The Dialectical Construction of a Notion of Truth in Some 13th-Century Masters of Arts

Aristotle puts forward claims about truth in a number of places of his phil-
osophical output, in works of logical, psychologico-epistemological and
metaphysical character. In these works, truth seems to be susceptible of at-
tribution to thoughts, language, and things, but the modalities of these attri-
butions remain unclear, as it is unclear whether these attributions are related
to each other, and if so, how. In their exegeses of the Aristotelian corpus,
thirteenth-century masters of Arts will move towards a unified notion of truth
that can account for these metaphysical, psychologico-epistemological and
logical attributions. The dialectical process whereby these masters devise such
a unified notion surfaces in the analysis of a discussion that goes from the first
half of the thirteenth century until at least the dawn of the fourteenth century.
My aim in this article is to present this process, by looking into thirteenth-cen-
tury commentaries on some relevant Aristotelian passages. I begin with the
rather short observations we find in Nicholas of Paris and Robert Kilwardby.
Thereafter, I look at the state of the discussion in the commentaries on the
De interpretatione by Martin of Dacia and Simon of Faversham and on the
De anima by an anonymous master. I finish with the presentation of the unified
notion we find in Radulphus Brito’s philosophical works.