Abstract

Richard of Campsall (c. 1280-1350) was an English Master of Arts and Theology at Oxford. He wrote a very influential commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics and influenced later English theology. Very few of his works have survived.

Not much is known about Richard of Campsall and very little written by him has survived to this day or perhaps still lies in manuscripts undiscovered in some library. He was, however, a fellow of Balliol College in Oxford while studying arts in the very early years of the fourteenth century. Later, as a Regent Master of Arts, he was a fellow of Merton College between 1307 and 1308. He seems to have finished his question commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics - his earliest logical work - before his regency. He lectured on the Sentences of Peter Lombard in 1316-1317, and was the Regent Master of Theology at Merton College after 1322. The date of this death is very uncertain, but some have suggested that he died sometime between 1350 and 1360.

The only surviving complete work, alongside some minor treatises, is his commentary on the Prior Analytics. He was, however, very well known in England in the early fourteenth century and is referred to in many theological works of the time. He seems also to have influenced William of Ockham and a whole range of later English thinkers on both logic and theology.

One of the major debates in early fourteenth-century England was about the nature of intuitive and abstractive

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Cognitions. Campsall played an important role in this debate. He argued that there is no need to posit a real distinction between intuitive and abstractive cognitions - one and the same cognition can fulfill both functions. He argued instead that a cognition is intuitive simply if the object it is about is present and it is abstractive if the object is absent. This view was rejected by both Ockham and Walter Chatton.

Campsall’s commentary on the Prior Analytics is important primarily because he seems to be the first commentator, as far as we know, to systematically apply the distinction between modal sentences taken in a composite (in sensu composito) and divided (in sensu diviso) sense to Aristotle’s modal syllogistics (the distinction roughly corresponds to what we now call de dicto and de re modal sentences). This distinction, which was not used by Aristotle himself, was known at least since Abelard, but it had not been used systematically before Campsall. This is a very important development in the history of logic, since applying this distinction to Aristotle’s logic opens up whole new perspectives and ultimately changes the original system. Campsall thus stands on the threshold of a whole new logic, which later fourteenth century authors like Ockham and John Buridan developed.

See also: > Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition > Modal Theories and Modal Logic > Walter Chatton > William of Ockham