With the systematic aim of clarifying the phenomenon sometimes described as “the intellectual apprehension of first principles,” Descartes’ first principle par excellence is interpreted before the historical backcloth of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. To begin with, three “faces” of the cogito are distinguished: (1) the proto-cogito (“I think”), (2) the cogito proper (“I think, therefore I am”), and (3) the cogito principle (“Whatever thinks, is”). There follows a detailed (though inevitably somewhat conjectural) reconstruction of the transition of the mind from (1) (...) via (3) to (2) and back again to (3). What emerges is, surprisingly, a non-circular, non-logical, and ultimately non-mysterious process by which first principles implicitly contained in a complex intuition are gradually rendered explicit (and, if abstract, grasped in their abstract universality). This process bears a striking family resemblance to that intuitive induction (“grasping the universal in the particular”) which Aristotle scholars have distinguished from empirical forms of induction. (shrink)

Este artículo puede ser considerado como un comentario de Física, I. En él se expone, por lo tanto, una interpretación de la investigación mediante la que Aristóteles intenta responder a la pregunta acerca de cuántas y cuáles son las archaí del saber relativo a la physis. A través de un análisis de la crítica aristotélica de las respuestas dadas a esa pregunta por los filósofos precedentes, buscamos además aclarar y facilitar la comprensión del desarrollo de dicha interpretación. This article may (...) be considered as a commentary on Physics, I. In it is expounded, therefore, an interpretation of the research by which Aristotle tries to answer the question about how many and which are the archai of the knowledge concerning physis. By an analysis of the Aristotle's criticism of the answers given to this question by the previous philosophers, we also try to clarify and make easier the understanding of that interpretation¿s development. (shrink)