Scotus and Peirce on Reality and Possibility

Abstract

This essay concerns the metaphysical thought of Duns Scotus and Charles S. Peirce. It will be explained firstly how at the center of the “Scotistic realism” proposed by Peirce stays a new conception of “reality”. That will turn out evident through the analysis of the real character of universals and of formal non-identity. Secondly, it will be showed that close to that stays the thesis that Scotus’s real possibility is a very useful device to understand the metaphysical basis of knowledge in Peirce’s category of Thirdness.