Gassendi's Logic

This chapter outlines the main elements of Gassendi’s logic, tracing its development across three main texts: Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos (written across the 1610s and 1620s), the Carpentras manuscript (circa 1636), and Syntagma philosophicum (published 1658). It pays particular attention to the polemic against Aristotelian logic, to the reception of Epicurus’ canons, and to the elaboration of an empiricist theory of knowledge in Institutio logica (published in Syntagma philosophicum Part I, “On logic”). Finally, it lays out some of the main lines of reception of Gassendi’s logic.