Hintikka on Modalities and Determinism in Aristotle

Abstract

Aristotle is a philosopher whom two kinds of people find interesting. The first is the scholar who tries to make Aristotle available to us; the second is the philosopher who develops his own position by trying to understand and criticize Aristotle’s. Of the first kind are several historians of logic who wrote at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of ours;¹ of the second kind is J. Lukasiewicz.² Lukasiewicz challenged many of his readers in a way which is relevant to my distinction: now as a scholar and historian of Aristotle’s work and now as a logician arguing with another logician. When Lukasiewicz made it clear, in giving his book a title, that he was arguing with Aristotle from the point of view of modern logic, he simply made explicit what would be implicit in the critical reaction of any philosopher, namely that one brings to the work of Aristotle a critical position of one’s own. So the question is not whether a philosopher will let us see his own position and views in discussing Aristotle’s but rather to what extent there is adaptability and to what end Aristotle’s views are taken up.