Nicholas Rescher on Greek Philosophy and the Syllogism

Abstract

We start with a general discussion of the discovery of rationality in Greek antiquity and the contributions made to it by Nicholas Rescher, in particular in his work "Cosmos and Logos". The more special parts of this paper investigate Rescher's edition of the Baghdad logician, physician and scientist Ibn al-Salah. We discuss in particular Al Salah's contribution (in Rescher's interpretation) to the dispute about the fourth figure in Aristotelian syllogistics by including some novel viewpoints concerning the significance of this figure. The final section deals with Rescher's axiomatization of Aristotelian modal syllogistics based on the principle of ecthesis.