Time and Contingency in Duns Scotus

Scotus' teaching on time presents two difficulties: one concerns the elucidation of the intricate texts in which the issue is raised, the other concerns the evolution of Scotus, who seems to have held different views at different stages of his career. The goals of this paper are to locate Scotus' views on time within the inquiry into the relation of time and eternity which itself stands at the core of the foreknowledge and future contingents debate and to demonstrate that the question concerning the ontological status of time is related to Scotus' teaching on contingency and possibility. Taking a departure from recent interpretations, the author argues that Scotus' discussion is not properly understood if we project upon it the twentieth-century debate between an indexical conception of time and a presentist one.