The Logic of Essentialism: An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic

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This work surveys the major interpretations, ancient, medieval and modern, of Aristotle’s modal syllogistic . It presents a framework within which these competing interpretations are compared and evaluated. A new interpretation is developed, which agrees in large measure with Aristotle’s text, including his theses, methods of proof, and use of examples. This interpretation reads Aristotle’s modal sentences de re , and attaches considerable importance to his use of ecthesis and counter-examples. It features a formal semantic analysis that makes no reference to possible worlds, and it articulates the links, both theoretical and genetic, between the modal syllogistic and Aristotle’s essentialist metaphysics.