Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

484 Catarina Dutilh Novaes
only for the formal ones as in the case of Billinham, Strode et al.
3.6 Conclusion
14 th century theories of consequences are without a doubt among the most important
and most interesting developments in the logic of this century. Given the
considerable length of the literature on the topic, and for reasons of space, here I
had to focus on its main lines of development and disregard some of the secondary
points and details that are nonetheless very interesting (such as Buridan’s reformulation
of the modal criterion in order to accommodate his token-commitment,
Pseudo-Scotus analysis of a Curryian paradox, among others). Indeed, my purpose
here was to give the reader a hint of the richness of this material, and encourage
him/her to go look further.
4.1 Introduction
4 OBLIGATIONS
Obligationes were a regimented form of oral disputation. It consisted of two participants,
Opponent and Respondent; Opponent would put forward several propositions,
and Respondent was expected to accept, deny or doubt them on the basis
of specific rules (the discussion of which will constitute the core of this chapter).
It is without a doubt one of the main logical genres of the 14 th century: virtually
every important author of this period wrote on obligationes. However, contrary to
what is sometimes thought, obligationes are not a 14 th century invention; interesting
13 th century Parisian treatises 55 indicate that the genre was already quite
developed at that time and place. 56 Even though the contents of these treatises
fall out of the scope of the present investigation, it may be added that the theory
of obligationes presented in them is very much in the spirit of the earliest of such
treatises in the 14 th century, namely Burley, indicating thus that Burley was most
probably inspired by this early tradition.
With obligationes we have a phenomenon that falls in the context of the OX-
INAT theory (cf. [Ebbesen, 1985]) previously mentioned, according to which the
typical logical topics of the 14 th century were re-introduced into Paris as British
import, after a period of modistic predominance. Indeed, after these 13 th century
Parisian treatises on obligationes, few continental treatises on the topic were writteninthe14
th century; the fact is that in the 14 th century, obligationes was an
overwhelmingly British genre.
The 14 th century British tradition on obligations begins, as already said, with
Burley; his treatise seems to have been written in the very first years of the century
(cf. [Braakhuis, 1993, 323]). Then, for at least two decades, nothing much seems
55 Such as those edited in [Braakhuis, 1998] and [de Rijk, 1974; 1975; 1976].
56 See also [Martin, 2001] for very early (12 th century) developments in the genre.