Early Oxford Lecture on Individuation

The problem on individuation, because of its theological implications, was a particularly controversial topic in university circles in the late thirteenth century, particularly at Paris and Oxford. The Lectura text translated in this book is from the first bachelor lectures in Oxford by John Duns Scotus on theological issues occasioned by Peter Lombard's Sentences. Book Two of Peter's collection of opinions of Fathers of the Church, which served as a university textbook, began with a discussion of angels. Scotus tells us Distinction Three "treats of the personality of the angels" and it was this that prompted him to raise these six questions about the individuation of a material substance.