See also: Organon (homonymy)

LOrganon indicates a whole of treaties of Logique which one allots to Aristote. In fact the oldest treaties of logic arrived to us. The title D Organon is not Aristote; it is mentioned for the first time by Diogène Laërce.

Aristote exposes to it in a systematic way the forms of the Pensée and the Démonstration like condition of the Science. The treaties thus form a complete unit of which the parts are followed according to a given order.

The Organon includes/understands as follows:

  • Categories , an analysis of the simplest elements of the proposals;
  • Of interpretation , study of the proposal;
  • First Analytical , which exposes the rules and the forms of the demonstration in general;
  • Second Analytical , which exposes the theory of the syllogism necessary;
  • the Topics , which expose the places of the Dialectique;
  • the Sophistical Refutations , which expose principal sophisms and the means of refuting them.

One sometimes joined there the Rhetoric and the Poetic .

This systematic presentation does not mean that these works were written in this order. Indeed, one finds several references which show that the logical order is not the chronological order: Analytical the is thus quoted in chapter 10 of the Of interpretation; and with book I, §1 of the Analytiques it is question of the Topiques . But this just as easily can be explained by a rewriting of works during the life of Aristote.

Is this Aristote which laid out these books according to the order that we know to them today?

The remarks of Aristote seem well to show that this one had an precise idea about its Logique. For him, indeed, the demonstrations must be founded on certain elements or principles (i.e the Catégories); then, the reasoning is of three kinds ( Topiques , I, 1):

  • the logical syllogism
  • the dialectical syllogism
  • the sophistical syllogism

Aristote declares clearly that the Analytiques are devoted to the syllogisms, and that the Topiques teach the art of the conjecture and the discussion.

In Metaphysics , Aristote distinguishes of the same manner the study and the philosophical research which relate to the Vérité, the Dialectique which relates to the probable one, and the sophistical one, which gives only one appearance of Réalité ( Métaphysique , 5, §2).

Nevertheless, it is also possible that a disciple of Aristote followed the indications of his Master to organize the treaties.

See too

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