Método escolástico y libertad de pensamiento. Duns Scoto y Michel Foucault

Abstract

The philosophical thought developed between the IV and XV centuries (aprox.), which we call medieval, has been characterized by a subject and a practice vital to the modification of the way of thinking. Timid at first but outstanding later, these are, in my opinion, the debate over the universals and the scholastic method supported by the discursive-gestural practice and installed in three ways of argument: lectio, dictio and quaestio. Certainly, this practice has been found mostly in Christian writings, although we cannot deny that it is also found in Jewish and Arab writing as well. In the Christian sphere, we can find them in the different forms that the intelligence of faith has acquired. These forms led to controversy and to the understanding by different thinkers that the truth is diffuse because it is either hidden by the smoke of sin or because human reason is incapable of reaching it. In this XIV century context we find Duns Scotus involved in the question of whether the world responds to an order pre-established by God: potentia ordinata, or to its own free will in accordance with the principle of potentia absoluta; and what is understood by them. Duns Scotus holds a “probable” and “contingent” order in the world event’s appearance by the principle of omnipotentia Dei. The term “probable” allows us to see an important change in the outlook of the century. Even though he was not the only one to claim that, the way in which he approaches the subject and the way his thought is ahead of the conceptions of the XIX and XX centuries caught our attention.