What do you think?
Rate this book
Aristotle II
19th Printing
General Contents:
History of Animals
On the Parts of Animals
On the Motion of Animals
On the Gait of Animals
On the Generation of Animals
Nicomachean Ethics
Politics
The Athenian Constitution
Rhetoric
On Poetics
General Contents:
History of Animals
On the Parts of Animals
On the Motion of Animals
On the Gait of Animals
On the Generation of Animals
Nicomachean Ethics
Politics
The Athenian Constitution
Rhetoric
On Poetics
- GenresPhilosophyClassics
699 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1952
3 people are currently reading
155 people want to read
About the author
Aristotle
4,338 books5,558 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 24, 2020
Dry reading, though the history of the writings of Aristotle is quite incredible and its influence on Western Civilization is rivaled perhaps only by the Bible.
Read
December 13, 2025"On Poetics" (pp. 681-699)
This is a fragment of a longer work on dramatic storytelling. This portion covers tragedy. (Poetics at the time was about the art of story telling rather than about poetry as we use the term now.)
Aristotle divides works into comedy and tragedy. The first step leading to this division was that some writers chose to write about noble characters and events, which would lead to the genre or tragedy. Others chose to write about the ignoble, first in the form of invective but later this form would develop into the comedic genre. In comedy the author focuses on the ridiculous, the ugly. But comedy will mostly be dealt with later. Here is is concerned with the tragic. He defines it thus, "an imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; [I guess this means that the arc of the story carries through with the action and its consequences?] in language with pleasurable accessories [the quality of the writing, acting, staging, etc.], each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form, with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions." (p. 684).
The action of the actors is motivated by their character and their thoughts. The element of character is what makes us ascribe certain moral qualities to the actors in the play. Along with the elements of thought and character, every play has the elements of spectacle, fable, diction, and melody. He tells us that "the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come second. . . . The element of thought comes third." Action is plot and plot is first because the work is portraying ("an imitation") of action observed in life. Perhaps he means that it is the action which we observe and see, the material manifestation, and then it is the character and the thought that gives the artist's particular illumination of human nature through characterization (the character and thoughts of the "agent" in the work), which attempts to explain the action.
The task of the poet (the playwright) is arrange the parts in the proper way and with the requisite magnitude to render the play to beautiful--"beauty is a matter of size and order." The playwright must seek Unity in the length and content of the story. This is the idea that one main action and its attendant reactions go together to form the unity of the play--The arc of the story as we would have it now.
In terms of plot, you have to avoid a tragedy that has a good man meeting a bad end, or a bad man meeting a good end. Also an extremely bad person should not be shown falling from happiness into misery as it will not move us to pity or fear. (By which I think he refers only to the protagonist, and not to minor characters.) Thus the protagonist should be "a man not preeminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error of judgement . . . The perfect plot, accordingly, must have a single, and not (as some tell us) a double issue; the change in the hero's fortunes must be not from misery to happiness, but on the contrary from happiness to misery; and the cause of it must lie not in any depravity, but in some great error on his part." (p 687). Notably, he says that tragedy is about the catharsis of pity and fear, and if you lose sight of that, you have lost connection with the genre of tragedy.
In terms of character, a character should have some moral goodness, first, and then the character should be appropriate to the role. A phenomenally sexist comment here: "it is not appropriate in a female character to be manly, or clever." He also states that goodness can be shown in any character "even in a woman or a slave, though the one is perhaps inferior, and the other a wholly worthless being." That says something about Aristotle's character, perhaps. A character must also be consistent. Whenever a character speaks, it is desirable that what they say is the necessary or probable thing for them to say in that instance. And the consequences that follow on that moment should also be necessary or probable. He notes that one can take license to make the characters somewhat exaggerated, as when a portrait painter makes a king more handsome than he was in fact. (I imagine, though, that we want to avoid going so far as to make a caricature.)
He discusses also "Discovery", which is the moment in which the fatal flaw is revealed or in which it leads to the pitiful result that makes the story tragic. He also notes the idea, familiar to us now, of complication (rising action, or twists in the plot) and Denouement (the ending of the story arc).
A tragedy should not be epic, i.e. should not have a multiplicity of stories in it. It needs one main action of magnitude, as he might say.
from Google: "In Poetics, Aristotle discusses the appropriate "magnitude" or length of a plot, especially in tragedy. He famously states that a tragic action should be of a length that can be "embraced by the memory" and move a character from prosperity to calamity, or vice versa, in a probable or necessary sequence."
