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A group of TAC-California students and tutors gathered in the Dillon Seminar Room earlier last month for the  year’s first Tutor Talk, given by Dr. Anthony Andres. Titled The Problem of Principles, the talk drew from texts familiar to students from their Freshman Year philosophy course in Aristotelian logic.

Throughout the academic years, members of the ���ϲ����� teaching faculty occasionally give informal presentations such as these at the end of the day’s classes. The casual afternoon gatherings allow students to learn from their tutors outside the familiar context of the Discussion Method. Tutors speak on a wide range of topics of personal interest, reflecting on subjects from or supplementary to the College’s classical curriculum.

Dr. Andres began his talk considering Aristotle’s treatment of demonstrative argument in the Posterior Analytics, noting how, though Aristotle considers demonstration the path to real, certain knowledge, he also wrote much about dialectic argument. In his presentation, Mr. Andres proposed beginning an inquiry into the importance of dialectic by asking questions about Aristotle’s account of first principles.

“My ultimate purpose in this investigation is to understand in detail how dialectic builds a road to the principles of the sciences, but my goal in this talk is more modest,” he told his audience. “Here, I just want to see why the principles need a road in the first place. To do that, I will look back at the Posterior Analytics, not only to see what a first principle is, but especially to see the questions that arise about the first principles in the course of its discussion.”