Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

MEDIEVAL MODAL THEORIES
AND MODAL LOGIC
Simo Knuuttila
The main ancient sources of early medieval logic were Boethius’s translations
of Aristotle’s Categories and De interpretatione and Porphyrius’s introduction
to the Categories (Isagoge), Boethius’s commentaries on these works and on Cicero’s
Topica, as well as a number of other logical treatises by Boethius, including
De syllogismis categoricis, De hypotheticis syllogismis, De topicis differentiis,
and De divisione. 1 Some historians, following medieval usage, call early medieval
logic based on these sources the old logic, as distinct from the new logic the
textual basis of which was extended by twelfth-century recovery of the rest of
Aristotle’s Organon (Prior Analytics, Topics and On Sophistic Refutations, translated
by Boethius, and Posterior Analytics, translated by James of Venice in the
second quarter of the twelfth century). 2 The elements of distinctly medieval logic
and semantics had been introduced since the twelfth century in what was called
1 The translation of the Categories is edited by L. Minio-Paluello in Aristoteles Latinus I.1-5
(Bruges-Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961) and the translation of the De interpretatione by L.
Minio-Paluello in Aristoteles Latinus II.1-2 (Bruges-Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1965). The translation
of Porphyry’s Isagoge is edited by L. Minio-Paluello and B.G. Dod in Aristoteles Latinus
I.6-7 (Bruges-Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1966). Boethius’s commentary on Aristotle’s Categories
is found in Patrologia Latina (ed. J.-P. Migne), 64, 159-294, De syllogismis categoricis in Patrologia
Latina 64, 793-832, In Ciceronis Topica in Patrologia Latina 64, 1039-1169; an English
translation with notes and an introduction by E. Stump, and De differentiis topicis in Patrologia
Latina 64, 1174-1216; an English translation with notes and essays by E. Stump, Boethius’s De
topicis differentiis (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978), Boethius’s In Ciceronis
Topica (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988). Boethius’s two commentaries on De
interpretatione are edited by C. Meiser (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877-1880), his two commentaries on
Porphyry’s Isagoge by S. Brandt, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 48 (Leipzig:
G. Freytag, Vienna: F.Tempsky, 1906), De hypotheticis syllogismis by L. Obertello (Brescia:
Paideia, 1969) and De divisione by J. Magee, with a translation and commentary (Leiden: Brill,
1998). Some other ancient works were also used, such as Apuleius’s Peri hermeneias (ed. C.
Moreschini in Opera III (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1991), Augustine’s Dialectica, trans. withnotes
by B.D. Jackson from the text edited by J. Pinborg, Synthese Historical Library 16 (Dordrecht:
Reidel, 1975), and pseudo-Augustinean De decem categoriis, ed. L. Minio-Paluello, in Aristoteles
Latinus I.1-5, 133-75. For the sources of eleventh and twelfth century logic, see J. Marenbon,
‘Medieval Latin Commentaries and Glosses on Aristotelian Logical Texts, Before c. 1150 AD’ in
Ch. Burnett (ed.), Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts (Warburg Institute
Surveys and Texts 23), (London: Warburg Institute, 1993), 77-127, republished and revised in
J. Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in
the West, Variorum Collected Studies Series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).
2 Analytica priora, ed. L. Minio-Paluello, Aristoteles Latinus III.1-4 (Bruges-Paris: Desclée
de Brouwer, 1962), Analytica posteriora, ed. L. Minio-Paluello and B.G. Dod, Aristoteles Latinus
IV.1-4 (Bruges-Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1968), Topica, ed. L. Minio-Paluello and B.G.