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The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Logic
This volume, the first dedicated and comprehensive Companion to Medieval Logic, covers both the Latin and the Arabic traditions and shows that they were in fact sister traditions, which both arose against the background of a Hellenistic heritage and which influenced one another over the centuries. A series of chapters by both established and younger scholars covers the whole period including early and late developments, and offers new insights into this extremely rich period in the history of logic. The volume is divided into two parts, ‘Periods and Traditions’ and ‘Themes’, allowing readers to engage with the subject from both historical and more systematic perspectives. It will be a must-read for students and scholars of medieval philosophy, the history of logic, and the history of ideas.
Catarina Dutilh Novaes is professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). She is the author of Formalizing Medieval Logical Theories (Springer, 2007) and Formal Languages in Logic (Cambridge University Press, 2012), as well as many articles on the history and philosophy of logic.
Stephen Read is Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Logic at the University of St Andrews (Scotland). He is the author of Relevant Logic (Blackwell, 1988) and Thinking about Logic (Oxford University Press, 1995), editor of Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar (Springer, 1993), editor and translator of Thomas Bradwardine: Insolubilia (Peeters, 2010), translator of John Buridan: Treatise on Consequences (Fordham University Press, 2015), as well as the author many articles on contemporary and medieval philosophy of logic and language.
Introduction
Catarina Dutilh Novaes and Stephen Read 0.1 The Scope of Medieval Logic (in This Volume) What counts as “medieval logic”? The Middle Ages is traditionally conceived as the period between the fall of the Roman Empire in 410 and the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 (alternative end dates are Columbus’ first trip to the Americas in 1492 or the Protestant Reformation in 1517).1 So technically, logical theories and traditions of roughly between AD 500 and 1500 could all qualify as belonging to the realm of “medieval logic”.
In practice, however, this is not what most of us have in mind when we speak of medieval logic; we tend to think specifically of textual material in Latin, produced within Europe, and typically from the twelfth century onwards. Moreover, there is the issue of delineating what is to count as “logic” among the different theories and topics, as the borders between logic, grammar, metaphysics, theology, etc. were then rather fluid. For this volume, we have chosen to adopt geographical borders going beyond the usual Eurocentric narrative, even if only slightly, and this has meant in particular including the rich Arabic tradition (more on this choice shortly) alongside the Latin tradition. We also sought to be more inclusive on the temporal dimension by taking into account developments in the so-called Early Middle Ages, though the focus remains on later developments.
The inclusion of the Arabic tradition is a very natural choice, for a number of reasons. First, the Latin and the Arabic medieval logical traditions2 are strongly connected thanks to the prodigious influence of one author, namely Aristotle. Indeed, these two traditions are best studied in tandem, as they originate against the background of the same authoritative texts (especially Aristotle’s logical works), and as cross-fertilisation (especially the influence of Arabic logic on the Latin tradition) regularly occurred. Second, in recent years, scholarship on Arabic medieval logic has attained a level of maturity that allows for detailed analysis at an accessible level, even if it is not yet as thoroughly studied as the Latin tradition.
These two kinds of consideration also motivate the choice to exclude a number of traditions we might have included in the volume. In particular, the Chinese and Indian traditions do not share the same general Hellenistic (especially Aristotelian) background (and do not seem to have been in close, regular contact with the Latin and Arabic traditions); thus, it seems that they are best studied separately. (Perhaps a more accurate title for this volume would have been something like The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Aristotelian Logic.) But if belonging to the Aristotelian tradition, broadly construed, were the only criterion, then we would have had to take into account also the Byzantine tradition, which remained active, albeit to a lesser extent, in later centuries (Ierodiakonou 2011), and the Hebrew tradition, which developed in close proximity with the Arabic as well as the Latin traditions (Manekin 2011). However, current scholarship on these two traditions is still incipient, and so it seemed prudent to focus specifically on the two Aristotelian traditions for which we could rely on extensive existing scholarly work: the Latin tradition and the Arabic tradition.
