Abstract

This paper is a case study of how a few short lines in two of Aristotle’s logical works were read in the thirteenth century. I shall begin with a quick look at Aristotle’s own remarks about equivocation in the Categories and the Sophistical Refutations, as they were transmitted to the West by Boethius’s translations. I shall continue with an analysis of the divisions of equivocation and analogy to be found in an anonymous commentary, on the Sophistical Refutations written in Paris between 1270 and 1280. I have chosen this author’s work to focus on, because it offers a remarkably full account which brings together the elements found in many other logical works from the second half of the thirteenth century. In the course of my analysis I shall attempt to show the part played by four different sources: the Greek commentators of late antiquity; the new translations of Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics; the reception of Arabic works, particularly the commentaries of Averroes; and new grammatical doctrines, notably that of modi significandi. At the same time, I hope to throw some light on the development of the doctrine of analogy as it was understood by late thirteenth-century logicians.