{"id":15058,"date":"2025-07-27T21:28:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T21:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revista.agorap.org\/?p=15058"},"modified":"2026-04-20T08:05:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:05:50","slug":"aristotle-the-four-discourses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revista.agorap.org\/en\/sem-categoria\/aristotle-the-four-discourses\/","title":{"rendered":"Aristotle: The Four Discourses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/https:\/\/revista.agorap.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/04\/rey-seven-_nm_mZ4Cs2I-unsplash-scaled-e1776201152897-1.jpginstitute.files.wordpress.com\/2023\/12\/fj_tysexwauzvnp-edited.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-130\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\"><em><strong>In this article, Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho exposes an unique interpretation of Aristotle&#8217;s works, which has escaped the perception of almost all of his readers and commentators, from Antiquity until today: the Theory of Four Discourses. This theory can be summarized in one sentence:&nbsp;human discourse is a single potency, which is updated into four different <\/strong><\/em><strong><em>modes<\/em><\/strong><em><strong>: poetic, rhetorical, dialectic and analytical (logic).  From this new interpretation of Aristotle, culture constitutes an integral expression of&nbsp;logos, by which scientific reason appears as the supreme fruit of a tree that has poetic imagination as its root. Culture, rising from the mythopoetic soil to the heights of scientific knowledge, appears there as the humanized translation of this logos, mirrored in miniature in the philosopher&#8217;s self-consciousness.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>Olavo de Carvalho <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ARISTOTLE: THE FOUR DISCOURSES<\/strong><sup> <\/sup><sup data-fn=\"9d167b30-13f2-466f-96f7-8fc05b5b0477\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"9d167b30-13f2-466f-96f7-8fc05b5b0477-link\" href=\"#9d167b30-13f2-466f-96f7-8fc05b5b0477\">1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">Chapter I of Aristotle<em> in New Perspective: Introduction to the Theory of the Four Discourses<\/em>&nbsp;(Rio, Topbooks, 1997)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">There is a central idea in Aristotle&#8217;s works, which has escaped the perception of almost all of his readers and commentators, from Antiquity until today.\u00a0Even those who noticed it \u2014 and there were only two, as far as I know, over the millennia \u2014 limited themselves to noticing it in passing, without explicitly attributing to it a decisive importance for understanding Aristotle&#8217;s philosophy<sup data-fn=\"701b85fd-411e-4895-914f-700bdcbe2f6e\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"701b85fd-411e-4895-914f-700bdcbe2f6e-link\" href=\"#701b85fd-411e-4895-914f-700bdcbe2f6e\">2<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0However, that is the key to his understanding, if by understanding we mean the act of capturing the unity of a man&#8217;s thought from his own intentions and values, instead of judging him from the outside;\u00a0an act which involves carefully respecting the unexpressed and implied, instead of suffocating it in the idolatry of the reified \u201ctext\u201d, the tomb of thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">I call this idea&nbsp;<em>the Theory of the Four Discourses.&nbsp;<\/em>It can be summarized in one sentence:&nbsp;human discourse is a single potency, which is updated into four different modes: poetic, rhetorical, dialectic and analytical (logic).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">Said like that, this idea doesn&#8217;t seem very remarkable.&nbsp;But, if it occurs to us that the names of these four modalities of discourse are also names of four sciences, we see that according to this perspective, Poetics, Rhetoric, Dialectic and Logic, studying modalities of a single potency, also constitute variants of a&nbsp;unified <em>science<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">The diversification itself into four subordinate sciences must be based on the unity&#8217;s reason of the object they focus on, under penalty of failing the Aristotelian rule of divisions.&nbsp;And this means that the principles of each one presuppose the existence of common principles that subordinate them, in other words, that these principles apply equally to fields as different from each other as scientific demonstration and the construction of the tragic plot in theatrical plays.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">Thus, the idea that I have just attributed to Aristotle already begins to seem strange, surprising, extravagant.&nbsp;And the two questions it immediately suggests to us are: Did Aristotle really think this way?&nbsp;And, if he did, did he think rightly?&nbsp;This question is therefore divided into a historical-philological investigation and a philosophical critique.&nbsp;I will not be able, in the dimensions of this communication, to satisfactorily carry out either one or the other.&nbsp;On the other hand, I can put into question the reasons for this strangeness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">The astonishment that the idea of \u200b\u200bthe Four Discourses provokes at first sight comes from a deep-rooted custom in our culture, of viewing poetic language and logical or scientific language as separate and distant universes, governed by sets of laws that are incommensurable to each other. Ever since a decree\u00a0by Louis\u00a0XIV separated \u201cLanguages\u201d and \u201cScience\u201d into different buildings<sup data-fn=\"cc0e76f9-dd93-4724-ac21-f1f6112d3c30\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"cc0e76f9-dd93-4724-ac21-f1f6112d3c30-link\" href=\"#cc0e76f9-dd93-4724-ac21-f1f6112d3c30\">3<\/a><\/sup>, gap between poetic imagination and mathematical reason has continued to widen, until it has become a kind of constitutive law of the human spirit.\u00a0Evolving as parallels lines that sometimes attract and sometimes repel each other but never touch, the <em>two cultures<\/em>, as C.P. Snow called them, solidified themselves into isolated universes, each one incomprehensible to the other.\u00a0Gaston Bachelard, poet\u00a0<em>doubl\u00e9<\/em>\u00a0of mathematician, imagined being able to describe these two sets of laws as contents of radically separate spheres, each equally valid within their own limits and in their own terms, between which man passes as from sleep to wokeness, disconnecting from one to enter the other, and vice versa<sup data-fn=\"fa89d8c9-2c82-4298-8a92-cbf57fcfb62e\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"fa89d8c9-2c82-4298-8a92-cbf57fcfb62e-link\" href=\"#fa89d8c9-2c82-4298-8a92-cbf57fcfb62e\">4<\/a><\/sup>: this language of dreams does not contest that of equations, nor does the latter penetrate in the world of the former.\u00a0So deep was this separation that some wanted to find an anatomical foundation for it in the theory of the two cerebral hemispheres, one creative and poetic, the other rational and organizing, so believing that there was correspondence between these divisions and the yin-yang pair of Chinese cosmology<sup data-fn=\"f5b04ed6-1244-48cf-9132-8511d53f2728\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"f5b04ed6-1244-48cf-9132-8511d53f2728-link\" href=\"#f5b04ed6-1244-48cf-9132-8511d53f2728\">5<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0Furthermore, they thought they could discover the cause of Western man&#8217;s ills in the exclusive predominance of one of these hemispheres.\u00a0A somewhat mystified vision of Chinese ideographism, disseminated in pedantic circles by Ezra Pound<sup data-fn=\"4994dd18-28d7-4b68-ae52-6806a1d36c4e\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"4994dd18-28d7-4b68-ae52-6806a1d36c4e-link\" href=\"#4994dd18-28d7-4b68-ae52-6806a1d36c4e\">6<\/a><\/sup>, gave this theory more than enough literary support to compensate for its lack of scientific foundations. The ideology of \u201cNew Era\u201d finally consecrated it as one of the pillars of wisdom<sup data-fn=\"a5bd7682-5597-4473-ba6e-df5a496bd004\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"a5bd7682-5597-4473-ba6e-df5a496bd004-link\" href=\"#a5bd7682-5597-4473-ba6e-df5a496bd004\">7<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">In this picture, the old Aristotle posed, together with the nefarious Descartes, as the very prototype of the rationalist official who, with ruler in hand, kept our inner Chinese under severe repression.&nbsp;The listener imbued with such beliefs can only receive with indignant astonishment the idea that I attribute to Aristotle.