Authors/Abelard/logica

The Logica ingredientibus, named for its incipit, i.e. 'logic for begninners', was probably intended by Abelard to be a cycle of extended commentaries on the whole of the logica vetus. It is in seven parts, three of them lost.

1. Glossae super Porphyrium taken from Geyer 1919-1927 1-109
2. Glossae super Predicamenta Aristotelis Ibid 111-305
3. Glossae super Peri hermeneias taken from Jacobi 2010
4. Gloss on Boethius's De syllogismo categorico
5. Gloss on Boethius's De syllogismo hypothetico
6. Gloss on Boethius's De divisione
7. Super Topica glossae

It was probably written between about 1118 and 1120, perhaps as late as 1121, after he had finished the Diaiectica, and had taken up teaching logic again at St Denis. It is based on similar material, but with some revision and development.

Since the work is incomplete, it has to be reconstructed from three different manuscripts. The commentaries on the Isagoge, Categories and De interpretatione are taken from the Milan manuscript, see Geyer 1919-1927. However, Geyer's edition includes the inauthentic ending of the De interpretatione commentary, and should be replaced with the one reconstructed from the Berlin ms, edited in Minio-Paluello Twelfth-century logic, pp, 3-108. The De differentiis topicis commentary is from LN 7493, edited in Dal Pra 1969, 205-330, see also Cousin 1836.

Dating

From Marenbon 1997, p.48

The reason why the Logica can be dated firmly to 1121 or before lies in its relation to Abelard's first version of the Theologia, the Theologia Summi Boni, which was condemned at the Council of Soissons in March 1121. There, led by his need to explain how God is three and one, Abelard argues that there are more meanings of 'the same' and 'different' than Porphyry had recognized in his Isagoge. This development, which involves a big step in Ahelard's thought about semantics, is quite absent from the Logica. Another commentary on the Isagoge, the Glossulae super Porphyrium attributed to Abelard in its sole surviving witness (Lunel, Bibliotheque municipale, 6) includes exactly this discussion, in a version more developed than that of the Theologia Summi Boni. And there turn out to be three further witnesses to Abelard's teaching on Porphyry after the time of the Logica.

The same Milan manuscript (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, M 63 sup.) which contains much of the Logica also includes an Isagoge commentary which is entitled 'Glosse super Porphyrium secundum vocales' - According', that is to say, 'to those who take universals to be words', which was Abelard's position. The commentary turns out to consist, with just a few exceptions, of passages often garbled but very close or identical to either the Logica or the Glossulae. Although the possibility that it is a compilation cannot be ruled out, it is more plausible to think that it derives from Abelard's lectures - though perhaps from more than one account of them.

Then there is a fragment entitled 'Positio vocum sententiae' in Orleans, Bibliotheque municipale, 266, discussing Porphyry's definition of genus which has many parallels with the Logica, Glossulae and the Glosse secundum vocales, and also probably derives from Abelard's teaching, although its ponderous didactic style suggests that it has been reworked by someone else. Most interesting, however, is a little treatise in Avranches, Bibliotheque municipal, 232, which is explicitly attributed to Abelard and given the title De intellectibus ('On thoughts'). Much of De intellectibus is close (though at times notably different in argument) to Abelard's discussion of cognition in the De interpretatione commentary of the Logica. Other parts of it run parallel to the discussion of universals in the Glossulae and, on occasion at least, it gives what is obviously a more complete version of the same passage.

Editions

• LI 1: Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge. Edited by Bernhard Geyer in Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 21, Aschendorff: Munster 1919.
• LI 2: Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories. Ibid.
• LI 3: Commentary on Aristotle’s De interpretatione. Also in Geyer, but more recently edited by Klaus Jacobi and Christian Strub, see Jacobi 2010.
• LI 7: Commentary on Boethius’s De topicis differentiis. Edited by Mario Dal Pra in Pietro Abelardo: Scritti di logica, Firenze 1969. Also in Cousin 1836.

Translations

• "The Glosses of Peter Abailard on Porphyry", in Hyman and Walsh 1983 169-188. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1973 (excerpts).
• "From the "Glosses on Porphyry" in his Logica 'Ingredientibus'." In Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals, Paul Vincent Spade, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994, 26-56. Translated from Geyer 1919-1927, 7.25-32.12.
• Peter King, doctoral dissertation in philosophy, Princeton University, three volumes (available at ProQuest Dissertation Express). Vol. 2 contains an Appendix with a translation of Logica ingredientibus I.ii.1-156 (pp.1*-28*)

See also

• Category: Abelard

External links

• History of the Problem of Universals in the Middle Ages Paul Vincent Spade