Note to myself on terminology:
intercalary - days inserted to round out a calendar and make it work
Iambic - one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable
Spondee - two stressed syllables
Dactyl - one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable ("Thunder and Lightening" consists of two dactyls. (THUN-der and LIGHT-en-ing)
"Nicomachean Ethics" (Book I, II, III, IV) (Nicomachus was Aristotle's son and editor.)
Started taking notes on the reading and realized that there is a pretty good summary provided in the contents (pp. 335-337).
Book I: In which Aristotle muses about "good" in the sense of what a person (man actually) should pursue to be happy. I say muses rather than argues or discusses because he seems to just follow his thinking here and there and often breaks off without having reached any conclusion. There isn't much system to the book, though it is broken into 13 small chapters. Curiously he suggests that good for man is pursued through politics. Politics is higher than other pursuits because it can rule them through the government. He looks at such pursuits as honor, pleasure, virtue, and notes that pursuit of honor is suitable to the active personality type, but that since honor is bestowed upon one by others, it isn't at the heart of the good life, not the heart of a happy life. The problem with putting virtue at the heart would be that it is too passive. A person could sleep their life away and be found to be perfectly virtuous, as virtue is understood--doing no evil, perhaps, but also not pursuing an active life. Though finally he sees virtue as a key to happiness and that politics is informed by virtue in its goal of creating a virtuous society. He sets forth two kinds of virtue: moral and intellectual. He writes, "Since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue, we must consider the nature of virtue; for perhaps we shall thus see better the nature of happiness." (p.346-7). "The student of politics must study the soul." Interestingly, Aristotle sets politics at the apex of society, explicitly stating in Book I that politics is above both education in science and medicine since those fields are decided by the politics of government. [Again, thinking of how our current moment with President Trump holding power is demonstrating this in our moment, as his administration runs over medicine and science and education, showing how politics does indeed rule over the other fields.]
Key in this chapter is the idea of the "rational principle" (aka logos, which is the ability to reason and set's man apart from the plants and animals, with which man shares the feature of being alive (plants) and perceiving (animals), but goes one step further in being guided by rational thought. To be a happy man must include an appropriate role for rational thought in life. Rational thought can be directed at abstractions like math and science or practical solutions in day-to-day life. Logos guides action in search of the mean between extremes, so that moral virtue becomes a practical thing, not a thing of absolutes, but an expression of character guided by reason. For example, a person could be naturally brave or naturally generous, but this needs to be guided by reason to be true virtue and helpful in the pursuit of the good life.
Book II:
(See "Contents" at start of this work) Discussing moral virtue and how it is developed through repetition and how it is connected with pleasure and pain. When one feels pleasure in being virtuous (doing good), one has acquired a virtuous disposition. Unlike something like vision, which is always there, virtue is acquired.
He decides that virtue is neither a matter of passions nor faculties. Faculties would be things like the ability to see, and passions would be things like anger and fear. Virtues and vices are things that are ascribed to character and blamed or praised in a way that passions and faculties are not.
In a sense he makes it a matter of judgment, to know where virtue becomes vice in either the direction of too much or too little of a good thing. Some great characterizations of how various character traits can exist in deficits or excesses (buffoon, boor, obsequious, quarrelsome, self-serving, etc.) (p. 353) He concludes Book II with the statement that our goal must be to hit the mean that is right. (Note Plato addresses the nature of virtue in "Meno", and for him virtue is knowledge of what is good while for Aristotle it is a matter of character, to judge what is good.)
Notes: He states that the Pythagoreans saw evil as a class that is unlimited, while good is a class that is limited. There is one way to succeed and many ways to fail. Straight is the road and narrow. (p. 352)
Book III Ethics: Expands on ideas in Book II regarding virtues and vices, especially courage and temperance.
Book III-V Politics: Some takeaways. He discusses the meaning of "citizenship" and who should be counted as a citizen. He discusses the possibility of looking at citizens as those born to a citizen, or even born to a X-generation citizen, as in a person whose great grandparent was born in that place would qualify as a citizen. Finally, he suggests that "He who has the power to take part in the deliberative or judicial administration of any state, is said by us to be a citizen of that state; and, speaking generally, a state is a body of citizens sufficing for the purposes of life." (Chapter 1, p.472)
He spends more time discussing the forms of government: monarchy, tyranny, oligarchy (narrow or wide), democracy, and a constitutional government, which would be similar to a republic. Tyranny is seen as a danger for governments based on monarchies or oligarchies, especially narrow oligarchies, while democracy is the dangerous form that a representative government might tend towards, but he does say that if a government is going to be bad, a overly democratic government (tending towards mob, I guess) is preferrable to a bad tyranny or oligarchy.
