Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotle Prior Analytics 1.32-46

Download or read book Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotle Prior Analytics 1.32-46 written by Alexander Of Aphrodisias and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last 14 chapters of book 1 of Aristotle's "Prior Analytics" are concerned with the representation in the formal language of syllogistic of propositions and arguments expressed in more or less everyday Greek. In his commentary on those chapters, "Alexander of Aphrodisias" explains some of Aristotle's more opaque assertions and discusses post-Aristotelian ideas in semantics and the philosophy of language. In doing so he provides an unusual insight into the way in which these disciplines developed in the Hellenistic era. He also shows a more sophisticated understanding of these fields than Aristotle himself, while remaining a staunch defender of Aristotle's emphasis on meaning as opposed to Stoics concern with verbal formulation. In his commentary on the final chapter of book 1 Alexander offers a thorough discussion of Aristotle's distinction between denying that something is, for example, white and asserting that it is non-white.