Walter Burley c. 1275 – c. 1344
Walter Burley was an English scholastic philosopher and logician, fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a leading representative of the realist tradition that stood against the rising nominalism of his contemporary William of Ockham. He produced extensive commentaries on Aristotle, a systematic treatise on the proper interpretation of logic, the De Puritate Artis Logicae, and the popular Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers. He served as a diplomat for both Edward II and Edward III of England and is regarded as one of the most accomplished logicians of his generation.
Key facts
- Nationality
- English
- Era
- Medieval
- Movements
- Scholasticism, Medieval, Christian
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Walter Burley:
“Universals exist in things, not apart from them.”
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Attributed to Walter Burley:
“Logic is the art of distinguishing truth from falsehood.”
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Attributed to Walter Burley:
“Reason is the noblest gift of nature.”
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Attributed to Walter Burley:
“What is signified by a sentence is a real proposition in the world.”
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Attributed to Walter Burley:
“The lives of the wise are themselves a kind of philosophy.”