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TheOrganon (Ancient Greek:Ὄργανον, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection ofAristotle's six works onlogical analysis anddialectic. The nameOrganon was given by Aristotle's followers, thePeripatetics, who maintained against the Stoics that Logic was "an instrument" of Philosophy.[1]
Aristotle never uses the titleOrganon to refer to his logical works. The book, according toM. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, was not called "Organon" before the 15th century, and the treatises were collected into one volume, as is supposed, about the time ofAndronicus of Rhodes; and it was translated into Latin byBoethius about the 6th century.[1]
The six works of Organon are as follows:
| Bekker number | Work | Latin name |
| Logic | ||
| Organon | ||
| 1a | Categories | Categoriae |
| 16a | On Interpretation | De Interpretatione |
| 24a | Prior Analytics | Analytica Priora |
| 71a | Posterior Analytics | Analytica Posteriora |
| 100a | Topics | Topica |
| 164a | On Sophistical Refutations | De Sophisticis Elenchis |
The order of the works is not chronological (which is now hard to determine) but was deliberately chosen byTheophrastus to constitute a well-structured system. Indeed, parts of them seem to be a scheme of a lecture on logic. The arrangement of the works was made byAndronicus of Rhodes around 40 BC.[2]
Aristotle'sMetaphysics has some points of overlap with the works making up theOrganon but is not traditionally considered part of it; additionally, there are works on logic attributed, with varying degrees of plausibility, to Aristotle that were not known to the Peripatetics.[3]
Whereas theOrganon of the LatinScholastic tradition comprises only the above six works, its independent reception in the Arabic medieval world saw appended to this list of works Aristotle'sRhetoric andPoetics.[4]
TheOrganon was used in the school founded by Aristotle at theLyceum, and some parts of the works seem to be a scheme of a lecture on logic. So much so that after Aristotle's death, his publishers (Andronicus of Rhodes in 50 BC, for example) collected these works.
Following the collapse of theWestern Roman Empire in the fifth century, much of Aristotle's work was lost in the Latin West. TheCategories andOn Interpretation are the only significant logical works that were available in the earlyMiddle Ages. These had been translated intoLatin byBoethius, along with Porphyry'sIsagoge, which was also translated into Arabic byIbn al-Muqaffa' via a Syriac intermediary. The other logical works were not available in Western Christendom untiltranslated into Latin in the 12th century. However, the original Greek texts had been preserved in theGreek-speaking lands of theEastern Roman Empire (akaByzantium). In the mid-twelfth century,James of Venice translated into Latin thePosterior Analytics from Greek manuscripts found in Constantinople.
The books of Aristotle were available in the early Muslim world, and after 750 AD Muslims had most of them[dubious –discuss], including theOrganon, translated into Arabic, normally via earlier Syriac translations. They were studied byIslamic andJewish scholars, including RabbiMoses Maimonides (1135–1204) and the Muslim JudgeIbn Rushd, known in the West as Averroes (1126–1198); both were originally fromCórdoba, Spain, although the former left Iberia and by 1168 lived inEgypt.
All the major scholastic philosophers wrote commentaries on theOrganon.Aquinas,Ockham andScotus wrote commentaries onOn Interpretation. Ockham and Scotus wrote commentaries on theCategories andSophistical Refutations.Grosseteste wrote an influential commentary on thePosterior Analytics.
In theEnlightenment there was a revival of interest in logic as the basis ofrational enquiry, and a number of texts, most successfully thePort-Royal Logic, polishedAristotelian term logic forpedagogy. During this period, while the logic certainly was based on that of Aristotle, Aristotle's writings themselves were less often the basis of study. There was a tendency in this period to regard thelogical systems of the day to be complete, which in turn no doubt stifled innovation in this area. However,Francis Bacon published hisNovum Organum ("The NewOrganon") as a scathing attack in1620.[5]Immanuel Kant thought that there was nothing else to invent after the work of Aristotle,[6] and the famous logic historianKarl von Prantl claimed that any logician who said anything new about logic was "confused, stupid or perverse." These examples illustrate the force of influence which Aristotle's works on logic had. Indeed, he had already become known by the Scholastics (medieval Christian scholars) as "The Philosopher", due to the influence he had upon medieval theology and philosophy. His influence continued into the Early Modern period and Organon was the basis of school philosophy even in the beginning of the 18th century.[7]Since the logical innovations of the 19th century, particularly the formulation of modernpredicate logic, Aristotelian logic had for a time fallen out of favor among manyanalytic philosophers.
However, the logic historianJohn Corcoran and others have shown that the works ofGeorge Boole andGottlob Frege—which laid the groundwork for modern mathematical logic—each represent a continuation and extension to Aristotle's logic and in no way contradict or displace it.[8][9]Boole fully accepted and endorsed Aristotle's logic, and Frege included Aristotle'ssquare of opposition at the end of his groundbreakingBegriffsschrift to show the harmony of his theory with the Aristotelian tradition.[10]
Primary sources
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