Aristotle for beginners

Which book by Aristotle would you recommend for a beginner?

I'm a beginner in Greek philosophy and started reading Plato only two years ago. Since western philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato, I figured it would be best to start at the source, and work my way down. Now that I've finished Plato's dialogues, I'm looking for a good segue into Aristotle.

The problem is: I picked up one of Aristotle's books in a bookstore the other day, but couldn't get past the first page. Not sure whether it was the translation, or his writing style, or just me.

Could be all of the above... it is pretty dense stuff.

I've read them all and I think the books on Politics and Rhetoric are the most entertaining ones, so I would start with them. The Metaphysics, Physics, Categories and Analytics would be of interest mostly for people who want to learn about the history of scientific thought. The Nicomachean ethics was the most boring one for me, but maybe that's just because I'm not particularly interested in moral philosophy.

Generally speaking Aristotle's writing style is dry and to the point, he doesn't waste any space on embellishing his arguments. Definitely not as entertaining as Plato, and when you read him it's sometimes hard to stay focused because much of what he's saying seems quite familiar, sometimes even self-evident. But that only testifies to the enormous impact he has had on western thought so it's good to remind yourself how original these ideas were 2400 years ago.

Aristotle was the Father of Formal Logic, so in my opinion his main article on Logic gives you a firm basis on which the rest of his philosophies are grounded. Deductive logic is an essential read for college as it is usually a philosophy and a cross sectioned mathematics course. My first introduction to Aristotle was this path and I have enjoyed his other articles due to a good foundation in deductive logic...I think I would have gotten bogged down without it being first. As my old philosophy Professor use to say..."I am not teaching you anything new...I am only coaching you in things you knew as a child but have chosen to complicate with adulthood!"

In school I had the most luck with the Poetics, but that may be because I was a literature major. The Ethics was pretty tough. In fact, Aristotle may be the toughest reading I've ever done.

Thanks to all for your input. I plan to read all of Aristotle's books included in the Western Canon.

>3 thcson:: thcson

I can't help wonder how Aristotle came up with the geocentric model of the universe. It doesn't inspire my confidence in his Physics, I have to admit.

>4 lokidragon:: lokidragon,

Which English translation of Aristotle did you use? A bad translation can make the most logical treatise seem incoherent and incomprehensible.

#3 "...much of what he's saying seems quite familiar, sometimes even self-evident. But that only testifies to the enormous impact he has had..."

What reading would y'all suggest for a grasp of what the field of philosophy looked before Aristotle's impact? Familiarizing oneself with that would make his writings easier to appreciate. (I'm yet to tackle any Greek philosophy save for Herakleitos...)

Except for Plato there really isn't that much left from before his time. For a quick overview start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Socratic_philosophy. But remember, most of it only survived fragmentary.

>7 defaults:
it's probably not very scholarly, but penguin put out a collection of extracts with commentary on sophist philosophers called The Greek Sophists by John Dillon and Tania Louise Gergel.

booksontrial, message 6, all of the evidence is that earth is the center of the universe. Aristotle didn't have the theoretical basis for assuming a centerless universe, and it would have been foolish for him to claim something contrary to the evidence without some general acceptance and understanding of that theoretical basis.

Robert

>10 Mr.Durick:: Mr.Durick,

Somehow I knew that message would elicit a response from you :), although it wasn't my intent to debate Unitarian Universalist belief.

The Pythagoreans developed a heliocentric model before Aristotle's time. I was just wondering how people come up with different theories based on the same evidence, and how these theories were accepted or rejected at different times in history.

The Pythagorean system, AFAIK, was not heliocentric, but had both the Sun and the Earth circling a "Central Fire".

I don't know Pythagorean cosmology. Assuming the Pyrthagoreans located the center of things off Earth, they had to have made a leap of faith into a theory or image that was beyond the evidence, perhaps with the addition of explanation congruent with the evidence.

Robert

Its amazing to think that three of the greatest minds that ever were lived within a hundred years of each other. All 3 from ancient greece, and their ideas are still debated till this day. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all have claims at being some of the smartest people that ever lived and they all were from ancient greece. Their ideas have shaped everything from philosophy, science, religion, and literature.

>14 thomasitt:

Not only did they live at the same time, but Plato was a disciple of Socrates, Aristotle was a student of Plato's, and Alexander the Great was a student of Aristotle's.

