>>24137889
Yes, Barnes was a pseud, so are all the others. Barnes thought the Posterior Analytics is a work about pedagogical questioning - let that sink in a moment. The 20th century was not a high point in Aristotle studies.

>>24137900
I have four secondary texts. Which if any are worth using? I am a new reader of Aristotle though very familiar with Plato, having read the complete works and half a dozen related books.

1. Cambridge Companion to Aristotle
2. From Aristotle to Augustine (book 2 of history of philosophy)
3. Aristotle and other platonists
4. Aristotle's dialogue with Socrates: on the Nichomachean Ethics

>>24137889
Barnes has no patience for Plato, but his autism for argument makes him sometimes helpful for Aristotle, and he's more helpful than his other Analytic peers. His opening chapter summarizing Aristotle's life, writings, and the messy state of those writings, is good. Dl it for that chapter and ignore the rest.

>>24137900
You're still an idiot.

>The opening words of the Posterior Analytics set the scene for the theory of demonstration:
>"All teaching and all learning that is based on reason comes from pre-existing knowledge." (cf. Top. Z 4, 141a26-31; Met. A 9, 992b30-32)
>This is clear: on stage are a teacher and a pupil, to whom he imparts knowledge in a formal manner ("based on reason" - Aristotle means to rule out acquisition of skills, like a young bird's learning to fly or a child's learning to talk). That this is the scene is confirmed by the next few sentences. Aristotle explains that both syllogistic and inductive arguments "make the teaching" through precognised facts. These arguments are then contrasted with rhetorical arguments, whose function is to persuade. The phrase" make the teaching" and the contrast between the end of demonstration and that of rhetoric serve to underscore the impression left by the first sentence of the book.

>>24137900
>>24138148
>The reference to teaching at the beginning of the book is not isolated. The different kinds of proposition which can occur in demonstrations are defined in terms of the learner's relation to them: a 'thesis' is a principle which cannot be proved but which the person who is about to learn need not already possess; an axiom, by contrast, is a principle which anyone who is going to learn anything must already possess (A Psi. A 2, 72a15-17; cf. Met. G 3, 1005b5; 15-17). Later, a 'hypothesis' is distinguished from a postulate solely by the fact that the former states what seems to be the case to the learner, while the latter is "the contrary of the learner's opinion" (A Pst. A 10, 76b23-34).
>There are also three passages from outside the Analytics which deserve quoting.
>(i) The first of these is the most considerable:
>"There are four kinds of conversational argument: pedagogic and dialectic and peirastic and eristic . . . About the apodeictic arguments we have spoken in the Analytics; about the dialectic and peirastic we have spoken elsewhere [i.e. in the earlier parts of the Topics]: let us now speak about the agonistic and eristic
arguments" (Top. I 2, 165a38-b11; cf. H 11, 161a25).
>Here Aristotle explicitly calls the demonstrative arguments which he has discussed in the Posterior Analytics pedagogic arguments.
>(ii) The second reason why rhetoric is useful is said by Aristotle to be this:
>"Again, there are some whom, even if we have the most rigorous knowledge, it is not easy to persuade by speaking from this knowledge: for argument in accordance with knowledge is teaching, and this is impossible" (Rhet. A 1, 1355 a24-27).
>An argument in accordance with knowledge cannot persuade some people because they are impervious to instruction; by "an argument in accordance with knowledge" Aristotle must mean a demonstrative argument (for rhetoric is being defended against the charge that demonstrative argument can do all that it can do, and do it better): and thus this passage too equates demonstrative arguments with pedagogic arguments.
>(iii) In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle says:
>"Neither there [in the case of mathematics] does the argument teach the principles, nor here [in the case of ethics], but virtue either natural or ingrained by habit governs right thinking about the principle" (EN. H 8, 1151 a17-19)
>In asserting that argument does not teach the principles, Aristotle implies that it does teach the theorems deduced from the principles. Here again, teaching is the proper function of demonstrative argument.

