Note 55 — Chapter V · ANALYTICA PRIORA I.

Ibid. p. 44, a. 39. Alexander and Philoponus (Scholia, p. 177, a. 19, 39, Brandis) point out an inconsistency between what Aristotle says here and what he had said in one of the preceding paragraphs, dissuading the inquirer from attending to the highest generalities, and recommending him to look only at both subject and predicate in their special place on the logical scale. Alexander’s way of removing the inconsistency is not successful: I doubt if there be an inconsistency. I understand Aristotle here to mean only that the universal expression KZ (τὸ καθόλου Ζ) is to be preferred to the indefinite or indeterminate (simply Z, ἀδιόριστον), also KΓ (τὸ καθόλου Γ) to simple Γ (ἀδιόριστον). This appears to me not inconsistent with the recommendation which Aristotle had given before.