A very pleasant introduction can be found in the Knowledge Products recordings in their Giants of Philosophy series. The narration is done by Charleton Heston. Actors read the primary source quotations, of which there are many. The script is written by a university professor from the field. Many works will be cited, and you'll probably have a good idea of what you wish to start reading after listening to this recording.

http://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Knowledge-Products-Philosophy-Library/dp/0786169...

I've just been looking at Robin Waterfield's translation of the Physics in the Oxford World Classics. Very clear - it might be a good place to start Aristotle. Especially if you've read the Pre-Socratics already (if not, read them first).

>17 shikari:: shikari,

For some reason Waterfield's translations aren't to my liking in general. When I was reading Plato, I compared Waterfield's works with others', and often ended up choosing other translations.

Which Pre-Socratics works would you recommend?

>18 booksontrial:: booksontrial,

Pre-Socratics tend to be gathered together into collections. The 'standard' collection is the old Fragmente der Vorsokratiker by Diels and Kranz, but this is too much (and there's a more up-to-date reference now with facing-page English translations in the form of Daniel Graham's The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics in two paperback volumes from Cambridge for £60/$100). You could try the translations in Jonathan Barnes' Early Greek Philosophy in Penguin Classics. You've said you don't like Robin Waterfield much, but he's done an equivalent collection in the Oxford World Classics (The First Philosophers: the Presocratics and Sophists). The usual university textbook, which has the Greek text as well, is Kirk, Raven and Schofield's The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts, which is very good.

I don't know whether the early volumes of Gunthie's History of Greek Philosophy is still well-regarded or not. Can anyone tell me?

But the lightest route into the Pre-Socratics is perhaps in the form of Professor Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy Without any Gaps which he has put out as a series of free podcasts on ITunes. The first fourteen twenty-minute podcasts introduce you to the pre-Socratics, while the next seventeen or so take you through Socrates and Plato. Oh, and there's always Catherine Osborne's Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, a good taster.

>19 shikari:: shikari,

Thanks for the recommendations. Just out of curiosity, what criteria do you use when you judge the quality of a book on (history of) philosophy?

My criterion is whether I've found it useful or not, booksontrial (though a standard text is a standard text).

>21 shikari:: shikari,

An explanation on my part might be in order here. The reason I'm asking is that different people find different things useful in the same book. What is useful to some might be useless to others. So I often look for more detailed opinions than a simple "good" or "useful" in a book recommendation, to get a sense whether it would be helpful to me.

There is a reason a book becomes a standard text. No? :)

Well, when I talked about a standard text, I meant the critical edition of the primary text that is generally referred to in the secondary literature. For the Pre-Socratics, the standard edition of the Greek text is that of Diels and Kranz, collected in a number of volumes. Any contemporary study will refer to Diels and Kranz. Graham's new book may well reach some sort of standard status, but we'll have to see.

As for other books, I tend to read reviews before using them. If you have access to a university library or if you have JSTOR access, look for reviews there. Otherwise it is more difficult, but books on classics brought out in the last ten to fifteen years are usually reviewed on the free Bryn Mawr Classical Review site. These reviews are normally in English, tho' as an academic review site, other academic languages (i.e. French, German, Italian and Spanish) are also used from time to time (helpful if you take the reviews as a but of practice in the relevant languages, tho' possibly unhelpful if you are not familiar with the language and can't be bothered to work through with a dictionary). The language of the review is not necessarily that of the book.

>25 shikari:: shikari

I didn't know about the Bryn Mawr Classical Review site. Thanks for the info.

Just finished Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle seems to take every opportunity to “correct” Plato, when in fact he is only attacking a strawman. In the end, his arguments often support and clarify Plato’s ideas, albeit using his own terminology. Aristotle, Aristotle, what has Plato ever done to make you treat him so disrespectfully?

Three ideas strike me, booksontrial. First, Plato did not select Aristotle as his successor at the Academy, despite his being (we are told by later sources) Plato's main assistant in the school. Could this have made Aristotle resentful? More importantly, perhaps, is the second point, that the Academy was a rival to Aristotle's own school, the Lyceum, and Aristotle would have contrasted his own teaching with Plato's on these grounds. What was Plato's own position on individual points? We can never know what the precise teaching methods were in the Academy, nor precisely what Plato taught in the Academy and whether it corresponded exactly with the position in a given dialogue.

