Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Developments in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 617
premisses, thus obtaining the direct modes of the fourth figure.
At this point, a diagram may be of use, with A, B, C as the terms, and with
S, P and M to indicate the different structures that result.
Barbara (1 st direct) Bambara (4th indirect)
All A is B All M is P All C is A All P is M
All C is A All S is M All A is B All M is S
∴ All C is B ∴ All S is P ∴ All C is B ∴All P is S
Baralipton (1 st indirect) Bamalipton (4th direct)
All A is B All M is P All C is A All P is M
All C is A All S is M All A is B All M is S
∴ Some B is C ∴ Some P is S ∴ Some B is C ∴ Some S is P
Buridan has been credited with the first explicit recognition of an independent
fourth figure, but this is a debatable position. 41 All Buridan means by the fourth
figure is the four direct modes of the first figure with transposed premisses, which
give us only the four indirect modes of the fourth figure. He did not explicitly link
the indirect modes of the first figure with the fourth figure. 42 Certainly Johannes
Dorp, whose commentary on Buridan’s Summulae was published at least five times
between 1490 and 1504, only seems to accept a fourth figure which is formed from
the direct modes of the first figure with transposed premisses. 43 Like others, he
referred to Galen’s acceptance of a fourth figure, and remarked that Aristotle and
Buridan did not discuss it because it was so easily reduced to the first figure.
Other logicians, such as Nifo, regarded the fourth figure as constituted by the
indirect modes of the first figure with transposed premisses. 44 Yet other logicians,
such as Johannes Eck, gave all nine possible modes of the fourth figure, both
direct and indirect. 45 Eck was happy to accept the fourth figure, but others,
notably Zabarella, who devoted a whole work to the topic, argued at length that
it represented an unnatural form of reasoning, and should be rejected. 46 It is
only in the second half of the seventeenth century that, owing to the acceptance
of Philoponus’s definition of major and minor terms, indirect modes were firmly
41Hubert Hubien, “John Buridan on the Fourth Figure of the Syllogism”, Revue internationale
de philosophie, 113 (1975), 271-285, especially pp. 284-285.
42John Buridan, Iohannis Buridani Tractatus de Consequentiis, ed. Hubert Hubien
(Philosophes médiévaux 16. Louvain: Publications Universitaires, Paris: Vander-Oyez, S.A.,
1976), pp. 82-83. Buridan says that transposition only affects whether the conclusion is direct
or indirect, and he notes that the direct modes of the first figure are indirect modes of the fourth
“et econuerso”. There is no reason to read this phrase as an explicit recognition that there are
direct modes of the fourth figure which are indirect modes of the first figure, an assumption that
Hubien seems to make (see article cited above). Later in his text (pp. 91-93) Buridan discusses
the direct and indirect modes of just three figures.
43Johannes Dorp, Perutile compendium totius logice, (Venetiis, 1499; repr. Frankfurt/Main:
Minerva G.m.b.H., 1965), sig. l 6 va–sig. m 1 ra.
44Niphus, Super libros Priorum, f. 27 va–vb.
45Johannes Eckius, Aristotelis Stagyrite Dialectica ([Augsburg, 1516–1517]), f. xii ra–f. xiii
rb.
46Zabarella, Liber de Quarta Syllogismorum Figura in Opera Omnia, cols. 101–132.