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Short Story

A Bale of Woe

The name of the medieval logician Jean Buridan (c.1295-1358) is forever linked to a curious problem in decision-making. Peter Cave recounts his own sad but instructive meeting with Buridan’s Ass.

Meandering lonely as philosophers do – o’er vale and hill, cross truth and mind, through dale and wine – I encounter an ass as lonely as I, so strange and doleful a creature indeed, as doleful and strange as I; and yet, unlike I, around his neck a placard does swing and hang, a placard which says:

“The ass of Buridan – all feeders of whom prosecution shall meet.”

PC: My dear, dear Ass, so thin, so scraggy, Ass of all but scrag and bones – and so sad, so sad – tell me do, why to feed unfortunate you is it so very forbidden?

Ass: My master – ‘Buridan’ he calls himself, but I am not so sure, for ne’er have I found my predicament explicitly drawn in his oeuvre – uses me, or even abuses me, making me an example, a dreadful example, to others.

PC: Yet an example of what? Have you sinned? Is this your punishment for some asinine misdemeanour, maybe a misdemeanour such that upon it ‘tis best not to dwell or even ask?

Ass: No, Sir. A vicious ass, certainly I am not. Virtuous and rational am I.

…