&nbsp;This idea presents as an apostle of unity the one whom everyone used to regard as a guardian of schizophrenia.&nbsp;It challenges a stereotypical image that time and almanac culture have consecrated as an acquired truth.&nbsp;It stirs up old wounds, healed by a long sedimentation of prejudices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">Resistance is, therefore, a <em>fait accompli<\/em>.&nbsp;It remains to confront it, proving, first, that the idea is actually Aristotle&#8217;s;&nbsp;second, that it is an excellent idea, worthy of being taken up, with humility, by a civilization that was quick to retire the teachings of its old master before having examined them well.&nbsp;Here I will only be able to indicate briefly the directions in which these two demonstrations should be sought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">Aristotle wrote a&nbsp;<em>Poetics<\/em>, a&nbsp;<em>Rhetoric<\/em>, a book on Dialectic (the&nbsp;<em>Topics<\/em>) and two treatises on Logic (<em>Analytics<\/em>&nbsp;I and II), in addition of two introductory works on language and thought in general (<em>Categories<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>On Interpretation<\/em>).&nbsp;All these works practically disappeared, like the rest of Aristotle, until the 1st century BC., when a certain Andronicus of Rhodes promoted a joint edition, on which our knowledge of Aristotle is based to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">Like every posthumous editor, Andronicus had to put some order in the manuscripts.\u00a0He decided to organize it fundamentally by the criterion of sciences division into\u00a0<em>introductory<\/em>\u00a0(or logical),\u00a0<em>theoretical<\/em>, practical and technical (or poietic, as some say).\u00a0This division had the merit of being Aristotle&#8217;s own.<sup data-fn=\"3c7c1a3f-e37a-46df-9477-03151d205d79\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"3c7c1a3f-e37a-46df-9477-03151d205d79-link\" href=\"#3c7c1a3f-e37a-46df-9477-03151d205d79\">8<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0But as Octave Hamelin astutely observed, there is no reason to suppose that the division of a philosopher&#8217;s works into volumes should correspond piece by piece with his conception of the divisions of knowledge.\u00a0Andronicus took this correspondence as a presupposition, and therefore grouped the manuscripts into four divisions.\u00a0But, lacking other works that could come under the label\u00a0<em>techniques<\/em>, he had to include\u00a0<em>Rhetoric<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Poetics<\/em>, disconnecting them from the other works on the theory of discourse, which were to compose the apparently closed unit of the\u00a0<em>Organon<\/em>, a set of logical or introductory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">Added to other circumstances, this editorial accident was full of consequences, which continue to multiply to this day.\u00a0Firstly, Rhetoric \u2014 the name of a science abhorred by philosophers, who saw in it the emblem of their main adversaries, the sophists \u2014 has not aroused, since its first edition by Andronicus, the slightest philosophical interest.\u00a0It was read only in schools of rhetoric, which, to make matters worse, were then entering into an accelerated decline due to the fact that the extinction of democracy, eliminating the need for orators, took away the raison d&#8217;\u00eatre of rhetorical art, enclosing it in the dome of a narcissistic formalism<sup data-fn=\"662acfa2-6c9f-4619-81de-9cb83b9a8edc\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"662acfa2-6c9f-4619-81de-9cb83b9a8edc-link\" href=\"#662acfa2-6c9f-4619-81de-9cb83b9a8edc\">9<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0Soon afterwards,\u00a0<em>Poetics<\/em>, in turn, disappeared from circulation, only to reappear in the 16th century<sup data-fn=\"2a27b8f2-a8ac-4941-b3d0-a3faa2b9ced3\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"2a27b8f2-a8ac-4941-b3d0-a3faa2b9ced3-link\" href=\"#2a27b8f2-a8ac-4941-b3d0-a3faa2b9ced3\">10<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0These two events seem fortuitous and unimportant.\u00a0But, taken together, they give as a result nothing less than the following: all Western Aristotelianism, which, initially slowly, but growing in speed from the 11th century onwards, was formed in the period that goes from the eve of the Christian Era to the Renaissance, completely ignored\u00a0<em>Rhetoric<\/em>\u00a0and<em>\u00a0Poetics<\/em>.\u00a0Since our image of Aristotle is still a legacy of that period (once the rediscovery of\u00a0<em>Poetics<\/em>\u00a0in the Renaissance aroused interest only among poets and philologists, without touching the philosophical public), nowadays what we call Aristotle, whether to praise him or to curse him, is not the man of flesh and blood, but a simplified scheme, created during the centuries that ignored two of his works.\u00a0In particular, our view of Aristotle&#8217;s theory of discursive thought is based exclusively on the analytical and the topical, that is, on logic and dialectic, amputated from the basis that Aristotle had built for them in poetics and rhetoric<sup data-fn=\"822e8ad1-c876-407b-a0ed-ba0a382bdfa7\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"822e8ad1-c876-407b-a0ed-ba0a382bdfa7-link\" href=\"#822e8ad1-c876-407b-a0ed-ba0a382bdfa7\">11<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">But the mutilation did not stop there.&nbsp;From the building of discourse theory, only the two upper floors remained \u2014 dialectics and logic \u2014, floating without foundations in the air like the poet&#8217;s room in Manuel Bandeira&#8217;s <em>\u00daltima can\u00e7\u00e3o do beco<\/em> (\u201cAlley\u00b4s Last Song\u201d).&nbsp;It did not take long before the third floor was also suppressed: dialectics, considered a minor science, as it only dealt with probable demonstration, was passed over in favor of analytical logic, consecrated since the Middle Ages as the very key to Aristotle&#8217;s thought.&nbsp;The image of an Aristotle constituted by \u201cformal logic + cognitive sensualism + theology of the First Unmoved Mover\u201d was consolidated as a historical truth never contested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">Even the prodigious advance in biographical and philological studies inaugurated by Werner Jaeger<sup data-fn=\"26850455-e701-47dc-8a85-3ae32cb97634\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"26850455-e701-47dc-8a85-3ae32cb97634-link\" href=\"#26850455-e701-47dc-8a85-3ae32cb97634\">12<\/a><\/sup> did not change this.\u00a0Jaeger merely overturned the stereotype of a fixed Aristotle born ready, to replace it with the living image of a thinker who evolves over time towards the maturity of his ideas.\u00a0But the final product of evolution was not, from the aspect discussed here, very different from the system consecrated by the Middle Ages: above all, dialectics would be a Platonic residue, absorbed in and overcome by analytical logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">But this view is challenged by some facts.\u00a0The first, highlighted by \u00c9ric Weil, is that the inventor of analytical logic never uses it in his treatises, always preferring to argue dialectically<sup data-fn=\"a27e0636-46b4-4a50-9b7a-00e64f804c2f\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"a27e0636-46b4-4a50-9b7a-00e64f804c2f-link\" href=\"#a27e0636-46b4-4a50-9b7a-00e64f804c2f\">13<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0Secondly, Aristotle himself insists that logic does not bring knowledge, but only serves to facilitate the verification of knowledge already acquired, comparing it with the principles that underlie it, in order to see if it does not contradict it.\u00a0When we do not have the principles, the only way to search for them is through dialectical investigation, which, by confronting contradictory hypotheses, leads to a kind of intuitive illumination that highlights these principles.\u00a0Dialectics in Aristotle is, therefore, according to Weil, a\u00a0<em>logica inventionis<\/em>, or logic of discovery: the true scientific method, of which formal logic is only complement and means of verification\u00a0<sup data-fn=\"56bcc962-e5c7-47ce-8058-a95c954827a9\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"56bcc962-e5c7-47ce-8058-a95c954827a9-link\" href=\"#56bcc962-e5c7-47ce-8058-a95c954827a9\">14<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">But Weil&#8217;s timely intervention dispelled the legend of a total hegemony of analytical logic in Aristotle&#8217;s system by leaving aside the question of rhetoric.