Reading Duns Scotus: From History to Philosophy

Abstract

I have written a large book on the place of Duns Scotus in the history of metaphysics. 1 This is understandable.But I have written only a small book on the structure of theology according to Duns Scotus. 2 This is forgivable.What is less forgivable is that I have not taken a position on the place of Duns Scotus in the history of Western theology.What is not forgivable at all is that I have not taken a position in the contemporary debates on the appropriateness or not of the revival of radical orthodoxy.Why is this the case? Because I did not want to pass from the historical results at which I had arrived to the contemporary problem that one is asked to answer.For what is the question? According to Catherine Pickstock, it is that of modernity. "Given that attempts to improve society in a secular way via the state and market have so visibly failed, then perhaps this revised genealogy which stresses the legacy of a distorted religious theory could also point us indirectly towards a more serious alternative future polity than the liberal and post-modern critiques." 3 What means to we have to answer this? For Pickstock, it is clearly a question of an interpretation of the nature of modernity. Is modernity that which it purports to be: an autonomy productive of values and not owing anything to what precedes it? Obviously, not. Hans Blumenberg, in his work The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, has already shown that modernity rests on the metaphor of secularization, and that any secularization rests on the idea of the appropriation of the goods of the Church-and thus on the appropria-

The Ratio Dei and the Ambiguities of History

“…He takes a first step in that direction by positing a new theologizing of metaphysics-"it is necessary as much as possible to release divine transcendence from the concept of ens", and "It is only by beginning with the Son that one can hope to have an image of the invisible Father, and thus eventually to conceive him." 20 In this, Boulnois strikes a chord resonant with Marion's Dieu sans etre and with Milbank's claim that "only theology overcomes metaphysics". 21 The irony in this approach is that it sounds strikingly like Scotus as well, at least in its motivation.…”