>>24137889
Iirc he only wrote 2 of the essays in the book plus the autobiographical chapter. He frequently mentions the process of how Aristotle was handed down to us to maintain his veil of unknowing and doesn't commit the cardinal sin of all pseuds which is trying to know. Most of the bad reputation he gets is from his metaphysics essay. If you're a platonist then you are already going to be predisposed to disagree with Aristotle about mathematical objects so keep in mind that Barnes mostly just repeats Aristotle or other pre-eminent Aristotle thinkers. Barnes does claim Aristotle's metaphysics wasn't unified or complete in the true sense which is where most of the interpretation biases make themselves known. Aristotle has historically been lauded by people who like to assume the pretense of knowing but even the most diehard enthusiasts will be reduced to making observations about when something is known upon examination. I don't remember him making any claims you could read the companion piece instead of Aristotle but as far as Aristotle interpretations go it isn't a bad collection.

>>24138159
I don’t deny that there is such a thing as pedagogic questioning but you would have to be a complete retard to think this simply is what demonstration is. Aristotle does define demonstrative science, go see what he says. Much of Post An is impossible to apply to questioning (all of book 2, most of book 1). You think this paper from the 1940s is the final word on the Analytics because it’s one of the only things you’ve read - you definitely haven’t read the Organon itself. The only reason Barnes is led to this bizarre conclusion is that he doesn’t understand the syllogism, so he can’t see how Aristotle’s own works are examples of demonstration. I’ve argued this to death, with quotes, while your argument amounts to “Barnes said it”. Sad.

(Cont’d) consider for a moment what it would mean to give a full demonstration, satisfying all his criteria, by question and answer. “Is man a rational animal?” “Yes teacher.” “Are rational animals risible?” “Yes teacher.” Imagine doing that with a complex geometrical proof, with every question/answer necessarily being atomic. And as I said he does define demonstration and it is not the same as questioning, for all that there are demonstrative problems and demonstrative answers. You just don’t know the texts well enough to know how overwhelming the evidence is against Barnes’ thesis. Grosseteste thought there was an Augustinian illuminationism in Post An and I think he was wrong, too, though he certainly understood Aristotle better than Barnes did.

(Cont’d) Barnes doesn’t even understand that in the process of learning the premises are in reverse order from a true demonstration, though Aristotle explains this. At least Barnes understood that Post An was not limited to geometry. But the fact that he even had to make that argument should tell you how shit 20th century scholarship on the Organon has been. You think you’re up against a random anon with a pet theory, you’re actually arguing with all of the premodern Aristotelians, from Alexander to Suarez.

>>24139153
You can stomp and shid and pizz all you like, but Barnes backs his positions up with readings of Aristotle, and far more than you, who will read
>"There are four kinds of conversational argument: pedagogic and dialectic and peirastic and eristic . . . About the apodeictic arguments we have spoken in the Analytics; about the dialectic and peirastic we have spoken elsewhere [i.e. in the earlier parts of the Topics]: let us now speak about the agonistic and eristic arguments" (Top. I 2, 165a38-b11; cf. H 11, 161a25).
And blink and handwave like a retard. Barnes even addresses your moves at the very beginning of the essay, because his autism guides him in being somewhat thorough, while yours just makes you a tranny shouting that you're right over and over while pretending words only have one sense in Aristotle, or arguing assbackwardly that BECAUSE Aristotle says a work is scientific, THEREFORE there are demonstrations present, a specious argument that only a retard would accept.

You can cope all you like by pretending I've never read Aristotle or the Organon or commentators besides Barnes, praise from a retard like you means nothing to me.

>>24139153
>>24139182
you're both right

t. Peripatetic scholar

>>24139178
>from Alexander to Suarez.
Lol you know they had to fill in premises and rearrange arguments *because the arguments weren't in demonstrative form, right*? This shit all over Alexander, Aspasius, Simplicius, Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, etc. How do you read any of them and fucking miss that?

>>24139182
Here is the definition of science from Post An 1.2:
"We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way in which the sophist knows, when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other than it is."

