Johannes Buridanus, Quaestiones topicorum

This critical edition is the first edition of John Buridan’s commentary on Aristotle’s Topics. The work is preserved in one complete manuscript of good quality and in four abbreviated versions. Buridan composed the work at the University of Paris in the first half of the fourteenth century, and the work illustrates very well how the commentators of this period took a freer attitude to Aristotle than previously and were selective about the passages which they commented upon. In book II Buridan discussed a number of sophisms which are not found in his collection of sophisms. The commentary was quite influential in the fifteenth century, particularly on the teaching in the universities of Central and Eastern Europe.