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Buridan's ass

name

Etymology

After the fourteenth-century French philosopher Jean Buridan, whose philosophy of moral determinism it satirizes.

Definitions

  1. The hypothetical donkey who is placed precisely midway between two sources of food or…

    The hypothetical donkey who is placed precisely midway between two sources of food or water.

    • Buridan is best-known to philosophers for the example of "Buridan's Ass," starving to death between two equidistant and equally tempting bales of hay, [...]
    • They remain like Buridan's Ass, in a kind of frozen indecisiveness, between total freedom and total regulation.

  2. A person or organization who does not make a choice.

    • The National Peace Council was, I will not say a Buridan's Ass, but a kind of eunuch organisation, unable to take a decision one way or another.

  3. Collectively, people who do not make a choice.

    • Not that they are Buridan's ass; they just do not believe in categorical decisions.
    • You are Buridan's ass, in your immoral refusal to head toward one or the other of what you claim are irresistible allures of 'human rights.'
  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. Alternative spelling of Buridan's ass (“the hypothetical donkey who is the subject of a…

      Alternative spelling of Buridan's ass (“the hypothetical donkey who is the subject of a philosophical paradox concerning choices of equal value”).

      • Buridan is best-known to philosophers for the example of "Buridan's Ass," starving to death between two equidistant and equally tempting bales of hay, [...]
      • They remain like Buridan's Ass, in a kind of frozen indecisiveness, between total freedom and total regulation.

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sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA