Ralph Strode, Obligationes

Ralph Strode studied and taught at Merton College Oxford in the 1350s and ’60s. Later, he lived in London near Geoffrey Chaucer, who dedicated his poem Troilus and Criseyde to “philosophical Strode”. While in Oxford, Strode wrote six treatises on logic, including one on obligationes, a unique logical genre probably designed to train students in logical inference. Obligationes are logical disputations between an Opponent, who poses a proposition, usually false, against a background scenario, and a Respondent who, having accepted the Opponent’s proposal, must respond by granting, denying or doubting the propositions put forward by the Opponent in accordance with certain rules. Various rival sets of rules were proposed. Strode’s treatise argues against three such theories including Swyneshed’s and Dumbleton’s, and develops Walter Burley’s theory further. Jennifer Ashworth began her edition of Strode’s Obligationes in the 1980s, and began an English translation late in life, but was unable to finish the work before her death in 2024. Stephen Read has completed the translation, and added a history of theories of obligationes and the place of Strode’s theory in it. Apart from a doctoral dissertation presenting Strode’s Consequences, it will be the first of Strode’s treatises to appear in print.