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Brief Lives

Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308)

Jack Allen considers the influential ideas of a medieval philosopher-monk.

John Duns Scotus is the most impressive and influential British philosopher of whom most people have never heard. This fact is itself rather impressive given that, along with Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham, he is reckoned to be one of the most important philosopher-theologians of the High Middle Ages of the Eleventh to Fourteenth Centuries.

Life In Brief

Scotus remains a rather mysterious man. You may have noticed that the date of his birth is given as ‘1265/66’. In truth we simply do not know when he was born.

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