Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ABELARD'S LOGIC

Abelard’s importance as a philosopher is due above all to his contribution to logic and the philosophy of language. Logic, when he began his teaching career, was studied in the West mainly from Aristotle’s Categories and On Interpretation, plus Porphyry’s introduction and some works of Cicero and Boethius. Aristotle’s major logical works were not known, nor were his physical and metaphysical treatises. Abelard’s logical researches, therefore, were less well informed than those, say, of Avicenna; but he was gifted with remarkable insight and originality. He wrote three separate treatises of Logic over the period from 1118 to 1140.