| APODEICTIC (ἀποδείκνυμι, to show), self-evident, «demonstrative» without demonstration, beyond contradiction, standing in contrast with DIALECTIC. This term was borrowed by Kant from Aristotle (Analyt. Prior., lib. I. cap. 1), who, restricting the work of demonstration, made a distinction between propositions which admitted of contradiction or dialectic discussion, and such as were the basis or result of demonstration. Kant introduced an analogous distinction between our judgments, giving the name of apodeictic to such as were above all contradiction, or were necessary and universal, the a priori conditions of experience, as opposed to those which are contingent on the result of experience.Adamson, art.» Logic,» Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., states the distinction thus:—»The one rests on principles essential, necessary; seen to be true, while the other proved from data which are merely received as credible, and as containing probable, received opinions on a subject about which there may be difference of view; and, it may be added, that in the one we reach conclusions which are essential, in which the predicate is necessarily and universally true of the subject, while in the other the conclusion remains, like the data, credible merely, and is, at best, only one of the probable answers to a question.» Thus, «apodeictic knowledge deals with the universal and necessary, that which is now and always, that which cannot be other than it is, that which is what it is simply through its own nature. It is the expression of the true universal in thought and things, τὸ καθόλον.» |
