ABSTRACT
In ordinary discourse, people often qualify what they say by appealing to one respect or another of what is being said in order to avoid contradiction. Aristotle himself has a philosophy teeming with such qualifications, often expressed via the “qua ” locution. He says things like “A doctor builds a house, not qua doctor, but qua housebuilder, and turns gray, not qua doctor but qua gray-haired. On the other hand, he doctors or fails to doctor, qua doctor”. The Islamic philosophers seemed to focus on qualification as the need arose when dealing with specific issues—in the way that Aquinas or Scotus would develop logical doctrines in their theological or metaphysical discussions. Once the Latin medievals had access to Aristotle’s full corpus, with the Greek and also with some Arabic commentaries, they too appropriated and elaborated upon Aristotle’s analyses of qua propositions. Islamic and Byzantine philosophers had the full Aristotelian corpus about from the start.
