De Interpretatione

She's not a scholar of Aristotle.

She's not engaged with Aristotle in the sense of there being passages exploring the nuances of some passage in the Posterior Analytics or De Interpretatione or, you know, how... six different interpretations.

It's not scholarly.

It's not this kind of erudite close reading, although she does quote passages from Aristotle occasionally, including difficult ones.

Strictly speaking, what I've just said isn't true.

Many of you probably know that Aristotle has a treatise called De Interpretatione.

The Middle Ages are rife with treatises on interpretation, I suppose what I'm really saying is that the word hermeneutics wasn't available and the idea that there ought to be a sort of a systematic study of how we interpret things wasn't really current.

Of course, by the same token, the notion of hermeneutics arises religion first and specifically in the Christian tradition, but that isn't to say that there wasn't long before the moment at which hermeneutics became important in Christianity.

It did aliquo modo assenti adherere, and therefore required a positive precept.

But about this time it fell out that the learned brother aforesaid had read Aristotelis de Elletica, and especially that wonderful piece, De Interpretatione, which was the faculty of teaching its readers to find out a meaning in everything but itself, like commentators on the Revelations who precede prophets without understanding a syllable of the text.

"Brothers," said he, "you are to be informed that of wills duo sunt genera, non cupatori and scriptori, that in the scriptori we'll hear before us there is no precept or mention about gold lace conceditur, but si idem affirmetur de non cupatorio negatur.

For brothers, if you remember, we heard a fellow say when we were boys that he heard my father's man say that he heard my father say that he would advise his sons to get gold lace on their coats as soon as ever they could procure money to buy it." "That is very true," cries the others.