This is the subject of the Posterior Analytics, not pedagogical questioning - again I have to assume you haven't read it or were too stupid to understand it if you don't see that I have a point here. The passage from Topics is about different sorts of question-and-answer and how they differ from the properly Dialectical kind. Huge portions of the Posterior Analytics do not make any sense if demonstrations are supposed to be questions, or they explicitly describe processes that could not conceivably be questions and answers (like the method of finding definitions in book 2, or again like I said, his claiming that the orders of premises in the process of learning are the *opposite* of a true demonstration). Note, too, that by this definition of science, all of his putatively scientific works are truly scientific and demonstrative, because this is exactly the kind of knowledge they contain. I'm arguing FROM his definition of science (which he gives in nearly the same words in other places) TO the fact that works like Physics and De Anima are scientific (besides the fact that he refers to them as sciences - or are you still confused because Barnes translates episteme as 'understanding'?). The only reason Barnes can't make this step is because he doesn't know what an Aristotelian syllogism is, and he doesn't know this because he thought Arab- and Latin-speaking Aristotelians weren't worth reading. Also, many of these works discuss issues of how they conform to the theory in Posterior Analytics - for example, in Parts of Animals 1 when he points out that a complete theory of intellect would have to be part of metaphysics, not natural science. Or at the beginning of De Anima when he lays out these puzzles (all solved in Post An) about how to proceed in examining the soul. Or in Nicomachean Ethics when he talks about how this science can't be as precise as others. Or in the Metaphysics when he spends so much time talking about what the subject genus must be, do we prove accidents of it, etc. And yet for your thesis to get off the ground none of these works can have anything to do with the Posterior Analytics because none of them are pedagogical questionings. And yet they all engage deeply with Post An.

Think whatever you want, you're too arrogant to change your mind. The fact that you lean so heavily on this one single paper and seem to think it's universally accepted pretty much says it all. You say I'm autistically hand-waving - I've given you dozens of citations and arguments over the last few months and all you do is quote Barnes.

>>24139189
Yes, I do know that. It's impossible to argue with you because you have made up your mind that I'm a retard, so you interpret whatever I say in the most retarded way possible. My point was that not a single person before Barnes argued that demonstration is primarily a sort of pedagogical questioning. FWIW I don't think anyone before Averroes really understood the Analytics. Also the rearrangement of Aristotle's arguments in commentaries into a syllogistic form is a mode of analysis which Aristotle describes in Prior Analytics. It does not mean that an argument has to have that form in order to BE a syllogism.

But this will never end because Aristotle's works are so maze-like that you can throw out-of-context quotes at me. For example you could quote Prior An 1 where he 'narrows' his conception of the syllogism from Topics into the classic three-term form, then use this to claim that a syllogism really does need this form. Then I'd quote syllogisms, openly identified as syllogisms, in Prior An and elsewhere, that don't have this form, and you'd probably respond by quoting Barnes again. You are the same guy who, in the past, claimed that the theory of syllogism has nothing to do with science, that science and syllogism are totally different things. You should be ashamed of yourself lol.

>>24139175
Filtered by Meno. Well Anutos if you trust yourself to sophists you'll lose what little intelligence you have left.

>>24139294
>>24139318
Here is the synthesis.
>science-syllogism is the theoretical object of study
>pedagogy is the practical motivation for discovering this object of study
Now can you gentlemen get along?

>>24137889
he's right though? read Phaedo. every argument there is complete garbage. and I've read it three times.

>>24139565
No, I don't think he is. You can't read one dialogue and then draw conclusions about Plato. You must read several, carefully. You need to read the republic, at least, and I refuse to believe that you can understand the republic without at least weeks of careful study. Also, it's sad when people have no taste for beautifully presented philosophy, like Plato

>>24139565
>he never realized many of the arguments are specious on purpose

>>24139599
>Many
ALL of the arguments are shit in Phaedo. Crito and Meno as well.
>>24139598
>>24139598
it's been like 2 years since I read any Plato but I don't call the Republic being particularly strong either.

>>24139635
>call
recall*

>>24139635
>filtered by plato...

>>24137889
Aristotle was a Platonist. If one despises Plato one can hardly be an Aristotelian who understands Aristotle.

For centuries, people who understood Aristotle very well, and truly *lived* his philosophy, thought it likely that the works ascribed to him that are actually Aristotelian paraphrases of Proclus and Plotinus, were close enough to warrant inclusion in the corpus. And this synthesis of Plato and Aristotle had begun further back when people still read the texts in their native language and had a fairly similar cultural background to draw on.

But whereas the ancients and medievals are always focused on unity (the Good being deeply related to the One), and this allows Scholastics to cite Pagans, next to Jews, next to Muslims, the modern critical scholar is always looking to isolate and find differences. Add in a desire to "reform" cherished philosophers for the present age and you get ridiculous framings like "Plato the rationalist versus Aristotle the empiricist scientist," or "St. Bonaventure the Platonists versus St. Thomas the Aristotelian."

This is why stuff like Porphyry remains the best secondary source literature on Aristotle to this day.

>>24137919
St. Thomas' commentaries are free online, and excellent, so that is always an option. Likewise for Porphyry's introduction to the Categories.

I do find some of Gerson's stuff illuminating. He has a really good article on Aristotelian Neo-platonic epistemology in the Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism, but I think he covers similar ground in the book you have IIRC.

Joe Sachs guide to the Physics is a really nice resource and I do think his translations are quite useful, although it is worth getting used to the more standard renderings.

If you like Gerson, Eric Perl has a pretty nice book called "Thinking Being" that traces commonalities in Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and St. Thomas.

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>>24139665
>Aristotle was a Platonist
>Porphyry remains the best secondary source literature on Aristotle to this da

>>24139665
>*lived* his philosophy
This is something that bothers me about modern philosophers. None of them seem to subscribe to any actual philosophy, they all live the same modern way and just critique, at least in my experience. Why do so few actually commit to something?
>isolate and find differences
Yes, good point.

>>24139676
>The introductory text on the Categories for 1,500 years, itself subject to commentaries by virtually all the greats, embraced by the via antiqua and that demon lord Ockham alike, is actually le bad.

>>24139689
no one said Isagoge was "le bad." A fag like you interpolating his agenda into Aristotle IS, however "le bad."

>>24139287
None of this amounts to more than waffling if you can't show that demonstrative syllogisms of the kind developed at length in the Analytics aren't noticeably absent: they simply are, and that raises legitimate questions about the statuses of the scientific works when large swathes of them aren't argued from by demonstrations in the narrow sense of the PosAn. When you go back to repeating claims like:
>Note, too, that by this definition of science, all of his putatively scientific works are truly scientific and demonstrative, because this is exactly the kind of knowledge they contain. I'm arguing FROM his definition of science (which he gives in nearly the same words in other places) TO the fact that works like Physics and De Anima are scientific (besides the fact that he refers to them as sciences - or are you still confused because Barnes translates episteme as 'understanding'?).
All you've done is handwave the problem being discussed, and, as I've said about your claims before, waffle between senses of apodexis, where it means "demonstration, i.e. demonstrative syllogism" except when it's absent, and then you can cover yourself with its looser sense of "evidence. Barnes's entire reasonable point is that either demonstration is tied up with the kind of syllogism discussed in PosAn, in which case we have to admit that we don't find them in Aristotle unless we supply missing premises and reformulate the texts as we have them, or demonstration isn't tied up with the syllogisms of PosAn, and we abandon the rigor that work apparently provides. You've consistently chosen the latter approach, but that doesn't free you from addressing why so much is made of demonstrative syllogisms if we can just lazily say the scientific works are demonstrative by definition, actual demonstrative arguments be damned.

>The passage from Topics is about different sorts of question-and-answer and how they differ from the properly Dialectical kind
He literally equates the pedagogic with apodictic, but apparently you prefer that Aristotle brings up apodictic unconnected with his discussion, and otherwise not corresponding with any of the four kinds of arguments he's talking about, leaving pedagogic undefined.