This choice also provided a solution to the issue of what to count as “logic”: given the pivotal place of Aristotle’s logical texts in both traditions, delineating logic as a discipline in this period then becomes by and large a matter of focusing on responses to these texts and on new theories emerging within these contexts. We, the editors, are the first to admit that the volume as a whole is still very much skewed towards the Latin tradition, which is more thoroughly covered (in number of pages and in the choice of themes) than the Arabic tradition. But we hope that the volume will constitute a further step (following in the footsteps of pioneering work by, e.g., John Marenbon and Tony Street with their project ‘Aristotelian Logic East and West, 500–1500’, among others) towards a systematic, integrated study of these two sister traditions. In short: this volume covers developments in logic (understood predominantly, but not exclusively, as material related to Aristotle’s canonical texts) in the period ranging roughly from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, as produced in Christian Europe (in Latin) and in the Islamic World (in Arabic). This choice of scope is not arbitrary (indeed, it is motivated by the reasons just discussed), but it could well have been a different one (in particular by the inclusion of the Byzantine and Hebrew traditions). 0.2 Structure and Content of the Volume However, even with these restrictions in place, there remains a formidable amount of material that asks to be included. Given the general goal of accessibility for a Companion volume, some difficult choices had to be made on what to include and what not. We opted for a bipartite structure.
The first part is dedicated to periods and traditions, focusing on developments considered diachronically within each period. The key question for these chapters was how logical doctrines evolved within the relevant period, what were the main trends, concepts, authors, etc. The first chapter lays down the basis for the subsequent chapters by providing an overview of the ancient, Hellenistic background against which each of the two traditions went on to develop, and the reception of the different texts. We then have two chapters on the development of the Arabic tradition, and four chapters on the Latin tradition; in both cases, we looked for somewhat natural cut-off points. (As it so happens, the Latin tradition has very natural cut-off points by century, and for the Arabic tradition we took the pivotal figure of Avicenna to represent a natural cut-off point.) The second part focuses on themes and concepts; here the emphasis is predominantly (and perhaps disproportionately) on the Latin material, as many of the themes receiving full chapters are crucial within the Latin tradition but absent within the Arabic tradition (e.g. properties of terms, obligationes). Here, too, difficult choices had to be made, and in order to respect the standard length for a Companion volume, we had to restrict ourselves to eight general themes, which collectively cover much but naturally not all of the important developments in both traditions.
Some of the important topics that were by and large excluded (albeit with somewhat brief mentions in other chapters) but which could just as well have received full chapters are: exponibilia; syncategorematic terms; the Arabic traditions of “ma’ani wa bayan” (semantics–rhetoric) and “adab al-bahth” (formal dialectics); the connections with grammarians and grammar; logic and theology. Let us comment briefly on each of them. Exponibilia are a major focus within Latin fourteenth-century logic and beyond (Ashworth 1973); the basic idea is that of analysing the meaning of a sentence by its exposition into presumably simpler sentences. These are sentences “which need further analysis in order to lay bare their underlying logical form and to make clear under what conditions they can be said to be true or false” (Ashworth 1973, 137). Some examples of sentences requiring exposition are exceptives (e.g. ‘Everyone except Socrates is running’), exclusives (e.g. ‘Only Socrates is running’) and reduplicatives (e.g. ‘Justice is known qua good’).
Syncategorematic terms (Kretzmann 1982; Spruyt 2011) are those “funny words” that typically cannot figure as subject or predicate in propositions unlike categorematic terms (predominantly nouns and adjectives) and do not straightforwardly stand for “things”, but which make significant contributions to the overall meaning of propositions where they figure. Typical examples are what we now call “logical terms” such as ‘not’, quantifying terms such as ‘all’, ‘some’, ‘no’, among many others. (A glimpse of medieval discussions on syncategoremata can be found in the chapter “Sophisms and Insolubles”.) They gave rise to sophisticated discussions on the nature of linguistic meaning, the semantics of propositions, and even metaphysical issues by Latin authors (Dutilh Novaes and Spruyt 2015). Grammar and the work of grammarians was a major influence for the development of medieval logic in both traditions, Latin and Arabic. On the Latin side, while there was widespread recognition that logic and grammar were different disciplines (they were both part of the Trivium curriculum, more on which shortly), there were continuous close contacts between the two throughout the centuries.
