CAN ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC BE TRANSLATED INTO CHINESE

Comparative philosophers have reported the difficulty in understanding logic structures that derives from cultural differences, and yet, very little comparative literature in this field has been conducted. This book is a comparative study of Aristotelian and Chinese logic, and is intended as a contribution to the philosophy of language and the practice of education, insofar as it helps us understand how language affects the logical structure of people's thinking. The author claims that the difficulties in the discourse result not only from the fact that concepts in each language fail to match properly, but also from the fact that the logical spaces themselves are structured differently. A report of the responses of American and Chinese school children's reading Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery-a logic text in Philosophy for Children-offers evidence that logical spaces of Western and Chinese thinking are indeed structured differently. The possibility of a mutually beneficial rapprochement between Chinese and Aristotelian logic depends on whether we can lay out a way for each side to understand the other in a common discourse.