The ‘Analysis’ of Aristotle’s Analytics

Abstract

‘Analytica’ is one of the few titles in Aristotle’s works that the author himself used. It is not clear what kind of analysis Aristotle had in mind, but it is usually thought that the title refers to the section at the end of Prior Analytics I (chapters 32–46) where he discusses ways of putting ordinary language arguments into the form of syllogistic moods. However, that section consists mainly in the discussion of recalcitrant examples and is not very successful. It may be more plausible to think that the title refers to the analysis of propositions into terms and their quantitative relations that replaced the classification of propositions according to the ‘predicables’ in the Topics.