Paul Natterer

The Tractatus de primo principio is a seminal work of Johannes Duns Scotus’ new approach to metaphysics which eventually became predominant up to the18th century. Its focus is on ontological analysis at its highest, transcendental or a priori level. In this regard it uses primary relations or disjunctions, the so-called ›ordines essentiales‹. The paper gives an overview of this medieval ›transcendental turn‹ and sketches its enormous impact on western philosophy. The essay then presents the top-level relations or ›ordines‹ and proceeds to discuss the basic tenets of the transcendental causal theory (›ordo dependentiae‹) in detail. A textual reconstruction endorses the understanding of the compact text and illustrates the causal theory’s line of argument that is at the core of the Tractatus. mehr