How a brilliant Scottish philosopher became a byword for stupidity
Medieval thinker John Duns Scotus was once known as ‘the Subtle Doctor’, but is now mostly remembered in a very different way
John Duns Scotus was “one of the most important philosopher-theologians of the High Middle Ages”, according to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. “His brilliantly complex and nuanced thought, which earned him the honorific ‘the Subtle Doctor’, left a mark on discussions of such disparate topics as the semantics of religious language... and the nature of human freedom,” it adds.
Duns Scotus, a contemporary of Robert the Bruce, also has another claim to fame. Some 550 years ago, long after his death, his work, “Quaestiones in primum librum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi”, became what is believed to be the first example of a Scottish author appearing in print.
So the acquisition of this ancient tome by the National Library of Scotland is quite a coup.
However, there’s a reason why he is not better known. The Renaissance, the rise of humanism and the Protestant Reformation all saw his ‘Scotism’ teachings fall out of favour and the middle name of this highly intelligent man turned into the word ‘dunce’.
A good reputation can be a nebulous thing, and sometimes unfair ones really do stick.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.