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"Aristotle versus Plato. For a long time that is the angle from which the tale has been told, in textbooks on the history of philosophy and to university students. Aristotle's philosophy, so the story goes, was au fond in opposition to Plato's. But it was not always thus."—from the Introduction

In a wide-ranging book likely to cause controversy, Lloyd P. Gerson sets out the case for the "harmony" of Platonism and Aristotelianism, the standard view in late antiquity. He aims to show that the twentieth-century view that Aristotle started out as a Platonist and ended up as an anti-Platonist is seriously flawed. Gerson examines the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle based on their principle of harmony. In considering ancient studies of Aristotle’s Categories, Physics, De Anima, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, the author shows how the principle of harmony allows us to understand numerous texts that otherwise appear intractable. Gerson also explains how these "esoteric" treatises can be seen not to conflict with the early "exoteric" and admittedly Platonic dialogues of Aristotle. Aristotle and Other Platonists concludes with an assessment of some of the philosophical results of acknowledging harmony. ... Read more

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Incollection you'll survey 13 of the world's greatestphilosophers (plus others who worked with or against them). You'll seehow each philosopher created a complete and coherent system of thoughtincluding their views on ethics metaphysics politics and es thetics.You'll learn about their epistemology-how we know what we know. Andyou'll learn how each thinker related to his times and to the work ofother philosophers over the centuries.the sophisticated complex andsubtle ideas of great philosophers are now available in a dramatizedformat that entertains and informs. Yet, like all Knowledge Productsproductions, the full substance and content of these ideas arepresented in clear and understandable language. Each presentationinvites the intelligent listener to ponder the great ideas withoutstruggling through an academic or simplified writing style. Eachpresentation inis sensitively and intelligently narrated by CharltonHeston one of America's most respected actors. Known for his rich voiceand dramatic acting skills Mr. Heston makes your journey through thehistory of philosophy both compelling and provocative. Aristotle inrevising Plato's ideas thought human beings are one with the rest ofnature yet set apart from it by their ability to reason. Aristotlecodified the laws of thought gave a complete account of nature and ofGod and developed an attractive view of the good life and the goodsociety. He was the first to systematically describe physics biologypsychology and the standards of literature. ... Read more

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Good basic introduction for 2.5 hours
This audiobook provides a good introduction for 2.5 hours of a reader's time. However, with this much time one can only touch Aristotle. Too short. A proper basic introduction would have needed, at bare minimum, three to four times the time of this tape. ... Read more

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The first complete translation into modern English of Aquinas' unfinished commentary on Aristotle's Politics, this translation follows the definitive Leonine text of Aquinas and moreover reproduces in English those passages of William of Moerbeke's famously accurate yet elliptical translation of the Politics from which Aquinas worked.Bekker numbers have been added to passages from Moerbeke's translation for easy reference. ... Read more

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If You Don't Want To Live In A State, You Are Either A God Or A Beast
I read this book for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.Politics is one of Aristotle's most prescient works that had a profound impact on our Founding fathers.

Nicomachean Ethics (EN) is part of political knowledge.Politics regulates when virtue does not.Laws are created for people who are not virtuous.Polis= "city or state."Humans live in society, so virtue ethics is not just for individual living, community is a shared project for the good.Aristotle starts with his method, a phenomenological attitude.He starts with pairs, male and female, builds up to ruler and subject, master and slave as a natural relationship, the 1st social community thus is the household.Household is an economic relationship and has monarchy of patriarch.Villages are a collection of households with a king.Then you have a Polis, a fulfilled complete community formed from several villages.Self-sufficiency is the mark of a Polis.An organized social relationship is Polis and a reason is being able to take care of needs of life and promote living well.Only in a Polis can you have art, philosophy, etc.All these are actualized in a Polis.Politics is natural to human life.We are meant to be social.According to Aristotle, "If you don't want to live in a state you are either a God or a beast."

Logos= "rationality or language" is what helps us to be political animals.Rational language expands capacity in human life.Since Aristotle thinks the Polis has a telos or an end then the Polis as potential comes even before the household.This is similar to the acorn having the telos to become a mighty oak tree.Politics completes the human condition for Aristotle.Need a Polis to develop other human capacities.

Aristotle's hierarchy.Slaves are a living tool for Aristotle.Aristotle argues that some people are meant to be slaves right from birth."Born to be ruled."Slavish person does not have enough rationality to rule themselves.Aristotle says not every form of actual enslavement is justified according to him.He justifies the human use of animals as a natural act.

