Get The Basic Works Of Aristotle Compiled By Aristotle Hardcover

finished this monster of a book, For people interested in philosophy, Aristotle is a must read, I only read one of his works beforehand, I'm glad I got this edition, Kind of lacked notes though, Doesn't have some full books, but at the same time I'm not sure I want the full books.
I thiiiink I used this for my grad treatise and not my undergrad thesis, but I'm notsure.
But hey! Aristotle! Good without God

I read this book in order to counter an idea I often hear from Christians that it is impossible for an atheist to be a good person.
There are three main arguments presented, The first is that a "Good person" by definition must have faith in God, The second is that it is impossible to know good from evil unless you RTFM: you need a higher authority to tell you which is which.
And the third is that the only possible reason anyone could have to be good is fear of Hell.
The first argument is vacuous, As for the third: people who are honest and kind only because they fear an afterlife of everlasting torment are not good people their opinions should be ignored.
Argumentis just wrong, and this book shows it, In it sitelinkAristotle sets out to systematically explore good, He was not a Christian, having lived hundred of years before Christianity got off the ground, In fact, religion plays no important role in the book, sitelinkAristotle shows that it is possible to think about good without a God to tell you what it is.


So, I read it, Aside from proving that it is possible to think about good without God, I do not find it a useful guide to action.
In this regard sitelinkPlato is more convincing, Even though sitelinkPlato does not systematically survey the subject of ethics in one place, the questions of what is good, what is virtue, and how should a good person act arise frequently in sitelinkPlato, and the views presented there are clearer and more convincing than sitelinkAristotle's.
So, in that regard Ethics is disappointing,

Why is this There are a few reasons, First, it should be noted that there is a hugely important technical difficulty in reading Ethics: vocabulary and translation.
A good illustration of this is sitelinkAristotle's discussion of courage, It became obvious immediately when I began to read the chapter on the subject that what sitelinkAristotle means by the word translated as courage is not at all what I and most English speakers mean by it.
sitelinkAristotle's concept is much narrower, really covering only physical courage in war, In fact, the word sitelinkAristotle uses is ανδρεία andreia, which is derived from άνδρας andros man, So what sitelinkAristotle here discusses is something like "manliness", and even of that he has a narrow concept.
Google translate informs me that modern Greek has two other words for courage that correspond more closely to the modern concept: θάρρος tharros and κουράγιο couragio.
I don't know if those words were in use in sitelinkAristotle's time, but I can tell you that his discussion of courage is seriously flawed from my point of view since it has little to do with anything that I would recognize as courage.
It is barely even possible to imagine a courageous woman in sitelinkAristotle's views, Chinese has a similar vocabulary problem: here is brave: 勇, and here is male: 男, The English word "courage" is derived from the Latin for heart, and is thus free of sexual etymology.


This points towards another problem with Aristotle: he considers man superior to nonman, to the point of incomparability.
Nonman includes women, children, and animals, Women and children are barely mentioned in Ethics, For instance, he has this to say about animals and boys: "It is natural, then, that we call neither ox nor horse nor any other of the animals happy for none of them is capable of sharing in such activity.
For this reason also a boy is not happy for he is not yet capable of such acts, owing to his age.
" He does seem to consider the possibility that there might be such things as womanly virtues, although they are clearly far inferior to those available to men.


Another problem I find with sitelinkAristotle is the view that a man's will is unitary.
This he shares with sitelinkPlato and sitelinkSocrates, It is the idea that what one wants is what one wants, i, e. that there is no such thing as internal conflict the very idea makes no sense, sitelinkAristotle, unlike sitelinkPlato and sitelinkSocrates, does admit a limited exception, which he calls incontinence, where, under certain circumstances a lessthanperfectly virtuous person may give in to temptation even though he knows he should not.


This error for so, I maintain, it is also infects his discussion of courage, sitelinkAristotle thinks a courageous man does not fear death in battle, In fact, I believe, as I think most people do, that without fear there is no courage.
Courage is doing the thing you fear when it is right, sitelinkAristotle cannot fully conceive the idea that a man fears dying in battle yet does so voluntarily.


