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The Traditions of Ancient Logic-Cum-Grammar in the Middle

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The Traditions of Ancient Logic-Cum-Grammar in the Middle viva rium Vivarium 45 (2007) 136-152 www.brill.nl/viv Th e Traditions of Ancient Logic-cum-Grammar in the Middle Ages—What’s the Problem? Sten Ebbesen University of Copenhagen Abstract Clashes between bits of non-homogeneous theories inherited from antiquity were an important factor in the formation of medieval theories in logic and grammar, but the traditional categories of Aristotelianism, Stoicism and Neoplatonism are not quite adequate to describe the situation. Neoplatonism is almost irrelevant in logic and grammar, while there might be reasons to introduce a new category, LAS = Late Ancient Standard, with two branches: (1) logical LAS = Aristotle + Boethius, and (2) grammatical LAS = Stoics &c. Apollonius Priscian. Keywords Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Neoplatonism, Scholasticism Medieval scientific practice to a great extent consisted in solving a problem well-known from latter-day natural science. You have got a couple of mutually independent theories, each with a field of its own, but also some overlap. How do you produce a unified theory for the combined field? Being faced with that challenge is intellectually stimulating and I, among others, believe that part of the fuel for medieval inventiveness came from the incongruity of some of their inherited ancient theories, whose incongruity in turn was due to their different origin. Th us we are faced with the task of identifying clashes between inherited theories, demonstrating how those clashes were constructively dealt with, and tracing the history of the various pieces of theory. For this we need information about our old thinkers and their works. We also need historio- graphical categories, and—as everybody knows—historiographical categories are in the best case too broad, in the middle case, which is not here the place © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/156853407X217687 VIV 45,2-3_304_f3_136-152.indd 136 10/15/07 11:51:21 AM S. Ebbesen / Vivarium 45 (2007) 136-152 137 [7] of virtue, they are plain useless, and in the worst case they are definitely mis- leading. From time to time we must take up our standard categories for evalu- ation. So, the belief in the fecundity of clashes between traditions carries with it problems of its own as well as its own variants of standard problems for historical research. How Many Different Ancient “Traditions” Do We Actually Have to Operate with? “Traditions” in philosophy are often, and for good reasons, thought of in terms of schools, the members of which share common tenets and attitudes thanks to intellectual descent from a common master. Often, members of a school of thought publicly declare their allegiance to the founder. Aristotelianism In this sense it seems unproblematic to pose an Aristotelian tradition in Anti- quity, in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance, yet it is a commonplace that “Aristotelianism” is a word of the type about which Aristotle might have said that it is said in many ways. In the Western Middle Ages there is one very straightforward sense in which there is an Aristotelian tradition. People simply studied Aristotle’s works, again and again, generation after generation, and usually claimed to be in essential agreement with him. Moreover, none of the Aristotelian works they studied have been lost in the meantime, so we can read what they read, check on their quotations, and easily recognize Aristotelian items in their writings. In another way the Aristotelian tradition is a very elusive entity. Usually a systematic coherence is assumed to exist between different pieces of doctrine from the same school. Th e medieval Aristotelian tradition hardly satisfies the criterion for being a school in that sense. If “Aristotelian tradition” is under- stood as a generic term comprising several specific ways of understanding Aristotle or several different ways of doing logic and linguistics each one inspired by Aristotle, but representing different interpretations of his work, we soon end up with a vaguely defined genus and an unwieldy lot of species and individuals. We are too well informed about too many Aristotelians! VIV 45,2-3_304_f3_136-152.indd 137 10/15/07 11:51:22 AM.
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