and Kantian categories inasmuch as the former are supposed to determine what kinds of things there are and the latter what can be experienced. Yet these traditional lists of categories draw on a specific domain of beings or objects for their determinacy and validity and, because of that, they are insufficiently formal (FS 211, 263, 287f). In addition to its clear recognition of the irreducibility of logical reality to psychological facts (FS 271-279, 284-288), Scotus's logical theory is said to have the virtue of appreciating the utter universality of logical categories, their applicability to sensory, supersensory, and nonsensory realms (the realms of natural sciences, metaphysics, and mathematics ) as well as to themselves.14 Paradigmatic among logical categories are the transcendentals, beginning with "being," the "category of categories" that indicates a "logically-theoretical value," namely, that of objectivity, and thus signifies "the condition of the possibility of knowledge of an object at all."15
In Scotus's appreciation of the universality of certain logical categories, particularly in his account of truth as a transcendental, Heidegger also finds a clear anticipation of the subjective and reflexive turn on which transcendental logicians insist. For example, Scotus's characterization of "being" as the maximally knowable ("maxime scibile") and his claim that "the true" is not something prior to the act of understanding meet in advance the demand to take the "judging subject" into account without confounding the con tent of what is judged truthfully with the passing reality of the subject (FS 270f, 275, 285, 402) . His rejection of an infinite regress of knowing judgments is interpreted by Heidegger as having its basis in an act remarkably akin to what Husserl describes as a
14 In the habilitation, Heidegger investigates Scotus's theory of categories only to the extent necessary to be able to determine the particular domain of meanings in his doctrine. But Heidegger also 1nakes a more fundamental qualification, based upon h is rejection of attempts to determine categories in abstraction from experience of the " material" form ed by them. Adopting Lask's conception of categories as forms intrinsically oriented to particular mate rial ordered by them, Heidegger emphasizes the necessarily nondeductive, ostensive, and open-ended character of such an undertaking. From this stand point, the very generality of Scotus's theory (elaborated without the benefit of the various newly developed sciences) is at odds with the demands of a modern theory of categories. Nevertheless, Heidegger defends taking Scotus's "general reflections" as his point of departure with the observation that general reflections are necessary if justice is to be done to one's own way of proceeding. Moreover, despite th e advances of transcendental philosophy, contemporary theory of science has not moved beyond problen1 s at such a general level (FS 200f, 212ff, 274f) .
15 FS 215: nor does the analysis stop at this point, since the meaning of 'being' can be unpacked in terms of other transcendentals (the predicates unum, verum, and bonum, which are convertible with it) . See PS 122ff for Heidegger's remarks on agathon.