John Duns Scotus was a Scottish Franciscan friar, priest and scholastic philosopher and theologian, born around 1265 or 1266 in Duns, Scotland, and died in 1308 in Cologne. Working within medieval scholasticism, he is remembered chiefly for three technical contributions: the univocity of being, the claim that existence can be predicated in the same basic sense of God and of created things; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing really inseparable aspects of one thing; and haecceity, his term for the individuating thisness that makes each particular being unique rather than merely an instance of a general kind. Scotus also mounted an influential philosophical defense of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and his subtle, technically demanding style earned him the scholastic title Doctor Subtilis, the Subtle Doctor, and gave rise to Scotism as a distinct school of thought within later medieval and early modern philosophy.
Facts
Birth YearSourced to the subject's own accountSources place his birth between 23 December 1265 and 17 March 1266; 1266 is the year most commonly cited. Defining MomentSourced to the subject's own accountHis defense of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, later cited in Pope Pius IX's 1854 dogmatic declaration 1 Notable PublicationSourced to the subject's own accountOrdinatio (Opus Oxoniense), his revised Oxford lecture commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences 1 Death YearSourced to the subject's own account Death DateSourced to the subject's own account BirthplaceSourced to the subject's own accountDuns, Berwickshire, Scotland 1 Death PlaceSourced to the subject's own accountCologne, buried in the Church of the Friars Minor 1 TraditionSourced to the subject's own accountScotism, the Franciscan scholastic tradition derived from his own work 1 Classification
NationalitySourced to the subject's own account In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Duns Scotus (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLife section, on his birth dating
His date of birth is believed to have been sometime between 23 December 1265 and 17 March 1266.
Life section, on his death in Cologne
Duns Scotus died unexpectedly in Cologne in November 1308; the date of his death is traditionally given as 8 November.
Life section, traditional death date
the date of his death is traditionally given as 8 November
Life section, on the origin of his name
That his contemporaries called him Johannes Duns, after the medieval practice of calling people by their Christian name followed by their place of origin, suggests that he came from Duns, in Berwickshire, Scotland.
Life section, on his burial
He is buried in the Church of the Friars Minor there.
Lead section, on Scotism
The intellectual tradition derived from Scotus's work is called Scotism.
Work section, on the Ordinatio
The standard version is the Ordinatio (also known as the Opus oxoniense), a revised version of lectures he gave as a bachelor at Oxford.
Theology, Immaculate Conception section
Perhaps the most influential point of Duns Scotus's theology was his defense of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (i.e., that Mary herself was conceived without sin).
Lead section, nationality sentence
John Duns Scotus ( dunz SKOH-təs; Ecclesiastical Latin: [duns ˈskɔtus], 'Duns the Scot'; c. 1265/66-8 November 1308) was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian.
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