From Aristotle through Boethius to scholasticism

‘Topic’ is the infelicitous but by now standard translation for the Latin technical term ‘locus’, designating a logical concept variously understood throughout ancient and medieval philosophy. The medieval tradition of the Topics has its roots in Aristotle's Topics. In that book, Aristotle's purpose is to present an art of arguing, more precisely the art of dialectical disputation or Socratic arguing; and most of the book is devoted to a method for the discovery of arguments. The main instrument of this method is a Topic, by which Aristotle understands primarily a strategy of argumentation (such as, ‘If the species is a relative, [one must] examine whether the genus is also a relative’) and secondarily a principle confirming the line of argument produced by the strategy (for example, ‘If the species is a relative, the genus is also’). Six of the eight books of the Topics consist largely in a loosely ordered compilation of such strategies and principles.

Aristotle considers these Topics part of dialectic and distinguishes them from two different but analogous sorts of Topics, rhetorical Topics (which aid in the construction of rhetorical arguments) and mnemonic Topics (which aid in recalling things committed to memory).

Topics received considerable attention in later antiquity from the Greek commentators on Aristotle and from Latin rhetoricians, including Cicero, who wrote his own treatise (Topica) on dialectical Topics. In the course of their work, the discipline of the Topics changed until by Boethius' time it has become very different from Aristole's art of Topics, particularly in its understanding of the nature of a Topic.