The work of the ancient grammarian Priscian in particular was very influential among logicians (as well as grammarians). The early stages of development of theories of the properties of terms (see Chapter 9) were strongly influenced by grammatical concepts and concerns, and at some points in the development of Latin medieval logic one can even speak of an “invasion” of the domain of logic by grammar, in particular by the Modistae at the end of the thirteenth century in Paris (see Chapter 5 and van der Lecq 2011). On the Arabic side, grammar and logic were sometimes contrasted with each other as different approaches to similar questions pertaining to language and thought, as in the famous debate opposing the philosopher and logician Abu Bishr and the grammarian Sirafi in Baghdad in 937 or 938 (Adamson and Key 2015). In this particular instance, the opposition was not only between logic and grammar, but also between a “foreign, Greek” framework and an “Arabic, Islamic” one, the same opposition underlying the dispute between “falsafa” and “kalam” (more on which shortly). Nevertheless, the relations between grammar and logic in the Arabic tradition go much beyond mere opposition, and constitute an important factor for the development of Arabic logic (Black 1991; Street 2015). Indeed, the traditions of “ma’ani wa bayan” (semantics–rhetoric – Versteegh 1997, Chapter 9) and of “adab al-bahth” (formal dialectics, literally “the rules of inquiry” – Miller 1984) are illustrations of the fruitful connections between logic and other language-oriented disciplines in the Arabic tradition, including a great deal of cross-pollination.
There were also close connections as well as oppositions between logic and theology in both traditions. On the Latin side, and as will be discussed in more detail shortly, logic occupied a foundational position in the medieval academic curriculum, and while this meant that logic was sometimes viewed as a topic for the youth, this also meant that logic continued to provide the conceptual background for investigations in all fields, including theology. However, because theological truths often seem to defy mere “earthly” logic, a number of logical theories were developed in particular so as to allow for the discussion of difficult theological matters such as the Trinity. For example, God is the Father and God is the Son, but the conclusion by expository syllogism (see Chapter 7) that the Son is the Father is heretical (whereas, e.g., from ‘Aristotle wrote the Categories’ and ‘Aristotle is the Philosopher’ we can safely infer that the Philosopher wrote the Categories). Thus ensued, for example, Trinitarian logic (Knuuttila 2011a). Similarly, some of the main impulses for the development of theories of analogy were theological problems such as how to speak meaningfully about God at all, given that no affirmation can be appropriate to a transcendent being (Ashworth 2013b, part 2).
On the Arabic side, it is tempting to view the famous opposition between falsafa and kalam in the earlier stages as an opposition between philosophy/logic and theology. However, a more fruitful way to look at this opposition seems to be as between an Arabic, Islamic framework relying on the Koran, hadith and “indigenous” sciences like grammar, and the imported framework of the Greeks. And while some authors (Al-Farabi, Averroes) seem to suggest that there was a sharp opposition between kalam and falsafa, in practice many authors were happy to treat problems and ideas of these two traditions in a more integrative way, especially starting with Al-Ghazali and Razi. Indeed, the early kalam tradition contained a great deal of sophisticated argumentation techniques (Schöck 2005), and this is why it is best described as rational, speculative theology. At later stages, however, logic and particularly Avicennan logic becomes increasingly incorporated into the training of theologians and jurists in the madrasa system (more on which shortly), just as Aristotelian logic is widely used for theological inquiry in the Latin tradition. (See El-Rouayheb 2016 for a systematic overview of the relations between logic and theology in the Arabic tradition.) 0.3 Institutional Settings A crucial element in truly understanding medieval logical theories, both on the Latin side and on the Arabic side, are the various institutional factors that had considerable effect on how the theories themselves developed. After all, philosophical/logical theories typically do not arise in a vacuum: they emerge as responses to particular intellectual needs felt within a given intellectual community.
Throughout this volume, and in particular in the ‘Periods and Traditions’ section, close attention is paid to these factors as well as to more general social, historical developments (e.g. the impact of the Papal Schism in the fourteenth century for logical developments – see Chapters 6–7). Medieval scholars, both on the Latin side and on the Arabic side, had inherited from (late) Antiquity the idea that logic played a crucial foundational role in the pursuit of knowledge; logic was generally seen as providing the very methodology to be applied in all areas of inquiry. In practical terms, the upshot was that the basics of logic were typically taught to students very early on in their education, in particular the contents of Porphyry’s Isagoge, Aristotle’s Categories and On Interpretation, and some syllogistic. But each of these traditions should not be treated as monoliths, as important transformations occurred in each of them throughout the centuries. Another aspect of commonality between the two traditions is the challenge of harmonising the “pagan” conceptual framework inherited from Antiquity with monotheistic faith. Indeed, both in the Latin and in the Arabic traditions, we observe an uneasy but often also fruitful interplay between these two poles, when philosophical and logical concepts become appropriated to clarify and defend religious convictions.
