Medieval logic

Transmission of Greek logic to the Latin West

As the Greco-Roman world disintegrated and gave way to the Middle Ages, knowledge of Greek declined in the West. Nevertheless, several authors served as transmitters of Greek learning to the Latin world. Among the earliest of them, Cicero (106–43 bce) introduced Latin translations for technical Greek terms. Although his translations were not always finally adopted by later authors, he did make it possible to discuss logic in a language that had not previously had any precise vocabulary for it. In addition, he preserved much information about the Stoics. In the 2nd century ce Lucius Apuleius passed on some knowledge of Greek logic in his De philosophia rationali (“On Rational Philosophy”).

In the 4th century Marius Victorinus produced Latin translations of Aristotle’s Categories and De interpretatione and of Porphyry of Tyre’s Isagoge (“Introduction,” on Aristotle’s Categories), although these translations were not very influential. He also wrote logical treatises of his own. A short De dialectica (“On Dialectic”), doubtfully attributed to St. Augustine (354–430), shows evidence of Stoic influence, although it had little influence of its own. The pseudo-Augustinian Decem categoriae (“Ten Categories”) is a late 4th-century Latin paraphrase of a Greek compendium of the Categories. In the late 5th century Martianus Capella’s allegorical De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (The Marriage of Philology and Mercury) contains “On the Art of Dialectic” as book IV.

The first truly important figure in medieval logic was Boethius (480–524/525). Like Victorinus, he translated Aristotle’s Categories and De interpretatione and Porphyry’s Isagoge, but his translations were much more influential. He also seems to have translated the rest of Aristotle’s Organon, except for the Posterior Analytics, but the history of those translations and their circulation in Europe is much more complicated; they did not come into widespread use until the first half of the 12th century. In addition, Boethius wrote commentaries and other logical works that were of tremendous importance throughout the Latin Middle Ages. Until the 12th century his writings and translations were the main sources for medieval Europe’s knowledge of logic. In the 12th century they were known collectively as the Logica vetus (“Old Logic”).

Arabic logic

Between the time of the Stoics and the revival of logic in 12th-century Europe, the most important logical work was done in the Arab world. Arabic interest in logic lasted from the 9th to the 16th century, although the most important writings were done well before 1300.

Syrian Christian authors in the late 8th century were among the first to introduce Alexandrian scholarship to the Arab world. Through Galen’s influence, these authors regarded logic as important to the study of medicine. (This link with medicine continued throughout the history of Arabic logic and, to some extent, later in medieval Europe.) By about 850, at least Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories, De interpretatione, and Prior Analytics had been translated via Syriac into Arabic. Between 830 and 870 the philosopher and scientist al-Kindī (c. 805–873) produced in Baghdad what seem to have been the first Arabic writings on logic that were not translations. But these writings, now lost, were probably mere summaries of others’ work.

By the late 9th century, the school of Baghdad was the focus of logic studies in the Arab world. Most of the members of this school were Nestorian or Jacobite Christians, but the Muslim al-Fārābī (c. 873–950) wrote important commentaries and other logical works there that influenced all later Arabic logicians. Many of these writings are now lost, but among the topics al-Fārābī discussed were future contingents (in the context of Aristotle’s De interpretatione, chapter 9), the number and relation of the categories, the relation between logic and grammar, and non-Aristotelian forms of inference. This last topic showed the influence of the Stoics. Al-Fārābī, along with Avicenna and Averroës, was among the best logicians the Arab world produced.

By 1050 the school of Baghdad had declined. The 11th century saw very few Arabic logicians, with one distinguished exception: the Persian Ibn Sīnā, or Avicenna (980–1037), perhaps the most original and important of all Arabic logicians. Avicenna abandoned the practice of writing on logic in commentaries on the works of Aristotle and instead produced independent treatises. He sharply criticized the school of Baghdad for what he regarded as their slavish devotion to Aristotle. Among the topics Avicenna investigated were quantification of the predicates of categorical propositions, the theory of definition and classification, and an original theory of “temporally modalized” syllogistic, in which premises include such modifiers as “at all times,” “at most times,” and “at some time.”

The Persian mystic and theologian al-Ghazālī, or Algazel (1058–1111), followed Avicenna’s logic, although he differed sharply from Avicenna in other areas. Al-Ghazālī was not a significant logician but is important nonetheless because of his influential defense of the use of logic in theology.

In the 12th century the most important Arab logician was Ibn Rushd, or Averroës (1126–98). Unlike the Persian followers of Avicenna, Averröes worked in Moorish Spain, where he revived the tradition of al-Fārābī and the school of Baghdad by writing penetrating commentaries on Aristotle’s works, including the logical ones. Such was the stature of these excellent commentaries that, when they were translated into Latin in the 1220s or 1230s, Averroës was often referred to simply as “the Commentator.”

After Averroës, logic declined in western Islām because of the antagonism felt to exist between logic and philosophy on the one hand and Muslim orthodoxy on the other. But in eastern Islām, in part because of the work of al-Ghazālī, logic was not regarded as being so closely linked with philosophy. Instead, it was viewed as a tool that could be profitably used in any field of study, even (as al-Ghazālī had done) on behalf of theology against the philosophers. Thus, the logical tradition continued in Persia long after it died out in Spain. The 13th century produced a large number of logical writings, but these were mostly unoriginal textbooks and handbooks. After about 1300, logical study was reduced to producing commentaries on these earlier, already derivative handbooks.