1 Scotus on Objective Being * Giorgio Pini Abstract Scotus’s views on objective being — i.e. the special way objects of thought are supposed to be in the mind — have been recently interpreted in different ways. In this paper, I argue that Scotus’s apparently contradictory statements on objective being can be made sense only if they are read against the background of his theory of essence. Specifically, I claim that a key point of Scotus’s position is that objects of thoughts are in the mind but have mind-independent identity (they are in the mind but not of the mind). I defend my interpretation by focusing on a usually neglected passage from Scotus’s Questions on the Metaphysics where Scotus provides an unusually explicit (if short) account of what he takes ‘to be objectively in the intellect’ to mean. 1. The problem Between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, a number of philosophers and theologians started to refer in their writings to the notion of objective being. By that expression, they wanted to indicate that what is thought about is in the thinker’s intellect in a special way. They considered it as uncontroversial that what is thought about is not in the thinker’s intellect as one of its parts. But the way what is thought about is in the thinker’s intellect should also be distinguished from the standard non- mereological sense of ‘being in another thing’ that Aristotle had described, namely the way an accident is in its subject, for example the way heat is in the sun. 1 Heat is in the sun as one of the sun’s characteristics: it is something that modifies it and makes it be in a certain way, namely hot. By contrast, when I think about the sun, the sun is not one of my characteristics or modifications — when I think about the sun, I am not sun-like. Nevertheless, the sun can still be said to be in my intellect. The adverb ‘objectively’ (obiective) and the corresponding expression ‘objective being’ (esse * A version of this paper has appeared in Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofia medievale 26 (2015), pp. 337-367. In this paper, I use the following editions of Scotus’s works : Ordinatio (= Ord.), in Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera omnia, vols. I-XIV, cura et studio Commissionis Scotisticae, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, Civitas Vaticana 1950-2013 (= ed. Vat. I-XIV) ; Lectura (= Lect.), in Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera omnia, vols. XVI-XXI, cura et studio Commissionis Scotisticae, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, Civitas Vaticana 1960-2004 (= ed. Vat. XVI-XXI) ; Reportatio I-A (= Rep. I-A). The Examined Report of Paris Lecture Reportatio I-A. Latin Text and English Translation, edd. A. B. Wolter, O. V. Bychkov, 2 vols., The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, N. Y. 2004 and 2008 (= ed. Wolter and Bychkov I and II) ; Quodlibet (= Quodl.), q. 13, in Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera omnia, XXV, Vivès, Paris 1895 (= ed. Vivès XXV), pp. 507-586 ; Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis (= Quaest. super Met.), edd. R. Andrews et al., Opera Philosophica, vols. III and IV, The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, N. Y. 1997 (= OPh III and IV). 1 Aristotle, Categories, 2, 1a24-25.