This book traces the development of formal logic from its origins inancient Greece to the present day. The authors first discuss the work oflogicians from Aristotle to Frege, showing how they were influenced by thephilosophical or mathematical ideas of their time. They then examinedevelopments in the present century.

Afghanistan. In the heat and dust, young British army medic Elinor Nielson watches an Afghan girl walk into a hail of bullets. But when she runs to help, Ellie finds her gone. Who is she? And what's happened to her? What Ellie discovers makes her question everything she believes in - even her feelings for the American lieutenant who takes her side.

Aristotle is widely regarded as the greatest of all philosophers; indeed, he is traditionally referred to simply as `the philosopher'. Today, after more than two millennia, his arguments and ideas continue to stimulate philosophers and provoke them to controversy. In this book J.L. Ackrill conveys the force and excitement of Aristotle's philosophical investigations, thereby showing why contemporary philosophers still draw from him and return to him. He quotes extensively from Aristotle's works in his own notably clear English translation, and a (...) picture emerges of a lucid, lively, subtle and tough-minded thinker of astonishing range and penetration. Professor Ackrill identifies many striking connections between Aristotle's ideas and ideas in recent philosophy; he also raises philosophical questions of his own, and exemplifies the way in which Aristotle can still be argued with and learned from. (shrink)

De Interpretatione is among Aristotle's most influential and widely read writings; C. W. A. Whitaker presents the first systematic study of this work, and offers a radical new view of its aims, its structure, and its place in Aristotle's system. He shows that De Interpretatione is not a disjointed essay on ill-connected subjects, as traditionally thought, but a highly organized and systematic treatise on logic, argument, and dialectic.

English summary: This commentary of Plato's Euthydemus demonstrates its place as the clearest text for understanding the relationship between Platonism and Sophism. French description: De tous les dialogues de Platon, l'Euthydeme est peut-etre le plus exclusivement consacre a l'elucidation de la relation du platonisme avec la sophistique. Ce qu'on a pris pour indigence de son contenu, c'est l'acuite avec laquelle la forme y est consideree. Formalisme moral de Socrate, formalisme eristique des sophistes: dans la lecon d'eristique donnee a Socrate apparait, (...) plus clairement peut-etre que dans aucun texte antique, la logique propre au discours sophistique, celle-la meme a laquelle a affaire dans sa totalite le texte platonicien. La sophistique, et Platon avec elle, relevent d'un regime de discours pre-aristotelicien, et c'est dans la pratique de ce discours que demande a etre reinscrite la tant galvaudee ironie socratique. (shrink)

J'examine le statut et la fonction des Catégories dans la philosophie d'Aristote.Le traité n'appartient ni à la philosophie première, ni même à la philosophie tout court, mais à la dialectique. Il ne s'agit pas d'une « discussion dialectique » de l'être, mais plutôt de dialectique en tant que tel : ce traité forme un ensemble avec les Topiques, qui a pour but d'aider le questionneur dans un débat dialectique à décider si le terme donné peut tomber sous la définition proposée (...) ou sous le genre proposé. Bien qu'il y ait un emploi philosophique des Catégories, tout comme de la dialectique en général, l'opposition prétendue entre la théorie de la substance des Catégories et celle de la Métaphysique est fondée sur une méconnaissance des buts différents des deux traités. I examine the status and function of the Categories in Aristotle's philosophy.The work does not belong to « first philosophy, » or indeed to philosophy at all, but to dialectic; not as a « dialectical discussion » of being, but in the strict sense that it is intended, together with the Topics, to help the dialectical disputant to decide whether a given term can fall under a proposed definition or a proposed genus. Although the Categories, like dialectic in general, has uses in philosophical argument, the supposed opposition between the accounts of substance in the Categories and in the Metaphysics depends on a misunderstanding of the different aims of the two works. (shrink)