Francis of Meyronnes on the Demonstrability of the Principles of Non-Contradiction and the Excluded Middle and 13th Century quaestiones on Aristotles’s Metaphysics

 
PIIS004287440001159-9-1
DOI10.31857/S004287440001159-9
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Occupation: Associate Professor (Docent), Department of History of World Philosophy
Affiliation: Lomonosov Moscow State University
Address: Russian Federation
Journal nameVoprosy filosofii
EditionIssue 10
Pages175-185
Abstract

A question on the demonstrability of the principles of non-contradiction and the excluded middle (”the first complex principle”) in the “De principiis” by Francis of Meyronnes (c. 1288–1328) had been discussed starting from early 1270s in question-commentaries on Aristotle’s “Metaphysics”. The article gives a survey of the quaestiones on the demonstrability of first principles, written from 1270s to 1290s. We may observe several textually different approaches to this quaestio in the commentaries on “Metaphysics”, namely those by (1) Giles of Rome and Anonymus Lipsiensis, (2) Peter of Auvergne and his followers – John of Dinsdale and Radulphus Brito, (3) pseudo-Henry of Ghent, and (4) Anonymus Zimmermanni. Giles and the Leipzig Anonym list in a systematic way the propositions according to their demonstrability/indemonstrability and briefly state the possibility of elenctic proof of first principles. Peter of Auvergne, John of Dinsdale, and Brito enumerate different ways of demonstration or proof and allow for the sophistical proof ad aliquem for first principles, which is yet another way of naming the elenctic proof. A solutio by Anonymus Zimmermanni is close to that by Giles and Peter, while the way pseudo-Henry solves the matter echoes Peter of Auvergne’s arguments against virtual opponent. The text by Francis of Meyronnes is quite original as viewed against the background of these question-commentaries. Instead of following Aristotle the author considers the matter within the framework of Scotist metaphysics: the subject of the first principle is Being, and its “attribute” or passio is the predicate of the principle of the excluded middle – “either affirmation or negation”. Francis assumes the “adequacy” of this attribute to the concept of Being and the immediacy of the link between the subject and the predicate in the “first complex principle”. The concept of Being does not have a definition, and thus nothing can be demonstrated about the subject of the first principle through its definition, while other principles are demonstrated in exactly this way. The article is supplemented with the translation of Questio XI of Francis’s treatise, made from the transcription of the text in MSS BAV Vat.lat. 3052 and Vat.lat. 4385.

Keywordsscholasticism, the principle of non-contradiction, the principle of the excluded middle, commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics
AcknowledgmentThe article is written under financial support of Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project 16-03-00047: “The Followers of John Duns Scotus in the Scholasticism of the 14th – 16th Centuries: The Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics”, and of The Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library Mellon Fellowship, Jan 2015.
Publication date23.11.2018
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