For humanists the perfect language was a revived Classical Latin. For scholastics it was a practical logic adapted to the needs of education. Though they have long been portrayed as arch rivals, Alan Perreiah here argues that humanists and scholastics were working in complementary ways toward some of the same goals: most significantly, the early modern search for the perfect language. The study advances research on language pedagogy in the Renaissance by clarifying the connections between truth and translation.

Alan R. Perreiah - Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.2 319-321 Ann Moss. Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. 306. Cloth, $74.00. Ann Moss offers an exciting and informative history of humanism from Johannes Balbus through Melanchthon, who completed the "turn" from scholastic to humanistic Latin. She marshals considerable evidence from lexicography and letters that scholastics and (...) humanists cultivated two idioms of Latin that created "two different mind-sets" , two "orders of truth-values" , and "two Latin speech communities that talked past one another" . While her main thesis that the "two linguistic universes" were "incommensurable" is questionable, it is a useful heuristic device to highlight differences between the two traditions. Moss illustrates many of her claims by controversies surrounding the legend of St. Ann, mother of Mary. Whether she is misled by the rhetoric of those heated debates on religious folklore, or whether they support her claim of "incommensurability" must be.. (shrink)

To meet a dilemma between the axiomatic theory of demonstrative science in Posterior analytics and the non-axiomatic practice of demonstrative science in the physical treatises, Jonathan Barnes has proposed that the theory of demonstration was not meant to guide scientific research but rather scientific pedagogy. The present paper argues that far from contributing directly to oral instruction, the axiomatic account of demonstrative science is a model for the written expression of science. The paper shows how this interpretation accords with related (...) theories in the Organon, including the theories of dialectic in Topics and of deduction in Prior analytics. (shrink)

The past 25 years have seen an increasing interest in later medieval logic and in the theory of supposition. a review of literature reveals, however, wide differences of interpretation of supposition-theory. taking the theory in the widest sense as a contribution to semiotic or the theory of signs, this study shows how supposition has been variously treated as a syntactical, semantical and even pragmatical theory. the main views of p. boehner, e. moody, p. geach, d. p. henry, w. c. kneale (...) and l. m. de rijk are examined, compared and appraised with respect to overall progress in the elucidation of supposition-theory. (shrink)

For the past three decades the theory of supposition (suppositio) has been a crux of scholarship in Medieval logic. Although supposition was one of the banner doctrines of the logic modernorum, its nature and purpose have remained elusive to modern interpreters. In this paper I outline an alternative approach to supposition theory. (edited).

Jean Buridan was a leader among those logicians of the fourteenth century who sought to carry out the nominalist program in logic. This volume presents the first English translations of two key tracts, the Treatise on Suppositions and the Treatise on Consequences based respectively on the editions of Maria Elena Reina in "Giovanni Buridano: Tractatus de suppositionibus," Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, pp. 175-208 and pp. 323-52, and Hubert Hubien, Iohannis Buridani tractatus de consequentiis: Édition critique, in Philosophes médiévaux (...) Vol. 16, Université de Louvain, 1976. The extensive introduction and notes locate the texts within a conceptual framework which has held special interest for logicians and historians of logic over the last three decades. (shrink)