\u00a0The academic world of the 20th century still subscribes to the opinion of Sir David Ross, who in turn follows Andronicus: Rhetoric\u00a0<em>has<\/em> \u201ca purely practical purpose\u201d;\u00a0\u201cit does not constitute a theoretical work\u201d but rather \u201ca manual for the speaker\u201d<sup data-fn=\"938fc7fe-11c5-4748-a858-be5e740888c4\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"938fc7fe-11c5-4748-a858-be5e740888c4-link\" href=\"#938fc7fe-11c5-4748-a858-be5e740888c4\">15<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0But to Poetics, for his part, Ross attributes an effective theoretical value, without noticing that, if Andronicus was wrong in this case, he may also have been mistaken regarding <em>Rhetorics<\/em>.\u00a0After all, from the moment it was rediscovered,\u00a0<em>Poetics<\/em>\u00a0was also seen above all as \u201ca practical manual\u201d and was of interest to literati rather than philosophers<sup data-fn=\"53324961-5475-4cd6-889e-3ecccb0c23c9\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"53324961-5475-4cd6-889e-3ecccb0c23c9-link\" href=\"#53324961-5475-4cd6-889e-3ecccb0c23c9\">16<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0On the other hand, the\u00a0<em>Topics<\/em>\u00a0book itself could be seen as a \u201ctechnical manual\u201d or at least \u201cpractical\u201d \u2014 because in the Academy dialectics functioned exactly as such: it was the set of practical norms of academic debate.\u00a0Ultimately, Andronicus&#8217;s classification, once followed literally, results in endless confusions, which can be resolved all at once by admitting the following hypothesis, however disturbing it may be: as sciences of discourse, Poetics and Rhetoric are part of the\u00a0<em>Organon<\/em>, a set of logical or introductory works, and are therefore neither theoretical nor practical nor technical.\u00a0This is the core of the interpretation I defend.\u00a0It implies, however, a profound review of traditional and current ideas about the Aristotelian science of discourse.\u00a0This revision, in turn, risks having far-reaching consequences for our view of language and culture in general.\u00a0Reclassifying the works of a great philosopher may seem like an innocent undertaking by scholars, but it is like moving the pillars of a building.\u00a0It may require the demolition of many surrounding buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reasons I give to justify this change are the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The four sciences of speech deal with four modes in which man can, through speech, influence another man&#8217;s mind (or his own).&nbsp;The four types of speech are characterized by their respective&nbsp;<em>levels of credibility:<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>(a) Poetic discourse deals with the possible (dunato\u00a0<sup data-fn=\"a97f37f8-5842-49b8-9ccc-41e284bf0d85\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"a97f37f8-5842-49b8-9ccc-41e284bf0d85-link\" href=\"#a97f37f8-5842-49b8-9ccc-41e284bf0d85\">17<\/a><\/sup>,\u00a0<em>dinatos<\/em>), addressing itself and above all to the imagination, which captures what it presumes itself (eikastiko,\u00a0\u00a0<em>eik\u00e1stikos<\/em>\u00a0, \u201cpresumable\u201d; eikasia,\u00a0\u00a0<em>eikasia<\/em>\u00a0, \u201cimage\u201d, \u201crepresentation \u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">(b) Rhetorical discourse has as its object the believable (piqano,&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>pith\u00e1nos<\/em>&nbsp;) and as its goal the production of a&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>firm&nbsp;belief<\/em>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(pisti,&nbsp;<em>p\u00edstis<\/em>&nbsp;) which presupposes, beyond mere imaginative presumption, the consent of the&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>will<\/em>&nbsp;;&nbsp;and man influences the will of another man through persuasion (peiqo,&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>peitho<\/em>&nbsp;), which is a psychological action based on common beliefs.&nbsp;If the poetry resulted in an impression, the rhetorical speech must produce a&nbsp;<em>decision<\/em>, showing that it is the most appropriate or convenient within a given framework of accepted beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">(c) Dialectical discourse is no longer limited to suggesting or imposing a belief, but submits beliefs to test, through rehearsals and attempts to overcome them through objections.&nbsp;It is the thought that comes and goes, through transversal paths, seeking the truth among errors and error among truths (dia,&nbsp;<em>di\u00e1<\/em>&nbsp;= \u201cthrough\u201d and also indicates duplicity, division).&nbsp;This is why dialectics is also called peirastic, from the root&nbsp;<em>peir\u00e1<\/em>&nbsp;(peira = \u201cproof\u201d, \u201cexperience\u201d, from which come peirasmo,&nbsp;<em>peirasmos<\/em>, \u201ctemptation\u201d, and our words&nbsp;<em>empiria<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>empiricism<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>experience<\/em>&nbsp;etc., but also, through from peirate,&nbsp;<em>peirates<\/em>, \u201cpirate\u201d: the very symbol of an adventurous life, of travel without a predetermined direction).&nbsp;Dialectical discourse finally measures, through trials and errors, the greater or lesser&nbsp;<em>probability<\/em>&nbsp;of a belief or thesis, not according to its mere agreement with common beliefs, but according to the superior demands of rationality and accurate information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">(d) Logical or analytical discourse, finally, always starting from premises admitted as indisputably certain, arrives, through the syllogistic chain, to the&nbsp;<em>certain demonstration<\/em>&nbsp;(apodeixi,&nbsp;<em>apod\u00eaixis<\/em>, \u201cindestructible proof\u201d) of the veracity of the conclusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">It is clear that there is an increasing&nbsp;<em>scale of credibility<\/em>: from the possible we go up to the credible, from there to the probable and finally to the certain or true.&nbsp;The very words used by Aristotle to characterize the objectives of each discourse highlight this gradation: there is, therefore, between the four discourses, less a difference of nature than of degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\"><em>Possibility<\/em>\u00a0,\u00a0\u00a0<em>verisimilitude<\/em>\u00a0,\u00a0\u00a0<em>reasonable probability<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0and\u00a0\u00a0<em>apodictic certainty<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0are, therefore, the key concepts on which the four respective sciences are built: Poetics studies the means by which poetic discourse opens the realm of the possible to the imagination;\u00a0Rhetoric, the means by which rhetorical speech induces the listener&#8217;s will to admit a belief;\u00a0Dialectics, those through which dialectical discourse ascertains the reasonableness of admitted beliefs, and, finally, Logic or Analytics studies the means of apodictic demonstration, or scientific certainty.\u00a0Now, the four basic concepts are relative to each other: the plausible cannot be conceived outside of the possible, nor is this possible without comparison with the reasonable, and so on.\u00a0The consequence of this is so obvious that it is surprising that almost no one has noticed it: the four sciences are inseparable;\u00a0taken in isolation, they make no sense.\u00a0What defines and differentiates them are not four isolatable sets of formal characters, but four possible human attitudes towards speech, four human reasons for speaking and listening: man speaks to open his imagination to the immensity of the possible, to make some practical resolution, to critically examine the basis of the beliefs that underpin their resolutions, or to explore the consequences and extensions of judgments already admitted as absolutely true, building with them the edifice of scientific knowledge.\u00a0<em>A speech is logical or dialectical, poetic or rhetorical, not in itself or because of its mere internal structure, but because of the objective it tends to as a whole, because of the<\/em>\u00a0human purpose it aims to achieve.\u00a0Hence the four are distinguishable, but not isolatable: each of them is only what it is when considered in the context of culture, as an expression of human intentions.