Jean Buridan's Logic

Buridan was a brilliant logician in an age of brilliant logicians, sensitive to formal and philosophical considerations. There is a need for critical editions and accurate translations of his works, for his philosophical voice speaks directly across the ages to problems of concern to analytic philosophers today. But his idiom is unfamiliar, so editions and trans lations alone will not bridge the gap of centuries. I have tried to make Buridan accessible to philosophers and logicians today by the introduc tory essay, in which I survey Buridan's philosophy of logic. Several problems which Buridan touches on only marginally in the works trans lated herein are developed and discussed, citing other works of Buridan; some topics which he treats at length in the translated works, such as the semantic theory of oblique terms, I have touched on lightly or not at all. Such distortions are inevitable, and I hope that the idiosyncracies of my choice of philosophically relevant topics will not blind the reader to other topics of value Buridan considers. My goal in translating has been to produce an accurate renaering of the Latin. Often Buridan will couch a logical rule in terms of the grammatical form of a sentence, and I have endeavored to keep the translation consistent. Some strained phrases result, such as "A man I know" having a different logic from "I know a man. " This awkwardness cannot always be avoided, and I beg the reader's indulgence. All of the translations here are my own.

Preface. - Buridan s Philosophy of Logic. - Section 1. John Buridan: Life and Times. - Section 2. The Treatises. - Section 3. Meaning and Mental Language. - Section 4. The Properties of Terms. - Section 5. Sentences. - Section 6. The Theory of Supposition. - Section 7. Consequences. - Section 8. The Syllogism. - Translation. The Treatise on Supposition. - 1. Signification, Supposition, Verification, Appellation. - 2. Kinds of Significative Words. - 3. The Kinds of Supposition. - 4. The Supposition of Relative Terms. - 5. Appellation. - 6. Ampliation and Restriction. - Translation. The Treatise on Consequences. - Book I. Consequences in General and Among Assertoric Sentences. - Book II. Consequences Among Modal Sentences. - Book III. Syllogisms With Assertoric Sentences. - Book IV. Syllogisms with Modal Sentences. - Notes. - Notes. Buridan s Philosophy of Logic. - Notes. Treatise on Supposition. - Notes. Treatise on Consequences. - Book I. Notes. - Book II. Notes. - Book III. Notes. - Book IV. Notes. - Indexes. - Index of Names. - Index of Subjects. - Index of Rules and Theorems.