In both cases, the result is often rational, philosophical approaches to theological questions, but also clashes between essentially philosophical and essentially theological perspectives (such as between falsafa and kalam in the Arabic tradition, or between Aristotelian scholasticism and the medieval mystical Christian tradition). On the Latin side, the noticeable differences between the philosophical and logical theories of the earlier centuries (roughly until the eleventh century) and later theories are to a great extent due to a radical shift in terms of institutional settings. With the exception of the period of the so-called Carolingian Renaissance (late eighth to early ninth centuries), the general economic stagnation in Christian Europe up to around AD 1000 is reflected in lesser (though still interesting) intellectual activity. As is well known, in this period, the pursuit of knowledge took place essentially in the context of monasteries, monastic schools and ecclesiastical centres more generally. This earlier period is not characterised by intense activity specifically on logical matters, but it certainly laid the grounds for the emergence of Latin scholasticism as we know it (see Chapter 4). With the economic prosperity of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the rise of towns and cities, the situation for intellectual pursuits more generally, and for logic in particular, began to change dramatically.
Especially in France (though in other European countries as well, e.g. Germany, the Netherlands, Italy), this period saw the flourishing of distinguished centres of learning such as cathedral schools in Chartres, Rheims, Paris, but also the famous abbey of Bec in Normandy (where Anselm wrote many of his most remarkable works, alongside his teaching and administrative duties as the prior of the abbey). And while the cathedral schools still mostly focused on training future clergy, the urban setting, the focus not only on religious but also on some civic matters, and the closer contact with other scholars were in clear contrast with the monastic focus on “leading a pious life” as the main purpose of education. In particular, while the monastic setting was characterised by master–pupil modes of dialogical interaction (as attested, e.g., in Anselm’s writings), the rise of the schools meant that more “adversarial” modes of dialogue such as debates and disputations became more prominent (Wei 2012; Novikoff 2013). Indeed, the twelfth-century Parisian schools were positively marked by the competitiveness among individual teachers in a marketplace of learning, where attracting students through one’s charisma as a teacher was a necessary condition for obtaining one’s income (see Chapter 4 and Wei 2012, chapter 1). But it would be a mistake to conclude that the monastic model had been entirely surpassed by the competitive model of the schools (Wei 2012, chapter 2). Indeed, some of the most famous disputes in the twelfth century (such as the one involving Peter Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux) can be understood as the clash between the two models, both of which remained equally vibrant.
Even with the rise of the universities later on, the monastic, contemplative model did not disappear completely and lived on with authors such as Hildegard of Bingen, Master Eckhart and the mystical tradition more generally. What is clear, at any rate, is that different institutional settings (the monastery, the cathedral school, the university) greatly influence the way intellectual inquiry is pursued, having consequences in particular for the logical theories developed given the tight connections between logic and argumentation. As is well known, with the rise of universities in the thirteenth century, most notably in Bologna, Paris and Oxford, a new system of learning emerged which was to have long-lasting consequences (see Chapter 5). In the fourteenth century, the university model was then exported from the original centres in France, Italy and England to the rest of Europe, with the foundation of universities in cities such as Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg, etc. (see Chapter 6). Essentially, much of the current structure of higher education is to be traced back to medieval universities, in particular the division of universities into different faculties. Philosophical instruction took place for the most part in the Arts faculties, and the classical Liberal Arts curriculum was famously structured in two clusters: the Trivium, composed of logic (or dialectic), grammar and rhetoric; and the Quadrivium, composed of music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy.
