Duns Scotus
Duns Scotus - A Famous Scottish Philosopher
Duns Scotus (c. 1265 - c. 1308) was born at Duns in Scotland, he early became a Franciscan. He began his studies at Oxford in the scientific tradition of Roger Bacon, and continued in Paris, then a meeting point of Thomists, Averroists, and Augustinians. After a period of teaching in Oxford he taught in Paris from 1301 to 1303, and finally in Cologne.
Duns Scotus rejected the Thomist view that faith and reason overlap, and regarded philosophy as autonomous, a position later amplified by the Occamists who regarded faith and reason as entirely distinct. Philosophy is the science of reason, so that it wouldfollow that all proofs for the existence of God that introduce either sense perception or theology must fail. As to existence, Duns Scotus held that its sense is univocal: if God exists, then he does so in the same sense as man does. Nevertheless, there are various modes of existence, the two basic modes being the infinite and the finite. Here then is a conceptual way, somewhat after the manner of Avicenna, of proving that God exists: there is first term in the order of existence, and that is infinite. God for Duns Scotus was entirely free, and the world was what it is because that is how God chose to create it.
As to the question of universals, or qualities, Duns Scotus held that they inhabit each particular thing in a specific mode, which makes the thing what it is, giving it its "thisness". During the 14th century, the Scotist philosophy found many capable followeers.
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