\u00a0The modern idea of \u200b\u200bdelimiting a language that is \u201cpoetic in itself\u201d or \u201clogical in itself\u201d would seem to Aristotle to be an absurd substantialization, even worse: an alienating reification<sup data-fn=\"614022d3-b52d-4b32-8450-98151d622bc7\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"614022d3-b52d-4b32-8450-98151d622bc7-link\" href=\"#614022d3-b52d-4b32-8450-98151d622bc7\">18<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0He was not yet infected by the schizophrenia that has become the normal state of culture today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol start=\"2\" class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>But Aristotle goes further: he points out the different psychological dispositions corresponding to the listener of each of the four speeches, and the four dispositions also form, in the most obvious way, a gradation:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">(a) The listener of the poetic speech must relax his demand for verisimilitude, admitting that \u201cit is not credible that everything always happens in a believable way\u201d, to capture the universal truth that can be suggested even by an apparently implausible narrative <sup data-fn=\"038624d2-7e51-44e8-b1f5-8b3bb745deca\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"038624d2-7e51-44e8-b1f5-8b3bb745deca-link\" href=\"#038624d2-7e51-44e8-b1f5-8b3bb745deca\">19<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0Aristotle, in short, anticipates the\u00a0\u00a0<em>suspension of disbelief\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0that\u00a0Samuel Taylor Coleridge would later speak of.\u00a0Admitting a more flexible verisimilitude criterion, the reader (or spectator) admits that the tragic hero&#8217;s misadventures could have happened to himself or to any other man, that is, they are permanent human possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">(b) In ancient rhetoric, the listener is called\u00a0\u00a0<em>a judge<\/em>\u00a0, because a decision, a vote, a sentence is expected from him.\u00a0<em>Aristotle, and in his wake the entire rhetorical tradition, admits three types of rhetorical speeches: forensic<\/em>\u00a0speech\u00a0 ,\u00a0<em>deliberative<\/em>\u00a0speech\u00a0 and\u00a0<em>epidectic<\/em>\u00a0speech\u00a0\u00a0, or praise and blame (of a character, a work, etc.)\u00a0<sup data-fn=\"781037b9-de8b-4e02-8e2f-44a3d7519eef\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"781037b9-de8b-4e02-8e2f-44a3d7519eef-link\" href=\"#781037b9-de8b-4e02-8e2f-44a3d7519eef\">20<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0In all three cases, the listener is called upon to decide: on the guilt or innocence of a defendant, on the usefulness or harmfulness of a law, a project, etc., on the merits or demerits of someone or something.\u00a0He is, therefore, consulted as an authority: he has the power to decide.\u00a0If in the listener of poetic speech it was important that the imagination took the realms of the mind, to take it to the world of the possible in a flight from which no immediate practical consequences were expected to result, here it is the will that listens and judges the\u00a0\u00a0<em>speech<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0, to, by deciding, create a situation in the realm of facts\u00a0<sup data-fn=\"e0f73f90-9df9-4c46-a8fb-6a93033e4cc8\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"e0f73f90-9df9-4c46-a8fb-6a93033e4cc8-link\" href=\"#e0f73f90-9df9-4c46-a8fb-6a93033e4cc8\">21<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">(c) The listener of dialectical discourse is, at least internally, a participant in the dialectical process.\u00a0This does not aim at an immediate decision, but at an approximation of the truth, an approach that can be slow, progressive, difficult, tortuous, and does not always lead to satisfactory results.\u00a0In this listener, the impulse to decide must be postponed indefinitely, even repressed: the dialectician does not wish to persuade, like the rhetorician, but to reach a conclusion that ideally should be admitted as reasonable by both contending parties.\u00a0To do so, he has to curb his desire to win, humbly willing to change his opinion if his opponent&#8217;s arguments are more reasonable.\u00a0The dialectician does not defend a party, but investigates a hypothesis.\u00a0Now, this investigation is only possible when both participants in the dialogue know and admit the basic principles on the basis of which the issue will be judged, and when both agree to honestly adhere to the rules of dialectical demonstration.\u00a0The attitude here is one of exemption and, if necessary, self-critical resignation.\u00a0Aristotle expressly warns his disciples not to venture into dialectical arguments with anyone who is unfamiliar with the principles of science: it would be exposing themselves to mere rhetorical objections, prostituting philosophy <sup data-fn=\"35e6e435-114b-4999-97ea-09633e77635c\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"35e6e435-114b-4999-97ea-09633e77635c-link\" href=\"#35e6e435-114b-4999-97ea-09633e77635c\">22<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">(d) Finally, at the level of analytical logic, there is no more discussion: there is only the linear demonstration of a conclusion that, starting from premises admitted as absolutely true and proceeding rigorously through syllogistic deduction, cannot fail to be certain.\u00a0The analytical discourse is the master&#8217;s monologue: the disciple is only responsible for receiving and admitting the truth.\u00a0If the demonstration fails, the matter returns to dialectical discussion <sup data-fn=\"33b5753f-b8c1-41fe-8cc7-48853d6238ef\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"33b5753f-b8c1-41fe-8cc7-48853d6238ef-link\" href=\"#33b5753f-b8c1-41fe-8cc7-48853d6238ef\">23<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">From speech to speech, there is a progressive narrowing, a narrowing of what is admissible: from the unlimited openness of the world of possibilities we move to the more restricted sphere of beliefs actually accepted in\u00a0\u00a0collective\u00a0<em>\u00a0praxis ;\u00a0<\/em>however, of the mass of beliefs subscribed to by common sense, only a few survive the rigors of dialectical screening;\u00a0and, of these, even fewer are those that can be admitted by science as absolutely certain and function, in the end, as premises for scientifically valid reasoning.\u00a0The proper sphere of each of the four sciences is therefore delimited by the contiguity of the antecedent and the subsequent.\u00a0Arranged in concentric circles, they form the complete mapping of communications between civilized men, the sphere of possible rational knowledge\u00a0<sup data-fn=\"a0d8e223-f3a0-4c4f-9d4c-610885620755\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"a0d8e223-f3a0-4c4f-9d4c-610885620755-link\" href=\"#a0d8e223-f3a0-4c4f-9d4c-610885620755\">24<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol start=\"3\" class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Finally, both scales are required by Aristotle&#8217;s theory of knowledge.&nbsp;For Aristotle, knowledge begins with sense data.&nbsp;These are transferred to memory, imagination or fantasy, which groups them into images (eikoi,&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>eikoi<\/em>&nbsp;, in Latin&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>species<\/em>&nbsp;,&nbsp;<em>speciei<\/em>&nbsp;), according to their similarities.&nbsp;It is on these images retained and organized in fantasy, and not directly on the data of the senses, that intelligence exercises the sorting and reorganization on the basis of which it will create eidetic schemes, or abstract concepts of species, with which it can ultimately construct judgments and reasoning.&nbsp;From the senses to abstract reasoning, there is a double bridge to be crossed: fantasy and the so-called&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>simple apprehension<\/em>&nbsp;, which captures isolated notions.&nbsp;There is no leap: without the intermediation of fantasy and simple apprehension, one cannot reach the upper stratum of scientific rationality.&nbsp;There is a perfect structural homology between this Aristotelian description of the cognitive process and the Theory of the Four Discourses.&nbsp;It could not even be otherwise: if the human individual does not reach rational knowledge without going through fantasy and simple apprehension, how could the collective \u2014 be it the polis&nbsp;<em>or<\/em>&nbsp;the smaller circle of scholars \u2014 reach scientific certainty without the preliminary and successive process of poetic imagination, of the organizing will that is expressed in rhetoric and of the dialectical sorting undertaken by philosophical discussion?