Medieval logic as "Sprachphilosophie"

Laurent Cesalli (1)

1 STL - Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

Historians of medieval logic hardly escape the issue of the nature of their field of investigations. A survey of the literature shows that the answers given to the question of the nature of medieval logic are characterized by two negative features: first, medieval logic is not a unitary discipline; second medieval logic has little to do with modern logic. The medieval technical term 'logica' covers a spectrum of interests which only partly overlaps with the contemporary concept of logic. The resulting image is that what falls under the concept of medieval logic seems to lack any sort of doctrinal unity whatsoever. In what follows, we argue that although medieval logic is indeed all but a unitary discipline, it can nevertheless be shown to possess what might be called a "second order organic unity", provided that it is neither considered as "logic" in the actual sense of the term, nor as "philosophy of language" in the contemporary sense of the expression, but as an anticipating instance of the Sprachphilosophie which emerged at the turn of the 20th century within the Bolzano-Brentanian Austro-German tradition.

Mots clés: Medieval logic; philosophy of language; formal logic; Austro-German tradition

Domaines: Philosophie

Laurent Cesalli. Medieval logic as "Sprachphilosophie". Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, 2010, 52, pp.117-132. ⟨10.1484/j.bpm.1.102148⟩. ⟨halshs-00749985⟩