Ed Feser gives a nicely articulated hermeneutic principle, stated below:

"The arguments of great philosophers of the past need to be understood, not only in the context of their times, but also in light of how later thinkers built on them. For an argument can contain, inchoately, real insights which only later thinkers were able to spell out adequately; and we will miss these insights if, overly fearful of anachronism, we insist pedantically on reading the argument in isolation from this later tradition. What ultimately matters in philosophy is not exactly who said exactly what, exactly when and exactly how. What matters is what is true, and whether an argument is likely to lead us to it. Anachronism, then, while a danger, is a less serious danger than loss of truth. To think otherwise is to abandon philosophy for mere scholarship. (Scholarship has its place, of course. But its place is to serve the ends of philosophy."

However, there must be some further principle whereby one is able to judge the strength (or defect) of the author in his original thought so as to distinguish the confused universal (or inchoately stated principle) from the determinate and distinctly stated interpretation. What is this principle? Here is one proposal. Here is mine (not necessarily in contradistinction to the prior proposal): philosophical wisdom.

Aristotle offers arguments that resolve the valid syllogisms to various first figure syllogisms (Prior Analytics I.7). He further argues that the particular first figure forms, both negative and affirmative (i.e. "Darii" and "Ferio") can be resolved to the universal negative of the first figure ("Celarent") by contradiction and reductio. Thus, of the fourteen valid forms, ten resolve directly or indirectly to "Celarent" and two resolve to "Barbara" (they are both negative: "Baroco" and "Bocardo"). However, there seems to be no resolution of "Celarent" to "Barbara." However, one can offer the following arguments that the "perfection" of these figures, that the mind can immediately grasp the necessity of the conclusion, by resolving them to the principle of contradiction. Furthermore, perhaps, we have a from these arguments an argument that the negative does resolve to the affirmative universal figure.

The necessity of the conclusion from the "Celarent" form is per se notum because "Celarent" is a form of speech that sets down the negation (not-being) of a predicate whole from a subject whole, which is in turn the predicate whole of a subject part, but such a form appeals to the negative side of the principle of contradiction, which is per se notum. "Celarent" also appeals to the principle that the whole is greater than the part.

The necessity of the conclusion from the "Barbara" form is per se notum because "Barbara" is a form of speech that sets down the affirmation (being) of a predicate whole of a subject whole, which subject whole is predicate to a subject part, but such a form appeals to the positive side of the principle of contradiction, which is per se notum. Likewise, this form utilizes the first principle that the whole is greater than or contains the part.

However, being is prior to non-being in notion, and therefore affirmation (saying of something that it is) is prior to negation (saying of something that it is not) in notion. Thus the necessity of "Celarent" depends upon that of "Barbara."

I apologize for the dirty word in the title. These arguments are actually attempting to be a part of metaphysics.