>Think whatever you want...
I could say the same to you, the fact that Barnes comes with his own citatons doesn't stop you from pretending he's positing a solution out of the blue, and you're so full of yourself that you can't represent his argument without errors or falling back into positions he addresses clearly. I don't even think he's an especially standout scholar, but the problems he spells out are there for all to see, and chanting "he doesn't understand syllogisms" is just burying your head in the sand, and you know it.

>>24139697
What agenda, achieving actual wisdom?

Aristotle chose to study under Plato for 20 years. Apparently he did not share the opinion given in >>24137889.

>>24139741
>achieving actual wisdom
yes, you believe that you have found "actual wisdom." you believe that Ockham was a "demon lord" and that neoplatonists have a monopoly on Aristotle. fuck off

"The demonstrator DOES NOT ASK for his premiss, but LAYS IT DOWN." Prior An 1.1

Of course there is such a thing as a demonstrative question, he talks about this in Post An 1. But there's no way to reduce the entirety, or even the majority of the Analytics to pedagogical question-and-answer games. You have one interpretation (mine) that explains the whole text and how it fits with the rest of the corpus. Then you have Barnes' that assumes the text doesn't really make a great deal of sense and introduces this question-and-answer hypothesis because he can't fathom how Post An might be used in the other works. I don't know why you think Barnes is this great authority. I am justified in thinking you haven't read the Organon because if you had, you would see how Barnes' claims could be challenged, and you would see the validity of my arguments. Thanks for reminding me of why I went into Classics rather than Philosophy.

I guess you guys didn't like my synthesis =(

bump

>>24137889
I decided to go through these arguments, since I think you both make fantastic points. My questions are not meant to refute, only to clarify:

>anti Barnes
>>24137900
My question to you is this: does the presentation of the arguments in Posterior Analytics affect the necessity of the arguments therein? Why or why not? What is the being of a syllogism? What would we lose in Posterior Analytics and elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus if its conclusions were not seen as necessary?

>pro Barnes
>>24138148
To what extent does an argument need to be isomorphic with its object? What would you say is the scope of a syllogism, and do syllogisms need to be made explicit in order to be present? How committed to Posterior Analytics is Aristotle? What role do you see Post An playing within Aristotle's work?

I would have quoted all your posts respectively but 4chan thinks that would be spam :(

bump

>>24139767
>Noooo! You cannot claim to know anything or to have found wisdom or that anyone else has either. That is very bigoted and exclusionary.
The "fear of error become fear of truth."

The Neoplatonists were good extenders and synthesizers of Aristotle. The Academics and other skeptics, particularly modern and postmodernism skepticism, tends towards misology and sophistry.

>>24139767
>Calling Ockham a "demon lord"
Sounds fair.

>Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.


— Richard Weaver

>>24142207
cringe book

>>24142207
One gem in a thread of coal. What a low quality thread.

>>24142204
read Plato

>>24142950
There's never coal when you have two Aristotlechads duking it out

>>24137889
Aristotlebros, is it good if I start with the ethics and then I continue by reading whatever interests me in particular?

>>24144069
they're probably pathetic twinks in real life

>>24145105
I don't care, I'd let them top me

bump

>>24144651
Politics goes with the Ethics, so you can follow up with that.

The heart of Aristotle's thought is the Physics and Metaphysics. I recommend Joe Sach's translation and guide for the Physics. These are difficult works, moreso than the Ethics, but worth it.

It helps to really understand exactly why Plato thinks the Good is what makes anything any thing at all, why it "gives light" to the other forms, and the way in which he sees the rule of the rational part of the soul as making us more unified, more self-determining, and more truly one. Aristotle is going to take those deep psychological insights (most clear in Republic and the Phaedrus) and expand them the philosophy of nature to explain why we don't have to be stuck with Parmenides' "there is just one thing" or the atomists' plurality "there are just heaps of elements and they are always changing."