The scholarly purpose of the volume is to restate and describe the historical reception of John Duns Scotus meta-physics, which, by taking the real concept of being as being as the first object of first philosophy, laid the ground-work for what scholars have called the second beginning of metaphysics in Western philosophy. Scotus outlined a theory of transcendental concepts that includes an analysis of the concept of being and its prop-erties, and a general analysis of modalities and intrinsic modes, paving the way for a view of metaphysics as a sci-ence of possible being. From the fourteenth to the eighteenth century Scotists invented and developed special concepts that could embrace both real being and the being of reason. The investigation of the metaphysics of the transcendentals by subsequent thinkers who were guided by Scotus is the central focus of the present collective book.

Roberto Hofmeister Pich is Professor of Philosophie at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul. Ludger Honnefelder received his doctorate in 1972 and habilitated in philosophy at the University of Bonn in 1982. Today he is Professor Emer-itus at the University of Bonn.