Documentation about Autrecourt's life is scarce. His date of birth is now placed sometime between 1295–1298. He came from the diocese of Verdun and attended the arts faculty at Paris. He also held a degree in civil law, which he must have obtained outside of Paris. His membership in the Collège de Sorbonne places Autrecourt back in Paris in the 1330s as a student in theology. He died in 1369, either on July 16 or 17.

Over the last two decades, it has become apparent that the study of Autrecourt's thought has been wrongly placed in the larger context of putatively skeptical tendencies in scholastic thought and the battle against Ockhamism at the University of Paris in the years 1339–1347. In his Universal Treatise (Exigit ordo), which originated at the arts faculty during the years 1333–1335, he defends the Aristotelian thesis that our sensory experiences are reliable...