Who the Hell am I, who thinks he has the standing to find fault with sitelinkAristotle I am an educatedstcentury human.
I am somewhat familiar withyears of history that had not yet happened when sitelinkAristotle lived.
I am aware of real governments, constitutions, movements, and nations of which he could barely conceive, I am infected by the liberal values of my time, which hold that humans are far more alike than they are different.
For instance, except for sexual physiology, men and women are mostly alike, Humans are animals sitelinkAristotle knew that and are not discontinuously different from other animals, I am also, as it happens, a retired neuroscientist, Thus I know that we reason and philosophize with our brains, This was not generally appreciated in sitelinkAristotle's time, sitelinkAristotle himself, believed that the brain was a kind of radiator whose purpose was to cool the heart, which he, like most people of his time, believed to be the seat of reason.
It was not until Harvey's description of the circulation of the blood inthat anyone correctly understood the purpose of the heart.
I know that the brain is a complicated organ of many parts, and that these parts may act in opposition, so that a human is almost constantly in a state of internal conflict.
There is nothing logically incoherent in the idea of a person overcoming his/her fear,

I bought sitelinkThe Basic Works of Aristotle intending to read Ethics and Politics, and then perhaps others of sitelinkAristotle's works.
However, I am sufficiently disappointed in Ethics that I do not intend to read Politics.
As I already said, sitelinkPlato is better, Honestly, not as dry as I expected, Interesting to see how much of our common thought today that we dont even question derived from Aristotle.
Wow. Incredible. Aristotle had an incredible mind, and he astounds me with his brilliance, I did not read all of the writings in this book in fact, I only read his Nichomean Ethics and his Politics, but, I know I will come back and read many of his other writings as I continue reading from those who cite him.
There is much to be said about Aristotle, but I favor him to his teacher, Plato, I've learned a lot. I read this book to understand the meaning of 'Soul', from a Western point of view, after I've read quite a few books on this subject from the East.

The chapter 'De Anima' in this book does a great job in illuminating this, if one takes the patience to read through it, and if one remembers that it was Aristotle who developed the notion of rhetorics in the first place.


It's a dense but complete read, not only one the subject of soul, but also on everything, from Physics to Medicine to Politics!! It's amazing how a man can be so versatile, and can have insight into so many truths.

I recently returned to the biological works to clarify a few points recounted in the book sitelinkHypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method: A natural approach to a safe, easier, more comfortable birthing If your interested in this, there is a good summarizing article by P.
M. Dunn located here sitelinkPerinatal Lessons from the Past I accept that this is regarded as a major milestone in human understanding but it's very hard to follow.
A picture here and there would be illuminating, An edition with pictures or "Cole's Notes" explaining what the heck Aristotle is talking about would be nice.


I'm mostly reading this to dispel the mystery of what it's about and to check it off the list so I'm not taking the time to try and understand the content based on the content itself I'd go to Khan Academy or a similar resource if I actually wanted to learn the content.
Maybe learning from an ancient text alone would strengthen my reading comprehension and academic conviction but I'm not passionate about either of those.
If I knew nothing about modern science then I wouldve believed him when he said all motion were originated from floaty spheres that were also gods I admit that I skimmed through a lot of this book.

Physics Metaphysics Rhetoric How to give speeches Poetics That's OK, I'll pass.
I did try to read some and had no idea what the heck I was reading.
It was unreadable.

The early part of the book dealt more with observational writing than philosophical writing, And much of this was in the category of "duh, master of the obvious" writing,
Example: A mountain can be both small and large at the same time, When compared to a larger mountain, it is small, When compared to a smaller mountain, it is large,
Wow, I never thought of that before,
As a coworker who knows a great deal about history told me, "Perhaps,years ago people were in awe of this discovery because maybe they hadn't thought of that before.
"
OK, maybe so.

I read almost all of his views on morality, human interaction and the human psyche and enjoyed this a great deal.
This was pretty easy to read,

I also enjoyed his view on politics, even though I didn't agree with much,
Surprisingly, as Greece was the birthplace of democracy, he seemed extremely antidemocracy,
He was very antipoor and prowealthy,
He was proslavery as well, Although back then I know it was commonplace and I believe most of them were prisoners of war really.

All of this surprised me as it didn't appear to be in line with his predecessors, Socrates and Plato.

As a matter of fact, many times he said Socrates was flat out wrong "when he said this" or "when he said that.
"
Hmmmm, maybe he should have been nicknamed "Aristotle the Arrogant, "
This is a far cry from Socrates who I enjoyed much more who said, "The only thing I know is that I know nothing" and who also was known for asking more questions of others in order to learn other people's points of view rather than preach and make sermons.

Still, the writing in this area was decent so

I can't criticize this part of the book just because I didn't agree with some of his philosophies.


However, out ofpages, I could really only easily handle aboutpages, The other,were absolutely either unreadable or a waste of time,
stars.

.