Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning

Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning
Author: David Bronstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2016
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019872490X

David Bronstein sheds new light on Aristotle's 'Posterior Analytics' - one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of Western philosophy. He argues that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest - knowledge and learning - and goes on to highlight Plato's influence on Aristotle's text.

Aristotle and Natural Law

Aristotle and Natural Law
Author: Tony Burns
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2011-10-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441107169

Aristotle and Natural Law lays out a new theoretical approach which distinguishes between the notions of 'interpretation,' 'appropriation,' 'negotiation' and 'reconstruction' of the meaning of texts and their component concepts. These categories are then deployed in an examination of the role which the concept of natural law is used by Aristotle in a number of key texts. The book argues that Aristotle appropriated the concept of natural law, first formulated by the defenders of naturalism in the 'nature versus convention debate' in classical Athens. Thereby he contributed to the emergence and historical evolution of the meaning of one of the most important concept in the lexicon of Western political thought. Aristotle and Natural Law argues that Aristotle's ethics is best seen as a certain type of natural law theory which does not allow for the possibility that individuals might appeal to natural law in order to criticize existing laws and institutions. Rather its function is to provide them with a philosophical justification from the standpoint of Aristotle's metaphysics.

Aristotle's Philosophy of Biology

Aristotle's Philosophy of Biology
Author: James G. Lennox
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2001
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521659765

In addition to being one of the world's most influential philosophers, Aristotle can also be credited with the creation of both the science of biology and the philosophy of biology. He was the first thinker to treat the investigations of the living world as a distinct inquiry with its own special concepts and principles. This book focuses on a seminal event in the history of biology - Aristotle's delineation of a special branch of theoretical knowledge devoted to the systematic investigation of animals. Aristotle approached the creation of zoology with the tools of subtle and systematic philosophies of nature and of science that were then carefully tailored to the investigation of animals. The papers collected in this 2001 volume, written by a pre-eminent figure in the field of Aristotle's philosophy and biology, examine Aristotle's approach to biological inquiry and explanation, his concepts of matter, form and kind, and his teleology.

How Aristotle gets by in Metaphysics Zeta

How Aristotle gets by in Metaphysics Zeta
Author: Frank A. Lewis
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2013-06-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191640646

Frank A. Lewis presents a closely argued exposition of Metaphysics Zeta—one of Aristotle's most dense and controversial texts. It is commonly understood to contain Aristotle's deepest thoughts on the definition of substance and surrounding metaphysical issues. But people have increasingly come to recognize how little Aristotle says in Zeta about his own theory of (Aristotelian) form and matter. Instead, he spends the bulk of the book examining 'received opinions', often as filtered through his own Organon, but including above all the views of Plato, who is at times friend, and at times foe. For much of the time, we are left to reconstruct Aristotle's finished views, subject to the constraint that they survive the critique he directs in Zeta at the philosophical tradition. In this book, Lewis argues that in giving his actual conclusion to Zeta in its final chapter, 17, Aristotle drops his earlier, largely critical engagement with received views, and turns approvingly to his own Posterior Analytics. The result is a causal view of (primary) substance, representing the property of being a (primary) substance (or the substance of a thing) as, in modern dress, the second-order functional property of (Aristotelian) forms, that they be the cause of being for different compound material substances. The property of being the cause of being for a thing is a role property, and it is realized in different forms and the sets of causal powers associated with them, matching the variety of things that have a form as their substance. Meanwhile, the failure of previous attempts at definition in earlier chapters leaves Aristotle's own definition standing as the 'best explanation' for the views proprietary to the theory of form and matter. The point that (Aristotelian) forms are the primary substances is not the main conclusion to Zeta, but rather a result his definition must give, if the definition is to be acceptable.

Aristotle on Mind and the Senses

Aristotle on Mind and the Senses
Author: G. E. R. Lloyd
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007-11-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521044431

The Symposia Aristotelica were inaugurated at Oxford in 1957. They are conferences of select groups of Aristotelian scholars from the UK, USA and Europe, and are held every three years. In 1975 the meeting was held in Cambridge and was devoted to Aristotle's psychological treatises, the De anima and the Parva uaturalia. The members of the conference discussed some of the much debated problems of Aristotle's psychology and broached important new topics such as his ideas on imagination. Dr Lloyd and Professor Owen have collected and edited the papers presented to the Symposium and provided an analytical index.

The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
Author: Ronald Polansky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 487
Release: 2014-06-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0521192765

This volume provides a systematic guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, a key text of ancient philosophy, and Western philosophy in general.

Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”

Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”
Author: Otfried Höffe
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2010-10-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9047444809

Anyone interested in theories of moral or human practice will find in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics one of the few basic models relevant through to today. At the centre of his analysis, both sober and cautious, are such concepts as happiness, virtue, choice, prudence, incontinence, pleasure and friendship. Aristotle’s arguments are by no means of merely historical interest, but continue to exert a key influence on present-day ethical debate. The thirteen contributions in this volume present the foundations of Aristotle’s investigation, along with the modern background of its reception.

One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics

One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics
Author: Edward C. Halper
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2005-01-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1930972474

The problem of the one and the many is central to ancient Greek philosophy, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to Aristotle's treatment of it in the Metaphysics. This omission is all the more surprising because the Metaphysics is one of our principal sources for thinking that the problem is central and for the views of other ancient philosophers on it.The Central Books of the Metaphysics are widely recognized as the most difficult portion of a most difficult work. Halper uses the problem of the one and the many as a lens through which to examine the Central Books. What he sees is an extraordinary degree of doctrinal cogency and argumentative coherence in a work that almost everyone else supposes to be some sort of patchwork. Rather than trying to elucidate Aristotle's doctrines-most of which have little explicitly to do with the problem, Halper holds that the problem of the one and the many, in various formulations, is the key problematic from which Aristotle begins and with which he constructs his arguments. Thus, exploring the problem of the one and the many turns out to be a way to reconstruct Aristotle's arguments in the Metaphysics. Armed with the arguments, Halper is able to see Aristotle's characteristic doctrines as conclusions. These latter are, for the most part, supported by showing that they resolve otherwise insoluble problems. Moreover, having Aristotle's arguments enables Halper to delimit those doctrines and to resolve the apparent contradiction in Aristotle's account of primary ousia, the classic problem of the Central Books. Although there is no way to make the Metaphysics easy, this very thorough treatment of the text succeeds in making it surprisingly intelligible.

Aristotle's Metaphysics

Aristotle's Metaphysics
Author: Roberto Radice
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 928
Release: 2023-03-27
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9004450408

The authors collaborated with 50 scholars from around the world to produce an exhaustive annotated bibliography on the central work of the Aristotelian corpus. It brings together signed descriptions of more than 3200 books and articles, as well as several thousand reviews and notes, originally published in English, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Russian. Descriptions are fully cross-referenced to one another. The first [Italian] edition (Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1996) has been thoroughly revised, corrected and updated, and is complemented by an index of the most important loci Aristotelici.