gersonides' notion of a rethorical assertoric sentence and its relation to averroes' interpretation of aristotle's modal logic

One of the problems with which the student of aristotle´s modal logic has to struggle is the question about the proper interpretation of the assertoric or absolute premise. as ancient sources indicate, this was already a problem among the principal pupils of aristotle, who were not quite sure about the nature of assertoric sentences. during the middle ages, arab philosophers and logicians also discussed this issue and sometimes adopted the teaching of theophrastus and eudemus or took part besides alexander of aphrodisias and the later commentators of aristotle. one of these arab philosophers who considered thoroughly the problem of assertoric sentences and tried to give it an answer was ibn rushd or, as he is commonly known in western society, averroes. later on, averroes opinion about modal syllogisms and assertoric sentences reached many jews living in southern france and northern spain through hebrew translations of averroes´ logical questions and middle commentary to aristotle´s organon, especially his middle commentary to the prior analytics.our paper studies the case of gersonides (1288-1344), a jewish astronomer and philosopher from southern france who wrote a supercommentary to averroes´ logical questions and another supercommentary to his middle commentary on the prior analytics. as we will see, gersonides´ view on modality is much indebted to averroes, from whom he takes the temporal interpretation of modal notions and the theory of modalized terms. however, he seems to depart from the arab philosopher in many other significant matters, for example, in his interpretation of the assertorric premise or sentence. what most disconcerted gersonides was the possibility of a collapse of the distinction between assertoric and necessary sentences. in order to solve this problem, gersonides proposed the notion of a rethorical assertoric sentence, a sentence for which we can claim universality without saying that it is universal. our main goal will be, thus, to compare gersonides solution with averroes original iterpretation of aristotle´s modal logic and assertoric sentences in order to better understand the impact of the great arab philosopher on gersonides´ work.