Buridan

Buridan, JEAN, a French schoolman of the 14th century, born at Béthune, in Artois, about 1300, studied at Paris under Occam, became himself a teacher of the nominalist philosophy, and was rector of the university of Paris in 1327. Of his life almost nothing is known, but it is certain that he was alive as late as 1358. There is a tradition that he had to flee from France, and that at Vienna he helped to found the university, but this is contrary to historical fact. His works treat of logic, metaphysics, physics, ethics, and politics—almost every subject save theology, which he avoided because it does not rest on reason alone, the sole authority in philosophy. Like Occam, he denied objective reality to universals, which are mere words, singulars or individuals alone existing (see NOMINALISM). In his comments on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle he makes the will depend entirely on motives, the only freedom being a certain power of suspending the judgment and determining the direction of the intellect. The celebrated sophism known to the schoolmen under the name of Buridan's Ass, has been discussed at superfluous length, and with needless ingenuity, by Bayle. It occurs nowhere in his books, and was no doubt due to some opponent who wished to cast ridicule upon his determinism. The sophism referred to is, that if a hungry ass be placed exactly between two bundles of hay of equal size and attractiveness, it must starve, as there is nothing to determine the will of the animal towards either bundle. (This hypothetical case is, however, found in Aristotle, De Cælo, ii. 14, and in the fourth book of Dante's Paradiso.) His chief works are Summula de Dialectica (1487), Compendium Logice (1489), In Aristotelis Metaphysica (1518), and Quæstiones in x. libros Ethicorum Aristotelis (1489).