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Isagoge
The ''Isagoge'' (, ''Eisagōgḗ''; ) or "Introduction" to Aristotle's "Categories", written by Porphyry in Greek and translated into Latin by Boethius, was the standard textbook on logic for at least a millennium after his death. It was composed by Porphyry in Sicily during the years 268–270, and sent to Chrysaorium, according to all the ancient commentators Ammonius, Elias, and David. The work includes the highly influential hierarchical classification of genera and species from substance in general down to individuals, known as the Tree of Porphyry, and an introduction which mentions the problem of universals. Boethius' translation of the work, in Latin, became a standard medieval textbook in European scholastic universities, setting the stage for medieval philosophical-theological developments of logic and the problem of universals. Many writers, such as Boethius himself, Averroes, Peter Abelard, Duns Scotus, wrote commentaries on the book. Other writers such as Willia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Porphyry (philosopher)
Porphyry (; ; – ) was a Neoplatonic philosopher born in Tyre, Roman Phoenicia during Roman rule. He edited and published the '' Enneads'', the only collection of the work of Plotinus, his teacher. He wrote original works in the Greek language on a wide variety of topics, ranging from music theory to Homer to vegetarianism. His '' Isagoge'' or ''Introduction'', an introduction to logic and philosophy, was the standard textbook on logic throughout the Middle Ages in its Latin and Arabic translations. Porphyry was, and still is, also well-known for his anti-Christian polemics. Through works such as ''Philosophy from Oracles'' and '' Against the Christians'' (which was banned by Constantine the Great), he was involved in a controversy with early Christians. Life The ''Suda'' (a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia based on many sources now lost) reports that Porphyry was born in Tyre, however, other sources report that he was born in Batanaea, present-day Syria . His par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tree Of Porphyry
In philosophy (particularly the theory of categories), the Porphyrian tree or Tree of Porphyry is a classic device for illustrating a "scale of being" (), attributed to the 3rd-century CE Greek neoplatonist philosopher and logician Porphyry, and revived through the translations of Boethius. Porphyry suggests the tree in his introduction ("") to Aristotle's Categories. Porphyry presented Aristotle's classification of categories in a way that was later adopted into tree-like diagrams of two-way divisions, which indicate that a species is defined by a genus and a differentia and that this logical process continues until the lowest species is reached, which can no longer be so defined. No illustrations or diagrams occur in editions of Porphyry's original work; diagrams were eventually made, and became associated with the scheme that Porphyry describes, following Aristotle. Porphyry's was originally written in Greek, but was translated into Latin in the early 6th century CE by Bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elias (commentator)
Elias (; ; fl. 6th century) was a Greek scholar and a commentator on Aristotle and Porphyry. Life No information has been handed down about the life of Elias; all assumptions represented in the research are deductions from circumstantial evidence in his works. That he was at least nominally a Christian is inferred from his Christian name, but has not been proven conclusively. His thinking is influenced by Neoplatonism, the dominant philosophical direction in late antiquity. Numerous passages in writings, some of which are certain, some of which are assumed to be by Elias, correspond to passages in the works of Olympiodorus the Younger. Olympiodorus was a prominent pagan philosopher who taught in the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria in the late-6th century. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Elias also lived and taught in Alexandria and that he was a student of Olympiodorus.Jonathan Barnes, 2006, ''Porphyry Introduction'', page xxi. Oxford University Press However, the ass ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David (commentator)
David (; fl. 6th century) was a Greek scholar and a commentator on Aristotle and Porphyry. He may have come from Thessaly, but in later times he was confused with an Armenian of the same name ( David Anhaght).Pamela M. Huby, R. W. Sharples, Dimitri Gutas, 1995, ''Theophrastus of Eresus, Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought and Influence'', page 16. Brill. He was a pupil of Olympiodorus in Alexandria in the late 6th century. His name suggests that he was a Jew or a Christian. Three commentaries to Aristotle's works attributed to him have survived:D. N. Sedley, 2003, ''The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy'', page 249. as well as an introduction (''prolegomena'') to philosophy: * ''Definitions and Divisions of Philosophy'' * Commentary on Porphyry's '' Isagoge'' * Commentary on Aristotle's '' Categories'' * Commentary on Aristotle's '' Prior Analytics'' (in Armenian) All these works will be published, with an English translation, in the series ''Commentaria i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Problem Of Universals
The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes: "Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist beyond those objects? And if a property exists separately from objects, what is the nature of that existence?" The problem of universals relates to various inquiries closely related to metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, as far back as Plato and Aristotle, in efforts to define the mental connections a human makes when they understand a property such as shape or color to be the same in nonidentical objects. Universals are qualities or relations found in two or more entities. As an example, if all cup holders are ''circular'' in some way, ''circularity'' may be considered a universal property of cup holders. Further, if two daughters can be considered ''female offspring of Frank'', the qualities of being ''female'', ''offspring'', and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known simply as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480–524 AD), was a Roman Roman Senate, senator, Roman consul, consul, ''magister officiorum'', polymath, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the translation of the Greek classics into Latin, a precursor to the Scholasticism, Scholastic movement, and, along with Cassiodorus, one of the two leading Christian scholars of the 6th century. The local cult of Boethius in the Diocese of Pavia was sanctioned by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1883, confirming the diocese's custom of honouring him on the 23 October. Boethius was born in Rome a few years after the forced abdication of the last Western Roman Empire, Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus. A member of the Anicii family, he was orphaned following the family's sudden decline and was raised by Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, a later Roman consul, consul. After mastering both Latin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duns Scotus
