Annotated Bibliography – CDG –

Englisch 09, SEC2

Barnes, J. (1969). Aristotle's Theory of Demonstration. Phronesis, 14(2), 123-152.

Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/418183
The author, an English philosopher specialized in ancient philosophy who was
professor at Oxford University, and at the Universities of Paris (Sorbonne) and
Geneva, intends to exhibit and cement a solution to the problem of concomitance
between what is given in Posterior Analytics1 and the other Aristotelian treatises. To
this end, he discusses and refutes three classical solutions, exposes his solution and its
foundation based on etymological arguments, discussing passages of the text and
analyzing the inductive reasoning, all these in order to establish the equivalence
between demonstrative and pedagogical arguments. From this arduous analysis,
Barnes concludes that the theory of demonstration is a formalization of a didactic
conversation; moreover, he eliminates the possibility that this theōría is a source of
new knowledge. Barnes's text will be of great importance in the development of this2
writing because it presents sufficient attacks to reject previous solutions, and because
develops the foundation of the proposal in an extremely formal and rigorous manner.

1
Abbreviated as APo.
2
My problem-solution text.