Abstract

This is a most significant publication. Buridan’s Summulae de Dialectica is among the finest contributions to philosophical logic, and aside from its own time, there is no better period than the present for it to be made available. No stage in the history of Western thought is closer to current work on logic and language than the fourteenth century. In their own way Ockham and Buridan dealt with the same central questions that Frege, Russell, Quine, Davidson, and Kripke have. It has had quite a history—republished as late as 1740 and read carefully and cited by Schopenhauer. Anyone with a taste for logical problems will gain by studying this work, and not only gain, but enjoy it as well. We are in the debt of Gyula Klima and Yale University Press for this important publication. Klima has provided us with an excellent introduction to go along with his highly readable annotated translation. It would be a great service to the philosophical community if it were possible to make a much less expensive paperback version available. Yale University Press is to be commended for bringing out this and other works like it. However, while it is completely understandable why the book has its present price, I could not expect a graduate student in a class to purchase this relatively costly hardcover edition.