Aristotle now wants to find what kind of government is best.In a Polis citizens have things in common.Aristotle criticizes Plato's Republic, he finds it to be overly controlling.Socrates says the soul has 3 aspects and so does the Polis.The Soul has:

1. Reason
2. Passion
3. Appetite
The Polis has:
1. Philosopher King.
2. Guardians, (military).
3. Commoners.

Both are a hierarchal ordering.Socrates and Plato talk about the state holding all property in common.This includes the state raising children after birth instead of the parents, thus there will be no family clans trying to better themselves over their neighbors.Aristotle criticizes this idea.Aristotle says a Polis is a plurality of people thus people are not all the same and a Polis must accommodate differences in people, which actually makes a Polis better.Aristotle criticizes Socrates and Plato's idea of a Polis needing to have "unity" of people.This is a contrast to the Polis of Sparta.Aristotle says the best way to integrate citizens to the Polis is to allow them taking turns in ruling it.Aristotle believes that holding property or rearing of children in common as in the Republic is wrong no one really loves children like their own and communal property never gets really taken care of.Love is diminished the less nuclear family we are.
Aristotle says you need a mix of private and public property.Thus, the best kind of Polis is a combination of a governing element.Aristotle affirms a constitutional democracy or Polity.A citizen participates in government by definition for Aristotle.

Comparison of virtue and the good citizen.Excellence of virtuous man not the same as a good citizen.There will be few virtuous men, but good citizens just have to follow the law.Aristotle says good political virtue and good moral virtue don't have to go together."Living finely then most of all is the goal of the city."

Aristotle classifies 3 types of government which occur naturally in nature and 3 types of deteriorations of those governments, they are:

1. "Monarchy," rule by one man a king, this is a top down rule.The deterioration is a "Tyranny," who is a ruler who rules for his own benefit.
2. "Aristocracy," rule by the best few men in the Polis, also this is a top down rule.The deterioration is an "oligarchy,' which he defines as rule of the rich who want to perpetuate themselves.
3. "Polity," All citizens participate in government with a constitution set above them to guide them instead of a king or aristocracy.The deterioration is a "democracy or what today we call mob rule or tyranny of the majority.He calls it rule of the poor.

Aristotle does a good job of looking at states and how they can be corrupted.Aristotle's concept of political justice and what is the best concept.What does justice mean?Not necessarily equality for all.Not all people are equal.He implies sometimes it is unjust to treat people equally.Justice is not necessarily equality for all; sometimes it would be unjust to treat all people equally.Politics is rated high by Aristotle as a human good.Education is a central feature of political life for Aristotle."But we must find the relevant respect of equality or inequality; for this question raises a puzzle that concerns political philosophy."First, because someone is unequal on hierarchy that means better than others like more virtuous.This is like "distributive justice" who gets what goods.Do you give the best flute to the best flute player which is based on merit or to the richest or best looking person?Aristotle says inequality should tip towards those who earn it on merit.His concept of equality and inequality is based on merit.Another philosopher coined a famous formula for this based on Relevant Respect:

P= Person, Q= Quality, C= Context.
It would be just to treat P1 + P2 equally or unequally if P1 + P2 are equal or unequal in Q (quality) relevant to C (content).This is a formula on how to treat people relevant to goods.This is context dependent.Allot of empirical work to be done before we use the formula.

People who fight wars control politics in the Polis.The more people who have weapons in a civilian army is a guarantee that a small group of people will not take control of the government and democracy grows, like our 2nd amendment, this is a historical perspective of the idea that works.
Democracy spreads power to citizens a bottom up structure.Expertise in relation to politics.Many professions we tend to defer to the experts for judgment, physicians, lawyers, etc.Plato's Republic does this with his advocacy of Philosopher king running government.Aristotle says the judgment of the many combined as acting as one is better then a monarch or a few wise men to run the government.In principle, pooling of multiple people to run Polis is good.Politics by nature is a communal effort so you should use all the people's expertise.Aristotle is against letting experts running the Polis they are not always the best of judges.The best judge of the function of a house is the owner, not the builder.In addition, Aristotle says there may not really be any such thing as a political expert, like a philosopher king.Aristotle advocates for a constitutional democracy a written set of laws to protect Polis from a tyranny of the majority."Law is reason unaffected by desire."A government of laws not men.A living being as the last word is not good.

Role of education in politics.Politics is coming together to foster human development and happiness for community, citizens, and improving human life like education.Aristotle says it should be public education.

I recommend Aristotle's works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy.Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.

... Read more

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This text combines a complete translation of Aristotle's "poetics" with a running commentary, printed on facing pages, to keep the reader in continuous contact with the linguistic and critical subtleties of the original while highlighting crucial issues for students of literature and literary theory. The volume includes two essays by George Whalley that outline his method and purpose. He identifies a deep congruence between Aristotle's understanding of mimesis and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's view of imagination. ... Read more

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Tragedy Teaches Us Something About Life
I read these works for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.
Poetry appeals to human passions and emotions.Powerful beautiful language and metaphor really appeal to emotion.This idea really disturbed Plato, who takes on Homer in the Republic.Plato thought that early Greek poetry portrays a dark world; humans are checked by negative limits like death.Tragedy has in it a character of high status brought down through no fault of his own.Plato says this is unjust.Republic is about ethical life and justice.It starts with the premises that might makes right and then moves onto the idea much like modern religions that justice comes in the afterlife.Plato hates the idea that in tragedy bad things can happen to good people.He wanted to ban tragedy because he found it demoralizing.

