The Many Roots of Medieval Logic: The Aristotelian and the Non-Aristotelian Traditions

268 Pages·2007·1.5 MB·English

by  John Marenbon

Th e Many Roots of Medieval Logic:
Th e Aristotelian and the Non-Aristotelian Traditions

The Many Roots of Medieval Logic:
The Aristotelian and
the Non-Aristotelian Traditions
Special Offprint of Vivarium 45, 2-3 (2007)
Edited by
John Marenbon
.
LEIDEN BOSTON
2007
Originally published as Volume 45, No. 2-3 (2007) of Brill’s journal Vivarium.
Th is book is printed on acid-free paper.
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ISBN: 978 90 04 16487 1
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Contents
Jo hn M arenbon , Introduction .................................................... 1
I. Roots, Traditions and the Multiplicity of Medieval Logic
S ten E bbesen , Th e Traditions of Ancient Logic-cum-Grammar in
the Middle Ages—What’s the Problem? ................................... 6
I I. Stoic Logic and Linguistics
C hristopher J. Ma rtin , Denying Conditionals: Abaelard and the
Failure of Boethius’ Account of the Hypothetical Syllogism .... 23
M artin L enz , Are Th oughts and Sentences Compositional? A
Controversy between Abelard and a Pupil of Alberic on the
Reconc iliation of Ancient Th eses on Mind and Language ....... 39
A nne G rondeux , Res Meaning a Th ing Th ought: Th e Influence of the
Ars donati .................................................................................. 59
I II. Platonism in Logic and Semantics
C hristophe E rismann , Th e Logic of Being: Eriugena’s Dialectical
Ontology .................................................................................... 73
I rène R osier -C atach , Priscian on Divine Ideas and Mental
Conceptions: Th e Discussions in the Glosulae in Priscianum, the
Notae Dunelmenses, William of Champeaux and Abelard ......... 89
S tefania B onfiglioli and C ostantino M armo , Symbolism and
Linguistic Semantics. Some Questions (and Confusions) from
Late Antique Neoplatonism up to Eriugena ............................. 108
I V. Aristotle, Augustine and Stoicism
M ary S irridge , “Utrum idem sint dicere et intelligere sive videre
in mente”: Robert Kilwardby, Quaestiones in librum primum
Sententiarum ............................................................................. 123
C laude P anaccio , Mental Language and Tradition Encounters in
Medieval Philosophy: Anselm, Albert and Ockham ................. 139
L aurent C esalli , Intentionality and Truth-Making: Augustine’s
Influence on Burley and Wyclif’s Propositional Semantics ....... 153
V. Aristotelian Traditions in Medieval Logic
L uisa V alente , Names Th at Can Be Said of Everything: Porphyrian
Tradition and ‘Transcendental’ Terms in Twelfth-Century Logic 168
E. Jennifer A shworth , Metaphor and the Logicians from Aristotle
to Cajetan ...................................................................................... 181
C hristophe G rellard , Scepticism, Demonstration and the Infi nite
Regress Argument (Nicholas of Autrecourt and John Buridan) 198
C atarina D utilh N ovaes , Th eory of Supposition vs. Th eory of
Fallacies in Ockham .................................................................. 213
Egbert P. B os , Richard Billingham’s Speculum puerorum, Some
Medieval Commentaries and Aristotle ...................................... 230
Bibliography ............................................................................... 244
Th e page numbers in the above table of contents refer to the bracketed
page numbers in this volume.
viva
rium
Vivarium 45 (2007) 131-135 www.brill.nl/viv
Introduction
A common way of dividing up medieval logic, which goes back to the period,
is into the logic vetus, the logica nova and the logica modernorum. Th e first two
of these labels refer to the different items in Aristotle’s logical corpus—the
group of works that came into use gradually between c. 780 and c. 1000, and
the remaining works that became known in the century or so after 1110. Th e
third is the title for those branches of logic invented by medieval thinkers,
such as the theory of the properties of terms or the investigation of insolubles.
Th is division sums up very eloquently a conception of medieval logic that is
usually unquestioned. Either it is Aristotelian in its basis, or else it is—perhaps
with some debts to the Aristotelian tradition—of medieval invention. But
might there not be other ancient traditions behind aspects of medieval logic?
Might it not have many ancient roots? Th e papers here set out to explore some
of the avenues indicated by this question. Th e sections of the collection indi-
cate the ways in which the question can be articulated.
