Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

The Assimilation of Aristotelian and Arabic Logic up to the Later Thirteenth Century 313
4.5 The Sophistici Elenchi
The Latin version of Sophistici elenchi by Boethius began to circulate in the
1120s. 74 It was retranslated from the Greek a little later by James of Venice
and later in the thirteenth century a third Latin translation appeared in 1269 by
William of Moerbeke. It relatively quickly became a central part of the new logic
developing in the late twelfth century. As with the other logic works of Aristotle
the earliest commentaries were literal commentaries, that is, they proceed by first
quoting the text from Aristotle and then expanding on it before turning to the
next bit of text. Towards the end of the thirteenth century so-called question commentaries
started to appear. These were more problametising by asking specific
problematic questions based on Aristotle’s text.
Although the Sophistici Elenchi belongs to the logica nova parts of it was well
known before the 1120’s. The reason for this is a line in Chapter 6 of De interpretatione.
In his discussion of contradictions, Aristotle notes that the subject
and the predicate of the contradictory propositions must be identical, and then he
adds that “the identity of subject and predicate of the contradictory propositions
must not be ‘equivocal’. Indeed there are definite qualifiers besides this, which we
make to meet the cauistries of the sophists” (17a35-7). This note makes Boethius
outline parts of Aristotle’s doctrine in the Sophistici Elenchi in his second, more
detailed, commentary on the De interpretatione. Boethius mentions six cases in
which the contradictions of propositions are frustrated by fallacies, namely in the
fallacies of (i) equivocation, (ii) univocation, (iii) diverse parts, (iv) relatives, (v)
diverse times, and (vi) diverse modes.
The fact that this discussion is included in a commentary on De interpretatione
is historically very important. De interpretatione is about terms in propositions
and the discussion of fallacies forces twelfth century logicians to think about ways
in which terms can be taken in a proposition. Very early in the twelfth century
one can therefore find formulations like the following in commentaries on De interpretatione,
namely that “the interpretation of a term is determine by its use in
a proposition.” 75 This is the fundamental idea behind supposition theory and the
logica modernorum.
The discussion of the fallacies did not single handily generate the doctrine of
supposition, since, as de Rijk shows 76 , the development of grammar in the twelfth
century was also essential to this development. It is clear though that early commentaries
on the Sophistici Elenchi in the later twelfth century played a very
important part in formulating supposition theory. I will not go in to this further
since this falls outside of the scope of the present chapter.
It is towards the latter half of the twelfth century that one can find the first
Latin commentaries on the Sophistici Elenchi that are based on Aristotle’s original
text. It is also then that the discussion of fallacies are formed and divided in the
74 See Aristotle, De sophisticis elenchis, xi-xv.
75 See [de Rijk, 1962, 48].
76 See [de Rijk, 1967, I, 95–125].