Abstract

The Tractatus de primo principio is a seminal work of Johannes Duns Scotus’ new approach to metaphysics which eventually became predominant up to the18th century. Its focus is on ontological analysis at its highest, transcendental or a priori level. In this regard it uses primary relations or disjunctions, the so-called›ordines essentiales‹. The paper gives an overview of this medieval ›transcendental turn‹ and sketches its enormous impact on western philosophy. The essaythen presents the top-level relations or ›ordines‹ and proceeds to discuss the basic tenets of the transcendental causal theory (›ordo dependentiae‹) in detail.A textual reconstruction endorses the understanding of the compact text and illustrates the causal theory’s line of argument that is at the core of the Tractatus.