George Lokert, Late-Scholastic Logician (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 407 cient causes (although it itself is a final cause for the outermost sphere). It is true that Aristotle sees Academic principles and the unmoved mover as competing for the same position within a philosophical system (lo69 a 32-36, alluded to on page 378), but this should not obscure the fact that they represent radically different solutions to the problem. A "reduction" model could perhaps be justified by appealing to the idea that sensible substances stand to the eternal unmovable substance in the pros hen relation (Patzig, Owens cf. 377, 380-80 9This possibility, however, has to be rejected on the grounds that the focal meaning doctrine was developed by Aristotle to explain the application of terms such as "healthy" or "medical" to particulars within different categories and there is no indication that the predicate "substance" (ous/a) has to be treated this way when applied to sensible and to non-sensible substances, i.e., to items falling within the same category. Thus, we are left with the age old conviction that Aristotle's metaphysics represents a drastic departure from the Academic approach and Flashar's summary of the specific contributions of Aristotle to the theological aspects of First Philosophy (380) is more persuasive than the preceding efforts to show coincidences between the conflicting positions: Two examples have been given where there is room for legitimate doubt or disagreement on the part of the specialized student, but there is much in this volume that will command universal assent and agreement. Like its predecessors, it includes such a wealth of accurate information that it will remain a major reference work which any satisfactory library should own. Unlike its predecesors, the typographical composition is clear and has sufficient variety to allow @ick orientation in the search for specific items. There is no index return, but a handy index nominum renders useful service especially in locating contributions by contemporary scholars. One can only hope that volumes ~, ~, and 4 of this magnificent work on Ancient philosophy will be available in print in the near future. ALFONSO GOMEz-LoBo Georgetown University Alexander Broadie, George Lokert, Late-Scholastic Logician. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983. Pp. viii +25~. $a7.5o. George Lokert (c.x485-1547) is not a name known to most historians of philosophy. He was nearly an exact contemporary of the better-known John Major (x467/8155o ) who was one of his teachers, and the careers of the two intertwined over a forty-year period both in Scotland and in Paris. They shared the same Scottish heritage and both labored in theology and philosophy at a time of immense intellectual and religious change. The fundamental formation of both was gained at Paris in a context which was in some ways the very end of an old world and the beginning of a new one. It was the Paris of Gaguin, Lef'evre d'Etaples, and Erasmus, when humanism was gradually---or, perhaps, not so gradually--replacing the scholasticism which had been pre-eminent there since Abelard. It was also the time when the Reformation took hold, eventually conquering Scotland (John Knox was one of I~kert's pupils), if only tinging Paris. 408 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 24:3 JULY 1986 Though Lokert taught both philosophy and theology, which was the normal pattern in Northern universities of the time, his publications were mostly in the field of logic of the most technical sort, which was characteristic of the Paris he left in 153o to return to Scodand. For some reason not yet satisfactorily explained, Paris during the half century around 15oo produced a remarkable number of logical treatises in the terminist tradition of the later Middle Ages. Those years, in fact, marked the end of the tradition, which was largely forgotten very quickly, and only in the last two generations has it been revived from oblivion by modern scholars, who have delineated the intrinsic intellectual importance of the logic it produced. Dr. Broadie focusses primarily upon two aspects, of Lokert, his logic and his Scottishness . Consequently, the significance of the scholastic enterprise as an international phenomenon is lost sight of and its links with other times and places are left...