Aristotle's Poetics is a defense against Plato's appeal to ban tragedy.Tragedy was very popular in Greek world so Aristotle asks can it be wrong to ban it?Yes, it is wrong thus he decides to study it.Plato says Poetry is not a technç because the poets are divinely inspired.Aristotle disagrees Poetics is a handbook for playwrights.Mimçsis= "representation or imitation."Plato uses it in speaking of painting, thus art is imitation.Another meaning is to mimic, like actors mimicking another person.Plato and Aristotle use it to mean psychological identification like how we get absorbed in a movie as if the action were real, eliciting emotions from us.We suspend reality for a while.Aristotle says this is natural in humans; we do this as children, we mimic.If imitation is important for humans then tragic poetry is worthwhile for Aristotle to study.

Definition of tragedy- "Through pity and fear it achieves purification from such feelings.This is a famous controversial line.Katharsis= "pity and fear" thus the purpose of tragedy is to purge katharsis.Katharsis can also mean purification or clean.There is a debate if it means clarification, through which we can come to understand katharsis.Aristotle thinks tragedy teaches us something about life.Tragedy is an elaboration on Aristotle's idea that good or virtuous people sometimes get unlucky and in the end, they get screwed.Tragedy shows this so we can learn to get by when life screws us.The whole point of tragedy is action over character.Action is the full story of the poem like the Iliad.Character is only part of the action.
Aristotle distinguishes between poetry and history.Poetry is concerned with universals, history is concerned with particulars.

I recommend Aristotle's works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy.Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.
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The collapse of the Soviet Union and other Marxist regimes around the world seems to have left liberal democracy as the only surviving ideology, and yet many scholars of political thought still find liberal democracy objectionable, using Aristotle's POLITICS to support their views.In this detailed analysis of Book 3 of Artitotle's POLITICS, Clifford Bates challenges these scholars, demonstrating that Aristotle was actually a defender of democracy.

Proving the relevance of classical political philosophy to modern democratic problems, Bates argues that Aristotle not only defends popular rule but suggests that democracy, restrained by rule of law, is the best form of government.According to Aristotle, because human beings are naturally sociable, democracy is the regime that best helps man reach his potential; and because of human nature, it is inevitable democracies will prevail.

Bates explains why Aristotle's is a sound position between two extremes--participatory democracy, which romanticizes the people, and elite theory, which underrates them.His fresh interpretation rests on innovative approaches to reading Book 3--which he deems vital to understanding all of Aristotle's POLICTICS. Examining the work in the original Greek as well as in translation, he addresses the questions of the historical Aristotle versus the posited Aristotle, the genre and structure of the text, and both the theoretical and dialogic nature of the work.Charting Aristotle's rhetorical strategies, Bates shows that Book 3 is not simply a treatise but a series of dialogues that develop a nuanced defense of democratic rule.

Bates's accessible and faithful exposition of Aristotle's work confirms that the philosopher's teachings are not merely of historical interest but speak directly to liberal democracy's current crisis of self-understanding.

Political Traditions in Foreign Policy; Kenneth W. Thompson, Editor ... Read more

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Combined in this volume are two works by Aristotle, 'On the Heavens' and 'On Generation and Corruption'. The first work, 'On the Heavens' is Aristotle's cosmological treatise, in which Aristotle details his astronomical theories. The second work, 'On Generation and Corruption', is a work of science philosophy. Building upon his arguments in 'Physics', Aristotle poses the question as to whether or not the act of something coming into being is the result of a specific cause or merely the result of the inevitable change in a world that is constantly in motion. ... Read more

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One of Many Versions of the Life and Times of Aristotle Onassis
After having read the biography of Maria Callas, I felt compelled to find out more about the love of her life, Ari Onassis.Although he was very intelligent, his drive was what lead him to succeed and to make choices that left him, in the end,very unhappy.The writer of this book was hand picked by Onassis even though Ari already had a biography that he had previously endorsed. The book was very interesting and also insightful.It has everything from his rise to power, his marriages, his affairs, and most importantly, his children and their lives. ... Read more

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A new translation of Aristotle's classic work on the natural sciences. ... Read more

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Good material, but poor reproduction
So this is the standard text and I have no comments in that regard, but the book is a digital reprint and the quality of the print on the page is below standard.It is still legible, but the resolution of the characters is poor, especially the footnotes which are difficult to read at times.It looks like the book was photocopied and then printed on cheap paper.It would have been nice if there was a way to determine that the book was a digital reprint or not prior to ordering. ... Read more