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify has-text-align-justify\">Rhetoric and Poetics, once removed from the \u201ctechnical\u201d or \u201cpoietic\u201d exile in which Andronicus placed them and restored to their status as philosophical sciences, the unity of the sciences of discourse leads us to a surprising verification: there is embedded within them an entire philosophical Aristotelian view of culture as an integral expression of\u00a0\u00a0<em>logos<\/em>\u00a0.\u00a0In this philosophy, scientific reason appears as the supreme fruit of a tree that has poetic imagination as its root, planted in the soil of sensitive nature.\u00a0And as sensitive nature for Aristotle is not just an irrational and hostile \u201cexteriority\u201d, but the materialized expression of the\u00a0 divine\u00a0<em>Logos\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0, culture, rising from the mythopoetic soil to the heights of scientific knowledge, appears there as the humanized translation of this divine Reason, mirrored in miniature in the philosopher&#8217;s self-consciousness.\u00a0Aristotle compares, in effect, philosophical reflection to the self-cognitive activity of a God who consists, fundamentally, in self-consciousness.\u00a0The summit of philosophical reflection, which crowns the edifice of culture, is, in effect,\u00a0\u00a0<em>gnosis gnoseos<\/em>\u00a0, the knowledge of knowledge.\u00a0Now, this is accomplished only at the moment when reflection recapitulatively encompasses its complete trajectory, that is, at the moment when, having reached the sphere of scientific reason, it understands the unity of the four discourses through which it progressively rose to this point.\u00a0There it is prepared to move from science or philosophy to wisdom, to enter Metaphysics, which Aristotle, as Pierre Aubenque rightly emphasized, prepares but does not completely accomplish, since its kingdom is not of this world\u00a0<sup data-fn=\"e9474173-8bee-493a-aba1-869ad0710d9d\" class=\"fn\"><a id=\"e9474173-8bee-493a-aba1-869ad0710d9d-link\" href=\"#e9474173-8bee-493a-aba1-869ad0710d9d\">25<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0The Theory of the Four Discourses is,\u00a0\u00a0<em>in this sense<\/em>, the beginning and end of Aristotle&#8217;s philosophy.\u00a0Beyond it, there is no longer knowledge in the strict sense: there is only the \u201cscience that is sought\u201d, the aspiration for supreme knowledge, for the\u00a0\u00a0<em>sophia<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0whose possession would mark at the same time the achievement and the end of philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>Article originally published in <a href=\"https:\/\/olavodecarvalho.org\/aristoteles-em-nova-perspectiva-capitulo-i\/\">olavodecarvalho.org<\/a>.<\/em> <em>Translated by Tiago Barreira<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>Notes<\/p>\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-footnotes\"><li id=\"9d167b30-13f2-466f-96f7-8fc05b5b0477\">Instead of exactly reproducing the text of the first edition, this chapter follows the slightly corrected version that, under the title \u201cThe structure of the\u00a0<em>Organon<\/em>\u00a0and the unity of the sciences of discourse in Aristotle\u201d, that I presented at the V Brazilian Congress of Philosophy, in S\u00e3o Paulo, September 6, 1995 (Logic and Philosophy of Science section). <a href=\"#9d167b30-13f2-466f-96f7-8fc05b5b0477-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 1\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"701b85fd-411e-4895-914f-700bdcbe2f6e\">These two were Avicenna and St.\u00a0Thomas Aquinas.\u00a0Avicenna (Abu &#8216;Ali el-Hussein ibn Abdallah ibn Sina, 375-428 H. \/ 985-1036 AD) emphatically affirms, in his work\u00a0<em>Nadjat<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cSalvation\u201d), the unity of the four sciences, under the general concept of \u201clogic&#8221;.\u00a0According to Baron Carra de Vaux, this \u201cshows how vast his idea of art was\u201d, whose object included \u201cthe study of all the different degrees of persuasion, from rigorous demonstration to poetic suggestion\u201d (cf. Baron Carra de Vaux,\u00a0<em>Avicenne,\u00a0<\/em>Paris, Alcan, 1900, pp. 160-161).\u00a0St.\u00a0Thomas Aquinas also mentions, in the\u00a0<em>Commentaries on the Second Analytics<\/em>, I, 1.I, n\u00ba 1-6, the four degrees of logic, of which he probably became aware through Avicenna, but attributing to them the unilateral meaning of a descending hierarchy which goes from the most certain (analytical) to the most uncertain (poetic) and implying that, from the Topic \u201cdownwards\u201d, we are only dealing with progressive forms of error or at least deficient knowledge.\u00a0This does not exactly coincide with Avicenna&#8217;s conception nor with the one I present in this book, which seems to me to be Aristotle&#8217;s own, according to which there is not exactly a hierarchy of value between the four arguments, but rather a difference in functions articulated between themselves and all equally necessary for the perfection of knowledge.\u00a0On the other hand, it is certain that St.\u00a0Thomas, like the entire medieval West, did not have direct access to the text of Poetics<em>.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0If he had, it would be almost impossible for him to see in the poetic work only the representation of something \u201cas pleasant or repugnant\u201d (cit., n\u00ba 6), without meditating more deeply on what Aristotle says regarding the philosophical value of poetry (<em>Poetics<\/em>, 1451 a).\u00a0In any case, it is an admirable feat for Aquinas to have perceived the unity of the four logical sciences, reasoning, as he did, from second-hand sources. <a href=\"#701b85fd-411e-4895-914f-700bdcbe2f6e-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 2\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"cc0e76f9-dd93-4724-ac21-f1f6112d3c30\">Georges Gusdorf,\u00a0<em>Les Sciences Humaines et la\u00a0Pens\u00e9e\u00a0Occidentale<\/em>, t.\u00a0I,\u00a0<em>De l&#8217;Histoire des Sciences \u00e0 l&#8217;Histoire de<\/em>\u00a0<em>la<\/em>\u00a0<em>Pens\u00e9e<\/em>, Paris, Payot, 1966, pp.\u00a09-41. <a href=\"#cc0e76f9-dd93-4724-ac21-f1f6112d3c30-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 3\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"fa89d8c9-2c82-4298-8a92-cbf57fcfb62e\">Bachelard&#8217;s work, reflecting the methodical dualism of his thought, is divided into two parallel series: on the one hand, works on the philosophy of sciences, such as\u00a0<em>Le Nouvel Esprit Scientifique<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Le\u00a0Rationalisme Appliqu\u00e9<\/em>, etc.;\u00a0on the other, the series dedicated to the \u201cfour elements\u201d \u2014\u00a0<em>La Psychanalyse du Feu<\/em>,\u00a0<em>L&#8217;Air et les<\/em>\u00a0<em>Songes<\/em>, etc., where the rationalist on vacation freely exercises what he called \u201cthe right to dream\u201d.\u00a0Bachelard seemed to possess a mental switch that allowed him to pass from one of these worlds to the other, without the slightest temptation to create any bridge between each other than the freedom to activate the switch. <a href=\"#fa89d8c9-2c82-4298-8a92-cbf57fcfb62e-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 4\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"f5b04ed6-1244-48cf-9132-8511d53f2728\">For a critical examination of this theory, see.\u00a0Jerre Levy, \u201cRight Brain, Left Brain: Fact and Fiction\u201d (<em>Psychology\u00a0Today<\/em>, May 1985, pp. 43ff.).\u00a0 <a href=\"#f5b04ed6-1244-48cf-9132-8511d53f2728-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 5\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"4994dd18-28d7-4b68-ae52-6806a1d36c4e\">Ezra Pound made a huge confusion about Ernest Fenollosa&#8217;s essay,\u00a0<em>The Chinese Characters as a Medium for Poetry<\/em>\u00a0(London, Stanley Nott, 1936), giving the West the impression that the Chinese language constituted a closed world, governed by categories of thought inaccessible to Western understanding except through a true twist of the very concept of language.\u00a0Chinese symbolism, however, is much more similar to Western symbolism than those who appreciate cultural abysses imagine.\u00a0A clear similarity that has escaped these people is that between the structure of the\u00a0<em>I Ching<\/em>\u00a0and Aristotle&#8217;s syllogistic. <a href=\"#4994dd18-28d7-4b68-ae52-6806a1d36c4e-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 6\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"a5bd7682-5597-4473-ba6e-df5a496bd004\">Belief in the two-hemisphere theory is common to all \u201cNew Age\u201d theorists and gurus, such as Marilyn Ferguson, Shirley MacLaine and Fritjof Capra.\u00a0About the latter, see\u00a0my book\u00a0<em>The New Era and the Cultural Revolution.