|
Aristotle
Online (for free!) |
|
Aristotle
and Aristotelian Scholarship (for sale!) |
Reason, Egoism, Capitalism—spreading
underground
Aristotle
|
Aristotle
Online (for free!) |
|
Aristotle
and Aristotelian Scholarship (for sale!) |
| These links to Aristotle's online works take you to the Internet Classics Archive. Their full list of works is here. We've presented separate links to individual works so we have a place to offer brief introductions. So far we've only introduced the logical works. |
| Search Engine at the Internet Classics Archive.
After you've made your acquaintance with Aristotle by a first reading,
you'll want to study separate ideas intensively. This is a snap, thanks
to the Internet Classics Archive! Just go to their
search page, select Aristotle, and search on the concept that interests
you. For example, a search on "leisure" will collect all of Aristotle's
references to leisure.
|
| These works are the source of logic. They are called the Organon, or instrument, the tool we use to learn. Textbooks of logic are useful, but there is no substitute for reading the master. Aristotle was vividly aware that he was breaking new ground. |
| Categories Short, but fundamental. A classification of all reality. Every thing either is a concrete individual thing ("substance" is the traditional term; some say "entity"), or is a quantity, quality or what-have-you of a concrete individual thing. Entities constitute reality. |
| On Interpretation How we put ideas together to make propositions. |
| Prior
Analytics The syllogism. An exhaustive study of the forms of valid
syllogism. Logicians have lovingly classified them the way biologists classify
exotic species of insect, but I think the entire Prior Analytics
is best viewed as a very long proof by induction. It proves the fundamental
importance of one particular kind of proposition (the universal
affirmative: "All A is B." I call them A-premises.), and of
one particular kind of syllogism (the one traditionally called Barbara:
"All A is B; All B is C; therefore All A is C.")
In Barbara, two A-premises with a middle term in common lead to a new A-premise as a conclusion. Because this conclusion is itself an A-premise, it can serve as a premise for yet other syllogisms in Barbara, and so on without end. Other types of proposition and syllogism have their uses, but you cannot build theories from them. |
| Posterior Analytics The work for which all the preceding are preparation. The Posterior Analytics should be titled How to make a theory. If we are to have a theory—a large, logically connected body of propositions—we must have A-premises. Where are we to get them? Definitions. Axioms. All theoretical investigation is a search for middle terms. |
| Topics This work seeks "a line of inquiry whereby we shall be able to reason from opinions that are generally accepted about every problem propounded to us, and also shall ourselves, when standing up to an argument, avoid saying anything that will obstruct us." |
| On
Sophistical Refutations The exposition of common fallacies
and dirty tricks of argument.
|
| Physics |
| Metaphysics |
| Nicomachean Ethics |
| Politics |
| Rhetoric |
| Poetics |
| On the Soul |
| The History of Animals |
| On the Parts of Animals |
| On the Gait of Animals |
| On the Motion of Animals |
|
Aristotle The standard English Aristotle is "The Works of Aristotle Translated into English under the editorship of W. D. Ross," from the Oxford University Press, in 12 volumes—a. k. a. The Oxford translation. It has it all: the famous, the obscure and the (almost certainly) spurious. My set is my pride and joy. But even in the 70s when I ordered it, one of the volumes was out of stock, then permanently out of stock, and was finally confessed to be out of print. An aggressive local used book store only managed to track down the missing volume for me within the last year or so. For most readers, a single, readily available, and much cheaper volume which draws from the Oxford translation is entirely adequate: Basic Works of Aristotle, Ed., Richard McKeon, Hardcover, Random House, April 1941, 1487 pages. Mckeon writes in the preface, "The eleven volumes of the Oxford translation can be reduced to a single volume, once the clearly inauthentic works have been excluded from consideration, without too serious loss of portions that bear on problems of general philosophic interest." (Eleven volumes? Yes, volume 12 is a collection of fragments: snippets that other writers attributed to Aristotle.) If you want more of Aristotle than the 1487 pages McKeon offers, you're no beginner. If you are a beginner, Mckeon offers some very sensible advice on how to get started reading Aristotle. And the price is right! Even if you downloaded these works from the web and printed them yourself, you'd have a hard time matching the price of Mckeon's volume. Get "Basic Works of Aristotle" now from Amazon.com! |
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