History of the term and concept "reasoning" in Russian logic

Abstract

The article attempts to trace the history of the term and the concept of "reasoning" in Russian logic from the middle of the 18th to the beginning of the 19th century. The formation of the concept of "reasoning" in Russia takes place during the period of Enlightenment and is associated with the development of academic science and education, the emergence of national textbooks on logic, rhetoric and grammar. During this period, the term "reasoning" occurs in three cases: (1) as an archaism of the term judgment – "reasoning", (2) as an independent term of rhetoric, denoting the type of literary work closest in meaning to "scientific discourse", and (3) as a common use in the sense of "reasoning about something" both in logic and outside it. The logical problematics is derived from the general principles of philosophy, in which a theoretical interpretation of human cognitive abilities is presented, which will subsequently constitute the content of psychology and anthropology. At the same time, logic is understood as a propaedeutics of philosophy, providing the receipt of true knowledge, which is now being problematized by epistemology or the theory of knowledge.

The word "reasoning" remains at the center of logical problems throughout its history, in its various meanings of use, both in the theoretical part of logic, which studies the main logical actions: concepts, judgments, inferences (syllogisms), and in practical, including material from eristics (the art of argument) and pedagogy to the theory of proof and the methodology of science. The full logical term "reasoning" becomes already in the formal logic of the 20th century, when it acts as a general concept for any logical actions, including inference and syllogism. However, it will be shown how in the 19th century, in the practical part of logic, the concept of "reasoning" from a rhetorical term becomes logical, absorbing the meaning of the concept of proof, but preserving the specifics of the rhetorical concept: discursiveness, materialism, informality, the requirement of persuasiveness, which, in turn, will find its development in a separate philosophical discipline of our time – the theory of argumentation.