Nicholas of Autrecourt ( French: ''Nicholas d'Autrécourt'';

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

: ''Nicolaus de Autricuria'' or ''Nicolaus de Ultricuria''; c. 1299, Autrecourt – 16 or 17 July 1369,

Metz Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand ...

) was a French medieval philosopher and Scholastic

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

Life and thought

Born in Autrecourt, near

Verdun Verdun (, , , ; official name before 1970 ''Verdun-sur-Meuse'') is a large city in the Meuse department in Grand Est, northeastern France. It is an arrondissement of the department. Verdun is the biggest city in Meuse, although the capital ...

, he was educated at Paris and earned bachelor's degrees in theology and law and a master's degree in arts. Nicholas is known principally for developing

skepticism Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...

to extreme

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...

al conclusions. He is sometimes considered the sole genuinely skeptic philosopher of medieval times. Nicholas founded his skeptical position on arguments that knowledge claims were not "reducible to the first principle," that is, that it was not contradictory to deny them. His views have been compared to those of

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...

, but it has been suggested that the similarities are superficial, and there is no evidence Nicholas influenced Hume, or other modern philosophers such as

René Descartes René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Ma ...

. Whether Nicholas was committed to skepticism is unclear, but on 19 May 1346 his views were condemned by

Pope Clement VI Pope Clement VI ( la, Clemens VI; 1291 – 6 December 1352), born Pierre Roger, was head of the Catholic Church from 7 May 1342 to his death in December 1352. He was the fourth Avignon pope. Clement reigned during the first visitation of the Bl ...

heretical Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...

. Nicholas was sentenced to burn his books publicly and recant, which he did in Paris in 1347. In the 14th century, Nicholas of Autrecourt considered that matter, space, and time were all made up of indivisible atoms, points, and instants and that all generation and corruption took place by the rearrangement of material atoms. The similarities of his ideas with those of

al-Ghazali Al-Ghazali ( – 19 December 1111; ), full name (), and known in Persian-speaking countries as Imam Muhammad-i Ghazali (Persian: امام محمد غزالی) or in Medieval Europe by the Latinized as Algazelus or Algazel, was a Persian poly ...

suggest that Nicholas was familiar with the work of al-Ghazali, who was known as "Algazel" in Europe, either directly or indirectly through

Averroes Ibn Rushd ( ar, ; full name in ; 14 April 112611 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes ( ), was an Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psy ...

. Much of the extant knowledge of Nicholas of Autrecourt's epistemology derives from one letter written by magister Egidius (master Giles) to Nicholas and an excerpt from his letter in reply to Egidius and from nine letters written by Nicholas to the Franciscan theologian Bernardus Aretinus (Bernard of Arezzo); however, only two of the nine letters survive. Some fragments of the lost letters are quoted in the records of the condemnatory proceedings against Nicholas. Almost nothing is known about these two correspondents.

References

* Stefano Caroti, Christophe Grellard (eds.), ''Nicolas d'Autrécourt et la faculté des arts de Paris (1317-1340)'', Cesena, Stilgraf Editrice, 2006. * Dutton, B.D., “Nicholas of Autrecourt and William of Ockham on Atomism, Nominalism, and the Ontology of Motion,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5 (1996), 63-85. * Christophe Greillard, ''Croire et savoir: les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d'Autrécourt'', Parigi, Vrin, 2005. * Christophe Greillard, ''Nicholas of Autrecourt'', in Henrtik Lagerlund (ed.), ''Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy'', Dordrecht: Springer, 2011, pp. 876–878. * Zénon Kaluza, ''Nicolas d‘Autrecourt. Ami de la vérité'', in: Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 42, fasc. 1. Paris, 1995, pp. 1–233. *

Hastings Rashdall Hastings Rashdall (24 June 1858 – 9 February 1924) was an English philosopher, theologian, historian, and Anglican priest. He expounded a theory known as ideal utilitarianism, and he was a major historian of the universities of the Middle A ...

,
Nicholas de Ultracuria: a medieval Hume
', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society N.S. 7 (1906-7), 1-27. * T. K. Scott, ''Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan, and Ockhamism'', Journal of the History of Philosophy 9 (1971), 15-41. * J.M.M.H. Thijssen, ''The ‘Semantic Articles’ of Autrecourt's Condemnation'', Archives d‘histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, 65 (1990), 155-175.

External links

*
Nicholas of Autrecourt
at

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Autrecourt, Nicholas Of 1299 births 1369 deaths People from Meuse (department) Occamism 14th-century French philosophers Scholastic philosophers 14th-century Latin writers Skeptics French male writers

Life and thought

See also

References

Further reading

English translations

Studies

External links