ABSTRACT
Averroes is an altogether different type from Avicenna, a true commentator, who labours to find ways of saving the truth of Aristotle's words. Averroes worked on the interpretation of the Prior Analytics at various stages of life, and towards the end of his life he wrote an essay on modal syllogistic, familiar to the Latin world as the Quaesitum on mixed syllogisms. Averroes says that if the major is per se necessary and the minor per accidens necessary and per se assertoric, the conclusion will be per accidens necessary and assertoric per se. Averroes is clearly interested in cases where necessity-propositions have different senses in the premises and the conclusion of an argument. A proposition can have a claim to metaphysical necessity, within the context of Aristotelian essentialism, only by virtue of standing in a relation to one of these per se necessary propositions.
