[3] Respecting the title of Organon which was sometimes applied to the Analytica Posteriora only, see Waitz ad Organ. ii. p. 294.
These treatises are six in number:— 1. Categoriæ;[4] 2. De Interpretatione, or De Enunciatione; 3. Analytica Priora; 4. Analytica Posteriora; 5. Topica; 6. De Sophisticis Elenchis. This last short treatise — De Sophisticis Elenchis — belongs naturally to the Topica which precedes it, and of which it ought to be ranked as the ninth or concluding book. Waitz has printed it as such in his edition of the Organon; but as it has been generally known with a separate place and title, I shall not depart from the received understanding.
[4] Some eminent critics, Prantl and Bonitz among them, consider the treatise Categoriæ not to be the work of Aristotle. The arguments on which this opinion rests are not convincing to me; and even if they were, the treatise could not be left out of consideration, since the doctrine of the Ten Categories is indisputably Aristotelian. See Zeller, Die Phil. der Griech. ii. 2, pp. 50, 51, 2nd ed.
Aristotle himself does not announce these six treatises as forming a distinct aggregate, nor as belonging to one and the same department, nor as bearing one comprehensive name. We find indeed in the Topica references to the Analytica, and in the Analytica references to the Topica. In both of them, the ten Categories are assumed and presupposed, though the treatise describing them is not expressly mentioned: to both also, the contents of the treatise De Interpretatione or Enunciatione, though it is not named, are indispensable. The affinity and interdependence of the six is evident, and justifies the practice of the commentators in treating them as belonging to one and the same department. To that department there belonged also several other treatises of Aristotle, not now preserved, but specified in the catalogue of his lost works; and these his disciples Theophrastus, Eudemus, and Phanias, had before them. As all these three disciples composed treatises of their own on the same or similar topics,[5] amplifying, elucidating, or controverting the views of their master, the Peripatetics immediately succeeding them must have possessed a copious logical literature, in which the six treatises now constituting the Organon appeared as portions, but not as a special aggregate in themselves.
[5] Ammonius ap. Schol. p. 28, a. 41; p. 33, b. 27, Br.
Of the two treatises which stand first in the Aristotelian Organon — the Categoriæ and the De Interpretatione — each forms in a certain sense the complement of the other. The treatise De Interpretatione handles Propositions (combinations of terms in the way of Subject and Predicate), with prominent reference to the specific attribute of a Proposition — the being true or false, the object of belief or disbelief; the treatise Categoriæ deals with these same Terms (to use Aristotle’s own phrase) pronounced without or apart from such combination. In his definition of the simple Term, the Proposition is at the same time assumed to be foreknown as the correlate or antithesis to it.[6]
[6] Τὰ ἄνευ συμπλοκῆς λεγόμενα — τῶν κατὰ μηδεμίαν συμπλοκὴν λεγομένωνα (Categ. p. 1, a. 16, b. 25). See Schol. ad Aristot. Physica, p. 323, b. 25, Br.; and Bonitz ad Aristotel. Metaph. (A. p. 987) p. 90.
The Categories of Aristotle appear to formed one of the most prominent topics of the teaching of Themistius: rebutting the charge, advanced both against himself, and, in earlier days, against Sokrates and the Sophists, of rendering his pupils presumptuous and conceited, he asks, ἠκούσατε δὲ αὖ τινος τῶν ἐμῶν ἐπιτηδείων ὑψηλογουμένου καὶ βρενθυομένου ἐπὶ τοῖς συνωνύμοις ἢ ὁμωνύμοῖς ἢ παρωνύμοις; (Orat. xxiii. p. 351.)
Reference is made (in the Scholia on the Categoriæ, p. 43, b. 19) to a classification of names made by Speusippus, which must have been at least as early as that of Aristotle; perhaps earlier, since Speusippus died in 339 B.C. We do not hear enough of this to understand clearly what it was. Boêthus remarked that Aristotle had omitted to notice some distinctions drawn by Speusippus on this matter, Schol. p. 43, a. 29. Compare a remark in Aristot. De Cœlo, i. p. 280, b. 2.
The first distinction pointed out by Aristotle among simple, uncombined Terms, or the things denoted thereby, is the Homonymous, the Synonymous, and the Paronymous. Homonymous are those which are called by the same name, used in a different sense or with a different definition or rational explanation. Synonymous are those called by the same name in the same sense. Paronymous are those called by two names, of which the one is derived from the other by varying the inflexion or termination.[7]