Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
_c._ The Analytics come third, and there are two parts of them, the
Prior and the Posterior; they deal most fully with proof (ἀπόδειξις)
and the syllogisms of the understanding. “The syllogism is a reason
(λόγος) in which if one thing is maintained, another than what was
maintained follows of necessity.”[116] Aristotle’s logic has treated
the general theory of conclusions in the main very accurately, but
they do not by any means constitute the universal form of truth; in
his metaphysics, physics, psychology, &c., Aristotle has not formed
conclusions, but thought the Notion in and for itself.
_d._ The Topics (τοπικά) which treat of ‘places’ (τόποι) come fourth;
in them the points of view from which anything can be considered are
enumerated. Cicero and Giordano Bruno worked this out more fully.
Aristotle gives a large number of general points of view which can
be taken of an object, a proposition or a problem; each problem can
be directly reduced to these different points of view, that must
everywhere appear. Thus these ‘places’ are, so to speak, a system of
many aspects under which an object can be regarded in investigating it;
this constitutes a work which seems specially suitable and requisite
for the training of orators and for ordinary conversation, because the
knowledge of points of view at once places in our hands the possibility
of arriving at the various aspects of a subject, and embracing its
whole extent in accordance with these points of view (Vol. I. p. 358).
This, according to Aristotle, is the function of Dialectic, which he
calls an instrument for finding propositions and conclusions out of
probabilities.[117] Such ‘places’ are either of a general kind, such
as difference, similarity, opposition, relation, and comparison,[118]
or special in nature, such as ‘places’ which prove that something is
better or more to be desired, since in it we have the longer duration
of time, that which the one wise man or several would choose, the
genus as against the species, that which is desirable for itself;
also because it is present with the more honourable, because it is
end, what approximates to end, the more beautiful and praiseworthy,
&c.[119] Aristotle (Topic VIII. 2) says that we must make use of the
syllogism by preference, with the dialectician, but of induction with
the multitude. In the same way Aristotle separates[120] the dialectic
and demonstrative syllogisms from the rhetorical and every kind of
persuasion, but he counts induction as belonging to what is rhetorical.