Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

284 Henrik Lagerlund
never very controversial and was largely unaffected by the teaching ban on Aristotle
in the 1210-30’s. It was the Physics and the Metaphysics that the authorities of the
time found objectionable, but it was only after these controversies were resolved
that the commentary tradition really took of, and eventually became the main
literary form of writing philosophy in the thirteenth century.
During the time of the controversy most of Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle’s
works had been translated. They were very helpful for a general understanding
of Aristotle’s logical works. An important line of interpretation in mid-thirteenth
century commentaries is to read in the metaphysics into the logic and this seems
to me to be mainly due to influence from Averroes.
With the expansion of commentaries and the growing importance of Aristotle’s
texts for university teaching the need for new or refreched translations soon became
apparent. In the 1260’s, William of Moerbeke translates or revises Boethius
translations. At the same time he also translates several of the Greek commentators.
The most important Latin commentators of the logic works from the
mid-thirteenth century that are known by name are Thomas Aquinas (d.1274),
Robert Kilwardby (d. 1279), Albert the Great (d. 1280), Boethius of Dacia (d. c.
1280), Simon of Faversham (d. 1306) and Radolphus Brito (d. 1320). The most
productive author from this time is, however, the one called Anonymous, since the
vast majority of commentaries from this time are anonymous.
It was generally accepted before de Rijk published his groundbreaking study on
the logica modernorum that this part of medieval logic was primarily an influence
from Byzantine and Arabic logic. 8 This was as de Rijk shows completely wrong.
He argues convincingly that it is partly due to Aristotle’s Sophistici Elenchi but
foremost it was due to the creative minds of late twelfth century logicians. His
judgement of earlier views was so harsh that Arabic logic in the Latin tradition
has hardly been studied at all. I will below give a sketch of what was translated
and what these works contain.
3 ARABIC LOGIC IN LATIN
The Latin logicians of the thirteenth century had quite a good grasp of Arabic logic.
The major source for this knowledge was the Maqāsid al-falāsifa (‘The Meaning
of the Philosophers’) by Abū Hāmid Muhammad Al-Ghazālī (1058-1111). It was
supposed to be a preparatory work for his later much more well known work
Tahāfut al-falāsifa (‘The Incoherence of the Philosophers’). The whole of the
Maqāsid contains a presentation of logic, physics, metaphysics and theology, and
has been claimed to be an intelligent reworking of foremost Avicenna’s Dāneshname
(‘Book of Science’), which is a compendium of his doctrines written in
Persian. Al-Ghazālī’s work was translated in full into Latin early in the second
half of the twelfth century, which is not more than 50 or 75 years after it was
written. In one of the manuscripts the title is Liber Algazelis de summa theoricae
8 See [Prantl, 1867, III, 263–4].