Vicisitudes de los Tópicos

Abstract

Aristotle's Topics capturesthe adventure of arguing. It may be distinguished in them morphologic-constitutive rules that stablish the elements of discussion, on one hand, and morphologic-regulative rules that suggest how must they work, on the other hand. This is very different from inferential-constitutive rules as the ones we find in the Prior and Posterior Analytics. Hence, Topics must be read as inferential-regulative rules, that is, as argumentative strategies or practical considerations and not as principles or axioms. The reception of the Topics from the Christian Scholastic is interested in formalizing this treatise as a pre-logic, “technifying” debates, and, therefore, losing the sense of the adventure of arguing. This systematizing lecture began with Theophrastus and continued with Boetius, Abelard and Peter of Spain until it turned what began as an inventary of argumentative strategies into a defined technique. The thesis here defended is that, because of its contextual, open, and inconsistent features, Topics must be read, in part, as an informal logic or as a regulative logic that offers a criterial, gradual and emphatically personal rule usage.