Boezio, commentatore e interprete delle Categorie aristoteliche

Boethius’s commentary on the Categories played a decisive role in the reception and interpretation of Aristotle’s logic in the Latin West. In this paper, I propose a general overview of the initial section of the commentary (PL 64, 159A–168 D), with special reference to Boethius’s discussion on the topic of homonymy. The main purpose of my analysis is to show that, following Porphyry, Boethius: 1) transmits a general classification of homonymy, within which the notion of “analogy” will progressively assume an autonomous and intermediate status between pure homonymy and synonymy; 2) defines on the logical level the relationship between aequivocatio and translatio, which in the following centuries will assume a central importance in relation to the metaphysical question of the praedicatio in divinis.