Talkhīṣ manṭiq Arisṭū

(lit.: Middle Commentaries on Aristotle's Logic)

Seven commentaries on Aristotle's logic, running from the theory of proof to rhetoric and poetry — which the Arabic philosophers counted as logic too.

by Averroes1,606 passages held

Arabic, the original language

Original language: Arabic

Report a rights issue

Overview

In a story of 1947, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges imagined Averroes stuck on two words in Aristotle's Poetics, tragedy and comedy, for which nothing in his Arabic world offered an equivalent. The puzzle is real, and it sits in one of the seven texts gathered on this page. They are not one book but a set of commentaries, each on one of Aristotle's logical works: middle commentaries (talkhīṣ, a close paraphrase) on On Interpretation, the Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Sophistical Refutations, the Rhetoric and the Poetics, and a long, line-by-line commentary on the Posterior Analytics. Rhetoric and poetry belong in the set because Averroes, following the usual practice of the Arabic philosophers before him, treated both as parts of logic: kinds of speech that persuade or move the imagination where a proof would compel. Above them all stands demonstration (burhān), reasoning from certain premises to necessary conclusions. The Posterior Analytics, which describes it, is the only one of these books to which he gave both a middle and a long commentary. The Arabic of the long commentary survives only for part of its first book. In the Poetics commentary Averroes reads tragedy as the art of praise and comedy as the art of blame, so that poetry becomes a way of praising virtue and censuring vice, and he illustrates Aristotle with lines from Arabic poets: Imruʾ al-Qays, the pre-Islamic master of the ode, and al-Mutanabbī, the tenth-century court poet. Hermann the German put that commentary into Latin in 1256, and for most of the Middle Ages it was the form in which European readers knew Aristotle's book on poetry.

Key concepts

What is demonstration (burhān)?

Demonstration is reasoning from premises that are true, certain and better known than the conclusion, so that the conclusion is known to be necessary. It is the strictest of all forms of argument, and the only one that gives knowledge in the full sense. Averroes ranks every other way of reasoning below it, and in his commentaries on the Posterior Analytics he sets out what such premises must be like.

What is a syllogism, and what does the middle term do?

A syllogism is an argument in which two premises sharing one term yield a conclusion that follows of necessity. The shared term, the middle term, links the other two and then drops out: what holds of every animal holds of every human being, because every human being is an animal. In a demonstration the middle term must also give the reason why the conclusion is true.

What is an enthymeme?

An enthymeme is the argument of public speech: a shortened syllogism whose premises are only probable, and of which the speaker often leaves one unsaid for the audience to supply. It persuades rather than proves. In the commentary on the Rhetoric, Averroes treats it as the speaker's main tool, the counterpart of demonstration in the sciences and of dialectical argument in debate.

What does imitation mean in the commentary on the Poetics?

Imitation is the poet's way of presenting a thing through a likeness of it, so that the hearer imagines it vividly and is moved to love or to shun it. Averroes treats it, together with metre, as what makes speech poetic. It does not have to state anything true or false, because it works on the imagination, which is why poetry stands at the lowest rung of the forms of speech that logic studies.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Knowing Through Causes

When does an argument give us knowledge rather than a well-founded opinion? Averroes makes the answer the top of a ladder that every other kind of reasoning stands below.

The commentaries on On Interpretation and the Prior Analytics lay out how statements combine into valid arguments; those on the Posterior Analytics, middle and long, say which arguments yield knowledge. Averroes's answer is demonstration: reasoning from premises that are true, certain and prior to the conclusion, through a middle term that is also the cause of the fact. Such premises cannot all be proved in turn, so knowledge rests on first principles grasped without proof. Everything else, however convincing, falls short of knowing.

demonstration
syllogistic logic
causation
logic
definition
necessity
middle term
predication
syllogism
modal logic
knowledge
universals
premises
infinite regress
conversion
essential predication
epistemology
first principles
contradiction
negation

Enter a dialogue

Speech That Persuades and Moves

Most people are never convinced by proofs. How do persuasion and poetry work on them, and when are they honest?

Like the Arabic philosophers before him, Averroes treats rhetoric and poetry as parts of logic, ways of speaking that win assent without compelling it. The Rhetoric commentary studies persuasion before crowds and judges, the Sophistical Refutations the arguments that only seem valid. The Poetics commentary turns Aristotle's tragedy and comedy into the arts of praise and blame, with poetry as an imitation that moves the imagination toward virtue and away from vice, and it borrows its examples from Arabic poets.

rhetoric
persuasion
fallacies
dialectic
argumentation

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 1,606
distinct concepts: 855
by passages held, corpus-wide: #37

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “causation” and “demonstration”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 88 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
causation	demonstration	103
definition	demonstration	57
demonstration	middle term	57
middle term	syllogistic logic	48
demonstration	syllogistic logic	45
demonstration	logic	38
demonstration	necessity	38
causation	middle term	17
causation	necessity	14
causation	definition	13
definition	logic	13
necessity	syllogistic logic	12
logic	rhetoric	11
causation	rhetoric	9
causation	syllogistic logic	8
demonstration	rhetoric	8
causation	logic	7
definition	syllogistic logic	6
definition	necessity	5
middle term	necessity	5
definition	middle term	4
logic	necessity	4
logic	syllogistic logic	4
logic	middle term	3
definition	rhetoric	2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory (Faṣl al-maqāl)
The legal case for philosophy, written around 1179: the first of three works from those years on religion and reason, followed by an exposition of the proofs of doctrine and by the Incoherence of the Incoherence.
AR
Tafsīr mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa
One of his last commentaries, from around 1190, and the fullest of his three on the Metaphysics, after an early epitome and a middle commentary finished in Córdoba in 1174.
AR
Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) (Tahāfut al-tahāfut)
The long sequel to the Decisive Treatise, written around 1180: the earlier book asks whether philosophy is allowed, and this one defends its doctrines in detail.
AR
Talkhīṣ manṭiq Arisṭū you are here AR
Talkhīṣāt al-ṭabīʿiyyāt
His first commentaries on Aristotle's science of nature; the long commentaries on On the Heavens and On the Soul, which reached Latin in the thirteenth century, came much later.
AR

— or open another of their works