An Anonymous Fourteenth-Century Treatise on "Insolubles": Text and Study

Abstract

A thesis submitted for the degree of Licentiate of Medieval Studies at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, 1969. The thesis consists of a Latin edition and a philosophical and historical study of a single anonymous treatise on semantic paradoxes like the "Liar Paradox" ("This very sentence is false"). The author has subsequently been identified as a certain Richard Brinkley, a Franciscan Friar at Oxford. The treatise was written sometime probably before 1373.

The treatise is edited from: British Library, MS Harley 3243, fols. 47ra1-56rb5. Two other manuscripts have subsequently been found to contain this treatise as Part 6 of Brinkley's "Summa logicae": Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 1360, and Prague, Státní Knihovna, ČSR, MS 396.