: In APo II 3-7 Aristotle discusses a series of difficulties concerning definition, deduction, and demonstration. In this paper I focus on two interrelated but distinct questions: firstly, what are exactly the difficulties emerging from or alluded to in the discussion in II 3-7; secondly, whether and in what sense the discussion in II 3-7 can be considered an aporetic discussion with a specific role to play in the development of the argument in APo II.

In his commentary on Aristotle’s De intepretatione, Ammonius criticises the view, which he ascribes to Alexander of Aphrodisias, that epirrhêmata, ‘adverbs’, fall under the rubric of onoma. While it is difficult to establish Alexander’s view on the basis of Ammonius’s criticism, I argue that an intelligible view can be reconstructed, mainly based on evidence in Alexander’s commentary on the Topics, about different types of adverbs. In particular, I suggest that Alexander, apparently unlike Ammonius, may have drawn a distinction between two (...) classes of adverbs Aristotle deals with in his logical writings: tropoi (modal operators); and ptôseis, i.e. the specific type of ‘inflections’ (adverbs in -ôs derived from a noun – usually an abstract noun) playing a prominent role in several of the topoi Aristotle gives in the Topics. (shrink)

Aristotle's Topics is a handbook for dialectic, which can be understood as a philosophical debate between a questioner and a respondent. In book 2, Aristotle mainly develops strategies for making deductions about 'accidents', which are properties that might or might not belong to a subject (for instance, Socrates has five fingers, but might have had six), and about properties that simply belong to a subject without further specification. In the present commentary, here translated into English for the first time, Alexander (...) develops a careful study of Aristotle's text. He preserves objections and replies from other philosophers whose work is now lost, such as the Stoics. He also offers an invaluable picture of the tradition of Aristotelian logic down to his time, including innovative attempts to unify Aristotle's guidance for dialectic with his general theory of deductive argument (the syllogism), found in the Analytics. The work will be of interest not only for its perspective on ancient logic, rhetoric, and debate, but also for its continuing influence on argument in the Middle Ages and later. (shrink)

The paper analyses the argumentative structure of a difficult passage from Aristotle's Metaphysics XII 7 on the basis of a topos of sameness provided in Top. VII 1. In doing this the article gives an example of how Aristotle's treatises on dialectic can prove useful to understand what he says in his more philosophically committed writings. The article also shows how general argumentative techniques and more or less explicit specific philosophical assumptions interact in shaping Aristotle's arguments and how the distinction (...) of these different factors can help us have a better grasp on Aristotle's text. (shrink)