Walter Chatton on Future Contingents
ISBN: 9789004338340
Platform/Publisher: BRILL / BRILL
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: English literature; Commonwealth literature (English); Decolonization in literature; English literature; English literature;

In Walter Chatton on Future Contingents , Jon Bornholdt presents the first full-length translation, commentary, and analysis of the various attempts by Chatton (14th century C.E.) to solve the ancient problem of the status and significance of statements about the future. At issue is the danger of so-called logical determinism: if it is true now that a human will perform a given action tomorrow, is that human truly free to perform or refrain from performing that action? Bornholdt shows that Chatton constructed an original (though problematic) formal analysis that enabled him to canvass various approaches to the problem at different stages of his career, at all times showing an unusual sensitivity to the tension between formalist and metaphysical types of solution.


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