John Duns Scotus: Critical Edition of the Reportatio Parisiensis examinata 1-A, d. 16-30
FAIN: RQ-50095-04
Catholic University of America (Washington, DC 20064-0001)
Timothy B. Noone (Project Director: November 2003 to November 2006)
Preparation of a critical edition of Duns Scotus's Reportatio Parisiensis examinata I-A, distinctions 16-30.
Scotus was unquestionably one of the most outstanding and influential philosopher-theologians of the Middle Ages. The research team proposes to work on Scotus's "Commentaria in libros Sententiarum Parisiensis" by continuing our on-going edition of the "Reportatio Parisiensis examinata I-A," part of one of the most important commentaries on the Sentences from the High Middle Ages. The first work in a series of texts to be edited that arise from Scotus's teaching in Paris at the end of the fourteenth century, the "Reportatio Parisiensis examinata I-A" was probably reviewed by Scotus himself for accuracy and was the text preferred on many doctrinal issues by early Scotists as representing the Subtle Doctor's mature thought; hence, the work was often quoted by subsequent followers and critics. For the proposed grant period, the Scotus Project Research Team intends to produce a critical edition of the central third of the "Reportatio Parisiensis examinata I-A," namely distinctions 16-30. These distinctions cover such philosophically interesting topics as the intention and remission of forms with a concomitant treatment of the difference between things differing in degree and differing in kind; the degrees of reality within finite ontology; identity and difference; the knowability and nameability of God; and personhood, both human and divine. The critical edition forthcoming from the proposed study will be an invaluable resource for medievalists, philosophers, theologians, historians of ideas, and historians of science. The influence of Scotus's philosophical and theological ideas was enormous, substantially informing discussions of the topics covered down to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.