He discusses class in the context of governing, and finds that a stable and sustainable state is created when ruling is in the hands of the middle classes, not the rich land owners or servants and slaves. And in Aristotle's view the citizens should be people of substance, freemen and tax payers, but also the state must be formed of citizens with the qualities of justice and valor (p.481).
He writes, "Great then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for where some posses much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme--either out of the most rampant democracy, or out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of the middle constitutions and those akin to them." (A "constitution" here is a "form of government" and not a written document, and the middle ones are ones run by the middle classes.) (Book IV, Chapter 11)
He discusses the law and whether all members of the state should be bound by the law, or should the sovereign be above the law. He notes that in war the king's power is absolute in that context, above the law, but not in other circumstances. Similarly on the battle field a general has power unchecked by law. One problem with being ruled by law instead of by the decisions of a king (tyrant) is that the law is general and not tailored to each individual case. The laws need magistrates to apply them to specific cases because the law is not particular enough to decide cases without the judicial process. Law that is not supreme over all can lead to demagogues in a democracy. In other words, the people make decisions unchecked by a constitution or laws, this leads to a tyranny "for the people becomes a monarch, and is many in one; and the many have the power in their hands, not as individuals, but collectively."
Book V takes on the causes of revolution. A difference in races can cause a revolution, by "race" he means people from a different country or culture that are welcomed into the existing population. This situation arises when the immigrant race does not share or come to share a common spirit. Sudden combining of two different races/peoples is a common cause of the immigrants revolting against the established population. He says of oligarchies, "There are two patent causes of revolutions in oligarchies: (1) First, when the oligarchs oppress the people, for then anybody is good enough to be their champion, especially if he be himself a member of the oligarchy, as Lygdamis at Naxos, who afterwards came to be a tyrant.
Here is a line that could have been written after watching Trump: "Hence tyrants are always fond of bad men because they love to be flattered, but no man who has the spirit of a freeman in him will lower himself by flattery. . . . characteristic of a tyrant to dislike every one who has dignity or independence; he wants to be alone in his glory." (p. 516, Book V, Chapter 2).
This is a fragment of a longer work on dramatic storytelling. This portion covers tragedy. (Poetics at the time was about the art of story telling rather than about poetry as we use the term now.)
Aristotle divides works into comedy and tragedy. The first step leading to this division was that some writers chose to write about noble characters and events, which would lead to the genre or tragedy. Others chose to write about the ignoble, first in the form of invective but later this form would develop into the comedic genre. In comedy the author focuses on the ridiculous, the ugly. But comedy will mostly be dealt with later. Here is is concerned with the tragic. He defines it thus, "an imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; [I guess this means that the arc of the story carries through with the action and its consequences?] in language with pleasurable accessories [the quality of the writing, acting, staging, etc.], each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form, with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions." (p. 684).
The action of the actors is motivated by their character and their thoughts. The element of character is what makes us ascribe certain moral qualities to the actors in the play. Along with the elements of thought and character, every play has the elements of spectacle, fable, diction, and melody. He tells us that "the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come second. . . . The element of thought comes third." Action is plot and plot is first because the work is portraying ("an imitation") of action observed in life. Perhaps he means that it is the action which we observe and see, the material manifestation, and then it is the character and the thought that gives the artist's particular illumination of human nature through characterization (the character and thoughts of the "agent" in the work), which attempts to explain the action.
The task of the poet (the playwright) is arrange the parts in the proper way and with the requisite magnitude to render the play to beautiful--"beauty is a matter of size and order." The playwright must seek Unity in the length and content of the story. This is the idea that one main action and its attendant reactions go together to form the unity of the play--The arc of the story as we would have it now.
In terms of plot, you have to avoid a tragedy that has a good man meeting a bad end, or a bad man meeting a good end. Also an extremely bad person should not be shown falling from happiness into misery as it will not move us to pity or fear. (By which I think he refers only to the protagonist, and not to minor characters.) Thus the protagonist should be "a man not preeminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error of judgement . . . The perfect plot, accordingly, must have a single, and not (as some tell us) a double issue; the change in the hero's fortunes must be not from misery to happiness, but on the contrary from happiness to misery; and the cause of it must lie not in any depravity, but in some great error on his part." (p 687). Notably, he says that tragedy is about the catharsis of pity and fear, and if you lose sight of that, you have lost connection with the genre of tragedy.