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W.K.C. Guthrie has written a survey of the great age of Greek philosophy - from Thales to Aristotle - which combines comprehensiveness with brevity. Without pre-supposing a knowledge of Greek or the Classics, he sets out to explain the ideas of Plato and Aristotle in the light of their predecessors rather than their successors, and to describe the characteristic features of the Greek way of thinking and outlook on the world. Thus The Greek Philosophers provides excellent background material for the general reader - as well as providing a firm basis for specialist studies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Highly Recommended
One reviewer calls this book "lucid and concise," with which I completely agree.Another credits Guthrie with explaining the important Greek terms well, with which I also agree and consider very valuable in approaching this material.Guthrie also does an excellent job (in a very short work) of helping the reader get some grasp of the ancient Greek world, in which concepts we take for granted weren't yet developed; ideas about virtue, vice, deity and many other things were quite different from our modern nearest equivalents; and gross superstitions remained dominant and formed an important historical backdrop and contemporary background to the first emergence of sustained rational speculation.Some authors of longer works fail to provide this context, potentially leaving us with the impression that the Greeks' conceptual world wasn't much different from that of Descartes or Kant, but Guthrie portrays the chasm vividly in remarkably few pages.

The survey of Pre-Socratics is brief but particularly enlightening, and Guthrie does a very good job of showing their influences on Socrates and Plato, especially showing how Socrates reacted against his predecessors and shifted emphasis away from speculation about the material world to speculation about humans (ethics, political philosophy, and to a lesser extent metaphysics).Socrates and Plato weren't alone in this trend, and Plato in particular was heavily influenced by some of the Pre-Socratics, but placing them in their context and against their background sheds considerable light on the orientation of their thinking and their choices of subject matter.Guthrie also does a good job of sketching the progression from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle, with continuities and developments and well as rejections, departures and new lines of thought.

Other reviewers have given good summaries of the book's content, so I'll just say that Guthrie is clearly more interested in Plato than Aristotle.I can sympathize with this: Plato is one of the greats in world literature, while Aristotle is dry.Even Plato's wilder ideas are fascinating and rich in suggestion, while Aristotle is more comprehensive and systematic, but less fanciful (what would we do without Aristotle's logic? but it's nothing like the jolly romp of Plato's Euthyphro).In all, this book is an excellent brief introduction to Greek philosophy - highly recommended.

Excellent Introduction or Review
This brief work of 161 pages is an excellent intro or review of the ancient Greek philosophers from the time of Thales to Aristotole. Guthrie focuses most of the work on cosmology/physics and on theology. Ethics and the nature of the soul take comparable place. Other issues are touched on as well.

The first chapter gives an excellent general overview of how ancient Greek thought differs from modern ways of thinking about key issues. The second chapter covers the Ionians and Pythagoreans. The third chapter deals with Heraclitus, Parmenides and the Pluralists. Chapter four concerns the Sophists and the reaction of Socrates. Chapters five and six relate to Plato: his doctrine of Ideas and his response to the Sophists. And chapters seven and eight discuss Aristotle. There is a brief bibliography and index at the back.

I found Guthrie's use of comparisons and contrasts between different philosophers (or groups of philosophers) very engaging and helpful. Guthrie's biases occasionally come through but they do not overwhelm the work. And although Guthrie seems to be running out of creative energy by the time he gets to Aristotle (as he admits himself that here he is falling back on standard approaches to Aristotle), I found even it to be helpful. And because the first six chapters were so excellent and insightful, I heartily recommend this work and give it five stars. (And with so many copies out there, you can't beat the price! By the way, the edition I have is the 1960 Harper Torchbooks edition. The cover is like that pictured.)

Lucid, Concise with Simplicity - Excellent Reading
This has been the most lucid and concise book on Greek philosophy that I have so far read. In a short 168 pages, the essence of the pre-Socratic and post eras of Greek thought is revealed in both as a refresher from other sources and in additional clarifying points. Definitely beneficial in gaining the grasp of ancient Greek thought.

Guthrie starts out explaining the division of philosophers into the materialists or matter philosophers and the teleologists or form philosophers. The Ionian or Milesian School attempted at a scientific explanation represented by Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. It was Thales who taught that the world was made from water and moisture, while Anaximander saw it as a warring of many opposites, and unlike Pythagoreans - of no distinctions, no limitations, the earth as a sphere resting on nothing. And Anaximenes.taught the primary substance of the world was air. All had various ideas on explaining movement.

The Pythagoreans came from an Italian school, as opposed to the Ionian, and was a religious brotherhood defining reality as a combination of substances in a harmonious blend based on mathematics, and discovered the mathematics to musical arrangement. The believed in the immortality and transmigration of the soul, the kinship with nature, the earth as an organism, a kind of pantheism. So it was the limit put on the limitless that arranged and harmonized nature by numerical system, a ruling principle, the meaning of the good - a state of harmonia.

