A Translation of the Ethical Writings of John Duns Scotus, Medieval Philosopher and Theologian

FAIN: RQ-50724-13

University of South Florida (Tampa, FL 33620-9951)
Thomas Williams (Project Director: December 2012 to May 2016)

Preparation for publication of English translations of John Duns Scotus's (1265/66-1308) writings on ethics. (24 months)

Interest in John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) has increased in recent years. Arguments that Scotus’s work represents some sort of decisive break–the “Scotist rupture”–leading to modernity frequently invoke purported features of his ethics and moral psychology: his radical account of freedom, his sidelining of natural law and virtue in favor of an ethics of command and obedience, and his conception of human agents as autonomous individuals. Unfortunately, this broad scholarly interest in Scotus has vastly outpaced translators. Except for the handful of specialists who can read Scotus’s rather barbarous Latin, scholars must rely on outdated translations made from non-critical texts or even; many important texts untranslated. The proposed collection would make available, for the first time in English, translations from critically edited texts of all the material necessary for non-specialist students to understand Scotus’s ethics and come to their own informed conclusions.