John Buridanus

John Buridanus a celebrated Nominalist of the 14th century, was born at Bethune, in Artois. He is reputed to have been a pupil of Occam, then to have lectured with great ability and success in Paris, and to have risen to the distinction of rector of the university of that city about 1330, and to have quitted that place only after the Realists had gained the ascendency, SEE REALISM and SEE NOMINALISM, and to have assisted in the founding of the university at Vienna. He was looked upon by his contemporaries as one of the most powerful adversaries of Realism, and distinguished himself also by his rules for finding the middle term in logic, a species of contrivance denominated by some the Ass's Bridge, as well as by his inquiries concerning free will, wherein he approached the principles of Determinatism, maintaining that we necessarily prefer the greater of two goods. As for the celebrated illustration which bears his name, of an ass dying for hunger between two bundles of hay, it is not to be found in his writings, which. are, Quoestiones in X libb. Ethicorum Aristot. (Paris, 1489, fol.; Oxford, 1637, 4to): — Quoest. in Polit. Arist. (Par. 1500, fol.): — Compendium Logicoe (Ven. 1499, fol.): — Summula de Dialecticâ (Paris, 1487, fol.); etc. Complete editions of his works were published at Paris in 1500, 1516, and 1518. See Bayle, Histor. Dict. art. Buridanus; Tennemann, Gesch. der Phil. 8, 2, 914 sq.; Man. of Philos. (transl. by Morell), p. 246.