The next philosopher in succession was Heraclitus who criticized the others in their search for facts, teaching that the substance of the world was never a still fact, but was fire, that everything must be destroyed to be born, that all things are in constant motion, in flux, rejecting the peaceful and harmonious world of opposites taught by the Pythagoreans. Nothing was constant, universal and eternal, all was in constant temporal states.

Parmenides taught the opposite, in that movement was impossible, for there was no such thing as empty space, and the whole of reality consisted of a single, motionless and unchanging substance. Such reality was non-sensible, only to be reached by thought.

The pluralists consisted of Empedocles, Anaxogoras and Democritus. Empedocles taught similar to the Pythagoreans that the world was a variety of harmonious combinations of the four root substances of earth, water, air and fire. He also included the ingredients of love and strife in a materialistic way. Anaxogoras, using a atomic theory, believed in a moving cause apart from the matter into a collective mind which rules the world, a mind behind the universe which governs and orders its changes. The atomic theory was fully attributed to Democritus and possibly Leucippusa. The atomic view had the problem of movement which needed empty space. While later Epicurus took up gravity as a reason, it was a retrograde step and Democritius was thinking more clearly when he saw that in infinite space the conception of up or down had no meaning.

Next comes the sophists and it was Protagoras that taught pragmatism, that while there is no opinion that is truer, there are those that can be better, better in the sense of the individual in unifying harmony with the majority or collective. However, the sophists endorsed a severe relativity and values became choices of multiple word definitions chosen to each particular argument. Right and wrong, wisdom, and justice and goodness became nothing but names. And so it was Socrates that came up with a method to acquire arete, efficiency and excellence in the trade or occupation one does.This method consisted of inductive argument and general definition, that is exposing the false definitions and replacing them with the common meaning to the particular word or value. It was then that not an absolute was established, but rather an a higher level of reasoning in a continuous, advanced inquiry.

Plato, speaking of Socrates, took the ever moving flux of Heraclitus and the ever still unchanging world of Parmenides into a two world system, the world of the senses and the world of eternal ideas or forms. Thus individualism could be curbed and collective agreement could be established for the survival of the polis or city-state. He also incorporates the ideas of Pythagoreans' immortality and transmigration of the soul and the process of recollection. He taught dialectical thinking but beyond that used myth to provide for regions beyond such explanations. Virtue or efficiency and excellence is knowledge, knowledge needed to fully excel.

Guthrie next goes into an explanation of the Republic and government with the three parts of an individual and three classes of people and then into the Laws. The classes consisted of the ruling party and the soldier party, both with censorship and undemocratic authority but not able to own private property and of a poorer nature. Those that ruled did so out of a service, not out of a luxury or desires. It was the masses or working class that obeyed but the only ones who had the ability to gain riches.

Aristotle is then described in his rejection of the Platonic world of ideas and his idea of the universe, relying on the mental process or reason, common principles, the idea of immanent form and the conception of potentiality applying that to the problem of motion. He arrived at the concept of God as the Unmoved Mover, motionless, yet caused movement from actuality from engagement of eternal thought activity of the pure mind, which is life. This then brought motion and potentiality. More is mentioned on ethics, classes of the good by habits, man being a political animal is the answer over the world of ideas, and paradoxically states that divine reason can not be fully attained by man and yet it is foolish to emulate the gods and poets, but man should aim at his fullest potentiality. The ergon of every creature is to attain its own forma and perform its proper activity. The activity of mind is life.

A brief and concise review of Ancient Philosophy
W.K.C. Guthrie, the famous historian, shows us in this book the essence of Greek philosophy, travelling through the minds of the pre-soctratic thinkers and the birth in Athens of what would become the most unique trio of Wisdom-lovers in history. Prof. Guthrie's account is outstanding and far more profound than most of our century's writers. ... Read more

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Apart from using our eyes to see and our ears to hear, we regularly and effortlessly perform a number of complex perceptual operations that cannot be explained in terms of the five senses taken individually. Such operations include, for example, perceiving that the same object is white and sweet, noticing the difference between white and sweet, or knowing that one's senses are active. Observing that lower animals must be able to perform such operations, and being unprepared to ascribe any share in rationality to them, Aristotle explained such operations with reference to a higher-order perceptual capacity which unites and monitors the five senses. This capacity is known as the "common sense" or sensus communis. Unfortunately, Aristotle provides only scattered and opaque references to this capacity. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the exact nature and functions of this capacity have been a matter of perennial controversy.

