The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

aristotle
Many thoughts, premises and conclusions were present, though slumbering, in
the early days of dialectic and sophistry, and were sometimes sketched in the
dialogues of Plato. Yet Aristotle was the one who gave them full expression.
Logic was the final step in the unfolding of human knowledge from the Logosdoctrine
through the dialectic to this inner faculty which Aristotle called an
art.
He transformed the old ontology as taught in the Academy into the
elements: Logos (word) and On (thing, being). The bond between the word and
the being is the art of thinking. The thinker is an artist in bringing together
these two elements. Aristotle wrote: “The Logos describes the being or, in other
words, the Logos marks the horizon line around the substance.” (Ho logos ten
ousian horizei). This description of the Logos led Aristotle to his teaching about
concept, judgment and conclusion. The concept is the idea or the word, logos.
The judgment is the sentence, phasis. The conclusion is the result of the concept
(logos) and the judgment (phasis) in the syllogism. In that way Aristotle came
to the highest predicates, kat exochen, the categories (kategoriai ton onton). These
ten categories are:
1. Ousia Being
2. Poson Quantity
3. Poion Quality
4. Pros ti Relation
5. Poieon Doing
6. Paschein Suffering
7. Echein Having (possessing)
8. Keisthai Position
9. Pou Place
10. Pote Time
Steiner called the ten categories, as they originated from Aristotle, a cosmic
script which he established like an alphabet through which we may learn to
write and read. What previously was taught at Ephesus about the World-Word,
the Logos, containing all the secrets of the physical and spiritual worlds, now
appeared as categories in abstract form yet with the same cosmic originality as