John of Mirecourt belongs to a generation of philosopher-theologians discussing the nature of knowledge and especially the varieties of evidence for human knowledge. Biographical information on him is scarce, but he lectured on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (c. 1095–1160) at the University of Paris in 1344–1345. Propositions taken from his work were condemned by the chancellor in 1347. His two apologies are the best-known writings by him, although his commentary on Lombard's Sentences has also survived. Traditionally, Mirecourt has been described as a skeptic associated with Nicholas of Autrecourt (c. 1300–after 1350). Research in the last decades of the twentieth century gave a somewhat more accurate picture of his epistemology, but other areas of his philosophy, like his theory of ethics and the will, have not been examined.

In his epistemology Mirecourt distinguishes between abstractive and intuitive cognition, following William of Ockham (c...