Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages

Aristotle’s Children by Richard E Rubenstein is a five-star book marred by the last nine pages (below).

Rubenstein offers good descriptions of some of Aristotle’s philosophy, contrasting it well with other philosophical and religious systems with which it competed through the ages, and follows the particulars of the survival of many of his works (and later commentaries thereon) from ancient Greece through the Mediterranean Muslim world into Spain and then beginning about 12th century into France and Italy, where Catholic scholars attempted to reconcile this gift of ancient wisdom with mutually incommensurate religious dogma, and where it seeded the Renaissance. Very readable and recommended.

The last nine pages in my edition show more comprise an inept purported attempt to draw lessons from the preceding which might be useful for the world. It’s a jarring disconnect from the rest. The author should have made this into a separate chapter and omitted the chapter. Among the more easily denoted problems are anthropomorphism, tautology, self-contradiction, straw-men, bombast, lumping, cliche, hand-waving, and repeated mischaracterizations of science. Aristotle would have puked. An undefined “Aristotelian project” is touted twice in these last pages. I did not recall such a thing from the previous (290) pages and could not find it there or in the index. One must then wonder how freely the author borrowed for those 290 pages. show less

The astonishing story of revelation and transformation in the Middle Ages. When Aristotle's lost works were translated and available once again, the medieval world was galvanized, the Church and the universities were forever changed, and the stage was set for the Renaissance. The book shows the struggle between faith and reason as philosophers and institutions grappled with the new/old works of Aristotle.

This book had some interesting things in its journey through Aristotelian history and his influence on thinking and reasoning through time, but it was tough to stay interested...

This book had some interesting things in its journey through Aristotelian history and his influence on thinking and reasoning through time, but it was tough to stay interested...

Religion and Science