论波爱修斯与古代逻辑

波爱修斯是古代逻辑向中世纪逻辑发展过程中最重要的哲学家.他翻译和注释了亚里士多德的<工具论>;探讨了波菲利关于共相的三个问题;对假言命题和假言三段论进行了深入的研究,在斯多亚学派之后重新奠定了命题逻辑在整个逻辑学说中应有的地位.波爱修斯的逻辑理论是中世纪逻辑学进步的主要源泉.

Boethius and Ancient Logic

Boethius was the most important philosopher during the development from ancient logic to medieval logic. He planned to put into Latin every work of Aristotle and all the dialogues of Plato, but only translated Aristotle' s Organon for he found later much essential contradiction between the two greatest authorities and that translating all of the works would unavoidably show their divergences to the Latin Romans. Boethius' translations and commentaries were the only bibliographies for the Latin scholars to study ancient logic before the 12th century. The nature of the universe is always the fundamental issue of logic and philosophy. The study of it was enhanced by Porphyry with his three famous questions, but he made no conclusions to them. Boethius' research into it was to resolve Porphyry' s questions and settle the controversies about the relation between logic and philosophy. He believed that genus or species is made sensible when in individual things, when it is in universals it is made intelligible; and in the same way when it is sensible, it remains in individuals, when it is understood, it is made universal; therefore they subsist in the sensible, but they are understood without bodies. This answer was Boethius' marked contribution to logic. However, it induced medieval philosophers to divide into two parts: Nominalists and Realists. Boethius also criticized Porphyry for considering logic as the tool of philosophy. He believed that logic is both the instrument and a part of philosophy. This assertion had an inestimable influence on the development of logic. Proposition logic is the most brilliant part of Boethian logic. He tried to define the hypothetical (or conditional) proposition in the Megara-Stoic tradition. Hypothetical proposition can be formed in two ways, accidentally, or so as to have some natural consequence. Accidentally in this way, as when we say 'when fire is hot, the sky is round' . It means that a hypothetical proposition is true if and only if when its antecedent is true and its consequent cannot be false. It is equivalent to the material implication of modern logic. As to the propositions which have within them a natural consequence, we might say ' when man is, animal is' . That is, the antecedent of a hypothetical proposition necessarily implies its consequent. It can be interpreted as modern strict implication. Moreover, Boethius listed 38 hypothetical syllogisms through which he re-established the due position of proposition logic in the whole logic theories after Stoics. Boethian logic was the main source of medieval logic.