John Duns Scotus ( ; , "Duns the Scot"; – 8 November 1308) was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian. He is considered one of the four most important Christian philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and William of Ockham. Duns Scotus has had considerable influence on both Catholic and secular thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the " univocity of being", that existence is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing between different formalities of the same thing; and the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual (i.e. a certain “thisness”). Duns Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued for the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The intellectual trad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ammonius Hermiae
Ammonius Hermiae (; ; – between 517 and 526) was a Greek philosopher from Alexandria in the eastern Roman empire during Late Antiquity. A Neoplatonist, he was the son of the philosophers Hermias and Aedesia, the brother of Heliodorus of Alexandria and the grandson of Syrianus. Ammonius was a pupil of Proclus in Roman Athens, and taught at Alexandria for most of his life, having obtained a public chair in the 470s. According to Olympiodorus of Thebes's ''Commentaries'' on Plato's ''Gorgias'' and ''Phaedo'' texts, Ammonius gave lectures on the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Porphyry of Tyre, and wrote commentaries on Aristotelian works and three lost commentaries on Platonic texts. He is also the author of a text on the astrolabe published in the '' Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum'', and lectured on astronomy and geometry. Ammonius taught numerous Neoplatonists, including Damascius, Olympiodorus of Thebes, John Philoponus, Simplicius of Cilicia, and Asclepius of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ibn Al-Muqaffa‘
Abū Muhammad ʿAbd Allāh Rūzbih ibn Dādūya (), born Rōzbih pūr-i Dādōē (), more commonly known as Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (; ), was a Persian translator, philosopher, author and thinker who wrote in the Arabic language. He bore the name Rōzbeh/Rūzbeh before his comparatively late conversion to Islam from Manichaeism.. "Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, the son of an Iraqi tax collector who had been tortured for mishandling tax revenues (hence the nickname "al-Muqaffaʿ", the cripple), was happy to oblige." Biography Ibn al-Muqaffa, though a resident of Basra, was originally from the town of Goor (or Gur, Firuzabad, Fars) in the Iranian province of Fars and was born into a family of Persian stock. He was a native speaker of Middle Persian and a non-native speaker of Arabic; Ibn al-Muqaffa composed his Arabic works during a period when the rules of Classical Arabic were still taking shape and the Arabic linguistic tradition was just emerging. His father had been a state official in charge of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Categories (Aristotle)
The ''Categories'' (; or ) is a text from Aristotle's '' Organon'' that enumerates all the possible kinds of things that can be the subject or the predicate of a proposition. They are "perhaps the single most heavily discussed of all Aristotelian notions". The work is brief enough to be divided not into books, as is usual with Aristotle's works, but into fifteen chapters. The ''Categories'' places every object of human apprehension under one of ten categories (known to medieval writers as the Latin term ). Aristotle intended them to enumerate everything that can be expressed without composition or structure, thus anything that can be either the subject or the predicate of a proposition. The text The antepraedicamenta The text begins with an explication of what Aristotle means by " synonymous", or univocal words, what is meant by "homonymous", or equivocal words, and what is meant by " paronymous", or denominative (sometimes translated "derivative") words. It then divi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Term Logic
In logic and formal semantics, term logic, also known as traditional logic, syllogistic logic or Aristotelian logic, is a loose name for an approach to formal logic that began with Aristotle and was developed further in ancient history mostly by his followers, the Peripatetics. It was revived after the third century CE by Porphyry's Isagoge. Term logic revived in medieval times, first in Islamic logic by Alpharabius in the tenth century, and later in Christian Europe in the twelfth century with the advent of new logic, remaining dominant until the advent of predicate logic in the late nineteenth century. However, even if eclipsed by newer logical systems, term logic still plays a significant role in the study of logic. Rather than radically breaking with term logic, modern logics typically expand it. Aristotle's system Aristotle's logical work is collected in the six texts that are collectively known as the '' Organon''. Two of these texts in particular, namely th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Predicables
Predicable (Lat. praedicabilis, that which may be stated or affirmed, sometimes called ''quinque voces'' or ''five words'') is, in scholastic logic, a term applied to a classification of the possible relations in which a predicate may stand to its subject. It is not to be confused with ' praedicamenta', the scholastics' term for Aristotle's ten Categories. The list given by the scholastics and generally adopted by modern logicians is based on development of the original fourfold classification given by Aristotle ( Topics, a iv. 101 b 17-25): definition (''horos''), genus (''genos''), property (''idioma''), and accident (''symbebekos''). The scholastic classification, obtained from Boethius's Latin version of Porphyry's ''Isagoge'', modified Aristotle's by substituting species (''eidos'') and difference (''diaphora'') for definition. Both classifications are of universals, concepts or general terms, proper names of course being excluded. There is, however, a radical difference ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
