NELLO STESSO ISTANTE. LA SFIDA DI GIOVANNI DUNS SCOTO SULLA LIBERTÀ

Following a critical review of the contemporary interpretative debate on freedom in Duns Scotus (libertarianism, compatibilism, the Anselmian line and the logical-metaphysical approach), this paper offers a systematic analysis of Scotus’s theory through a comparison with Aristotelian determinism and the development of the notion of synchronic contingency. The argument proceeds by first showing how the Aristotelian conception links necessity and time, before introducing Scotus’s solution, which shifts freedom from the diachronic to the synchronic axis. Central to this is the technical elaboration (composite/divided sense, instants of nature, natural priority), which allows for a conception of freedom that is not contradictory but ‘in act’ in the very same instant. The analysis then extends to the divine will and the theory of the possible, highlighting the metaphysical and epistemological implications of synchronic contingency. Scotus’s theory thus appears not merely as a doctrine of the will, but as a radical ‘challenge to time’: freedom is not simply causal indeterminacy, but rather the capacity to escape the necessity of the present.