Abstract
Early medieval thinkers were acquainted with ancient modal theories through Boethius’ commentaries on De interpretatione, which dealt with Aristotelian and other ancient modal paradigms extensively. Modal syllogistic was brought into the discussion by the recovery of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics in the twelfth century. Medieval considerations were also influenced by Augustine’s ideas, which deviated from philosophical paradigms, particularly his conception of God as acting by choice between simultaneous alternative possibilities. There were analogous discussions of philosophical and theological modalities in Arabic philosophy. Arabic modal theories influenced Latin discussions mainly through the translations of Averroes’ works.
Apart from ancient philosophical conceptions, the new idea of associating modal terms with simultaneous alternatives was discussed by Abelard and some other early medieval thinkers. While these innovations were used to some extent in thirteenth-century theology, they were not often discussed in philosophical contexts. The increasing reception of Aristotle’s philosophy in the thirteenth century gave support to traditional modal paradigms, as is seen in Robert Kilwardby’s influential commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, where modal syllogistics is treated as an essentialist theory of the structures of being.
Things became different when John Duns Scotus combined the various elements of the conception of modality as alternativeness into a detailed theory. A logically possible state of affairs is something to which to be is not repugnant, though it may not be compossible with other possibilities. Scotus’ modal semantics influenced early fourteenth-century philosophy and theology in many ways. The new modal logic which was developed by William Ockham, John Buridan, and others was based on the new modal semantics. Thirteenth-century essentialist assumptions were largely dropped from modal syllogistics, the Aristotelian version of which was regarded as a fragmentary theory without a sufficient explication of the various fine structures of modal propositions.
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Knuuttila, S. (2018). Modal Theories and Modal Logic. In: Lagerlund, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1151-5_340-2
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