Suhrawardi’s Ideas about Syllogism

Abstract

Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 1194), in his most important book, Hikmat al-Ishrāq, claims that he has simplified the Aristotelian theory of syllogism by reducing its many rules to a few by which the validity of all moods can be proven. This is done by reducing all negative and particular categorical propositions to universal affirmative propositions and introducing two meta-language rules, one for the second and the other for the third figure. This article is an exposition of the non-modal part of his syllogism and an examination of his claim to simplifying the Aristotelian theory of syllogism.

Keywords

• Shihab-al-Din Suhrawardi
• Aristotelian non-modal syllogism
• conversion