Abstract

In previous issues of The Review of Metaphysics attention has been drawn to the project of Professor Richard Sorabji to publish the English translations of the ancient Greek commentators of Aristotle. We are happy to present a new volume of this series which contains the English translation of the commentary by Alexander of Aphrodisias on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, I, chapters 8–13. In his preface Professor Sorabji underlines the importance of Alexander’s commentary on these chapters, in which Aristotle invented modal syllogistic. This volume comprises the commentary on chapters 8 to 13. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 to 7 contain Aristotle’s assertoric syllogistic. For Alexander’s commentary on these chapters the translators refer to the excellent edition of Jonathon Barnes, et al. In chapters 8 to 13 Aristotle studies syllogisms which consist of two necessary propositions and those which are composed of one necessary proposition and a second which is modally unqualified. The central question is which modal syllogisms, analogous to assertoric syllogisms of the first figure, are true syllogisms. The translators have added Alexander’s commentary on chapter 17, where it is argued that a privative contingent proposition cannot be converted into a syllogism of the first figure.