Pavel Gregoric offers an extensive and compelling treatment of the Aristotelian conception of the common sense, which has become part and parcel of Western psychological theories from antiquity through to the Middle Ages, and well into the early modern period. Aristotle on the Common Sense begins with an introduction to Aristotle's theory of perception and sets up a conceptual framework for the interpretation of textual evidence. In addition to analyzing those passages which make explicit mention of the common sense, and drawing out the implications for Aristotle's terminology, Gregoric provides a detailed examination of each function of this Aristotelian faculty. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A lot remains common sense
The book is in three parts:
Part I. The Framework
Part II. The Terminology
Part III. Functions of the Common Sense

The stage is set by contrasting Plato's and Aristotle's views of the senses. In Plato's view the five senses are separate and the intellect integrates them. Aristotle's view of the matter tries to account for perception by nonhuman animals as well. So he says sensory input is integrated by the sensory capacity, by what he calls the `common sense', which also monitors sensory input. This monitoring function anticipates some modern conceptions of consciousness.

Aristotle conceptually divides the `soul' into different capacities. These are the nutritive, sensitive (perceptual and locomotive), and thinking. Plants have only the first one and only humans have the last one. The sensitive capacity of the soul is not an aggregate of the individual senses, but a unified whole. Memory, mainly in the form of images retained from sensory input, is also part of the sensitive capacity.

Integration recognizes the `common perceptibles', which are those perceived by more than one sense - change, rest, shape, magnitude, number, and one (or unity). These are sensed by both sight and touch. Part of the integration is cross-modal, e.g. that something is both hot and sweet, or colored and extended. The `special perceptibles' are those perceived by only one sense, such as taste, odor, and sound.

In sleep the common sense is incapacitated. Waking activates it. Aristotle argues that this is so because the common sense controls the peripheral sense organs. Awareness of an individual sense's activity or inactivity is the work of the common sense.

Four distinct functions of the common sense are identified: simultaneous perception, perceptual discrimination, control of the senses, and monitoring of the senses.

An interesting historical point is where Plato and Aristotle believed sensory integration occurred. Plato thought it was the brain, where he believed the rational soul was (in his dialogue Timaeus). Aristotle located the common sense in the heart. At the time there had been an intense and long standing debate among physicians regarding which organ it was. Plato sided with one school of physicians and Aristotle with the other.
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Bringing together a group of outstanding new essays on Aristotle's De Anima, this book covers topics such as the relation between soul and body, sense-perception, imagination, memory, desire, and thought, which present the philosophical substance of Aristotle's views to the modern reader.The contributors write with philosophical subtlety and wide-ranging scholarship, locating their interpretations firmly within the context of Aristotle's thought as a whole.u ... Read more

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All Humans Desire To Know
I read these works for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.

Soul- De Anima Latin for Greek word Psuche=Life.It is a Phenomenology of Life.Living things are Aristotle¡¦s primary interest.Renee Descartes says thinking is only aspect of soul, not life.For Descartes the soul is the mind.Aristotle classifies features of living things.A soul can¡¦t be a body, (like a corpse).Psuche=life is a living form of the body, the phenomenon of life.Capacity to live is what he means.Ergon=function or work, thus when he talks about soul it is a body¡¦s function.Thus, a corpse is a deactivated body.Dunamis=capacity, Energia= actuality, thus both words are active words and can be seen as ¡§activating capacity.¡¨Like a builder while building a house, past potential but not actual until the house is complete.
Entelecheia=¡¨living things have their ends inside them.¡¨A living being has an end in itself.

What is the soul?Psuche= soul is being working toward ends of a self-moving body having the capacity to live.This is another way of talking about desire (like an animal that is hungry).Desire-animals have this as we do.Orexis=desire.The phenomenology of desire is to be motivated towards something that is lacking at the time, hunger, etc.Pleasure and pain.
Desire and action there are 3 kinds of desire.

1. Appetite like hunger and sex.
2. Emotion-like love not on crude level as appetite.
3. Wish-desire of the mind, (I want a good job).

All three strive towards something that is lacking.¡§Desire is movement of the soul.¡¨Human life is a set of desires.Human desires are more complicated.Desires clash like dieting and appetite.

¡§All humans desire to know.¡¨This is the first line of the Metaphysics.Knowledge examined in terms of distinction between matter and form, perception has to do with intelligible form.Perception takes in visible form of something without the matter.Like imagination, an animal and human can do this.All knowledge starts with perception thus memory.Ultimate knowledge is intelligible form from visible form but mind is also using abstractions, this is a human capacity only.Humans use language to do this.Animals have image of a cat, word ¡§cat¡¨ is an abstraction for us.True knowledge organizes language.

