Search

This article offers a detailed presentation of three anonymous, unedited sets of questions on Aristotle’s Physics. The commentaries survive in manuscripts in Oxford, Munich and Sint Agatha (Netherlands). A comparison of the lists of quaestionessuggests that there is a close correspondence between the three commentaries, on the one hand, and the ultima lecturaof John Buridan’s Quaestiones super octo libros Physicorum, on the other. Judging from the lists of quaestiones, it makes sense to attach the label secundum Buridanumto all three commentaries. However, the texts of the three commentaries differ significantly both from each other and from Buridan’s lecture. To illustrate the differences, in the Appendix I present editions of one question from Book I of the Physicsand one question from Book III from each of the three commentaries. The edited questions correspond with Book I q.4 in Buridan’s ultima lectura, “Utrum in omni scientia ex cognitione principiorum, causarum et elementorum contingat alia scire et intelligere, scilicet principiata, causata et elementata,” and Book III q.18 of his ultima lectura, “Utrum in quolibet continuo infinitae sint partes.” It appears that one of the three anonymous commentators copies Buridan’s text verbatimor follows its precise structural arrangement. Buridan’s text seems to have functioned as a framework or a point of departure used by the anonymous authors to compose their own commentaries.

In 1991, Benoît Patar published a set of anonymous commentaries (an expositioand a commentary per modum quaestionis) on Aristotle’s De anima. He argued that both works should be ascribed to John Buridan and, taken together, constitute the first of Buridan’s three series of lectures on De anima. Even though Patar’s proof of the authenticity of the commentaries has not been unanimously accepted, his attribution of the works to Buridan turned out to be persistent. This article examines the question of the authenticity of the two anonymous commentaries. It argues that there is no conclusive reason to attribute the works to Buridan. The texts are closely related to works by Buridan, but they bear the same relation to commentaries written by Nicole Oresme. As a consequence, the works should be considered to be exactly what they are: anonymous commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima, written in the same context and around the same time in which the commentaries by John Buridan and Nicole Oresme were also written.