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Aristotle: Selections
Aristotle
*Aristotle: Selections* is a single-volume anthology drawing together the most important passages from across Aristotle's enormous body of work—logic, physics, metaphysics, the soul, ethics, and politics—so a reader can meet the philosopher without navigating the full corpus. Aristotle (384–322 BC) touched nearly every field of knowledge, and his surviving writings are mostly terse lecture notes rather than polished books, which makes a well-chosen selection especially useful. Anthologies under this title have appeared from several editors and translators over the decades; each pairs the excerpts with introductions and notes to orient newcomers. As a way into the thinker who shaped Western science, ethics, and logic for two millennia, a good "Selections" is hard to beat.
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The author
Aristotle (384–322 BC) of Stagira studied for two decades under Plato, tutored Alexander the Great, and founded his own school, the Lyceum. His works became the backbone of medieval learning in the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic worlds and remain central to philosophy today. Much of what survives is dense lecture material, not writing meant for publication.
The book
This is an anthology, not a single treatise: representative selections from the logical works (the Organon), the Physics and Metaphysics, On the Soul, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Politics, framed by editorial introductions. Several editions carry the title Aristotle: Selections—among them a classic Scribner volume edited by W. D. Ross and the widely used Hackett edition edited by Terence Irwin and Gail Fine—so the exact translator and apparatus depend on the printing.
How to read it
An anthology is ideal for a first encounter, but abridgement flattens Aristotle's step-by-step arguments; readers who catch fire should move to complete translations of individual works.
For more context
Follow up with the Nicomachean Ethics whole, and Jonathan Barnes's short Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Aristotle
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Spirituality & Philosophy
- Location
- Colorado
Places