Thursday, June 13, 2013

Burley on the Supertranscendentals

I posted this on facebook but it generated nary a reply, not even a 'like'. So here it is for my loyal readers. It is often stated that the earliest thinkers to endorse (even if in a qualified way) the supertranscendentals was Nicolaus Bonetus. But, in a moment of distraction I was flipping through one of Burley's early works, the De puritate artis logicae, from the early 1320's. I suppose I should keep to this myself and hunt through his other works to see if he develops it and then write it up as an article, but here it is anyway.

Burley, De puritate, p. 59:

Ad secundum dico, quod ens potest accipi tripliciter. Uno modo ut est maxime transcendens et commune omni intelligibili. Et sic est adaequatum obiectum intellectus.
To the second [objection] I say that being can be understood in three ways. In one way as it is maximally transcendental et common to every intelligible.

To be sure, this is just a hint. But one of the supertranscendentals is the intelligible, which is common to being of reason and real being.

I intend to post on Scotus and the supertranscendentals in a few days.

1 comment:

Michael Sullivan said...

Somehow I missed this on facebook. I'd like to know more!