L'analisi socratica della sillaba nel Teeteto e la riformulazione aristotelica

This research is divided into three phases. At first it is shown that the three meanings of logos – which Socrates furnishes in Theaetetus for the purpose of verifying the validity of the third definition of ejpisthvmh, i.e. the one in which science is called “true opinion accompanied by reason” (... dovxan ajlhqh` meta; lovgou ejpisthvmhn ei\nai, 202c7-8), in which he also uses the example of the syllable and the letters – all belong to a context of a semantic-descriptive type. Then there is an examination of some passages from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, especially Z 17, H 2, Z 12, H 3, D 26 as well as Poe. 20, 1056b20 ff., for the purpose of showing how the same example of the syllable and the letters is used by Aristotle in syntactic-causal terms always to express the same theoretical position, that is to say one that distinguishes, at both a physical and a logical level, a) what is capable of accepting a certain determination, i.e. matter, b) what syntactically and causally determines matter itself, i.e. substance seen as form, and c) what is determined and as such has semantic value, i.e. substance as synolon. The example of the syllable and the letters, used by Plato to define science, is used by Aristotle to clarify the inseparability of form from subject and in this sense it sums up all aristotelian anti-Platonism, because it shows the causal function of a syntactic type proper to causal form. Thirdly, there is positive assumption of the Aristotelian solution in order to verify whether it throws light on the meaning of the theory of the dream in Theaetetus, and the hypothesis is advanced that this theory could be linked to an investigation of the validity of mathematical knowledge as the culminating phase of the pre-eidetic epistemological pathway. In this connection, the failure of the possibility of defining ejpisthvmh as “true opinion accompanied by reason” would lie for Plato in the absence of action of the causal principles and above all in the fact that mathematical knowledge would be reduced to doxastic knowledge, since mathematicians do not dispose of and do not need the causal principles of the objects of their science.