In confinio sensus et intellectus. APo. B 19

Through a detailed analysis of APo. II 19, my article tries to aswer two questions: 1) the first immediate principles, whose grasping is debated in the last chapter of APo., are (a) terms or (b) propositions? 2) which is the way in which these principles are grasped? How should we construe the theory that Aristotle, in the last section of this chapter, proposes in order to explain the grasping of these first immediate principles? 2b) Aristotle’s exposition of this theory is sealed by a comparison between the human knowing soul and the rebuilding of an army after a rout: how should we explain this comparison? After having answered to the question 1 holding that a is true, I propose an exegesis of the comparison between the soul and the phalanx; exegesis which tries to show that, if we give the appropriate weight to what we know about the military practice in IV century B.C. Greece, we can explain some main exegetical problems about this very debated text.