Treatise on Logic

A pocket dictionary of the logicians' terms, long read as Maimonides' first book, whose authorship is now disputed.

Hebrew, a translation held here

Original title: Maqāla fī ṣināʿat al-manṭiq
Original language: Arabic

Overview

Moses Mendelssohn, the Berlin philosopher of the Jewish Enlightenment, wrote a commentary on this little book that was printed at Frankfurt an der Oder in 1761. In the preface to its second edition he urged young men bound to Talmud study to give an hour or two a week to the book's rules, because they would help with the Talmud and its commentators. The book is a dictionary of logic rather than a treatise. In fourteen short chapters it explains some 175 technical terms, mostly of logic, with others from physics, metaphysics and politics, as the Arabic philosophers in the line of al-Farabi used them. It was written in Judaeo-Arabic as a Treatise on the Art of Logic and reached Hebrew readers in three medieval translations, of which Moses ibn Tibbon's, Millot ha-Higgayon or "terms of logic", became the standard; it was first printed, with a Latin translation, at Basel in the 1520s. Older reference works say that Maimonides wrote it at sixteen. Whether he wrote it at all is now disputed: in a 2005 study the historian Herbert Davidson argued that the ascription is false, and other scholars, among them Ahmad Hasnawi, have defended it. The last chapter divides political science into four parts, the government of oneself, of a household, of a city and of a great nation, and then remarks that in these times we have no need of the philosophers' books on laws and on the governance of people in divine matters. Leo Strauss, the political philosopher, built a 1953 essay, "Maimonides' Statement on Political Science", around that chapter.

Key concepts

What is a syllogism?

An argument that draws a conclusion from two premises linked by a shared middle term. From “every human being is a living thing” and “every living thing feels”, it follows that every human being feels; “living thing” is the middle term that joins the other two and then drops out. The treatise sets out the figures, the arrangements of that middle term, and which of them yield a valid conclusion.

What are the five kinds of argument in this treatise?

They are sorted by their premises. A demonstration rests only on true premises and proves. A dialectical argument rests on widely held opinions and wins debates. A rhetorical one rests on what is received from trusted people and persuades. A sophistical one hides a falsehood and deceives. A poetic one works by images and likenesses, making things attractive or repellent. Knowing which kind you face tells you how far to trust it.

What is a shared name, or homonym?

One word used for several different things. In the full case the things have nothing in common: the Hebrew word ayin means both the eye and a spring of water. Other shared names are borrowed or carried over from one thing to another with some likeness between them. Mixing up the senses of a word is one of the commonest sources of false arguments, so the treatise lists six kinds of shared name.

How does a definition work?

It names the wider kind a thing belongs to and then the feature that sets it apart within that kind. “A human being is a living thing that speaks”: living thing is the kind, which humans share with animals, and speaking, meaning the power to reason, is the difference that marks them off. Naming the kind together with some mere property instead of the difference gives only a description, not a definition.

Themes of the book

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

The Grammar of Reason

What can be known without proof, and how does an argument earn the right to be believed? The treatise answers with a short vocabulary of the logicians, meant to keep thinking from going astray.

Logic, the treatise says, stands to the mind as grammar stands to language: it guards inner speech, the thinking itself, from error and guides it to the truth. Four kinds of statement need no proof: what the senses show, first truths such as that the whole is greater than its part, what is widely held, like the judgment that exposing one's nakedness is shameful, and what is received from a trustworthy person. Only the first two are the same for every people. An argument built wholly on true premises is a demonstration; one resting on received opinion persuades but does not prove.

logic
syllogism
propositions
valid inference
categorical syllogisms
rhetoric
dialectic
homonymy
language
definition

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From Causes to Cities

Which words does a reader need to follow the philosophers when they talk about nature and about government? The last chapters reach beyond logic to physics and politics.

Everything has four causes, the treatise explains with a chair: its wood, its carpenter, its shape and the sitting it serves. Causes are near or remote, so a broken arm can be traced from a falling stone back through a wall, a palm tree and a gust of wind. Iron is potentially a sword in a way leather is not. Politics has four parts, from governing oneself to governing a household, a city and a great nation, and the philosophers' many books on laws, it remarks, are not needed in these times.

causation
natural philosophy
actuality
privation
form
political philosophy
classification

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Within this work

passages held: 54
distinct concepts: 102
by passages held, corpus-wide: #644

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: “language” and “logic”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 3 concepts, joined by 3 pairings. 36 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
language	logic	3
logic	philosophical terminology	3
language	philosophical terminology	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.

Commentary on the Mishnah: Tractate Sanhedrin (Kitāb al-Sirāj: Sanhedrin)
One tractate of Maimonides' first great book, the Commentary on the Mishnah, including the introduction to Perek Helek in which the Thirteen Principles first appear; held in the medieval Hebrew translation printed in the Vilna Talmud.
HE
Eight Chapters on Ethics (Shemonah Perakim)
Maimonides' ethics set out in eight chapters, opening his commentary on the tractate Avot in 1168; the Mishneh Torah's laws of character later restate its doctrine of the mean as law. Held in Joseph Gorfinkle's English of 1912.
EN
Mishneh Torah: Foundations of the Torah (Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah)
Where the Mishneh Torah begins: Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah, the opening section of its first book, the Book of Knowledge (Sefer ha-Madda); held alone, its ten chapters in Simon Glazer's English of 1927.
EN
Mishneh Torah: Human Dispositions (Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot De'ot)
The second of the five sections of the Book of Knowledge, between the Foundations of the Torah and the laws of Torah study; held alone, its seven chapters in Simon Glazer's English of 1927.
EN
Mishneh Torah: Repentance (Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Teshuvah)
Closing the Mishneh Torah's first book, the Book of Knowledge, Hilkhot Teshuvah is the last of its five sections; held alone, its ten chapters in Simon Glazer's English of 1927.
EN
The Commentary to Mishnah Aboth (Kitāb al-Sirāj: Avot)
Maimonides' commentary on the five chapters of Avot, written within the Commentary on the Mishnah and opened by the Eight Chapters, which have their own page here; held in Samuel ibn Tibbon's medieval Hebrew.
HE
The Guide for the Perplexed (Dalālat al-Ḥāʾirīn)
Maimonides' last major book, addressed to a single reader and completed in Fustat around 1190, a decade after the Mishneh Torah had made his name. Held here in Michael Friedländer's English of 1904, with the letter to Joseph.
EN
Treatise on Logic (Maqāla fī ṣināʿat al-manṭiq) you are here HE

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