Περιγραφή
Dialectical Disputations, translated here for the first time into any modern language, is his principal contribution to the philosophy of language and logic. With this savage attack on the scholastic tradition of Aristotelian logic, Valla aimed to supersede it with a new logic based on the actual historical usage of classical Latin and on a commonsense approach to semantics and argument. Valla provides a logic that could be used by lawyers, preachers, statesmen, and others who needed to succeed in public debate one that was stylistically correct and rhetorically elegant, and thus could dispense with the technical language of the scholastics, a tribe of Peripatetics, perverters of natural meanings. Valla's reformed dialectic became a milestone in the development of humanist logic and contains startling anticipations of modern theories of semantics and language. Volume 1 contains Book I, in which Valla refutes Aristotle's logical works on the categories, transcendentals, and predicables, with excursions into natural and moral philosophy and theology. (From the publisher) + Περιεχόμενα Introduction Dialectical Disputations Book I Proem 1. Predicaments and transcendentals, what and how many? 2. The meaning of the six called transcendental, and proof that thing is chief among them, while the rest are not transcendental 3. Except in a few special cases, the term concrete means nothing 4. Nouns in -ness or -ity come from adjectives, not substantives, and not from all adjectives. 5. There is no difference between essence and to be, and likewise with other terms like will and to will. 6. On distinguishing the use of these words, essence and substance, so that our speech is not tangled in confusions 7. The classification of substance: Against Porphyry and others 8. On Spirit and on God and angels 9. On the soul 10. On virtues 11. On body 12. On matter and form and the composite 13. On accident and that nine predicaments reduce to two, quality and action 14. On qualities cognized by the senses 15. On qualities grasped by perceptions 16. On action, motion and the verb to be 17. That the rest of the predicaments reduce either to substance or to quality or to action 18. Whether more and less fall under quality and not under substance 19. Middle comes between what? 20. On definition, description, etymology and property Note on the Text Notes to the Text Abbreviations Notes to the Translation Bibliography Index +