There is another treatise by Nicholas, the Exigit, which expounds an anti-Aristotelian, and apparently totally original, picture of the world. The details of Nicholas’s worldview are remarkable. His idea is to oppose to the Aristotelian world picture, whose necessity he has denied, his own view, which he asserts is “probable.” Of the infinitely many things that could possibly exist, or ways things could be, he needs some probable principle to determine which ones do in fact exist. His central probable principle is that a thing exists if it is good that it should exist. His notion of good seems
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