The Trivium was taught very early on (which then gave rise to the word ‘trivial’, meaning ‘unimportant’), and logic was to acquire increasing importance in the Trivium curriculum at the expense of the other two disciplines (something that humanists in the Renaissance would later criticise vehemently). The more common trajectory for a master was to start in the Arts faculty and then teach in the Arts faculty while studying in the higher faculties such as Law, Medicine and especially Theology (the notable exception being John Buridan, who spent his whole academic career at the Arts faculty in Paris). The teaching of logic in the thirteenth-century universities relied extensively on a few canonical textbooks, in particular Peter of Spain’s and William of Sherwood’s (see Chapter 5). It is also with the rise of universities that Aristotle’s canonical position became consolidated, as education in the Arts faculties consisted essentially in reading and commenting upon Aristotle’s texts (see Chapter 5 and Hoenen 2011). Indeed, up to the rediscovery of the Aristotelian corpus in its full glory at the end of the twelfth century, the most influential author as far as logical matters were concerned was Boethius, whose logical textbooks were widely read and provided the basis for logical education (along with his translations of Aristotle’s Categories and On Interpretation) (see Chapter 1). On the Arabic side, interest in logic and philosophy more generally emerged with the advent of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), which promoted a vigorous translation movement of Hellenistic texts (see Chapter 1) sponsored by the ruling elite in Baghdad, where Al-Kindi played a major role. The absorption of the Greek tradition gave rise to the Neoplatonic/Aristotelian tradition of falsafa; the main competing tradition in the early period was that of kalam, as mentioned above. Just as in the Latin tradition the rise of universities fundamentally changed the way logic was taught and practised, in the Arabic tradition it was the emergence of the madrasa system in the eleventh century that had an equally significant impact (Makdisi 1981). In the earlier period, logic would have been pursued in the more informal setting of an intellectual group with no institutional centre, with the most obvious examples being the Al-Kindi circle and the Baghdad school, with figures such as Farabi, Ibn Adi, etc. (see Chapter 2). In this context, the key component seems to have been the patronage relations between philosophers and various potentates, including the caliphal family in Kindi’s case. There were such patronage relations also in the cases of Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, and indeed many of the great thinkers in the Arabic tradition were never associated with formal institutions of learning. (See Reisman 2013 for Avicenna.) Madrasas as institutions of learning flourished from the eleventh century onwards, initially in Baghdad (Makdisi 1981). As noted, the impact of the rise of madrasas can be compared to the rise of universities in Europe in terms of how it fundamentally changed the way learning and intellectual inquiry were pursued – even if, as in the case of the European universities, these events were firmly grounded in previous developments. In particular, in the earlier period learning and intellectual inquiry were for the most part pursued in the context of centres of political power (given the patronage system), but with the emergence of the madrasas it became much more widely disseminated, geographically speaking. In the madrasas, the Arabic scholastic method became consolidated and widely disseminated, a method in which logic occupied pride of place (Street 2015). Notice, however, that if in the early stages the most influential logician was Aristotle, by the twelfth century the logic taught in the madrasas was by and large Avicennan, not Aristotelian (with a few pockets of diehard Aristotelians, in particular in Andalusia, such as Averroes). Moreover, in the madrasa context, logic came to be divorced from the Neoplatonic/Aristotelian falsafa tradition and became more of an instrumental discipline deemed useful for jurists and theologians (alongside grammar and rhetoric) (see Chapter 3). This development seems to be linked to the spread of the literary genres of condensed textbook (often memorised by students), commentary and gloss (Rescher 1964). (Of these textbooks, Al-Ghazali’s Doctrines of the Philosophers was later on very influential in the Latin tradition – Hasse 2014 – though it was not a madrasa handbook.) It is fair to say that the establishment of the madrasa system in the eleventh century gave rise to an educational tradition that continued to flourish well into the nineteenth century in the Islamic World. It is worth noting, however, that in the later medieval period we seem to be dealing not with one but rather with two Arabic traditions: one in the East, and one in the West, in the Iberian peninsula. These two traditions developed in largely independent ways, one noticeable difference being (as noted above) that in the East, Avicenna became the canonical logician, while in the West this position was still for the most part occupied by Aristotle, at least until the fourteenth century (during which time Avicennan logic also becomes predominant in North Africa and Islamic Spain). In this volume, the focus is predominantly on the Eastern tradition, but this editorial and authorial choice should not be interpreted as a dismissal of the historical and philosophical importance of the Iberian tradition (which also had great impact on the development of Latin logic, in particular due to the influence of Averroes – Hasse 2014). Finally, a note on another conspicuous absence from the volume: female philosophers and logicians. It is well