This volume contains the first modern commentary to Boethius's last logical monograph entitled 'De topicis differentiis', his most original work written around 522 A.D., just before the incarceration and death of the Roman philosopher. His textbook aims at providing a method for the discovery of arguments, that is an art that teaches how to solve any kind of question through the use of the topics, litteraly 'places' of our mind able to produce arguments subsequently developed into argumentations. Boethius inherited this (...) teaching from two different traditions, the Greek and Latin. In light of the differences found in them, the Roman scholar undertook the writing of the 'De topicis differentiis' precisely in order to show the possible way of reconciling these two philosophical traditions. In this way Boethius was able to disseminate a unified vision of this matter to the Latin world, restoring the centrality that the Topics had in the Aristotelian Logic and restoring their noblest function, that of being instruments at the service of the search for Truth. Finally, he also provided the list of the rhetorical topics by showing the differences with dialectical topics. This study provides a full reconstruction of the structure of the Boethian work, retraces and evaluates the sources, investigates the implications, and explains why the 'De topicis differentiis' remains a foundational work for anyone who wants to understand the development of European Logic through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (shrink)

Beginning with the Ciceronian divisions of rhetorical and dialectical topics as found, respectively, in the De inventione, the De oratore, the Partitiones oratoriae and the Topica, the purpose of this study is to collect all the lists that have been transmitted from Antiquity to the early Middle Ages in order to observe — mainly through the help of several diagrams put in the appendix — their alteration, as well as their preservation.

El propósito de este estudio es el de centrar la atención sobre la coexistencia, en el curso de la transmisión de la doctrina de los _loci _en el Alto Medioevo de dos interpretaciones, las cuales, aunque surjan ambas de un comentario a los _Topica _de Cicerón, han originado una diversa, aunque notable flexión interpretativa del texto ciceroniano: el primer comentario realizado por Mario Victorino, el cual concibió los _loci _casi exclusivamente al servicio de la Retórica, el segundo llevado a cabo (...) por Boecio quien, por su parte, intentó restaurar la centralidad que los _Topica _tuvieron en la lógica aristotélica, subordinando los _loci _retóricos a los _loci _dialécticos. Mi conclusión es que la Alta Edad Media puede ser considerada con justa razón desde un punto de vista epistemológico como una larga _boetiana aetas_. Aunque el _corpus _de los escritos de lógica boeciana no estuviera disponible sino hasta la segunda mitad del siglo XI, Boecio de algún modo continuó sosteniendo con su impostación de método el esqueleto de la nueva estructura especulativo-teológica. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to focus on the coexistence, during the transmission of the doctrine on the Topics in the early Middle Ages, of two different interpretations: although both emerge from two commentaries on Cicero’s Topics, however, they gave rise to two different readings: the one transmitted by Marius Victorinus who thought the topics almost exclusively in the service of Rhetoric, the other conceived by Boethius who intended to restore the centrality that the Topics had in the Aristotelian (...) Logic, by subordinating the rethorical Topics to dialectical Topics. My conclusion is that the Early Middle Ages can be considered, from an epistemological point of view, as a long boetiana aetas. Although the corpus of Boethius’s logical writings was not yet available until the second half of the 11th century, Boethius’s methodological approach on the Topics somehow continued to support the slow but constant absorption of the topical doctrine into the new Christian sensibility. (shrink)