ARISTOTLE’S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE (PART II)

Abstract

In the text is carried out the integral analysis of Aristotle’s concept of language. The analysis is partly set up as the critique of Heidegger’s critique of Aristotle. The author refutes Heidegger’s understanding that Aristotle reduces the whole of manifestation of language to the logical function of judging (λόγος ἀποφαντικός). Against this understanding is being made the research decision that Aristotle's concept of language – using the metaphysical doctrine of the four causes as the key – can be understood in its immanent quaternity, which tells what are the definitions for linguistic causa materialis, causa formalis, causa efficiens and causa finalis by Aristotle. The decision rests upon the clear difference between Aristotle's philosophy of understanding and philosophy of reason, as well as upon the high interpretative value of his nonthematic differentiation between the categories of immediacy and the categories of mediation.