In terms of character, a character should have some moral goodness, first, and then the character should be appropriate to the role. A phenomenally sexist comment here: "it is not appropriate in a female character to be manly, or clever." He also states that goodness can be shown in any character "even in a woman or a slave, though the one is perhaps inferior, and the other a wholly worthless being." That says something about Aristotle's character, perhaps. A character must also be consistent. Whenever a character speaks, it is desirable that what they say is the necessary or probable thing for them to say in that instance. And the consequences that follow on that moment should also be necessary or probable. He notes that one can take license to make the characters somewhat exaggerated, as when a portrait painter makes a king more handsome than he was in fact. (I imagine, though, that we want to avoid going so far as to make a caricature.)
He discusses also "Discovery", which is the moment in which the fatal flaw is revealed or in which it leads to the pitiful result that makes the story tragic. He also notes the idea, familiar to us now, of complication (rising action, or twists in the plot) and Denouement (the ending of the story arc).
A tragedy should not be epic, i.e. should not have a multiplicity of stories in it. It needs one main action of magnitude, as he might say.
from Google: "In Poetics, Aristotle discusses the appropriate "magnitude" or length of a plot, especially in tragedy. He famously states that a tragic action should be of a length that can be "embraced by the memory" and move a character from prosperity to calamity, or vice versa, in a probable or necessary sequence."
Note to myself on terminology:
intercalary - days inserted to round out a calendar and make it work
Iambic - one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable
Spondee - two stressed syllables
Dactyl - one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable ("Thunder and Lightening" consists of two dactyls. (THUN-der and LIGHT-en-ing)
"Nicomachean Ethics" (Book I, II, III, IV) (Nicomachus was Aristotle's son and editor.)
Started taking notes on the reading and realized that there is a pretty good summary provided in the contents (pp. 335-337).
Book I: In which Aristotle muses about "good" in the sense of what a person (man actually) should pursue to be happy. I say muses rather than argues or discusses because he seems to just follow his thinking here and there and often breaks off without having reached any conclusion. There isn't much system to the book, though it is broken into 13 small chapters. Curiously he suggests that good for man is pursued through politics. Politics is higher than other pursuits because it can rule them through the government. He looks at such pursuits as honor, pleasure, virtue, and notes that pursuit of honor is suitable to the active personality type, but that since honor is bestowed upon one by others, it isn't at the heart of the good life, not the heart of a happy life. The problem with putting virtue at the heart would be that it is too passive. A person could sleep their life away and be found to be perfectly virtuous, as virtue is understood--doing no evil, perhaps, but also not pursuing an active life. Though finally he sees virtue as a key to happiness and that politics is informed by virtue in its goal of creating a virtuous society. He sets forth two kinds of virtue: moral and intellectual. He writes, "Since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue, we must consider the nature of virtue; for perhaps we shall thus see better the nature of happiness." (p.346-7). "The student of politics must study the soul." Interestingly, Aristotle sets politics at the apex of society, explicitly stating in Book I that politics is above both education in science and medicine since those fields are decided by the politics of government. [Again, thinking of how our current moment with President Trump holding power is demonstrating this in our moment, as his administration runs over medicine and science and education, showing how politics does indeed rule over the other fields.]
Key in this chapter is the idea of the "rational principle" (aka logos, which is the ability to reason and set's man apart from the plants and animals, with which man shares the feature of being alive (plants) and perceiving (animals), but goes one step further in being guided by rational thought. To be a happy man must include an appropriate role for rational thought in life. Rational thought can be directed at abstractions like math and science or practical solutions in day-to-day life. Logos guides action in search of the mean between extremes, so that moral virtue becomes a practical thing, not a thing of absolutes, but an expression of character guided by reason. For example, a person could be naturally brave or naturally generous, but this needs to be guided by reason to be true virtue and helpful in the pursuit of the good life.
Book II:
(See "Contents" at start of this work) Discussing moral virtue and how it is developed through repetition and how it is connected with pleasure and pain. When one feels pleasure in being virtuous (doing good), one has acquired a virtuous disposition. Unlike something like vision, which is always there, virtue is acquired.
He decides that virtue is neither a matter of passions nor faculties. Faculties would be things like the ability to see, and passions would be things like anger and fear. Virtues and vices are things that are ascribed to character and blamed or praised in a way that passions and faculties are not.
