Abstract

The purpose of this paper is twofold. One is to show that Aristotle’s study of examples in Prior Analytics (An. Pr.) and Rhetoric (Rh.) (and in particular the ‘comparison’ (parabole) described in Rh 2.20) is useful for philosophy and, moreover, it underlies Aristotle’s discussion of examples in several passages of his philosophical writings. The second is to show that in order to correctly understand the examples that Aristotle presents in his philosophical writings, it is crucial for the reader to successfully identify their logical structure (a task made difficult by the heterogeneous structures covered by Aristotelian examples) and, in the case of comparisons, to identify the relevant features of the illustration presented within its context of use.