A Note on Walter Burley's Exaggerated Realism

A NOTE ON WALTER BURLEY'S EXAGGERATED REALISM The appearance in 1934 of L. Baudry's article, "Les rapports de GuiUaume d'Occam et de Walter Burleigh,"1 marked the turning point for scholarly estimates of Walter Burley's rôle in the history of mediaeval philosophy. Prior to the publication of this work by Baudry, it had been assumed that the key to Burley's thought lay in his bitter, if mediocre and ineffectual, opposition to the moderni in general, and WiUiam Ockham in particular.2 After the circulation of Baudry's article, however, the scholarly consensus began to waver; and, to be brief, we may now observe that more recent research on Burley has done so much in the direction of establishing him as an independent thinker of the first rank,3 that 1 In Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, IX (1934). 2 The thesis that Burley's and Ockham's works constitute a continuous sequence of mutual attacks and counter-attacks is propounded — with no real evidence, as Baudry shows — by P. Doncoeur in his "La théorie de la matière et de la forme chez Guillaume Occam," Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, Paris (1921), and K. Michalski, "La physique nouvelle et les différents courants philosophiques au XIVe siècle," Bulletin international de l'Académie polonaise des sciences, Cracovie (1927). Among others, C. Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande (Leipzig, 1855—70); B. Hauréau, Histoire de la Philosophie Scolastique (Paris, 1872—80); and L. Michalski in op. cit., all attest to the sterility and ultra-conservative character of Burley's writings. Hauréau, for example, (in op. cit., II, 2, p. 444), writes: ". . . Ne proposant jamais rien de nouveau, il (Burley) n'éprouve pas le besoin de faire de long discours . . .;" this note is echoed by K. Michalski (in: op. cit., p. 120): ". . . dans ses (Burley's) oeuvres, on chercherait peut-être vainement une seule idée fondamentale qui ne l'oppose au parti des novateurs." Again, Michalski notes (op. cit., p. 97): "(Burley) accablait le monde scientifique de son époque d'une masse d'opuscules sans importance." The fact that Burley does express himself as opposed to the views of the moderni cannot be taken as prima facie evidence of his philosophical conservatism. It should be noted that William Ockham too, whom Michalski and the others regard as a progressive thinker, quite often directs criticism against the moderni, and prefers to think of his own views as being in alignment with those of the antique. See E. A. Moody's The Logic of William of Ockham (London, 1935), esp. Chapter One. 3 Easily the most dramatic and startling of the works that are beginning to bring the "new" Burley to the fore, is Philotheus Boehner's Medieval Logic (Manchester University Press, 1952). In this work Boehner proves Burley to have been one of the most acute logicians of an age noteworthy for the 205 2?6H. SHAPIRO the pre-baudrian view of his philosophical worth is faUing rapidly into decay.4 Despite the fact that scholarship has been thus puUed up short and forced to review its stand, at least one line connecting the "old" and the "new" Walter Burley stretches unbroken across Baudry's road-block. For whether of the pre or post-baudrian vintage, all observors see eyeto -eye on the fact of Burley's "extreme realism." It appears, however, that even this — possibly the last meaningful stronghold of scholarly consensus in respect of Burley's philosophy — may be open to question.5 excellence of its logic. For more on the "new" Burley, see also: S. H. Thompson , "Walter Burley's Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle," Mélanges Auguste Pelzer (1947); A.N.Prior, "One some consequentiae in Walter Burley ," New Scholasticism XXVII (1953); and H. Shapiro, "Walter Burley and the Intension and Remission of Forms," Speculum, XXXIV (1959). 4 When we look to our standard histories of mediaeval philosophy, we find only M. DeWuIf still adhering doggedly to the pre-baudrian line. See M. DeWuIf, Histoire de la Philosophie Médiévale, III, 6th ed. (Paris, 1947) p. 164 ff. F

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