Third idea is that Aristotle was forging his own philosophy (in this, the Lyceum can't have hindered him, and his independence might well have swayed Plato against appointing him successor). He uses 'Plato', perhaps, as a way of formulating his own ideas (formed naturally through engagement with his teacher's ideas, whether in opposition or support) rather as Plato does with the ideas of 'Lysias' or 'Protagoras' which were not, one sometimes suspects, entirely as Plato presents them. Think too of Plato's 'Socrates' - he expresses Plato's ideas more surely than he expresses the historical Socrates' ideas, certainly in the later dialogues.

A further thought that strikes me - a commonplace, I know - is the oppositional nature of Greek ideas and writings of the period. The Fifth and Fourth centuries were not a time when one regarded one's rivals as colleagues and strove to harmonise ones own thought with theirs - far from it.

Finally, it could be argued that Aristotle has been ultimately the more influential as a philosopher. He was fully Plato's equal, even, we are told, down to literary skill, Aristotle's dialogues being famed in antiquity for their artistry, though they are lost now. Does he need to have been respectful of a man whose sillier ideas he firmly rejected?

The word that struck me was "patricide". As Plato and Aristotle both believed that the intellect was the best part of man or the true man, to attack and destroy another's ideas would be equivalent to murder. But, you've certainly put it in milder and more reasonable terms. :)

Did the Academy or Aristotle's Lyceum charge their students fees like the Sophists? If not, there was no financial incentives in disparaging their rival. If it was purely intellectual rivalry, using ad hominem or straw man is often a sign of an inferior intellect, imo.

I agree with your thoughts about Aristotle formulating his own philosophy through engagement with Plato's ideas and the oppositional nature of Greek intellectuals in the period. It does take intellectual engagements and competitions to develop sound ideas.

Come to think of it, there seems to be a pattern in Nicomachean Ethics. When Aristotle discussed one of Plato's ideas, he didn't always attribute it to Plato explicitly, but only when he felt certain he could refute (or support, on rare occasions) it convincingly. I wonder why.

Oh, well spotted, booksontrial! I'll have to reread.

Has anyone read and understood "Prior Analytics"?

I don't recall ever reading a book where I had to stop constantly and think to myself "That's not true" or "It doesn't necessarily follow". Aristotle's Logic doesn't seem logical to me at all. It would be nice to have a discussion with someone who understands it.

For the best introduction to Aristotle, I recommend History of Philosophy by Albert Schwegler

I myself can't recommend any 'one way' into Aristotle. For years the difficulty of finding an approach into his thought put me off. I contented myself with scraps and fragments contained in other works. To help me with my own writing, I recently began again with the 'Poetics'..but I found it again, off-putting. It hardly helped me at all. Honestly I couldn't name the random series of books I careened from, one to the other. And ...I kind of think that's how it might be, for any person similar to myself. I think what I went through, was probably a typicality--see, I never wanted to spend my precious time deciphering his cryptic language, I wanted some way to jump immediately to the kernel of his thought--since he is such a jumping-off point for the rest of the western tradition.

You have to try several ways until you find the one which works for you. The most 'critically respected' or the 'best translation' may not necessarily be the one for you. Historical overviews may be too broad; compilations may be too cluttered.

I will say this: I love the 'Oxford University Press' "Very Short Introduction' series. This is a way to very quickly orient yourself to what you want to study in depth. The series covers all the major periods of western intellectual history and devotes individual titles to specific giants.

With regard to Aristotle himself; despite all that I went through over so many years, never obtaining very much from him--these days I am pleased (and startled) to find he is my #1 favorite philosopher; certainly in my top 1-3. His rigor is something I refer to--internally--just about every day. The keenest edge of his legacy? For me--what turned the key--is his analysis of causality.

Its tremendous. Aristotle has massive utility in that he teaches one how to think. Not what to think but how to think. How to reduce complex situations and questions to their simplest terms. Its pure gold. Provides a method to lead you through any problem.

Try the VSD overview and then yes--by all means--I agree with the selections suggested above by other LT'ers. They're sage.

Hope this helps.

Also, at the bottom of an encyclopedie entry for Aristotle you find a list of readings to choose from.