FR MNC Al Farabi and Maimonides, author of the Treatise on logic or Maqala fi sina at al-mantiq

Al Farabi and Maimonides. Influence of Al Farabi on Maimonides, author of the Treatise on logic

Maimonides wrote a treatise on logic ,called Maqala fi sina at al-mantiq in Arabic. The treatise is most explicitly founded on the work of Al-Farabi. The work illustrates the essentials of Aristotelian Logic to be found in the teachings of the great Arabic philosophers such as Avicenna and, above all, Al-Farabi, “the Second Master” to employ Maimonides’ words, the First Master being Aristotle. In his work devoted to the Treatise, Rémi Brague stresses the fact that Al-Farabi is the only philosopher mentioned therein. This indicates a line of conduct for the reader, who must read the text keeping in mind Alfarabi’s works on logic. In the Hebrew versions, the Treatise is called Les mots de la logique (The words of Logic) which happily describe the matter and the manner of the work. Maimonides explains to the honest man, the technical meaning of the words used by logicians. The Treatise duly inventories the terms used by the logician and indicates what they refer to. Although Maimonides starts from the lexical items and produces a sort of lexicon, the Treatise is an organised work in which the chapters succeed each other rationally. Each chapter offers a cluster of associated notions. The meaning of the words is explained with conciseness and illustrated with clear examples. At the end of each chapter, Maimonides carefully draws up the list of words studied. The work is a masterpiece of clarity and conciseness. Chapter II is mainly devoted to the four marked proposition used in syllogism. Tout homme est un être vivant, Every man is a living being and Certains hommes savent écrire, Some men know how to write represent respectively the universal affirmative and the particular affirmative. The particular negative is represented by Tout homme ne sait pas écrire, Not every man knows how to write or Certains hommes ne savent pas écrire, Some men do not know how to write. The universal negative is represented by Pas un homme n’est une pierre, No man is a stone. However, every scholastic rendering of Aristotelian logic must devote a paragraph to indeterminate propositions (or unquantified), that is, propositions lacking in marks of universality or particularity such as all, every or some. As does his master Al-Farabi, Maimonides proposes two different examples of indeterminates. On the one hand, we have L’homme est un être vivant, (The) Man is a living being which has the same referent as the marked universal Tout homme est un être vivant, Every man is a living being. And on the other hand, we have L’homme sait écrire, (The) Man knows how to write which is supposed in Maimonides to have the same referent as the marked particular Certains hommes savent écrire, Some men know how to write. In fact, in the Aristotelian tradition, it is admitted that semantically, certain indeterminates are universals whereas certain indeterminates are particulars. For this reason, Al-Farabi, Lulle and Saint Thomas each put forward two different examples of indeterminates.