The volume contains a brief introduction with a chronology of Scotus’s life and work (which could have benefited from S. Dumont’s recent essay in the volumeInterpreting Duns Scotus [Fordham UP, 2022]) and notes on the Latin text and translation; a parallel edition of the Latin text and translation of Scotus’s commentary on the Latin version of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book 1, the Prologue and Questions 1-10; extended notes on the text and translation; a section on several corrections to the Latin text with comments; and a bibliography (which is lacking the edition/translation of Scotus’s Reportatio IV-A [St. Bonaventure, 2016]).
A recent exhaustive review of this volume by Alfonso Quartucci in Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval, 31, no. 1 (2024): 291-4 leaves hardly anything to be done for the next reviewer and the reader could be directed to that review. Also, given that the Latin text in the volume is taken from an existing edition (B. Ioannis Duns Scoti Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, libri 1-5, Opera philosophica 3, ed. R. Andrews, G. Etzkorn et al. [St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1997]) and the main purpose of the volume is to provide a German translation, while a full English translation of this text by one of the editors of the Latin text (Girard Etzkorn) as well as Allan Wolter has been in existence for quite a while (Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle by John Duns Scotus, Books One-Five, vol. 1, trans. G.J. Etzkorn and A.B. Wolter [St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1997]), the current volume is of limited relevance and will only assist native German speakers among both college students and scholars of Scotus. Given that the majority of German-speaking scholars and college students are fluent in English, the relevance of the current volume is further reduced.
The current review, then, will focus on a few issues that seem to be underrepresented in Quartucci’s review. A few comments on the designation “critical edition” are in order. Söder brings up the fact that the editorial team of the St. Bonaventure edition of the Metaphysics have abandoned the idea of constructing a stemma despite having dealt with twenty-one manuscripts (18). Quartucci echoes Söder: “As for the choice of variant readings, it has already been remarked that the final aim of the research on the Questions should consist in critical choices which are consistent with a stemma codicum, and that this remains as yet a major desideratum” (294) as “the critical edition does not provide a stemma” (294n10). Now, if “critical” means more technically the process of recreating a stemma of MSS one can certainly deny the Latin text the status of a critical edition. However, if “critical” means reviewing all available manuscripts in order to recreate a text then this edition is certainly as “critical” as others. The editors (an esteemed group headed by Girard Etzkon and which included Romuald Green, Timothy Noone, and Robert Andrews, among others) write that they “have followed the ‘rational method’ by adopting the readings called for by the meaning of the context in spite of, at times, the fallible versions found in the manuscripts” (xxii). It is hard to deny the advantages of a “rational method” while attempting to recreate a text from a collection of very flawed or deficient MSS created in a university environment where they are intelligently read and corrected with little respect for the original.
According to Söder, this edition presents “the Latin text of Book 1 that has been improved in 17 places” (22). The improvements are listed on pages 379-80 and explained subsequently. All improvements are very minor and most of them are not questionable: for example, a word is adjusted to match a direct quotation that was previously missed, or quotation marks are added to mark a direct quotation. Sometimes changes are only to punctuation. One exception is in Book 1, q. 1, n. 145 (140-41 in this edition) where Söder preferences a minority reading motum (“moved”) over the reading motivum that is printed in the St. Bonaventure Latin edition and translated by Etzkorn/Wolter as “mover.” One can argue that the editors’ and translators’ choice also makes sense here. The context is that “being” is associated with “movement” or an ability to move things, but that the natural philosopher can only indicate the prime mover, but not necessarily the primary being. Further, the natural philosopher can indicate not the ultimate being but only--a sensical idea given the flow of the argument--the ultimate mover. While the variant “the ultimate moved” also makes sense, a much more substantial discussion is needed to exclude the variant “mover” definitively.
One must also note Söder’s reasons for deleting all the editorial partitions and subtitles in his edition/translation, which make good sense: “Our edition does not accept the subtitles introduced by the editors of the Opera Philosophica.... This would subject the reading comprehension to prior editorial decisions and direct it along the way that outlines how the editors understood the text. ...the reader cannot be spared the effort to first work out their own understanding and not grab on to the ‘reading glasses’ prepared by others previously...” (22-23).
The introduction to the Etzkorn/Wolter translation mentions the “messiest” manuscript tradition for Questions on the Metaphysics but also the stylistic difficulties for a translator of Scotus (xv) without really saying anything specific about their approach to translation apart from Wolter’s addition of explanatory phrases and words in [...] brackets. Söder agrees that this sketchy and sometimes cryptic text does not make it easy to produce a “good, readable” translation. One is tempted to make it “more comprehensible and smooth,” so one must achieve a balance between adding too much interpretation and leaving the text too “obscure and ambivalent” (23).
Söder is obviously familiar with the Etzkorn/Wolter translation as he notes that despite its usefulness “on many occasions, and often the most tricky ones, Etzkorn/Wolter leave us clueless” (24). One wishes he provided some examples. Söder also complains that the translation was not perfectly harmonized with the Latin text (24n41), although in his example the translators probably preferred the alternative reading, which seems to make better sense, as a good translation of a critical text (especially by one of its editors!) also indicates one’s reconstruction of the text.
Speaking of his own approach to translation, Söder notes that it is “an attempt to present the Latin text as precisely and closely [to the text] as possible; the original must be made comprehensible without softening its characteristic roughness. Also for obscure and ambigous passages we wanted at least to present plausible interpretations” (25). One must say that on this front Söder definitely succeeds: the translation is excellent, very accurate, very clear, and does not leave truncated or cryptic phrases for the reader to guess but expands them without using the [...] brackets for additions. As for the quality of the German text, I only found one possible typo in q. 1, n. 15, p. 63, “Natur..., die, wie er sagt, Betrachtungsgegenstand diese Wissenshaft ist” (translating in tali natura... quam dixit istam scientiam considerare), which should probably be “dieser Wissenshaft.”
Söder further notes that where possible he offered consistent German equivalents of Latin terms but that there are some limitations to this approach in the case of Latin terms such as ratio which have very broad ranges of meaning and cannot be translated by a single word into German (25). Taking ratio as an example and comparing it with the way Etzkorn and Wolter (EW) translated the term yields the following equivalents: “Argument” (Prologue, n. 8, p. 33, EW: “proof”); “Begriff” (q. 1, n. 42, p. 81; EW: “the way [something is] considered”); “Gesichtspunkt,” “Hinsicht” (q. 1, n. 145, p. 141; EW: “characteristic,” “aspect”); “demzufolge,” i.e., by a demonstrative pronoun (q. 1, n. 146, p. 141; EW: “basis”); “Grund” (q. 6, n. 43, p. 281; EW: “aspect”); “Sinngehalt” (q. 9, n. 40, p. 333; EW: “reason”).
Overall, this is an excellent German translation of the St. Bonaventure edition of the Latin text of Duns Scotus’s commentary on the Metaphysics with useful comments but with no substantial improvements to the Latin text.