In a sense he makes it a matter of judgment, to know where virtue becomes vice in either the direction of too much or too little of a good thing. Some great characterizations of how various character traits can exist in deficits or excesses (buffoon, boor, obsequious, quarrelsome, self-serving, etc.) (p. 353) He concludes Book II with the statement that our goal must be to hit the mean that is right. (Note Plato addresses the nature of virtue in "Meno", and for him virtue is knowledge of what is good while for Aristotle it is a matter of character, to judge what is good.)
Notes: He states that the Pythagoreans saw evil as a class that is unlimited, while good is a class that is limited. There is one way to succeed and many ways to fail. Straight is the road and narrow. (p. 352)
Book III Ethics: Expands on ideas in Book II regarding virtues and vices, especially courage and temperance.
Book III-V Politics: Some takeaways. He discusses the meaning of "citizenship" and who should be counted as a citizen. He discusses the possibility of looking at citizens as those born to a citizen, or even born to a X-generation citizen, as in a person whose great grandparent was born in that place would qualify as a citizen. Finally, he suggests that "He who has the power to take part in the deliberative or judicial administration of any state, is said by us to be a citizen of that state; and, speaking generally, a state is a body of citizens sufficing for the purposes of life." (Chapter 1, p.472)
He spends more time discussing the forms of government: monarchy, tyranny, oligarchy (narrow or wide), democracy, and a constitutional government, which would be similar to a republic. Tyranny is seen as a danger for governments based on monarchies or oligarchies, especially narrow oligarchies, while democracy is the dangerous form that a representative government might tend towards, but he does say that if a government is going to be bad, a overly democratic government (tending towards mob, I guess) is preferrable to a bad tyranny or oligarchy.
He discusses class in the context of governing, and finds that a stable and sustainable state is created when ruling is in the hands of the middle classes, not the rich land owners or servants and slaves. And in Aristotle's view the citizens should be people of substance, freemen and tax payers, but also the state must be formed of citizens with the qualities of justice and valor (p.481).
He writes, "Great then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for where some posses much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme--either out of the most rampant democracy, or out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of the middle constitutions and those akin to them." (A "constitution" here is a "form of government" and not a written document, and the middle ones are ones run by the middle classes.) (Book IV, Chapter 11)
He discusses the law and whether all members of the state should be bound by the law, or should the sovereign be above the law. He notes that in war the king's power is absolute in that context, above the law, but not in other circumstances. Similarly on the battle field a general has power unchecked by law. One problem with being ruled by law instead of by the decisions of a king (tyrant) is that the law is general and not tailored to each individual case. The laws need magistrates to apply them to specific cases because the law is not particular enough to decide cases without the judicial process. Law that is not supreme over all can lead to demagogues in a democracy. In other words, the people make decisions unchecked by a constitution or laws, this leads to a tyranny "for the people becomes a monarch, and is many in one; and the many have the power in their hands, not as individuals, but collectively."
Book V takes on the causes of revolution. A difference in races can cause a revolution, by "race" he means people from a different country or culture that are welcomed into the existing population. This situation arises when the immigrant race does not share or come to share a common spirit. Sudden combining of two different races/peoples is a common cause of the immigrants revolting against the established population. He says of oligarchies, "There are two patent causes of revolutions in oligarchies: (1) First, when the oligarchs oppress the people, for then anybody is good enough to be their champion, especially if he be himself a member of the oligarchy, as Lygdamis at Naxos, who afterwards came to be a tyrant.
Here is a line that could have been written after watching Trump: "Hence tyrants are always fond of bad men because they love to be flattered, but no man who has the spirit of a freeman in him will lower himself by flattery. . . . characteristic of a tyrant to dislike every one who has dignity or independence; he wants to be alone in his glory." (p. 516, Book V, Chapter 2).
March 8, 2019
With this, I have finished the second volume of Aristotle in the Britannica Great Books series, and have now read all the collected works of Aristotle! How to sum up my total impression. He was certainly a brilliant thinker, probably the single greatest mind in the history of Western thought. His works are well worth reading, especially the more directly philosophical, ethical, and political works--well, plus his works on literary theory such as the Rhetoric and Poetics! His scientific works, while shrewd and well observed, are less relevant today.
But in all, I can heartily recommend Aristotle. He is probably still the core author for a liberal education.
But in all, I can heartily recommend Aristotle. He is probably still the core author for a liberal education.
Want to read
January 9, 2010I bought this book from DASA Book Cafe (350 baht).
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews