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Introduction to Aristotle
Edited, with and Introduction, by Richard McKeon
667 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1947
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About the author
Aristotle
4,354 books5,611 followersAristotle (Greek: Αριστοτέλης; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At 17 or 18, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of 37 (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante Alighieri called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Pierre Abélard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At 17 or 18, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of 37 (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante Alighieri called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Pierre Abélard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 8, 2014
This is a great introduction to Aristotle, suitable for anyone who wants a taste of his most famous works without investing a great amount of time or money in any single one of them.
I've only read most, though not all, of the selections in this book, not always from this edition.
What I have read in this edition are De Anima, Metaphysica, Ethica Nicomachea, and Politica.
The book's selections of The Posterior Analytics (Logic), On the Soul (Psychology/Biology), Nichomachean Ethics and the Poetics are all complete. These are Aristotle's writings that are probably of most interest to us modern readers, so the editor selected well I think.
(The Politics is still referred to fairly often, so a larger selection from that would have been useful.)
One thing I don't like about the book, at least this first edition of it, is the footnotes. They are very cryptic, and given in a style that seems ultra-academic, perhaps outdated, and impossible in some cases to even interpret.
For example, in the Politics selection Aristotle says, at the beginning of Chapter 11, book III, "Most of these questions may be reserved for another occasion." The footnote to this statement is
Well not all the footnotes are that indecipherable, thank goodness.
I've only read most, though not all, of the selections in this book, not always from this edition.
What I have read in this edition are De Anima, Metaphysica, Ethica Nicomachea, and Politica.
The book's selections of The Posterior Analytics (Logic), On the Soul (Psychology/Biology), Nichomachean Ethics and the Poetics are all complete. These are Aristotle's writings that are probably of most interest to us modern readers, so the editor selected well I think.
(The Politics is still referred to fairly often, so a larger selection from that would have been useful.)
One thing I don't like about the book, at least this first edition of it, is the footnotes. They are very cryptic, and given in a style that seems ultra-academic, perhaps outdated, and impossible in some cases to even interpret.
For example, in the Politics selection Aristotle says, at the beginning of Chapter 11, book III, "Most of these questions may be reserved for another occasion." The footnote to this statement is
cc. 12-17, iv., vihuh?
Well not all the footnotes are that indecipherable, thank goodness.
January 24, 2026
This collection of writings gives a truncated picture of Aristotle’s comprehensive worldview. Of Aristotle’s writings, only On the Soul and Nicomachean Ethics are provided in full.
Aristotle is about the science of his time and specifically about the causes of motion. Taking from Samuel Stumpf’s Socrates to Sartre: A History of Philosophy, Aristotle’s physics is about what causes material bodies to move; his ethics is about what causes the good life; his politics is about the causes of the good state; and his aesthetics is about what causes the good poem.
Beneath all of this lies Metaphysics (and also Book 12, Lambda, of his Physics) in which all movement is caused by the unmoved mover. In Aristotle’s system, that movement was not about kicking things into motion and forgetting about it in a hands-off way. Rather, the universe moves - as with Plato’s Divine - and that movement is teleological in its operation. It is perfection. It is a good toward which all movement aims. In Durant’s way of putting it, for Aristotle “God moves the world as the beloved object moves the lover….He is pure energy - a magnetic power.”
I’ve written a Goodreads review on Metaphysics. For more commentary, see that review. I have also reviewed De Anima. Soul is what moves the body. In that work, Aristotle discusses plant and animal soul. Plants move by nutritive needs; animals are moved by nutritive needs and sensitivity (needs via the senses?) “Man” lives at the top of the animal hierarchy, and is moved by intellectual needs, which are two. The practical intellect works on behalf of moral virtue. This is the calculating faculty of mind that regulates the appetitive, animal soul. Then there is the philosophical intellect, the job of which is to contemplate what is good, per se. Consistent with his teleological worldview, humans are driven to fulfill these needs. Framed this way, who humans are, in essence, is who they ought to be.
This sets Aristotle up for his Nicomachean Ethics.* Here the basic theme is this: Excessive or deficient expressions of emotion are bad; the mind’s role is to regulate them. This is like the Stoics (though I understand there may be some differences between the Stoics and Aristotle). Aristotle now makes his case for the good man. That man operates by the golden mean. While he throws in all sorts of detail, in essence he means that too much or too little emotional expression in behavior is bad. Those that lie in between are good. Moral virtue is “a disposition to choose the mean” and to “avoid excess and defect.” To not follow the mean is a vice.
Thus, courage is good; cowardice and rashness is bad. Friendliness is good; obsequiousness and churlishness is not. Continent (self-restraint) is good; incontinent and softness is bad. Liberality with regard to money is good; prodigality is excess; meanness/stinginess is a deficit of virtuous behavior.**
We go through life in this self-regulated way, which involves moral virtue. This involves practical intelligence that helps us negotiate our way. The result of a well-regulated life is practical wisdom. Intellectual virtue has two divisions. The calculative intellect regulates moral behavior in accordance with the mean. Intellectual virtue is contemplative. It is about what is good per se. This is in accord with divine perfection and movement. The result of intellectual virtue is philosophical wisdom. Such wisdom lies at the apex of human virtue.
From the virtuous “man,” Aristotle moves to his ideas about good government, which extends“man’s” natural impulse toward political association, that starts first with the family, and then extends to the village and then to larger organizations such as the political state. For the latter, he divides governance into three large categories: rule by the one, which is monarchy; rule by the few, which is aristocracy; and rule by the many, which is the polity.
As the goal of each is to govern for the common good, it does not matter which form of governance is best, or at least I didn’t get that sense. The goal is the good of all; the form of ruling is the means to that end. Aristotle says there are two aims of the good state. First, as the introduction to Politics in this collection says, its task is to satisfy “all the needs of men.” But the higher end of the state is, as with Plato, to promote the good life, which includes the citizen's responsibility to obey orders. It also includes inculcating moral and intellectual virtue, though it’s not clear to me whether this will reflect the basic Platonic division between those qualified to rule and those whose job is to obey.
With tyranny, oligarchy, and extreme democracy - the respective bad counterparts to the good governments above - occur. The objective for each of these bad forms is to promote private interest at the expense of the common interest.
In his Ethics, Aristotle has a long discussion on friendship in all its complexity. The discussion on utilitarian friendship was excellent, though it’s fair to question whether utility goes with friendship. Aristotle talks about pleasure and pain and, thus, long precedes the utilitarians. Like them, Aristotle says it is the object that provides pleasure on the one hand and pain on the other, but he does not address the Schopenhauer question about why objects provide pleasure and pain. Had he done so, his energy model of humankind would have bumped into a biological motive force. We interact with the world out of need and fear, about what “objects” we need and what we don’t want, which is pain in Schopenhauer’s sense. When we are successful in getting what we need or defending ourselves, there is pleasure. While integrally connected to plus and negative objects, pain and pleasure are internal emotion states.
Biological motive forces - Darwinian need to survive and reproduce - encounter a deeper question. Aristotle sees character as inculcated through good upbringing, habit formation and modeling - whereas from a Darwinian perspective it is inborn, and exists along a continuum of self interest without regard to others on the one hand and other-regarding on the other. The significance of this added point hits his ethical and political system straight on: How does one - the virtuous person or ruler - work for the good of the whole if they have no motivation to do so? If one’s motive force is raw self-interest, why does one care about the good of the whole? Why not screw others if one can get away with it?
I thought Aristotle’s political theory, boiled down, was excellent. The essentials are clear, not obscured. From the natural instinct for group life, we have ruling systems of which there are three main forms to protect and promote the common good. The deviation forms of government do the opposite and private interest prevails. From this, inequality and injustice flows, in contrast to equality and justice that is necessary for good governance systems. The only missing piece in Aristotle’s system, at least as presented in this book, is the role of power to promote and protect the good, or to do the opposite.
Aristotle was voluminous in his commentary on this and that. His range of interests is impressive. But his writing was tedious to say the least. Despite all of his points and subpoints, and the pretext or organization, his arguments were hard to follow in any kind of orderly way. It is a struggle to see how everything fits together. I did not go into the book excerpts on Posterior Analytics and Rhetoric and Poetics. They were quite removed from my interests.
*Reputed to be associated in some way (dedicated to him; or edited by him) his son Nicomachus.
**Interestingly, Aristotle is describing behavior not emotions that prompt the behavior, though it’s common to conflate the two.
Aristotle is about the science of his time and specifically about the causes of motion. Taking from Samuel Stumpf’s Socrates to Sartre: A History of Philosophy, Aristotle’s physics is about what causes material bodies to move; his ethics is about what causes the good life; his politics is about the causes of the good state; and his aesthetics is about what causes the good poem.
Beneath all of this lies Metaphysics (and also Book 12, Lambda, of his Physics) in which all movement is caused by the unmoved mover. In Aristotle’s system, that movement was not about kicking things into motion and forgetting about it in a hands-off way. Rather, the universe moves - as with Plato’s Divine - and that movement is teleological in its operation. It is perfection. It is a good toward which all movement aims. In Durant’s way of putting it, for Aristotle “God moves the world as the beloved object moves the lover….He is pure energy - a magnetic power.”
I’ve written a Goodreads review on Metaphysics. For more commentary, see that review. I have also reviewed De Anima. Soul is what moves the body. In that work, Aristotle discusses plant and animal soul. Plants move by nutritive needs; animals are moved by nutritive needs and sensitivity (needs via the senses?) “Man” lives at the top of the animal hierarchy, and is moved by intellectual needs, which are two. The practical intellect works on behalf of moral virtue. This is the calculating faculty of mind that regulates the appetitive, animal soul. Then there is the philosophical intellect, the job of which is to contemplate what is good, per se. Consistent with his teleological worldview, humans are driven to fulfill these needs. Framed this way, who humans are, in essence, is who they ought to be.
This sets Aristotle up for his Nicomachean Ethics.* Here the basic theme is this: Excessive or deficient expressions of emotion are bad; the mind’s role is to regulate them. This is like the Stoics (though I understand there may be some differences between the Stoics and Aristotle). Aristotle now makes his case for the good man. That man operates by the golden mean. While he throws in all sorts of detail, in essence he means that too much or too little emotional expression in behavior is bad. Those that lie in between are good. Moral virtue is “a disposition to choose the mean” and to “avoid excess and defect.” To not follow the mean is a vice.
Thus, courage is good; cowardice and rashness is bad. Friendliness is good; obsequiousness and churlishness is not. Continent (self-restraint) is good; incontinent and softness is bad. Liberality with regard to money is good; prodigality is excess; meanness/stinginess is a deficit of virtuous behavior.**
We go through life in this self-regulated way, which involves moral virtue. This involves practical intelligence that helps us negotiate our way. The result of a well-regulated life is practical wisdom. Intellectual virtue has two divisions. The calculative intellect regulates moral behavior in accordance with the mean. Intellectual virtue is contemplative. It is about what is good per se. This is in accord with divine perfection and movement. The result of intellectual virtue is philosophical wisdom. Such wisdom lies at the apex of human virtue.
From the virtuous “man,” Aristotle moves to his ideas about good government, which extends“man’s” natural impulse toward political association, that starts first with the family, and then extends to the village and then to larger organizations such as the political state. For the latter, he divides governance into three large categories: rule by the one, which is monarchy; rule by the few, which is aristocracy; and rule by the many, which is the polity.
As the goal of each is to govern for the common good, it does not matter which form of governance is best, or at least I didn’t get that sense. The goal is the good of all; the form of ruling is the means to that end. Aristotle says there are two aims of the good state. First, as the introduction to Politics in this collection says, its task is to satisfy “all the needs of men.” But the higher end of the state is, as with Plato, to promote the good life, which includes the citizen's responsibility to obey orders. It also includes inculcating moral and intellectual virtue, though it’s not clear to me whether this will reflect the basic Platonic division between those qualified to rule and those whose job is to obey.
With tyranny, oligarchy, and extreme democracy - the respective bad counterparts to the good governments above - occur. The objective for each of these bad forms is to promote private interest at the expense of the common interest.
In his Ethics, Aristotle has a long discussion on friendship in all its complexity. The discussion on utilitarian friendship was excellent, though it’s fair to question whether utility goes with friendship. Aristotle talks about pleasure and pain and, thus, long precedes the utilitarians. Like them, Aristotle says it is the object that provides pleasure on the one hand and pain on the other, but he does not address the Schopenhauer question about why objects provide pleasure and pain. Had he done so, his energy model of humankind would have bumped into a biological motive force. We interact with the world out of need and fear, about what “objects” we need and what we don’t want, which is pain in Schopenhauer’s sense. When we are successful in getting what we need or defending ourselves, there is pleasure. While integrally connected to plus and negative objects, pain and pleasure are internal emotion states.
Biological motive forces - Darwinian need to survive and reproduce - encounter a deeper question. Aristotle sees character as inculcated through good upbringing, habit formation and modeling - whereas from a Darwinian perspective it is inborn, and exists along a continuum of self interest without regard to others on the one hand and other-regarding on the other. The significance of this added point hits his ethical and political system straight on: How does one - the virtuous person or ruler - work for the good of the whole if they have no motivation to do so? If one’s motive force is raw self-interest, why does one care about the good of the whole? Why not screw others if one can get away with it?
I thought Aristotle’s political theory, boiled down, was excellent. The essentials are clear, not obscured. From the natural instinct for group life, we have ruling systems of which there are three main forms to protect and promote the common good. The deviation forms of government do the opposite and private interest prevails. From this, inequality and injustice flows, in contrast to equality and justice that is necessary for good governance systems. The only missing piece in Aristotle’s system, at least as presented in this book, is the role of power to promote and protect the good, or to do the opposite.
Aristotle was voluminous in his commentary on this and that. His range of interests is impressive. But his writing was tedious to say the least. Despite all of his points and subpoints, and the pretext or organization, his arguments were hard to follow in any kind of orderly way. It is a struggle to see how everything fits together. I did not go into the book excerpts on Posterior Analytics and Rhetoric and Poetics. They were quite removed from my interests.
*Reputed to be associated in some way (dedicated to him; or edited by him) his son Nicomachus.
**Interestingly, Aristotle is describing behavior not emotions that prompt the behavior, though it’s common to conflate the two.
April 5, 2011
It's been said somewhere, don't remember by whom, that all of western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato and Aristotle. This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the fact remains that these two seminal figures of western thought have left at least an indirect mark on all of the subsequent thinkers. And yet, it's been my experience that Plato is much more widely read and studied, in college courses and otherwise, than his equally famous erstwhile disciple. This probably has to do a lot with the style: Plato's "Socratic dialogs" have been written in a form that makes them instantly accessible to readers of all ages, and tends to belie the complexities and subtleties of the underlying ideas. Aristotle's style is much more pedantic and scholarly. One could easily see his writings appearing in peer-reviewed journals.
In part due to the above considerations, it took me a while to finally pick up a book of Aristotle's writings and try to go through at least some of them. This volume brings a few of his works in their entirety, but for most part only more important excerpts are given. Reading it requires some effort on the part of the reader, especially if you are not used to the style and substance of ancient Greek thought. However, the effort was worthwhile, and I've come away from reading this work with renewed and deepened appreciation for Aristotle. In terms of the sheer breadth of his inquiry, there has not been anyone quite like him before or since.
