Categories and Logic in Duns Scotus : An Interpretation of Aristotle's Categories in the Late Thirteenth Century

This volume deals with thirteenth-century interpretations of Aristotle’s Categories, providing at the same time an introduction to some main themes of medieval philosophical logic. It analyzes various answers to the question whether the Aristotle’s short and influential treatise is a logical or a metaphysical work, and to the connected question, whether categories are words, concepts, or things. It also presents the doctrine of the so-called ‘second intentions’, and traces the influence that it had on the interpretation of the Categories in authors such as Thomas Aquinas, Peter of Auvergne, Simon of Faversham, Radulphus Brito, and Duns Scotus. The last two chapters, entirely devoted to Duns Scotus’s reading of the Categories, provide a systematic introduction to Scotus’s commentary on Aristotle’s treatise, which has hitherto been largely neglected.