known that in medieval times the possibilities for women to participate in intellectual, academic endeavours were rather meagre (to say the least), both in the Arabic tradition and in the Latin tradition. For example, women were usually not permitted to enrol as students in Christian universities. But it would be a mistake to conclude that women were completely excluded from medieval intellectual life (Herzenberg 2008). The Christian monastic setting in particular gave rise to remarkable figures such as Hildegard of Bingen and Heloise. On the Arabic side, there were women intellectuals who wrote on or collected hadith (reports about the prophet), poets and other scholars; for example, some of the members of the ulama religious elite, who pronounced on matters of religion and jurisprudence, were women. But to date there is no evidence of women having been active among logicians in the so-called Islamic Golden Age. The fact that we are only now beginning to appreciate the role and importance of some female figures in the history of philosophy is of course also a reflection of the gender bias in philosophical historiography (Witt and Shapiro 2015); it is to be hoped that future work will shed new light on the contributions of female figures. Sadly, though, at this point the available scholarship on the history of logic for this period presents a picture entirely dominated by men. Thus, the best we can do for now is to highlight this absence and to look forward to future work on medieval female thinkers. 0.4 Historiography of Medieval Logic Medieval logic began to be studied more systematically by historians of philosophy in the mid-twentieth century (at first, almost exclusively the Latin tradition), in particular with the pioneering work of scholars such as Bocheński, Moody, De Rijk, Boehner and others. Since then, medieval logic has attracted the interest of historians as well as logicians and philosophers, but it remained by and large seen as a somewhat “obscure” topic of study, perhaps still under the influence of the “Dark Ages” mythology as well as the received idea of medieval philosophy’s too-close-for-comfort connections with theology. Also worth noticing is the scarce availability of medieval texts in this period, which posed limits to the generality of the conclusions that could be drawn. Fortunately, a steady group of dedicated researchers pursued the project of producing critical editions of a wide range of logical texts that were otherwise only available in manuscript form (with a few exceptions available in Renaissance editions and some others which had received often unreliable editions). As a result, we now have a much wider range of materials available, and not only for the Latin tradition. Due to the increasing availability of modern editions of the key texts and an ever-increasing body of secondary literature, the study of medieval logic has been greatly facilitated; it is no longer viewed as an obscure topic of study, reserved for a handful of advanced graduate students and specialists. However, the availability of materials does not in any way solve all the issues one is confronted with in the study of medieval logic. In particular, there remain various pressing methodological issues, such as the role that modern, symbolic logic has to play in the analyses. Indeed, some of the earlier, mid-twentieth-century scholarship on (Latin) medieval logic consisted in adopting modern, potentially anachronistic logical frameworks to investigate the extent to which the medieval theories anticipated modern theories, or more generally resembled them. But while there is much insight to be gained in applying modern formal frameworks to historical logical theories (and both editors as well as many contributors to this volume have engaged in such projects), a great amount of care is required given the risk of unwittingly and unduly projecting modern presuppositions and assumptions into the medieval theories (Dutilh Novaes 2007; Cameron 2011; Thom 2011). Notice though that the fruitfulness and applicability of modern formal frameworks in the study of medieval logic is not the only issue worthy of attention. More generally, there is the question of what logic is/was to us, modern interpreters, and to them, medieval authors. General considerations on what logical frameworks were expected to accomplish for the medieval authors, i.e. the position logic occupied in the broader context of intellectual pursuits, need to be raised. (It is particularly ironic that the medieval authors themselves did not always display much care when interpreting the ancient authors they so often engaged with, Aristotle in particular – see Knuuttila 2011b.) Given that there are such significant differences between what logic was for medieval authors and what it is for us now, it may seem that nothing much can be gained from historical analyses for the systematic questions in modern (philosophy of) logic. But here too the situation is not as grim as it may seem: while it is always advisable to avoid viewing the medieval theories as completely detached from the broader context of their production and use, this does not mean that they cannot offer new insights in modern debates, even if the broader contexts are quite dissimilar. The main point, which in fact holds for historiography of philosophy in general, is to avoid anachronism while still potentially recognising historical theories as philosophically interesting in their own right. And thus, this Companion volume strives to strike the right balance between doing justice to the medieval theories in their own terms (in their own historical contexts) and outlining the systematic interest of the medieval theories as potential contributors to modern debates. Whether we have succeeded in achieving the right balance is for the reader to judge.
