Topics (Aristotle)

The Topics (Ancient Greek: Τοπικά; Latin: Topica) is the name given to one of Aristotle's six works on logic collectively known as the Organon. In Andronicus of Rhodes' arrangement it is the fifth of these six works.

The treatise presents the art of dialectic - the invention and discovery of arguments in which the propositions rest upon commonly held opinions or endoxa (ἔνδοξα in Greek). Topoi (τόποι) are "places" from which such arguments can be discovered or invented.

What is a topic?

In his treatise Topics, Aristotle does not explicitly define topic, though it is "at least primarily a strategy for argument not infrequently justified or explained by a principle". He characterises it in the Rhetoric thus: "I call the same thing element and topic; for an element or a topic is a heading under which many enthymemes fall." By element, he means a general form under which enthymemes of the same type can be included. Thus, a topic is a general argument source, from which the individual arguments are instances, and is a template from which many individual arguments can be constructed. The word topic derives from ancient Greek tópos (literally "place, location").

Connection to Aristotle's theory of the syllogism

Though the Topics, as a whole, does not deal directly with syllogism, clearly Aristotle contemplates the use of topics as places from which dialectical arguments (i.e.