Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

486 Catarina Dutilh Novaes
kens, 1982]). Concerning John of Wesel (in Paris in 1344-1353), of whom little is
known, Spade argues that his text shows ‘a close familiarity with the writings of
Oxford logicians from the first half of the fourteenth century, in particular with
those of Roger Swyneshed’ [Spade, 1996b, 3]). Therefore, we may conclude that
all these continental obligationes treatises of the 14 th century were directly or
indirectly under the influence of the British literature on the topic.
And as for the antiqua responsio vs. nova responsio dichotomy with respect
to the continental authors, it seems that, while all of them were aware of the
innovations introduced by Swyneshed, they were mostly critical of them. John of
Wesel seems to be sympathetic to some of Swyneshed’s views (cf. [Spade, 1996b]);
as for Peter of Candia, in spite of the attribution by some commentators of the
qualification of modernus to him (cf. [Keepkens, 1982, 154]), from the description
of his text in [Pozzi, 1990, 55] it becomes apparent that he was not a modernus
with respect to relevance, which is the main aspect considered here. 58 All the
other authors clearly side with the antiqui.
In what follows, I concentrate on Burley’s and Swyneshed’s treatises, as they
are the most famous treatises of each of these trends (it is in fact a condensed
version of [Dutilh Novaes, 2005a; 2006a]). Moreover, Burley’s treatise has received
a partial translation into English [Burley, 1988], and it seems reasonable to focus
on a text that can be consulted also by those who do not read Latin.
In his treatise, Burley describes six kinds of obligationes: petitio, sit verum,
institutio, positio, depositio and dubitatio. Swyneshed, by contrast, recognizes
only three kinds: positio, depositio and impositio (Burley’s institutio). We shall
be focusing on positio, as it is arguably the most representative form of obligationes
(even though impositio in particular also offers the opportunity for very interesting
semantic analysis).
4.2 Burley’s treatise: antiqua responsio
The disputation has two participants, Opponent and Respondent. In the case of
positio, the game starts with Opponent putting forward a proposition, called positum,
which Respondent must accept as true for the sake of the disputation, unless
it is self-contradictory. Opponent then puts forward propositions (the proposita),
one at a time, which Respondent must either concede, deny or doubt, on the basis
of inferential relations with the previously accepted or denied propositions, or, in
case there is none (and these are called irrelevant or impertinent propositions 59 ),
on the basis of the common knowledge shared by those who are present. Respondent
loses the disputation if he concedes a contradictory set of propositions. At
58 Unfortunately, this text is still only available in the form of manuscripts (S. Brown is reportedly
preparing and edition of the text), and I have not had the occasion of examining the
manuscripts myself.
59 Throughout the text, I use the terms ‘relevant’ and ‘pertinent’ as synonymous, as much as
‘irrelevant’ and ‘impertinent’. The terms in Latin are ‘pertinens’ and ‘impertinens’, but they are
often translated as ‘relevant’ and ‘irrelevant’, for example in the translation of Burley’s treatise.