Stephanus, p.12, line 1: πρὸς ὅν φησιν ὁ Γαληνὸς ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ὁρισμὸς ἀλλὰ λόγος. This is said about Aristotle’s definition of the noun: Thus, the complete definition of the noun is the following: significative sound by convention not indicating time, whose parts do not have meaning when taken apart, that introduces a definite nature, and that with ‘was’, ‘is’, and ‘will be’ is either true or false.
What does he mean here by logos? In LS, formula, extended definition, and essential definition are mentioned. This is not an essential definition because it is not like genus plus differentia, so it must be one of the first two. Is there a shortcut to know the answer otherwise im afraid ill have to read the whole institutio logica by Galen.
Hi, there is no shortcut to understanding λόγος. (That sounded unnecessarily philosophical or theological, but I mean it in a commonplace way.) I suggest you read Aristotle’s organon together with good commentaries (you’ll see a few of us discussing expressions from these works on this forum from time to time), which will give a grounding in the terminology. Cheers, Chad
yes i think i must do it, i mean reading good commentaries that have already been translated into english. there was something like Sorabji project; they appear to have translated some commentaries.
Yes that’s right, and the advantage of those is that (at least the one I got a while back when I first worked through the organon, I think it was one of the An. Pr. ones, I forget now) the introduction goes through and explains their approach to translating Aristotle’s technical expressions, which is a good intro to that area. See if you can find this type of intro for the Categories and On interpretation and you’ll be off and running. Cheers, Chad