Abstract

This dissertation is a philosophical study of Book III of John Buridan's Quaestiones super librum De anima Aristotelis secundum tertiam lecturam, the revised text of the last of Buridan's lectures on Aristotle's De anima. ;The dissertation contains four parts. Part One is an edition of the previously unedited Latin text of Book III of the tertia lectura of Buridan's Quaestiones De anima, constructed from four manuscripts: Vat. lat. 2164, Vat. lat. 11575, Vat. Reg. lat. 1959, and Codex Vindobonensis Pal. 5454. Part Two is an English translation of the text edited in Part One. Part Three is a philosophical commentary keyed to individual passages in the text and translation, providing brief explanations of some of the arguments and doctrines employed therein. Part Four is a more extended treatment of some metaphysical and epistemological issues raised by Buridan's psychology. ;Part Four consists of three chapters. In Chapter One, I argue that Buridan's account of universal cognition threatens to compromise his nominalistic ontology because he cannot explain the universality of concepts without appealing to such ontologically-suspect notions as 'natures', 'likenesses', and 'essential agreement'. Part of the problem is that he is ill-served by the model of intellectual abstraction he inherits from Aristotle and Aquinas. I suggest a revision of this model along Berkeleian lines that is more in keeping with Buridan's nominalism. ;Chapter Two discusses the relation between Buridan's theory of cognition and how we come to know that sensible particulars exist, and that the principles and conclusions of demonstrative science are true. I argue that the psychological mechanism by which Buridan claims we are directly acquainted with sensible particulars is unreliable, and that his attempt to show that we can be more than inductively certain of scientific truths looks too ad hoc to be plausible. ;Chapter Three considers how Buridan's theory of knowledge fares against skeptical doubt. I argue that despite first appearances, it is never Buridan's intention to reply to the skeptic, although he says too little about the justification of knowledge to satisfy even ordinary rational inquiries into how we know, let alone skeptical doubts