PHILOS 1E03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Syllogism, Stoicism
1 Oct 2016
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Read what andrew bailey has written on the nature of arguments in your textbook, pg. Aristotle (384-322 bce) contributed the theory of the syllogism: e. g. all a are b; no c are a. There is a form of argument much beloved by the stoics, of which the following argument invented by zeno of citium is an instance: What is rational is better than what is not rational. This works for almost any positive property, like . What is alive is better than what is not alive. What exists is better than what does not exist. This line of reasoning inspired st. anselm to famously argue for existence of god: What actually exists is greater than what is merely thought to exist. Nothing is greater than a being-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought (= god).
