Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a sonnet about him, and Thomas Merton came under his spell. The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce called him one of the "profoundest metaphysicians that ever lived," and the doctoral dissertation (and first book) of Martin Heidegger was
Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus (Categories and Meaning in Duns Scotus, 1916).
The situation of Heidegger illustrates perfectly the problems presented by the life and works of Duns Scotus. He was working with some logical treatises attributed to Duns Scotus in the first volume of Luke Wadding's edition of Duns Scotus's Opera Omnia (Complete Works, 1639), including the Tractatus de Modis Significandi sive Grammatica Speculativa (Tractate on the Mode of Signifying, or the Speculative Grammar). He knew enough about Duns Scotus's thought to speculate that this work was probably not by Duns Scotus at all. Some years later, Martin Grabmann picked up the clue and found that Heidegger was right: it was a work of Thomas of Erfurt (circa 1350) that had been included among the works of Duns Scotus.
Practically nothing can be said with certainty about the life of Duns Scotus.
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