\u00a0Fritjof Capra &amp; Antonio Gramsci<\/em> (Rio, Instituto de Artes Liberales &amp; Stella Caymmi Editora, 1994). The most curious thing about this theory is that it aims to overcome the schizophrenia of Western man and begins by giving it an anatomical foundation (fortunately, fictitious).\u00a0\u2014 It is evident, from what will be seen below, that I do not take very seriously the attempts, as meritorious in intention as they are miserable in results, to overcome dualism through the generalized methodological mess that admits rhetorical persuasiveness and imaginative effusion (see, for example, Paul Feyerabend,\u00a0<em>Against the Method<\/em>, trans. Octanny S. da Motta and Le\u00f4nidas Hegenberg, Rio, Francisco Alves, 1977). <a href=\"#a5bd7682-5597-4473-ba6e-df5a496bd004-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 7\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"3c7c1a3f-e37a-46df-9477-03151d205d79\">\u201cIt is perhaps excessive to demand that an author\u2019s works correspond point by point to the classification of sciences as understood by that author.\u201d\u00a0(Octave Hamelin,\u00a0<em>Le Syst\u00e8me d&#8217;Aristote<\/em>, published by L\u00e9on Robin, 4th edition, Paris, J. Vrin, 1985, p. 82.)\u00a0 <a href=\"#3c7c1a3f-e37a-46df-9477-03151d205d79-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 8\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"662acfa2-6c9f-4619-81de-9cb83b9a8edc\">I refer to the period of so-called \u201cschool rhetoric\u201d.\u00a0V. Ernst Robert Curtius,\u00a0<em>European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages<\/em>, trans.\u00a0Teodoro Cabral, Rio, INL, 1957, pp.\u00a074 ff.\u00a0 <a href=\"#662acfa2-6c9f-4619-81de-9cb83b9a8edc-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 9\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"2a27b8f2-a8ac-4941-b3d0-a3faa2b9ced3\"><em>This makes the plot of The Name of the Rose<\/em>, by Umberto Eco, even funnier,\u00a0a deliberately impossible plot that the uninformed spectator takes as credible fiction: because how could a dispute arise over the missing Second Part of Aristotle&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Poetics<\/em>, at a time when even the First Part was unknown? <a href=\"#2a27b8f2-a8ac-4941-b3d0-a3faa2b9ced3-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 10\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"822e8ad1-c876-407b-a0ed-ba0a382bdfa7\">In the medieval context, the phenomenon I describe certainly has some relationship with a social stratification that placed wise men and philosophers, the priestly class, above poets, the class of court servants or fair artists.\u00a0The\u00a0 lower\u00a0<em>status<\/em>\u00a0of the poet in relation to the wise men is noticeable both in the social hierarchy (see the decisive role played by the\u00a0\u00a0<em>clerici\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<em>vagantes<\/em>\u00a0, or goliards, in medieval literary development), and in the hierarchy of the sciences themselves: literary studies were strictly outside the educational system of scholasticism, and the highest philosophical conceptions of the Middle Ages were written in rather crude Latin, without arousing any strangeness at that time, with much less reactions of aesthetic scandal like those that would emerge in the Renaissance.\u00a0Cf., by the way, Jacques Le Goff,\u00a0<em>Intellectuals in the Middle Ages<\/em>, trans.\u00a0Lu\u00edsa Quintela, Lisbon, Estudios Cor, 1973, Cap. I \u00a7 7. <a href=\"#822e8ad1-c876-407b-a0ed-ba0a382bdfa7-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 11\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"26850455-e701-47dc-8a85-3ae32cb97634\">Werner Jaeger,\u00a0<em>Aristotle.\u00a0Bases para la Historia de su Desarrollo Intelectual<\/em>\u00a0his, trans.\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Gaos, M\u00e9xico, Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica, 1946 (the German original is from 1923). <a href=\"#26850455-e701-47dc-8a85-3ae32cb97634-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 12\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"a27e0636-46b4-4a50-9b7a-00e64f804c2f\">This finding in turn gave rise to a dispute between interpreters who consider Aristotle a\u00a0<em>systematic<\/em>\u00a0thinker (who always starts from the same general principles) and those who see him as an\u00a0<em>aporetic<\/em>\u00a0thinker (who attacks problems one by one and moves upward towards the general without really being sure where it is going).\u00a0This approach suggested in this work has, among others, the ambition of resolving this dispute., below, Chapter VII. <a href=\"#a27e0636-46b4-4a50-9b7a-00e64f804c2f-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 13\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"56bcc962-e5c7-47ce-8058-a95c954827a9\">\u00c9ric Weil, \u201cLa Place de la Logique dans la Pens\u00e9e Aristot\u00e9licienne\u201d, in\u00a0<em>\u00c9ssais et Conf\u00e9rences<\/em>, t.\u00a0I,\u00a0<em>Philosophie<\/em>, Paris, Vrin, 1991, pp.\u00a043-80. <a href=\"#56bcc962-e5c7-47ce-8058-a95c954827a9-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 14\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"938fc7fe-11c5-4748-a858-be5e740888c4\">Sir David Ross,\u00a0<em>Aristotle<\/em>, trans.\u00a0Lu\u00eds Filipe Bragan\u00e7a SS Teixeira, Lisbon, Dom Quixote, 1987, p.\u00a0280 (the English original is from 1923). <a href=\"#938fc7fe-11c5-4748-a858-be5e740888c4-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 15\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"53324961-5475-4cd6-889e-3ecccb0c23c9\">Since its first annotated translation (Francesco Robortelli, 1548), the rediscovered\u00a0<em>Poetics<\/em>\u00a0will shape the standards of literary taste for two and a half centuries, at the same time that, in the field of Natural Philosophy, Aristotelianism retreats, banished by the victorious advance of new science of Galileo and Bacon, Newton and Descartes.\u00a0This shows, on the one hand, the total separation between literary thought and philosophical and scientific evolution (a separation characteristic of the modern West, and which will worsen over the centuries);\u00a0on the other, the indifference of philosophers towards the rediscovered text.\u00a0On the Aristotelian roots of the aesthetics of European classicism, see.\u00a0Ren\u00e9 Wellek,\u00a0<em>History of Modern Criticism<\/em>, trans, L\u00edvio Xavier, S\u00e3o Paulo, Herder.\u00a0t.\u00a0I, Chapter I.\u00a0 <a href=\"#53324961-5475-4cd6-889e-3ecccb0c23c9-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 16\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"a97f37f8-5842-49b8-9ccc-41e284bf0d85\">Due to technical editing difficulties, I omit the accents of the Greek words here.\u00a0 <a href=\"#a97f37f8-5842-49b8-9ccc-41e284bf0d85-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 17\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"614022d3-b52d-4b32-8450-98151d622bc7\">Four facts from the history of contemporary thought highlight the importance of these observations.\u00a01\u00b0) All attempts to isolate and define a \u201cpoetic language\u201d by its intrinsic characters, differentiating it materially from \u201clogical language\u201d and \u201ceveryday language\u201d have completely failed., in this regard, Mary Louise Pratt,\u00a0<em>Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse<\/em>, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1977. 2\u00b0) On the other hand, since Kurt G\u00f6del, the impossibility of extirpating all intuitive residue from logical thought has been generally recognized.\u00a03)\u00b0 The studies by Chaim Perelman (\u00a0<em>Trait\u00e9 de l&#8217;Argumentation. La Nouvelle Rh\u00e9torique<\/em>\u00a0, Bruxelles, Universit\u00e9 Libre, 1978), Thomas S. Kuhn (\u00a0<em>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions<\/em>\u00a0) and Paul Feyerabend (\u00a0<em>cit.<\/em>\u00a0) show, convergently, the impossibility of eradicating all dialectical and even rhetorical elements from scientific-analytical evidence.\u00a04)\u00b0 At the same time, the existence of something more than a mere parallelism between aesthetic (that is, poetic, in the broad sense) and logical-dialectical principles in the medieval worldview is strongly emphasized by Erwin Panofsky (Architecture Gothique et Pens\u00e9e Scolastique,\u00a0<em>trans<\/em>. Pierre Bourdieu, Paris, \u00c9ditions de Minuit, 1967).\u00a0These facts and many others in the same sense indicate more than the convenience, the urgency of the integrated study of the four discourses. <a href=\"#614022d3-b52d-4b32-8450-98151d622bc7-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 18\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"038624d2-7e51-44e8-b1f5-8b3bb745deca\"><em>Poetics<\/em>, 1451 ab. <a href=\"#038624d2-7e51-44e8-b1f5-8b3bb745deca-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 19\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"781037b9-de8b-4e02-8e2f-44a3d7519eef\">About the three modalities in the rhetorical tradition, see.