Buridan on the metaphysics of the soul

Calvin G. Normore

pp. 63-75

in: Gyula Klíma (ed), Questions on the soul by John Buridan and others, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

Normore's chapter focuses on the metaphysical issues stemming from Buridan's conception of the union of body and soul, also considered in the broader context of the union of substantial form and matter in general. Normore's argument traces in particular the rather strange metaphysical and mereological ramifications of Buridan's "homogeneity-thesis' of material substances (the thesis that all material substances by themselves, without their accidental dispositions, must be homogeneous: every quantitative part of a material substance is of the same kind as is the whole), as presented in Buridan's difficult discussion in Book II, q. 7.