Publication
Title
Freedom, contingency and self-gift: from Duns Scotus to humanae vitae
Author
Abstract
This paper explores the prospects of a kind of Scotistic personalism. It does so by tying Scotus’s key notion of synchronic contingency to the metaphysics of marriage. Scotus’s voluntarism often enjoys a dubious reputation in the history of philosophy, standing at the origin of a typically “modern” conception of freedom. Pope Benedict’s remarks in his Regensburg address are used as a historical foil, in a balancing act with the 1277 condemnations, and it is suggested that Scotus was precisely aiming at a careful and valuable balance. This paper subsequently explores whether it can also be understood as a personalist metaphysics of self-gift that can ground one of the Church’s most contentious moral teachings: Humanae Vitae. A rudimentary framework of a ‘scotistic’ metaphysics of institutions and personhood is presented and a metaphysics of marriage is built on top of that. In the last section this is complemented with some wider theological, especially mariological considerations.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Philosophical News
Publication
2018
Volume/pages
16 (2018) , p. 19-28
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Publication type
Subject
External links
Record
Identifier
Creation 17.09.2020
Last edited 04.03.2024
To cite this reference