The scotist voluntarism: constitution and usage of historical cesurea in modern usage

This paper addresses 19th- and 20th-century reconstructions and evaluations of Scotist voluntarism. Although the opposition between Scotist voluntarism and Thomist intellectualism has been studied from the very first reception of Scotus' thought and the 14th-century debates between Scotists and Thomists, nevertheless around 1800 a new reading of this opposition appeared in the intellectual context of the German Protestant universities. 19th-century German historians of philosophy depicted Scotist voluntarism as a radical novelty and as a detour in the development of modern reason. At the beginning of the 20th century this reading spread to the French-speaking world, where, however, Scotist voluntarism was evaluated in a different light: instead of an obstacle on the road to modern rationality, for francophone historians Scotist voluntarism was the first appearance of modern subjectivism and indifferentism, that is, the beginning of a long-lasting decline in the history of reason.