Le fil des catégories: Trendelenburg, Kant et la réception de l’Aristoteles Kategorienlehre (1846)

In the XIXth century Germany, the Berlin Academy of Sciences edition of the corpus aristotelicum is the condition that has made historically possible the « return to Aristotele », one of the major figures of which has no doubt been A.F. Trendelenburg. Following as commun thread the grammatical relationships inherent to the different components of the proposition, Trendelenburg aims at demonstrating the underlying order of the categories, whose number has nevertheless been left indeterminate by Aristotle. The objective is essentially to discover the original contact point between thinking, language and being, in direct opposition to the outcomes of German idealism. So, it is the link between logic and metaphysics that lies at the heart of the philosophical exegesis that Trendelenburg provides in the 1846 Aristoteles Kategorienlehre, on which we focus our attention in order to appreciate the guidelines of a project, whose originality has basically been bordered to the allegedly unproductive efforts of a speculative grammar or neglected in favor of other epigones of the Aristotelian linage – from Brentano to Heidegger.