2. Analytical Introduction (16)

4.2. The division between formal and material logic

Many authors preface the division we have just studied with a division of the whole of logic and its three parts into formal logic and material logic. Jacques Maritain does so, and justifies it in this way:

Logic being the art which permits us to proceed with order, ease, and without error in the act itself of reason, it is necessary to consider both the form and the matter of our reasonings, whence comes its division into two parts: minor logic or "formal" logic and major logic or "material" logic.

Minor logic studies the formal conditions of the science and analyzes or "resolves", as is said, the reasoning into principles on which it depends from the point of view of its form or its disposition; it teaches the rules necessary for the reasoning to be correct or well constructed considering the disposition of the materials. (...)

Major logic studies the material conditions of the science, and analyzes or resolves reasonings into the principles on which they depend for their material or in other words their content; it shows to which conditions the materials of the reasoning should respond such that it have a conclusion certain at every point, not only from form, but also from the material - that is, a certain and true conclusion.
(Jacques Maritain, Elements de philosophie,t. II, L'ordre des concepts, 1. Petite logique, Paris, 1966, pp. 10-11 (our translation). On the same theme, cf. John of St Thomas, Ars logica, "praeludium secundum", 5 a 32 - b 26.

This division, as can be seen in the text just quoted, best suits logic of argumentation, where the order of the concepts of the reasoning can be clearly distinguished on the one hand, and the truth of the conclusion which follows from the rest. In fact, the real object of a proposition is known either immediately or mediately; now if it is mediately, the study of the conditions of truth pertains to material logic of argumentation; if on the other hand it is immediately grasped, no need to search for it! So in what concerns the logic of the universal, we can distinguish with certainty a material aspect, which corresponds to the generic meanings of universal concepts (as we will see in the course), and a formal aspect, which corresponds to the intention of universality itself. But this last is nothing other than predicability; now the study of diverse modes of being predicable involve, if only in a formal way, the ultimately real subjects, to which a concept can be attributed; therefore the analyses of the relations of universality take on a "material" aspect. for this reason, the scholastic treatises of logic place the study of predicability in the major logic. (this already appears in John of St Thomas, who treats De universali secundum se as well as the individual types of universality in the secunda pars artis logicae titled, De intrumentis logicalibus ex parte materiae. The same for Josephus Gredt, in his Elementa philosophiae aristotelico-thomisticae, vol. 1, logica/philosophia naturalis, Freiburg i. B., 1929, then in the op. cit. of Jacques Maritain.)

One can see therefore that the distinction between formal and material logic is fully justified with regard to argumentation, but only partially with regard to the universal, whereas it appears inadequate with regard to the proposition. Therefore, we do not consider such a division essential to the whole of logic.