Jean Buridan


Buridan, Jean

 

Born circa 1300 in Bethune (Artois); died circa 1358. French philosopher; a representative of nominalism.

Buridan began teaching at the University of Paris in 1328. He contributed to the dissemination in France of Ockham’s philosophy and many concepts of natural science (explanation of the movement of falling bodies and the possibility of unlimited immovable space, for example). Buridan saw the problem of freedom of will as logically insoluble. He did not coin the proverbial expression “Buridan’s ass.”

WORKS

Quaestiones super libris quattuor de caelo et mundo. Cambridge, Mass., 1942.

REFERENCES

Istoriia filosofii, vol. 1. Moscow, 1941. Page 478.
Maier, A. Die Vorläufer Galileis im 14. Jahrhundert. Rome, 1949.
Faral, E. “Jean Buridan, maître ès arts de l’Université de Paris.” In his book Histoire littéraire de la France. Paris, 1950.