Rodrigo Guerizoli: John Buridan on the Definition of Definition

Lecture by Rodrigo Guerizoli (Rio de Janeiro), organized by the Dept. of Theoretical Philosophy

In my presentation I will focus on one aspect of a larger project, whose aim is to reconstruct and to analyze the medieval reception of the Aristotelian theory of definitions in the tradition of commentaries on the Topics from the 13^th and 14^th centuries. Precisely, I will focus on the commentary written by John Buridan in the first half of the 14^th Century, a work composed as set of questions on Aristotle’s text. I shall concentrate on one single question of Buridan’s commentary, formulated on the basis of Aristotle’s teaching in the first book of the Topics.

The question, I argue, plays a pivotal role when approaching the notion of definition, since it deals with the problem whether we can grasp what it is to be a definition or, in other terms, whether we can arrive at a correct definition of the notion of definition. I believe that the analysis of Buridan’s position on the issue, in which theory of definition and theory supposition are brought together, provides an interesting introduction to the gist of the discussions on the notion of definition carried out in the context of medieval commentaries on the Topics.

When & where?

Wednesday, 23 September 2015, 3.15-5 pm
Faculty of Philosophy, room Alfa