Seing<³being seen.Two beings, seer and seen, this is act of vision it is only one actuality and two potentialities.In effect, Aristotle is saying that the capacity to see can only be actualized by seeing something.However, he goes the other way as well; something seeable only actualizes its seeability by being seen.One actuality, two potentials, the potential to see, the potential to be seen.In the modern world since Descartes, it is spoken as two actualities, the mind, and the outside world and there is a split between the two, two actualities, the mind as a separate thing and the object as a separate thing being seen.This is the source of the classic problem of skepticism.When there is seeing obviously you have two beings, the seer and the seen, but the act of vision is one actuality. Aristotle does not have this skeptical problem because he seems to stipulate this idea of single actuality and the whole point of the capacity to know is meant to hook up with things known.The whole point of knowable things is to be known by knower¡¦s, that is what he means by one actuality, thus there is no split between the mind and the world.There is no purely inside and outside.It isn¡¦t that minds are in here and the world is out there, and we might wonder about how they hook up.The nature of things and the nature of the mind are meant to hook up.Thus, Aristotle is not a radical skeptic like Descartes or Hume.Act of seeing the desk is joint actuality of seer and seen.

Actual hearing and actual sounding occur at the same time.Berkeley¡¦s famous question¡K¡¨If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?For Berkeley, to be is to be perceived.Aristotle answers Berkeley¡¦s question that it does make a sound, but you have to have the capacity to hear, it is a joint venture.The mind and the world are not separated like for Descartes.Aristotle doesn¡¦t buy the idea that ¡§everything in my mind can be false¡¨ like the skeptics argue, Aristotle would say this is impossible.Getting things true and false are part of what the mind has to do, but the possibility that the whole mental realm could be put into question is impossible.Thus, he doesn¡¦t have to answer the question put to skeptics.¡§If you are right that there is a radical doubt about the possibility of our knowledge hooking up with reality,why would the human situation ever come to pass in this way that it is possible that we could be totally wrong.¡¨The skeptics answer we are not sure that we are wrong, they are saying we can¡¦t be sure that we are right.If that were the case then Aristotle can say, well is this a recipe for the human condition?One can be skeptical about this or that, but not about everything.

Aristotle moves from perception to thought.The thinking of the world and world to be thought is actualization.Nous=highest capacity of intellect for Aristotle.Mind is potential and until it thinks isn¡¦t actualization.The implication of this the world wants to be known according to Aristotle.The world also activates our desire.One actualization of two potentialities.Taking in form without matter that is what knowledge is.A knowing soul cannot be separation from the body.The mind has built in capacity to understand for Aristotle, no actual knowledge until intellect engages with objects.¡§Actually thinking mind is the thing that it thinks.In this respect the soul is all existing things.¡¨Soul is capacity to think the world in the passage.

I recommend Aristotle¡¦s works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy.Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.

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Interprets Heidegger’s phenomenological reading of Aristotle’s philosophy. ... Read more

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Do you get upset easily, even about small things, or have trouble getting along with others? Do you feel down most of the time? Are you plagued by loneliness, grief, guilt, or a gnawing feeling of life's futility? Philosopher Elliot D. Cohen offers an uncommonly commonsense approach to these and many other problems and reveals how you can gain genuine insight into the confusions of everyday life by harnessing your own natural powers of reason and critical thinking. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

The real title: What would Albert Ellis do?
Cohen basically cribs Albert Ellis's Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and sticks a new label on it. Why not read Ellis's books instead? Ellis in his writings states that he derived his psychotherapeutic ideas from the study of philosophy, which erases the alleged distinction between his form of therapy and Cohen's.

Cohen, despite his devotion to reason, also commits one glaring fallacy that I noticed. The story on page 30 about his friend Larry, who acted "irrationally" by hooking up with drag racers and dying from injuries in an auto accident, shows confirmation bias. One, most people who die in auto accidents, don't die because of drag racing. And two, the overwhelming majority of young men who go through a drag or street racing phase come out of it unharmed, even if they get into a few scrapes with the law along the way.

And from their perspective, the racing scene offers definite advantages: the ability to make new friends; meet sexually available girls; learn something about auto mechanics; improve their driving skills; and have a lot of fun while doing so. I don't endorse drag racing, but a good philosopher would at least acknowledge that it can look like a rewarding thing to do at the time.

Best self-help book and a practical guide to critical thinking, self-awareness, and self-knowledge
For a long time I have enjoyed reading Ayn Rand and her Objectivism philosophy, but I was troubled by my lack of knowledge in applying Objectivism principles to daily living. I am glad to find this book to serve me not only as a practical guide to improve quality of my thinking and emotional wellbeing but also as a bridge to concretize Objectivism theories into real life practices.

I have found the other Amazon reviews, particularly by Heersink and Zinaich, are immensely helpful and accurate in describing and contrasting this title to others in the same category.

This book is well organized and written in great clarity including clinical cases in each chapter to help the reader to grasp its major points. I found this book is a much easier read than Dr. Ellis's books.

okay
i learned a lot about Aristotle, but didn't find the book as provocative as i'd hoped. Writing and thinking is decent but bland.