Th e other great tradition of logic and semantics in the ancient world besides
Aristotle’s was that of the Stoics. Th ere is no doubting its importance as a
logical school, but, unlike Aristotelian logic, its transmission to the Middle
Ages is unclear. Section II (papers on conditionals by Christopher Martin; on
compositionality by Martin Lenz and on res meaning a thing thought by Anne
Grondeux) considers the extent of possible Stoic influence. By contrast, there
is no doubt that medieval thought was influenced by Platonism, but there is a
large question—addressed in Section III (papers on Eriugena by Christophe
Erismann, Ideas in the mind of God by Irène Rosier-Catach and symbolism
in the early Middle Ages by Stefania Bonfiglioli and Costantino Marmo)—as
to whether it is helpful to speak of Platonic logic. One of the main bearers
of Platonic influence was Augustine, but, especially in semantics, Augustine
is strongly influenced by Stoicism. How did this Augustinian approach to
semantics interact with the Aristotelian model, known especially through his
On Interpretation? Th e papers in Section IV (Mary Sirridge and Claude Panac-
cio on mental language, and Laurent Cesalli on the semantics of propositions)
examine this question.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/156853407X217678
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[2] 132 Introduction / Vivarium 45 (2007) 131-135
From Sections I-IV, it will already have become evident that the Aristotelian
ideas combine in a whole variety of ways with these other Stoic, Platonic and
Augustinian ones. Section V looks at what might be called Aristotelian tradi-
tions in medieval logic—medieval developments in logic that can indeed be
traced back to Aristotle, but to aspects of Aristotle from which theories that are
themselves unAristotelian are developed: the theory of transcendental terms,
discussed by Luisa Valente; metaphor, treated by Jennifer Ashworth and Chris-
tophe Grellard’s examination of how sceptical arguments found in the Prior
and Posterior Analytics are exploited in the fourteenth century. Th e final two
pieces in this section—by Catarina Dutilh Novaes on fallacies and supposition,
and Egbert Bos on probationes terminorum—consider to what extent branches
of the logica modernorum can be thought of as distant types of Aristotelianism.
* * *
S ten Ebbesen sets the scene, in Section I, by presenting his conception of
the problem as a whole: ‘Th e Tradition of Ancient Logic-cum-Grammar in the
Middle Ages—What’s the Problem?’, he asks in his title. Ebbesen is sceptical
about the direct influence on medieval logic of ancient Stoicism. Where Stoic
and medieval logical notions (for instance, Stoic lekta and medieval dicta or
enuntiabilia) are close to one another, he believes that it is a case of parallel
development. He also doubts whether there is anything that can properly be
called ‘Neoplatonic Logic’. But he suggests that we add to the traditional ter-
minology of ‘Aristotelian’, ‘Stoic’ and ‘Neoplatonic’, the ideas of ‘Hellenistic
Standard’ and ‘Late Ancient Standard’. Hellenistic Standard is the mixture of
Stoic and Aristotelian logic that was widely disseminated in the Hellenistic
period. Ebbesen believes that it would be worthwhile to try to describe it, but
that it has ‘scant relevance’ for medieval logic. By contrast, he argues that Late
Ancient Standard logic and Late Ancient Standard grammar are both impor-
tant for the Middle Ages: LAS logic is the mixture of logical ideas, often devel-
oped by Neoplatonists though not specifically Neoplatonic, that was common
in late antiquity and is reflected in Boethius’s works. LAS grammar is largely
but not entirely Stoic in its derivation, and it is mediated through Apollonius
Dyscolus and Priscian.
Ebbesen’s answer to the question he poses himself faces, therefore, in
two different directions. On the one hand, he does not reject the idea that
there are traditions at the basis of medieval logic other than the Aristote-
lian. Indeed, his argument points in the direction of saying that we should
think, first and foremost, of LAS logic and grammar—composite traditions,
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Introduction / Vivarium 45 (2007) 131-135 133 [3]
containing heterogeneous elements—as giving medieval logic and semantic its
roots, as multiple as these traditions themselves. Th is analysis fits a number of
the papers that follow. Grondeux, Lenz and Ashworth illustrate the pervasive-
ness of LAS grammar, as do the papers in Section IV (where Augustine’s
importance as a transmitter of strands in this tradition is highlighted); Valente,
especially, provides an instance of LAS logic and how it is developed in the
Middle Ages. On the other hand, Ebbesen wants to disappoint some of the
expectations raised by the title of this collection. We should not expect, he tells
us, to encounter medieval versions of Stoic logic, or that of any other ancient
school apart from the Peripatetics. Is Ebbesen right?