Contributors
E. Jennifer Ashworth is Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Waterloo (Canada). She is the author of Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period (Reidel, 1974) and the editor and translator of Paul of Venice’s Logica Magna Part II.8 (Oxford University Press, 1988). Julie Brumberg-Chaumont is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris (France). She is the editor of Ad notitiam ignoti, L’Organon dans la translatio studiorum à l’époque d’Albert le Grand (Brepols, 2013). Margaret Cameron is the Canada Research Council Chair in the Aristotelian Tradition and associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Victoria (Canada). She is the editor of Methods and Methodologies: Aristotelian Logic East and West 500–1500 (Brill, 2010) and Linguistic Content: New Essays on the History of the Philosophy of Language (Oxford University Press, 2014). Laurent Cesalli is professor of medieval philosophy at the Département de philosophie, Université de Genève (Switzerland). He is the author of Le réalisme propositionnel: Sémantique et ontologie des propositions chez Jean Duns Scot, Gauthier Burley, Richard Brinkley et Jean Wyclif (Vrin, 2007).
Elizabeth Coppock is a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study and a researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, University of Gothenburg x Contributors (Sweden). She has published articles in journals such as Linguistics and Philosophy and the Journal of Semantics. Catarina Dutilh Novaes is professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen (the Netherlands). She is the author of Formalizing Medieval Logical Theories (Springer, 2007) and Formal Languages in Logic (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Khaled El-Rouayheb is James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic and Islamic Intellectual History at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University (USA). He is the author of Relational Syllogisms and the History of Arabic Logic, 900–1900 (Brill, 2010).
AHMAD HASNAWI is director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. He is the author of articles in venues such as Arabic Sciences and Philosophy and L.E.U.S. and the editor of La lumière de l’ntellect: La pensée scientifique et philosophique d’Averroès dans son temps (Peeters, 2011). Wilfrid Hodges is a fellow of the British Academy and Emeritus Professor at Queen Mary, University of London (England). He is the author of Logic (Penguin, 1977) and Building Models by Games (Dover, 2006). Christoph Kann is professor at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Düsseldorf (Germany). He edited and translated William of Sherwood’s Introduction to Logic (Meiner, 1995) as well as his Syncategoremata (Meiner, 2012) and is the author of Die Eigenschaften der Termini. Eine Untersuchung zur ‘Perutilis logica’ Alberts von Sachsen (Brill, 1994).
Gyula Klima is professor at the Department of Philosophy, Fordham University (USA). He is the author of John Buridan (Oxford University Contributors xi Press, 2009) and the translator of John Buridan’s Summulae de Dialectica (2001). Henrik Lagerlund is professor and chair at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Western Ontario (Canada). He is the author of Modal Syllogistics in the Middle Ages (Brill, 2000) and the editor of the Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy (Springer, 2011). Stephen Read is Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Logic at the University of St Andrews and researcher at the Arché Research Centre (Scotland). He is the author of Thinking about Logic (Oxford University Press, 1995), and the editor and translator of Bradwardine’s Treatise on Insolubles (Peeters, 2010) and Buridan’s Treatise on Consequences (Fordham University Press, 2015). Riccardo Strobino is Mellon Bridge Assistant Professor at the Department of Classics of Tufts University (USA). He has published articles in journals such as Vivarium, Oriens, and the British Journal for the History of Philosophy. Paul Thom is Honorary Visiting Professor at the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney (Australia). He is the author of The Syllogism (Philosophia, 1981), Medieval Modal Systems (Ashgate, 2003), and Logic and Ontology in the Syllogistic of Robert Kilwardby (Brill, 2007).
Sara L. Uckelman is a lecturer at the Department of Philosophy, Durham University (England). She has published articles in journals such as Synthese, Vivarium, and the Journal of Philosophical Logic. Ian Wilks is professor and chair at the Department of Philosophy, Acadia University (Canada). He has published articles in journals such as the Journal of the History of Philosophy and the Review of Metaphysics. xii Contributors Mikko Yrjönsuuri is professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyvaskyla (Finland). He is the editor of Medieval Formal Logic (Kluwer, 2001) and author of Obligationes: 14th Century Logic of Disputational Duties (Acta philosophica Fennica, 1994).
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