Aristotle, Prior Analytics [Paperback]

Aristotle (Author), Robin Smith (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1989 | ISBN-10: 0872200647 | ISBN-13: 978-0872200647

'This volume is an impressive tour de force. It is state-of-the-art Aristotle: it employs the most recent philological, philosophical, and logical advances which since the 1970's at least have rendered previous translations and commentaries obsolete. The translation is the first to take account of the recent epistemically orientated natural-deduction approach, which restores Aristotle's reputation as a consummate logician and reveals much more of Aristotle's method than previous approaches. Every page of Robin Smith's commentary shows extensive learning, taste, imagination, and skill...An important and lasting contribution, not only to Aristotle scholarship and to the history of logic, but also to the history of philosophy itself' - John Corcoran, SUNY Buffalo.

Product Details

• Paperback: 293 pages
• Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Inc (September 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872200647
• ISBN-13: 978-0872200647
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #755,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE TRUE NATURE OF ARISTOTLE'S LOGIC--FINALLY?, March 14, 2009

By 

Ole Anders (Coquina Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aristotle, Prior Analytics (Paperback)

A new interpretation of Aristotle's PRIOR ANALYTICS emerged independently and simultaneously in the spring of 1971 in two places on different continents: the University of Buffalo and the University of Cambridge. John Corcoran of UB and Timothy Smiley of UC are the scholars most responsible for what has become known as the Buffalo-Cambridge interpretation. The question of priority is immaterial. The story is recounted in John Corcoran's 1994 paper "Founding of Logic" in the journal ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
The new interpretation takes syllogisms to be direct or indirect "deductions" of conclusions from premises: these deductions typically are NOT determined simply by the premise set and the conclusion alone but contain chains of reasoning that show how the conclusions can be KNOWN to follow from the premise sets. The 1989 book under review was one of the firmest signs that the new interpretation was taking hold among Aristotle scholars; it contains a new translation of Aristotle's PRIOR ANALYTICS based on the Buffalo-Cambridge interpretation. The Greek SULLOGISMOS is rendered "deduction". The translator was the accomplished classicist-philosopher Robin Smith; one of the publisher's readers was the late Michael Frede, one of the acknowledged leaders in the field of Greek logic.
No translation was ever based on an interpretation taking syllogisms to be sentences--whether universalized conditionals or of some other form. All previous translations use interpretations taking a syllogism to be determined by its premises and its conclusion, thereby making it impossible to understand how there could be a direct and an indirect syllogism having the same premises and the same conclusion.
In addition to the English translation of PRIOR ANALYTICS--the previous one was done in 1928--the book contains an extensive commentary reviewing and summarizing much of the relevant literature through 1988. If you want the most authoritative modern view of the nature of Aristotle's logic as Aristotle saw it, this book is your only choice.