Pascal Massie

Pascal Massie was educated in France (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Agrégation) and completed his PhD at Vanderbilt University. He is currently associate professor at Miami University. His work focuses on Ancient and Medieval philosophy as well as contemporary continental philosophy. He is the author of Contingency, Time and Possibility; an essay on Aristotle and Duns Scotus (Lexington). He proposes a revision of the prevailing interpretation of the history of modal logic according to which Scotus rejected the principle of plenitude attributed to Aristotle and replaced the ancient diachronic theory of possibilities with a synchronic one, thereby contributing to a “possible world’s semantics.” Rather, Massie argues that in its proper ontological import, the question of possibility concerns the limit between being and non-being and that this limit must be thought in terms of temporality. He also wrote articles on Aristotle, Achard of Saint Victor, Duns Scotus, and Heidegger. His focus is primarily on metaphysics; more specifically on three related issues: the intersection of time and being, a temporal interpretation of modalities, and the ontological status of the future. His current projects include a book provisionally entitled Ontology of the Possible.