Even for the knowledgeable, the tasks get vitiated by the blemishes of fate or the gods, or the human nature. It is not impossible to divine what is meant here, but how much more idiomatically it could have been done: Things go wrong, even for the wise, because of the iniquities of fate and of men. The bibliographical control of source works is almost non-existent, although this is not always a...

Aristotle in his Categories 10, 13a37ff, De Interpretatione 4f, 17a8–37; 10, 19b5– 20b12 and Prior Analytics i.2, 25a1–13; i.46, 51b5–52b35 introduced a distinction between affirmative and negative (kataphátikos and apophátikos, or in noun form katáphasis and apóphasis). Aristotle’s views are not my concern here. But already Aristotle’s treatment of the notions raises some fundamental questions: