His most important writings are two sets of Commentaries on the Sentences and the treatises Quodlibetic Questions, Questions on Metaphysics, and On the First Principle.
.
Although John Duns Scotus was very influential upon his students and fellow scholars, he was often misunderstood regarding the nature and purpose of his work. His frequent use of subtle distinctions and difficult style served only to undermine what traditionally had been accepted without question. (Gonzalez, p.429) Even though his lectures were popular and well attended, his views failed to gain the widespread measure of acceptance, which Thomas Acquinas eventually enjoyed. John Duns Scotus? lack of acceptance was due mostly to his difficult style and contrasting clarity of Thomas Acquinas. Like Aquinas, Scotus was a realist in philosophy, but he differed from Aquinas on certain basic issues. A major point of difference concerned their views of perception. Scotus held that a direct, intuitive grasp of particular things is obtained both through the intellect and the senses. Aquinas maintained that intellect did not directly know the singularity of material things but only the universal natures that are abstracted from sense perceptions. Scotus held that universals as such do not exist apart from the human mind, but that each separate or "singular" thing possesses a formally distinct nature that it shares in common with other things of the same kind. This fact, he taught, provides the objective basis of our knowledge of essential truths. Following the Franciscan tradition established by the Italian theologian St. Bonaventure, Scotus stressed human freedom and the primacy of human will and acts of love over the intellect. He avoided an arbitrary or voluntarist view of God's acts, although he pointed out that the actual existence of things depends on a free decision made by God, and he argued that moral obligations depend on God's will.