Nicholas of Amsterdam: Commentary on the Old Logic. Critical Edition with Introduction and Indexes

ISBN-13: 9789027214683 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 383 str.

Egbert P. Bos

Opis

Master Nicholas of Amsterdam was a prominent master of arts in Germany during the first half of the fifteenth century. He composed various commentaries on Aristotle s works. One of these commentaries is on the logica vetus, the old logic, viz. on Porphyry s Isagoge and on Aristotle s Categories and On Interpretation. This commentary is edited and introduced here.
Nicholas is a modernus as opposed to the antiqui, who were realists which means that he is a conceptualist belonging to the university tradition that accepted John Buridan (ca. 1300-1360 or 1361) and Marsilius of Inghen (ca. 1340-1396) as its masters. In medieval philosophy, a parallel between thinking and reality is generally upheld. Nicholas makes a sharp distinction between the two; this may be interpreted as a step towards a separation between the two realms, as is common in philosophy in later centuries.
Other characteristics of Nicholas are that he defends the position that science has its place in a proposition, and does not simply follow reality. Furthermore, he emphasizes the part played by individual things.
Fifteenth-century philosophy has hardly been studied, mainly because that century has long been considered unoriginal. Nicholas of Amsterdam certainly deserves the historian s interest in order to evaluate how medieval philosophy prepared the way for modern philosophy."