Completion of the critical edition of Albert of Saxony, Sophismata

1 Title Completion of the Critical Edition of Albert of Saxony, Sophismata. 2 Content The aim of the project is to complete the critical edition of a medieval logical treatise, namely, Albert of Saxonys Sophismata. This work presumably was written in 1360/62 at the University of Paris. The author deals with 255 sophisms, i.e., propositions whose truth or falsehood is difficult to determine, due to the ambiguous or complicated usage of logical constants. Apart from the edited Latin text, the edition will contain a critical apparatus, an apparatus of sources, an introduction to the edited book, and an introduction to the edition. 3 Hypothesis The Sophismata are a supplement to Alberts main logical work, the Logica. Writing the collection of sophisms, however, Albert seems to have felt obliged to alter several doctrines he had taught in the Logica. Such advancements or detours occurring in the development of Alberts doctrine are a main point of interest for the editor. 4 Method The method of the project is determined by the usual procedure of critically editing a text which has been transmitted by several text witnesses but of which no manuscript version exists that was written down or authorized by the author himself. A reference manuscript is chosen, its text transcribed and collated with the versions presented by other text witnesses, the remarkable variants are collected in the critical apparatus, and the sources used by the author are listed in an apparatus of their own. The introduction to the work will have to outline the logical doctrines contained in the Sophismata Alberti. In addition, Alberts other logical treatises as well as several works written by other authors will be scrutinized and compared with the Sophismata. 5 Peculiarity The apparatus of sources will shed light on the genesis of the work and its wealth of doctrines and, on the other hand, on certain discrepancies Albert did not manage to avoid.

The projects aim was to complete the critical edition of Albert of Saxonys Sophismata, a Latin scholastic logical treatise, written around 1360 at the University of Paris. The main part of the edition had been prepared in a foregoing project (P 24892-G15). In the Sophismata, the author presents and solves many logical and semantic problems arising from certain parts of propositions, such as from the word all in All apostles are twelve, or from the word not in You are not able to truly deny that you are not an ass. The treatise was famous enough to be edited in print five times at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century. These editions, however, present a very poor text full of mistakes and editorial interventions. So the history of late medieval logic, and especially of the sophismata genre, will gain some additional clarity from the critical edition of the Sophismata Alberti. This edition has now been completely prepared and is ready to be published.There are known to exist 28 manuscripts of the work (including fragments, even very small ones), 27 of which have been accessible to the editor. One manuscript was chosen as the best with regards to the number and severity of manifest errors; however, even this text had to be corrected in many ways, and it raised doubts whether it is closest in style to Alberts original work. In the apparatus criticus, the variants of four manuscripts are displayed almost from the beginning to the end of the whole text, while other testimonies are mentioned only occasionally, whenever it seems useful. There also is a second apparatus in which some of Alberts sources are identified and several hints to similar or thematically relevant passages in other works of his are given.