Simon of Faversham was an English scholar affiliated with the University of Paris during the 1280s, where he most likely wrote his commentaries on Aristotle's philosophical works. The Posterior Analytics, one of Aristotle's most important treatises, addresses the nature of scientific demonstration. Faversham's two extant commentaries on The Posterior Analytics are invaluable witnesses to key elements of late medieval accounts of scientific demonstration, including views on the extent and limits of demonstration, its metaphysical underpinnings, and its epistemic power.
The commentary edited here, together with the accompanying translation, offers new insight into Simon of Faversham's philosophy-a fascinating chapter in the history of late medieval thought. It also deepens our understanding of the philosophical discussions on demonstration and related topics that took place during the early period of Europe's university history, and of the ways in which these discussions drew on earlier philosophical developments in non-European traditions, notably the Islamic philosophical tradition.
Iacopo Costa is directeur de recherche at the CNRS and teaches philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is a member of the Leonine Commission (Paris). He is a specialist of the history of moral philosophy and theology and particularly of the Latin reception of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in the 13th and 14th centuries. He has published several critical editions of Scholastic texts, as well as articles concerning medieval ethics.
Gustavo Fernandez Walker is assistant researcher at the University of Gothenburg. He got his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a PhD in Philology and Hermeneutics at the Università del Salento, Italy. He has held postdoctoral fellowships in Buenos Aires, Dresden and Gothenburg.
John Longeway is professor of medieval philosophy at University of Wisconsin, now in retirement. He has published extensively on medieval and renaissance epistemology and philosophy of science, and on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and its medieval reception.