In part due to the above considerations, it took me a while to finally pick up a book of Aristotle's writings and try to go through at least some of them. This volume brings a few of his works in their entirety, but for most part only more important excerpts are given. Reading it requires some effort on the part of the reader, especially if you are not used to the style and substance of ancient Greek thought. However, the effort was worthwhile, and I've come away from reading this work with renewed and deepened appreciation for Aristotle. In terms of the sheer breadth of his inquiry, there has not been anyone quite like him before or since.
May 23, 2013
To call this an "introduction" is a pretty severe exaggeration. McKeon's General Introduction (with the exception of his section on 'Aristotle's Life and Times') and his introduction to Analytica Posteriora are both horrendously written, and thus far in my reading of AP much of the content has been entirely unintelligible without outside research due to a lack of explanation within the text by Aristotle, who assumes the reader familiar with his ideas and terms, as well as an almost complete lack of glosses by the editor. I do not believe for one second that the difficulty I'm having with this text is because the ideas are to esoteric or complex for me to understand; rather, it is because of poor writing and editing on the part of McKeon. True, it is reasonable to expect the reader to put some work into a book--I'm not saying otherwise. But to expect the reader to do their own research on basic terminology and ideas goes beyond reason in a book termed an "Introduction."
May 17, 2017
I mostly skimmed this one but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. It reminded me of the other book on Aristotle I read, and it has the same person to introduce the works. This book includes a biography of Aristotle as well as a short introduction to each work. Since I had previously read a lot of the pieces included in this text, I really only had to read Rhetoric and some other parts that interested me. It has the same line number system that the other book has, so that must be some kind of standard for Aristotle's works, you know, like how they number Classical Music pieces.
I liked how they began with his work on Logic and the Syllogism because it is a gateway to his analytical methods of thinking and classifying things. this would be a great book to study Aristotle, but alas, I must return it since it is from the Library. Some of his thinking is really outdated, but he can't help knowing things about medicine and diseases and other stuff that had to wait for the Renaissance.
I liked how they began with his work on Logic and the Syllogism because it is a gateway to his analytical methods of thinking and classifying things. this would be a great book to study Aristotle, but alas, I must return it since it is from the Library. Some of his thinking is really outdated, but he can't help knowing things about medicine and diseases and other stuff that had to wait for the Renaissance.
January 14, 2019
For Omnibus we just read Ethics and Poetics - I thoroughly enjoyed Poetics, but Ethics was a slog. That said, it was worth slogging. I may be #TeamPlato, but I appreciate Aristotle's desire to really push the universals into the particulars; to deal with the here-and-now, and his philosophical honesty in recognizing that though he can define evil, he cannot actually define good - and so, at least here, he doesn't try. He operates in a broken, constrained humanistic worldview, and brilliantly does so. Without the light of the truth of God, this is virtue as good as you are going to get...and it's amorphic, subjective, and exhausting. Which explains a whole lot of what went wrong in Medieval Europe once Aristotle's teaching re-emerged on the world stage.
February 14, 2021
A very good introduction to one of the most famous philosophers the world has ever seen. I'd be curious to read another translation, though, as I'm not sure translations based on 19th century German translators are fully faithful to the original documents.
January 17, 2010
I enjoy Aristotle's philosophy, but find the writing circular in the extreme. This translation does nothing to mediate that. I would love to see an edition that brought the language current. But maybe that's not possible while staying true to Aristotle's diligent categorization and analyzation of his various subjects...
October 27, 2020
This book covers substantially the same material as 'The Basic Works of Aristotle', but this edition had updated introductions by editor McKeon. My reading of it was for the new and different matters within.
March 2, 2024
The educational value is obvious though not easily accessible. For a great feeling of accomplishment I highly recommend pressing one's way through this volume. If you prefer an educational text to facilitate understanding look elsewhere.
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November 21, 2009None
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June 16, 2011have 1947 edition
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