\u00a0Heinrich Lausberg,\u00a0<em>Elements of Literary Rhetoric<\/em>, trans.\u00a0RM Rosado Fernandes, Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2nd ed., 1972. <a href=\"#781037b9-de8b-4e02-8e2f-44a3d7519eef-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 20\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"e0f73f90-9df9-4c46-a8fb-6a93033e4cc8\"><em>Rhetoric<\/em>\u00a0, 1358 a \u2014 1360 a. <a href=\"#e0f73f90-9df9-4c46-a8fb-6a93033e4cc8-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 21\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"35e6e435-114b-4999-97ea-09633e77635c\"><em>Topics<\/em>\u00a0, IX 12, 173\u00a0<em>to<\/em>\u00a0\u00a029 ff. <a href=\"#35e6e435-114b-4999-97ea-09633e77635c-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 22\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"33b5753f-b8c1-41fe-8cc7-48853d6238ef\">Between analytics and dialectics, \u201cthe difference is, according to Aristotle, that between the course of teaching given by a teacher and the discussion held in common, or, to put it another way, that between the monologue and the scientific dialogue\u201d (\u00c9ric Weil,\u00a0<em>cit.<\/em>, p. 64). <a href=\"#33b5753f-b8c1-41fe-8cc7-48853d6238ef-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 23\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"a0d8e223-f3a0-4c4f-9d4c-610885620755\">It is almost impossible that Aristotle, a natural scientist with a mind full of analogies between the sphere of rational concepts and the facts of the physical order, did not notice the parallelism \u2014 direct and inverse \u2014 between the four discourses and the four elements, differentiated, they too, by scalarity from the densest to the most subtle, in concentric circles.\u00a0In a course given at the IAL in 1988, unpublished except in a series of handouts under the general title of \u201cTheory of Four Discourses\u201d, I investigated this parallelism more extensively, which here is only a passing mention.\u00a0 <a href=\"#a0d8e223-f3a0-4c4f-9d4c-610885620755-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 24\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"e9474173-8bee-493a-aba1-869ad0710d9d\">Pierre Aubenque,\u00a0<em>Le Probl\u00e8me de l&#8217;\u00catre chez Aristote.\u00a0\u00c9ssai sur la Problematique Aristotelicienne<\/em>, Paris, PUF, 1962. <a href=\"#e9474173-8bee-493a-aba1-869ad0710d9d-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 25\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this article, Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho exposes an unique interpretation of Aristotle&#8217;s works, which has escaped the perception of almost all of his readers and commentators, from Antiquity until today: the Theory of Four Discourses. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"Instead of exactly reproducing the text of the first edition, this chapter follows the slightly corrected version that, under the title \u201cThe structure of the\u00a0<em>Organon<\/em>\u00a0and the unity of the sciences of discourse in Aristotle\u201d, that I presented at the V Brazilian Congress of Philosophy, in S\u00e3o Paulo, September 6, 1995 (Logic and Philosophy of Science section).\",\"id\":\"9d167b30-13f2-466f-96f7-8fc05b5b0477\"},{\"content\":\"These two were Avicenna and St.\u00a0Thomas Aquinas.\u00a0Avicenna (Abu 'Ali el-Hussein ibn Abdallah ibn Sina, 375-428 H. \/ 985-1036 AD) emphatically affirms, in his work\u00a0<em>Nadjat<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cSalvation\u201d), the unity of the four sciences, under the general concept of \u201clogic\\\".\u00a0According to Baron Carra de Vaux, this \u201cshows how vast his idea of art was\u201d, whose object included \u201cthe study of all the different degrees of persuasion, from rigorous demonstration to poetic suggestion\u201d (cf. Baron Carra de Vaux,\u00a0<em>Avicenne,\u00a0<\/em>Paris, Alcan, 1900, pp. 160-161).\u00a0St.\u00a0Thomas Aquinas also mentions, in the\u00a0<em>Commentaries on the Second Analytics<\/em>, I, 1.I, n\u00ba 1-6, the four degrees of logic, of which he probably became aware through Avicenna, but attributing to them the unilateral meaning of a descending hierarchy which goes from the most certain (analytical) to the most uncertain (poetic) and implying that, from the Topic \u201cdownwards\u201d, we are only dealing with progressive forms of error or at least deficient knowledge.\u00a0This does not exactly coincide with Avicenna's conception nor with the one I present in this book, which seems to me to be Aristotle's own, according to which there is not exactly a hierarchy of value between the four arguments, but rather a difference in functions articulated between themselves and all equally necessary for the perfection of knowledge.\u00a0On the other hand, it is certain that St.\u00a0Thomas, like the entire medieval West, did not have direct access to the text of Poetics<em>.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0If he had, it would be almost impossible for him to see in the poetic work only the representation of something \u201cas pleasant or repugnant\u201d (cit., n\u00ba 6), without meditating more deeply on what Aristotle says regarding the philosophical value of poetry (<em>Poetics<\/em>, 1451 a).\u00a0In any case, it is an admirable feat for Aquinas to have perceived the unity of the four logical sciences, reasoning, as he did, from second-hand sources.\",\"id\":\"701b85fd-411e-4895-914f-700bdcbe2f6e\"},{\"content\":\"Georges Gusdorf,\u00a0<em>Les Sciences Humaines et la\u00a0Pens\u00e9e\u00a0Occidentale<\/em>, t.\u00a0I,\u00a0<em>De l'Histoire des Sciences \u00e0 l'Histoire de<\/em>\u00a0<em>la<\/em>\u00a0<em>Pens\u00e9e<\/em>, Paris, Payot, 1966, pp.\u00a09-41.\",\"id\":\"cc0e76f9-dd93-4724-ac21-f1f6112d3c30\"},{\"content\":\"Bachelard's work, reflecting the methodical dualism of his thought, is divided into two parallel series: on the one hand, works on the philosophy of sciences, such as\u00a0<em>Le Nouvel Esprit Scientifique<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Le\u00a0Rationalisme Appliqu\u00e9<\/em>, etc.;\u00a0on the other, the series dedicated to the \u201cfour elements\u201d \u2014\u00a0<em>La Psychanalyse du Feu<\/em>,\u00a0<em>L'Air et les<\/em>\u00a0<em>Songes<\/em>, etc., where the rationalist on vacation freely exercises what he called \u201cthe right to dream\u201d.\u00a0Bachelard seemed to possess a mental switch that allowed him to pass from one of these worlds to the other, without the slightest temptation to create any bridge between each other than the freedom to activate the switch.\",\"id\":\"fa89d8c9-2c82-4298-8a92-cbf57fcfb62e\"},{\"content\":\"For a critical examination of this theory, see.\u00a0Jerre Levy, \u201cRight Brain, Left Brain: Fact and Fiction\u201d (<em>Psychology\u00a0Today<\/em>, May 1985, pp. 43ff.).\u00a0\",\"id\":\"f5b04ed6-1244-48cf-9132-8511d53f2728\"},{\"content\":\"Ezra Pound made a huge confusion about Ernest Fenollosa's essay,\u00a0<em>The Chinese Characters as a Medium for Poetry<\/em>\u00a0(London, Stanley Nott, 1936), giving the West the impression that the Chinese language constituted a closed world, governed by categories of thought inaccessible to Western understanding except through a true twist of the very concept of language.\u00a0Chinese symbolism, however, is much more similar to Western symbolism than those who appreciate cultural abysses imagine.\u00a0A clear similarity that has escaped these people is that between the structure of the\u00a0<em>I Ching<\/em>\u00a0and Aristotle's syllogistic.\",\"id\":\"4994dd18-28d7-4b68-ae52-6806a1d36c4e\"},{\"content\":\"Belief in the two-hemisphere theory is common to all \u201cNew Age\u201d theorists and gurus, such as Marilyn Ferguson, Shirley MacLaine and Fritjof Capra.\u00a0About the latter, see\u00a0my book\u00a0<em>The New Era and the Cultural Revolution.\u00a0Fritjof Capra &amp; Antonio Gramsci<\/em> (Rio, Instituto de Artes Liberales &amp; Stella Caymmi Editora, 1994). The most curious thing about this theory is that it aims to overcome the schizophrenia of Western man and begins by giving it an anatomical foundation (fortunately, fictitious).\u00a0\u2014 It is evident, from what will be seen below, that I do not take very seriously the attempts, as meritorious in intention as they are miserable in results, to overcome dualism through the generalized methodological mess that admits rhetorical persuasiveness and imaginative effusion (see, for example, Paul Feyerabend,\u00a0<em>Against the Method<\/em>, trans. Octanny S. da Motta and Le\u00f4nidas Hegenberg, Rio, Francisco Alves, 1977).