Fala e comunicação em João Duns Escoto

Abstract

The period from the eleventh to the fourteenth century is one of the periods of most effervescent philosophical production. However, it is difficult to find works exclusively devoted to reflection on Language and Communication. Thus, part of this research will be an extraction of medieval texts –(mainly, but not only) scholastic texts– in search of those occasions when a discourse on language or communication emerges. A first field in which these themes emerged for an author for an university author at that time were discussions of logic that contributed to an increasingly subtle reflection on the signs used in Language and Communication.

In the present work it will focus in two fields in which the medieval scholastics were taken to the reflection on Communication: [i] the discussion on the speaking of the angels and [ii] the discussion on the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist, and especially on the ‘Eucharistic formula’. It will be seen how these two themes serve as an occasion for a discussion of Language and Communication in the work of John Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308). The purpose of this study will be, above all, to see to what extent it is possible, in fact, to find in the Middle Ages notions of ‘Communication’ or ‘Language’ close to the present.