Abstract

Despite the huge amount of critical literature on practical syllogisms, Aristotle only gave a scanty treatment of the subject in short passages of three works, De motu, De anima, and Nicomachean Ethics. A practical syllogism is a syllogism about actions; its conclusion is an action, or is a proposition asserting that “one should do something”, immediately followed by action. In many regards, practical syllogisms use the same logic as the Analytics. However, there are features of practical syllogisms that are at odds with this classical logic and Aristotle himself gives hints suggesting a two-place predicate logic.