Walter Leszl

ACCORDING TO MANY of the most authoritative interpreters and commentators of Aristotle, there is in his thought "a discrepancy between the real and the intelligible," that is to say, a failure to reconcile the requirements of his ontology with those of his logic and epistemology. From the point of view of his ontology, the individual, in effect the substance provided with matter, is basic, while the universal is derivative. From the point of view of his logic and epistemology, only the "ideal," that is to say, what is universal and formal, is intelligible; and therefore, if the intelligible coincided with the real, this would also have to be basic ontologically. This conflict in his system is usually attributed to the existence of two incompatible strands of thought, one of which is close to a form of empiricism and is typically Aristotelian, while the other is "idealistic" and derives from Plato.

I provide a survey of the contents of the works belonging to Aristotle's Organon in order to define their nature, in the light of his declared intentions and of other indications (mainly internal ones) about his purposes. No unifying conception of logic can be found in them, such as the traditional one, suggested by the very title Organon, of logic as a methodology of demonstration. Logic for him can also be formal logic (represented in the main by the De Interpretatione), axiomatized syllogistic (represented in the main by the Prior Analytics) and a methodology of dialectical and rhetorical discussion. The consequent lack of unity presented by those works does not exclude that both the set of works called Analytics and the set of works concerning dialectic (Topics and Sophistici Elenchi) form a unity, and that a certain priority is attributed to the analytics with respect to dialectic.