The use of the immediate and common point of view is presented, in Arab philosophy, as characteristic of the rhetorical method. We will endeavour, in this article, to determine the importance, the significance and the origins of this concept in the works of Fbb where Fbahb which depend on the concept of the immediate and common point of view, focusing in particular on the definition of enthymema. In the last part, we will investigate some philological and philosophical difficulties, such as (...) the difference between rhetorical and dialectical premises, which constitute the background to the development of the concept. (shrink)

Striking similarities, often literal, between Ibn Riwan's Book on the Application of Logic in the Sciences and Arts and the Didascalia in Rhetoricam Aristotelis ex glosa Alpharabii lead to suppose that the first of these treatises has preserved something of the Arabic source of the second one, the Great Commentary on the Rhetoric by al-Fbn has, as the Didascalia, a system of the means of the persuasion which puts on the same level eight non pathetical means external to the speech, (...) the enthymeme and the example. Nervertheless, one has also to note that Ibn Riwan's theory of rhetoric is radically different from Didascalia's: on the one side, a general rhetoric n's rhetorical doctrine towards the Didascalia, and the project underlying his work. (shrink)

It is well-known that the Arab philosophers of the Aristotelian tradition, like some of their Alexandrian predecessors, attached rhetoric and poetics to logic, and supported this inclusion by the idea that the principal poetic procedure - that is, essentially, metaphor - is a kind of syllogism: the poetic syllogism. However, until now, no texts prior to those of Avicenna had been identified which render the structure of this syllogism explicit. In the present contribution, we present and translate a passage from (...) al-Fārābī which shows that for him, the poetic syllogism is an incorrect syllogism of the second figure - a different interpretation from that which will be given by Avicenna. (shrink)

Averroes' Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics reveals the original version, previously considered lost, of a landmark work in Arabic philosophy. Undoubtedly authored by the Cordovan thinker Averroes (1126-1198), this "middle" commentary is distinct from the Long Commentary and the Short Commentary in method, several doctrinal elements, and scope (it includes books M and N of the Stagirite's treatise). These points and the transmission of the Middle Commentary at the crossroads of Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin traditions are addressed in the introduction, (...) which also establishes that the work was extensively quoted by the mystical philosopher Ibn Sab'in (XIIIth c.). The edition of the text and the facing translation follow. At the end of the book are Ibn Sab'in's quotations, along with extensive indexes. (shrink)

It is well-known that the Arab philosophers of the Aristotelian tradition, like some of their Alexandrian predecessors, attached rhetoric and poetics to logic, and supported this inclusion by the idea that the principal poetic procedure - that is, essentially, metaphor - is a kind of syllogism: the poetic syllogism. However, until now, no texts prior to those of Avicenna had been identified which render the structure of this syllogism explicit. In the present contribution, we present and translate a passage from (...) al-Fārābī which shows that for him, the poetic syllogism is an incorrect syllogism of the second figure - a different interpretation from that which will be given by Avicenna. (shrink)