The Analytical Perspective of Aristotle’s Categorical and Modal Syllogisms

Abstract

What is meant under the genuine title of Aristotle’s ta Analytika is rarely properly understood. Presumably, his analytics was inspired by the method of geometric analysis. For Aristotle, this was a regressive or heuristic procedure, departing from a proposed conclusion (or prob­lem) and asking which premises could be found in order to syllogize, demonstrate or explain it. The terms that form categorical and modal propositions play a fundamental role in analytics. Aristotle introduces letters in lieu of the triples of terms (major – middle – minor) constitut­ing the propositions and the three syllogistic figures that schematize them. His formulation of the three syllogistic figures refers to a syntacti­cal and predicative order and position of the triples of terms, arranged in some diagrammed schemata, which, regrettably, are missing from the extant text of the Prior Analytics. Considering planar and graphic arrangements, both vertical and horizontal orders as well as the posi­tion of the three terms involved, we propose a reconstruction, at least to some extent, of these probable lettered diagrams. In such reconstructed diagrams, we can appropriately capture the definition of syllogism as a predicative connexion of terms, and easier survey a synoptic account of all valid predicative relations and transpositions, and also reduce the imperfect syllogisms into the moods of the first figure. Aristotle’s syllogistic is an analytical calculation of terms, understood as predicates and subjects within the categorical propositions, and more precisely of three terms schematized in three figures in predicative links such that, by means of a middle, follows from necessity a conclusion of the extreme terms. The necessity of the consequence is not based on the implication or inference of the propositions, but on a predictive transi­tivity through the middle term within the syllogistic figures. Syllogism must draw its conclusion through the way its terms are predicated of one another. Aristotle in his Prior Analytics (I 3, 8–22) developed also a complex account of modal syllogisms within necessity and possibility of belonging (predicating). This account involves also such an analyti­cal reduction to the syllogistic figures. In this analytical perspective, we try to throw some light on his modal syllogisms, although this difficult and nowadays thoroughly discussed topic would require a much wider treatment.