# Apophantic

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Specific type of declaratory statement

In [logic](/source/Logic), **Apophantic** ([Greek](/source/Greek_language): ἀποφαντικός, "declaratory", from ἀποφαίνειν *apophainein*, "to show, to make known") statements are declaratory statements whose truth-value can be determined by examining whether its predicate can be logically attributed to its [subject](/source/Subject_(grammar)).

For example, consider the two sentences "All [penguins](/source/Penguins) are [birds](/source/Birds)" and "All [bachelors](/source/Bachelors) are unhappy". In the first sentence, the set of all birds is a [category](/source/Theory_of_Categories) which penguins can or cannot [necessarily](/source/Necessity_and_sufficiency) be placed into. In the second sentence, "unhappy" is not a category that all bachelors must necessarily be placed into; it is [contingent](/source/Contingency_(philosophy)) on the happiness of the individual bachelors. However, because no penguins need to be consulted or examined to determine that all penguins are birds, the conclusion that the first statement must be true is apophantic.

The term "apophantic" first appeared in the works of [Aristotle](/source/Aristotle).[*[citation needed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)*] The concept appears in the Arabic Aristotelian tradition as *jâzim*.[1] In [phenomenology](/source/Phenomenology_(philosophy)),[2] [Edmund Husserl](/source/Edmund_Husserl) considered apophantic judgment central to his 'transcendental logic',[3] but his student [Martin Heidegger](/source/Martin_Heidegger) argued later that apophantic judgements are the *least* reliable means of obtaining truth because they are cut from the original interpretive framework of relations to the subject.[4]

## See also

- [Analytic–synthetic distinction](/source/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_distinction) – Semantic distinction in philosophy

- [Diairesis](/source/Diairesis) – Epistemology classification method

- [Heideggerian terminology](/source/Heideggerian_terminology) – Overview of terms coined by the 20th-century German philosopher

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** Street, Tony. ["Arabic and Islamic Philosophy of Language and Logic"](https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/arabic-islamic-language/). *plato.stanford.edu*. Retrieved 2024-05-31.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** ["Glossary of Terms in Heidegger's Being and Time"](http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/b_resources/b_and_t_glossary.html#a). *www.visual-memory.co.uk*. Retrieved 2024-05-31.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** See course lectures on passive synthesis in the mid 1920s.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** ["Glossary of Terms in Heidegger's Being and Time"](http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/b_resources/b_and_t_glossary.html#a). *www.visual-memory.co.uk*. Retrieved 2024-05-31.

## External links

- ["Benedetto Croce, *Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic*"](https://web.archive.org/web/20061001085713/http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8asth10.txt)

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