What Would Aristotle Do?
Elliot D. Cohen's personal insight on how to think and use reasoning in your everyday life is a useful tool to anyone. He shows us how to logically and rationally approach our inner struggles of life. He shows by changing the way one thinks and looks at life then one can successfully deal with their negative outlooks. He helps you tackle your behavioral and emotional problems through rules and reports (how you should think about things). He also shows that there are fallacies in reasoning, and he provides you antidotes to over come these fallacies.

This book is a fantastic guide to helping someone think in the approved manner. Cohen's logic and personal experiences gives you a ray of hope. He turns on a light and shows you that you do not have to live a life in the dark. You do not have to be a philosopher or psychologist to have good reasoning.

Short term therapy for long term results.
I am taking the liberty of quoting Dr. Albert Ellis. Albert Ellis wrote A Guide to Rational Living almost fifty years ago. Arguably one of the best self help books ever writen.

In "What Would Aristotle do", Mr. Cohen builds upon the brilliant revelations and keen insight of "Rational Living". Mr. Cohen adds to the science of self help with humor and simplicity. You can't go wrong with this one. I expect most everyone's life will be a little happier for taking the time to read a couple hundred pages.
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In Aristotle's teleological view of the world, natural things come to be and are present for the sake of some function or end (for example, wings are present in birds for the sake of flying). Whereas much of recent scholarship has focused on uncovering the (meta-)physical underpinnings of Aristotle's teleology and its contrasts with his notions of chance and necessity, this book examines Aristotle's use of the theory of natural teleology in producing explanations of natural phenomena. Close analyses of Aristotle's natural treatises and his Posterior Analytics show what methods are used for the discovery of functions or ends that figure in teleological explanations, how these explanations are structured, and how well they work in making sense of phenomena. The book will be valuable for all who are interested in Aristotle's natural science, his philosophy of science, and his biology. ... Read more

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Richard Janko's acclaimed translation of Aristotle's "Poetics" is accompanied by the most comprehensive commentary available in English that does not presume knowledge of the original Greek. Two other unique features are Janko's translations with notes of both the "Tractatus Coislinianus", which is argued to be a summary of the lost second book of the "Poetics", and fragments of Aristotle's "Dialogue On Poets", including recently discovered texts about catharsis, which appear in English for the first time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Tragedy Teaches Us Something About Life
I read these works for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.
Poetry appeals to human passions and emotions.Powerful beautiful language and metaphor really appeal to emotion.This idea really disturbed Plato, who takes on Homer in the Republic.Plato thought that early Greek poetry portrays a dark world; humans are checked by negative limits like death.Tragedy has in it a character of high status brought down through no fault of his own.Plato says this is unjust.Republic is about ethical life and justice.It starts with the premises that might makes right and then moves onto the idea much like modern religions that justice comes in the afterlife.Plato hates the idea that in tragedy bad things can happen to good people.He wanted to ban tragedy because he found it demoralizing.

Aristotle's Poetics is a defense against Plato's appeal to ban tragedy.Tragedy was very popular in Greek world so Aristotle asks can it be wrong to ban it?Yes, it is wrong thus he decides to study it.Plato says Poetry is not a technç because the poets are divinely inspired.Aristotle disagrees Poetics is a handbook for playwrights.Mimçsis= "representation or imitation."Plato uses it in speaking of painting, thus art is imitation.Another meaning is to mimic, like actors mimicking another person.Plato and Aristotle use it to mean psychological identification like how we get absorbed in a movie as if the action were real, eliciting emotions from us.We suspend reality for a while.Aristotle says this is natural in humans; we do this as children, we mimic.If imitation is important for humans then tragic poetry is worthwhile for Aristotle to study.

Definition of tragedy- "Through pity and fear it achieves purification from such feelings.This is a famous controversial line.Katharsis= "pity and fear" thus the purpose of tragedy is to purge katharsis.Katharsis can also mean purification or clean.There is a debate if it means clarification, through which we can come to understand katharsis.Aristotle thinks tragedy teaches us something about life.Tragedy is an elaboration on Aristotle's idea that good or virtuous people sometimes get unlucky and in the end, they get screwed.Tragedy shows this so we can learn to get by when life screws us.The whole point of tragedy is action over character.Action is the full story of the poem like the Iliad.Character is only part of the action.
Aristotle distinguishes between poetry and history.Poetry is concerned with universals, history is concerned with particulars.

I recommend Aristotle's works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy.Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.

Outstanding Translation and Reconstruction
This text is the first book of literary criticism in the western literary tradition--and the most influential.It is also a how-to-write-a-successful-story text, based on Aristotle's inductive study of Greek literature.Richard Janko's rendering is the best English translation I have read.His commentary on catharsis is profound, resolving what has often been a stumbling block for many critics and theorists.His interpretation is well in line with the rest of Aristotle's philosophy and makes Aristotle's analysis even more useful for both students of literature and contemporary writers.Janko's reconstruction of Aristotle's lost book on comedy is splendid, a contribution to the history of ideas and comic theory. ... Read more