\",\"id\":\"a5bd7682-5597-4473-ba6e-df5a496bd004\"},{\"content\":\"\u201cIt is perhaps excessive to demand that an author\u2019s works correspond point by point to the classification of sciences as understood by that author.\u201d\u00a0(Octave Hamelin,\u00a0<em>Le Syst\u00e8me d'Aristote<\/em>, published by L\u00e9on Robin, 4th edition, Paris, J. Vrin, 1985, p. 82.)\u00a0\",\"id\":\"3c7c1a3f-e37a-46df-9477-03151d205d79\"},{\"content\":\"I refer to the period of so-called \u201cschool rhetoric\u201d.\u00a0V. Ernst Robert Curtius,\u00a0<em>European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages<\/em>, trans.\u00a0Teodoro Cabral, Rio, INL, 1957, pp.\u00a074 ff.\u00a0\",\"id\":\"662acfa2-6c9f-4619-81de-9cb83b9a8edc\"},{\"content\":\"<em>This makes the plot of The Name of the Rose<\/em>, by Umberto Eco, even funnier,\u00a0a deliberately impossible plot that the uninformed spectator takes as credible fiction: because how could a dispute arise over the missing Second Part of Aristotle's\u00a0<em>Poetics<\/em>, at a time when even the First Part was unknown?\",\"id\":\"2a27b8f2-a8ac-4941-b3d0-a3faa2b9ced3\"},{\"content\":\"In the medieval context, the phenomenon I describe certainly has some relationship with a social stratification that placed wise men and philosophers, the priestly class, above poets, the class of court servants or fair artists.\u00a0The\u00a0 lower\u00a0<em>status<\/em>\u00a0of the poet in relation to the wise men is noticeable both in the social hierarchy (see the decisive role played by the\u00a0\u00a0<em>clerici\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<em>vagantes<\/em>\u00a0, or goliards, in medieval literary development), and in the hierarchy of the sciences themselves: literary studies were strictly outside the educational system of scholasticism, and the highest philosophical conceptions of the Middle Ages were written in rather crude Latin, without arousing any strangeness at that time, with much less reactions of aesthetic scandal like those that would emerge in the Renaissance.\u00a0Cf., by the way, Jacques Le Goff,\u00a0<em>Intellectuals in the Middle Ages<\/em>, trans.\u00a0Lu\u00edsa Quintela, Lisbon, Estudios Cor, 1973, Cap. I \u00a7 7.\",\"id\":\"822e8ad1-c876-407b-a0ed-ba0a382bdfa7\"},{\"content\":\"Werner Jaeger,\u00a0<em>Aristotle.\u00a0Bases para la Historia de su Desarrollo Intelectual<\/em>\u00a0his, trans.\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Gaos, M\u00e9xico, Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica, 1946 (the German original is from 1923).\",\"id\":\"26850455-e701-47dc-8a85-3ae32cb97634\"},{\"content\":\"This finding in turn gave rise to a dispute between interpreters who consider Aristotle a\u00a0<em>systematic<\/em>\u00a0thinker (who always starts from the same general principles) and those who see him as an\u00a0<em>aporetic<\/em>\u00a0thinker (who attacks problems one by one and moves upward towards the general without really being sure where it is going).\u00a0This approach suggested in this work has, among others, the ambition of resolving this dispute., below, Chapter VII.\",\"id\":\"a27e0636-46b4-4a50-9b7a-00e64f804c2f\"},{\"content\":\"\u00c9ric Weil, \u201cLa Place de la Logique dans la Pens\u00e9e Aristot\u00e9licienne\u201d, in\u00a0<em>\u00c9ssais et Conf\u00e9rences<\/em>, t.\u00a0I,\u00a0<em>Philosophie<\/em>, Paris, Vrin, 1991, pp.\u00a043-80.\",\"id\":\"56bcc962-e5c7-47ce-8058-a95c954827a9\"},{\"content\":\"Sir David Ross,\u00a0<em>Aristotle<\/em>, trans.\u00a0Lu\u00eds Filipe Bragan\u00e7a SS Teixeira, Lisbon, Dom Quixote, 1987, p.\u00a0280 (the English original is from 1923).\",\"id\":\"938fc7fe-11c5-4748-a858-be5e740888c4\"},{\"content\":\"Since its first annotated translation (Francesco Robortelli, 1548), the rediscovered\u00a0<em>Poetics<\/em>\u00a0will shape the standards of literary taste for two and a half centuries, at the same time that, in the field of Natural Philosophy, Aristotelianism retreats, banished by the victorious advance of new science of Galileo and Bacon, Newton and Descartes.\u00a0This shows, on the one hand, the total separation between literary thought and philosophical and scientific evolution (a separation characteristic of the modern West, and which will worsen over the centuries);\u00a0on the other, the indifference of philosophers towards the rediscovered text.\u00a0On the Aristotelian roots of the aesthetics of European classicism, see.\u00a0Ren\u00e9 Wellek,\u00a0<em>History of Modern Criticism<\/em>, trans, L\u00edvio Xavier, S\u00e3o Paulo, Herder.\u00a0t.\u00a0I, Chapter I.\u00a0\",\"id\":\"53324961-5475-4cd6-889e-3ecccb0c23c9\"},{\"content\":\"Due to technical editing difficulties, I omit the accents of the Greek words here.\u00a0\",\"id\":\"a97f37f8-5842-49b8-9ccc-41e284bf0d85\"},{\"content\":\"Four facts from the history of contemporary thought highlight the importance of these observations.\u00a01\u00b0) All attempts to isolate and define a \u201cpoetic language\u201d by its intrinsic characters, differentiating it materially from \u201clogical language\u201d and \u201ceveryday language\u201d have completely failed., in this regard, Mary Louise Pratt,\u00a0<em>Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse<\/em>, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1977. 2\u00b0) On the other hand, since Kurt G\u00f6del, the impossibility of extirpating all intuitive residue from logical thought has been generally recognized.\u00a03)\u00b0 The studies by Chaim Perelman (\u00a0<em>Trait\u00e9 de l'Argumentation. La Nouvelle Rh\u00e9torique<\/em>\u00a0, Bruxelles, Universit\u00e9 Libre, 1978), Thomas S. Kuhn (\u00a0<em>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions<\/em>\u00a0) and Paul Feyerabend (\u00a0<em>cit.<\/em>\u00a0) show, convergently, the impossibility of eradicating all dialectical and even rhetorical elements from scientific-analytical evidence.\u00a04)\u00b0 At the same time, the existence of something more than a mere parallelism between aesthetic (that is, poetic, in the broad sense) and logical-dialectical principles in the medieval worldview is strongly emphasized by Erwin Panofsky (Architecture Gothique et Pens\u00e9e Scolastique,\u00a0<em>trans<\/em>. Pierre Bourdieu, Paris, \u00c9ditions de Minuit, 1967).\u00a0These facts and many others in the same sense indicate more than the convenience, the urgency of the integrated study of the four discourses.\",\"id\":\"614022d3-b52d-4b32-8450-98151d622bc7\"},{\"content\":\"<em>Poetics<\/em>, 1451 ab.\",\"id\":\"038624d2-7e51-44e8-b1f5-8b3bb745deca\"},{\"content\":\"About the three modalities in the rhetorical tradition, see.\u00a0Heinrich Lausberg,\u00a0<em>Elements of Literary Rhetoric<\/em>, trans.\u00a0RM Rosado Fernandes, Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2nd ed., 1972.\",\"id\":\"781037b9-de8b-4e02-8e2f-44a3d7519eef\"},{\"content\":\"<em>Rhetoric<\/em>\u00a0, 1358 a \u2014 1360 a.\",\"id\":\"e0f73f90-9df9-4c46-a8fb-6a93033e4cc8\"},{\"content\":\"<em>Topics<\/em>\u00a0, IX 12, 173\u00a0<em>to<\/em>\u00a0\u00a029 ff.\",\"id\":\"35e6e435-114b-4999-97ea-09633e77635c\"},{\"content\":\"Between analytics and dialectics, \u201cthe difference is, according to Aristotle, that between the course of teaching given by a teacher and the discussion held in common, or, to put it another way, that between the monologue and the scientific dialogue\u201d (\u00c9ric Weil,\u00a0<em>cit.<\/em>, p. 64).\",\"id\":\"33b5753f-b8c1-41fe-8cc7-48853d6238ef\"},{\"content\":\"It is almost impossible that Aristotle, a natural scientist with a mind full of analogies between the sphere of rational concepts and the facts of the physical order, did not notice the parallelism \u2014 direct and inverse \u2014 between the four discourses and the four elements, differentiated, they too, by scalarity from the densest to the most subtle, in concentric circles.\u00a0In a course given at the IAL in 1988, unpublished except in a series of handouts under the general title of \u201cTheory of Four Discourses\u201d, I investigated this parallelism more extensively, which here is only a passing mention.\u00a0\",\"id\":\"a0d8e223-f3a0-4c4f-9d4c-610885620755\"},{\"content\":\"Pierre Aubenque,\u00a0<em>Le Probl\u00e8me de l'\u00catre chez Aristote.\u00a0\u00c9ssai sur la Problematique Aristotelicienne<\/em>, Paris, PUF, 1962.\",\"id\":\"e9474173-8bee-493a-aba1-869ad0710d9d\"}]"},"categories":[518],"tags":[],"idioma":[],"class_list":["post-15058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sem-categoria"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.5 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - 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