Nota sobre os conhecimentos do ‘o que é’ e do ‘por que’ no livro II dos Segundos Analíticos de Aristóteles

Abstract

I examine the difficulties involved in the Aristotelian proposal to identify the knowledge of “what it is” and “why it is”, in order to better understand the outlines that delimit it. I propose that the connections by which Aristotle links definition and explanation, and hence essence and cause, depend on the mutual convertibility between nominal expressions and predicative sentences