In several important ways, the papers published here seem to show that he
is wrong. First, Chris Martin’s paper shows that it is possible, if in a qualified
way, to talk of a medieval influence of strictly Stoic logic. Stoic logic is most
sharply distinguished from Aristotle’s by being propositional, whereas Aristo-
telian logic is of terms. Unfortunately, ancient scholars seem to have seen these
systems as competing, rather than complementary, and in late antiquity Stoic
logic all but disappeared, leaving no texts that could be transmitted to the
Middle Ages. In LAS logic, as represented by Boethius, although features orig-
inating from Stoic propositional reasoning remain, their meaning has been
lost (cf. Speca, 2001). What Martin shows, however, is that Abelard succeeded
in rediscovering the notion of propositional content and so in devising a prop-
ositional logic, on the basis of a reading of Boethius’s treatise on hypothetical
syllogisms. Abelard saw, as it were, through the incomprehension of Boethius
and LAS to the core of Stoic logic, hidden to them. It is not, therefore, a mat-
ter strictly speaking of parallel development, but rather of a sort of thoughtful
perspicacity, a logical ability that enabled Abelard to make of the tradition
more than it ostensibly offered him.
Second, Christophe Erismann’s paper shows how, in a limited area, it may
be justified to speak of a Platonic logic. Although Porphyry and many of the
Neoplatonists who interested themselves in logic (especially Boethius, who is
strikingly Porphyrian) allow their Neoplatonism to affect their logical think-
ing only sporadically, there was a current in the logic practised by Neopla-
tonists that was more genuinely Neoplatonic, and one medieval Latin thinker,
John Scottus Eriugena—using especially his knowledge of Greek Christian
sources, such as Maximus the Confessor—took it to its limits. True, as Eris-
mann indicates, Eriugenian logic is always shading into metaphysics, but it
begins from Aristotle’s Categories.
Th ird, Christophe Grellard’s paper brings out the many-rootedness of medi-
eval logic in a way that Ebbesen’s scheme does not accommodate. Aristotle
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[4] 134 Introduction / Vivarium 45 (2007) 131-135
himself was working within an already complex philosophical tradition, and
some of the earlier thinkers he attacks would become foundational figures of
later ancient schools. Grellard shows how philosophers like Nicholas of Autre-
court and John Buridan used arguments and counter-arguments about scepti-
cism in Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics in their own ways. Some of
these seem to parallel moves made by genuine ancient sceptical philosophers
(and knowledge of Sextus Empiricus, translated but little read, cannot be
ruled out). But what Grellard shows is that even just a close reading of Aristo-
tle can lead out of the Aristotelian tradition.
Although Ebbesen may be wrong in these ways, there is one, more impor-
tant, central way in which he is completely right, and in the light of which
even Martin’s, Erismann’s and Grellard’s powerful points need to be qualified.
Ebbesen’s main point is not so much that we should look at traditions s and t
rather than traditions u and v. It is that we have to be very wary about the idea
of monolithic traditions at all. His view is echoed by Panaccio’s essay. Panaccio
emphasizes the obvious, but often forgotten point, that traditions are a con-
struct of historians. Th ere were thinkers who had thoughts, and who left
records of them in texts. Panaccio’s own piece, examining the ‘textual chains’
by which theories of mental language were transmitted from antiquity, gives
an example of his method. Other pieces in this collection also illustrate it. It
would be hard, for instance, to think of one of Irène Rosier-Catach’s topics—
the use by Abelard, a twelfth-century nominalist, of the presentation by Priscian,
a sixth-century grammarian who borrows heavily from the Stoics, of Plato’s
theory of Ideas, as transformed (through a tradition going back to Philo
Judaeus) into Ideas in the Mind of God—in terms of anything but individual
texts and their multiform usages. Or again, whilst a contrast between Aristo-
tle’s exclusion of non-assertive sentences from the realm of logic and the
Stoics’ acceptance of them may set the scene for the controversy Martin Lenz
describes between Abelard and a pupil of Alberic on compositionality, the
reader of this analysis is quickly transported from vague ideas of traditions to
the specifics of a twelfth-century intellectual encounter that is brought to life
with the help of an understanding of contemporary semantics.
Perhaps, then, the main title of this collection, ‘Th e Many Roots of Medi-
eval Logic’ hints at a better methodology than the sub-title, which refers to the
Aristotelian and the non-Aristotelian traditions. Th e best work in the follow-
ing pages at once brings the variety of ancient logical tradition into focus and
reveals the inadequacy of thinking in terms of traditions. We start to learn
about the past of our subject, it tells us, when we try not to label, but look
carefully at texts and their relations and try to understand the story they tell as
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