The Anti-Logical Movement in the Fourteenth Century

Abstract

Abstract The debate among Byzantine philosophers and theologians about the proper attitude towards ancient logic is just one episode in the turbulent history of the reception of ancient philosophy in Byzantine thought, but it certainly raises one of the most complicated and intriguing issues in the study of the intellectual life in Byzantium. For there are many Byzantine authors who explicitly praise and themselves make use of, to a lesser or greater extent, the ancient logical traditions; yet, at the same time, there are also many others who fiercely reject the logical doctrines of pagan philosophers and their use, especially in theology. What I am particularly interested in, here, is to examine how the Byzantine attitude towards ancient logic differs from one author to another and from one period to another, what exactly the arguments presented in favour and against relying on these ancient theories are, and to what extent ancient logic, or some more developed form of it, actually is used by Byzantine thinkers.