The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

This book is an excellent choice for that purpose. This book helps to alleviate some of the fears one has in reading a great thinker who is not only difficult and challenging but also complex. The content of this book are as follows: Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science, Science, Psychology, Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric and poetics. There is an introduction and a suggestions for reading section which are invaluable and help the reader to understand and comprehend what is trying to be said.

If you need help with Aristotle... look no further than this book to help you get organized and to better understand Aristotle. Approach and methods vary from person to person, but if someone has proceeded you in understanding it is prudent to follow those footsteps... then make your interpretation.

The editor has written an excellent chapter on Metaphysics. Metaphysics is one of Aristotle's most difficult books to understand. Here the editor helps the reader to understand it and also how to read Aristotle with a logical approach.

Remember the best aid to reading Aristotle is Aristotle himself. Aristotle is difficult so read him slowly, very slowly, then he is inspiring and gripping. But, it helps to have someone to rely on and this book will help.


The Cream of the Companion Series   April 11, 2003
Christopher T. Greaves (Salem, OR United States)
25 out of 25 found this review helpful

The 'Cambridge Companion' to philosophy series has put out some great products. In my opinion this may be the best. Absolutely splendid articles that help the reader understand Aristotle rather than some philosopher's interpretation of him. For such a polymath as Aristotle, the authors did a good job of focusing on key facets of his philosopy that adequately prepare and stimulate the reader to investigate other of Aristotle's writings, which the Companion could not cover for lack of space. The bibliography and subject guides to the secondary liturature are well done.


Philosophy of Aristotle? This is the best introduction   June 21, 2008
William J. Romanos (Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

This is the best introduction to one of the most - if not the most - important philosophers in human history.

Aristotle's body of work is extremely wide-ranging as well as dense in detail, and often extremely complex and subtle. This Cambridge Companion simplifies and explains - without the loss of fidelity to the complex and subtle and innovative nature of his teachings - the most important of his teachings.

This Cambridge Companion to Aristotle has essays by preeminent scholars in the field. The book focuses on the most important and influential of Aristotle's philosophical thinking.

It includes essays on Aristotle's logic, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of science and science generally, and psychology, poetics, rhetoric, and politics. These are the core subjects in Aristotle's canon. It is generally believed among scholars that most all of the work of Aristotle that has survived and come down to us today, consists of copies of lecture notes that his students took at his school (known as the Lyceum). Thus, much of his "writings" - though copied for generations and then edited by translators - often seems disjointed or unnecessarily complex in terms of its clarity and organization.

If you are new to studying philosophy, I suggest you start with this Cambridge Companion or the one on Plato. If you start with the one on Aristotle, I suggest you read this Companion and then either at the same time or right after, begin reading the primary texts. You can read all the secondary and ancillary texts you want on philosophers and philosophy, but they are never a substitute for the primary texts. The primary texts are infinitely more rewarding, provided you are able to understand them - and that is where guides like this one come in hand.

To start off on some of his most readable and understandable works (yet still highly important), I suggest you start with poetics (which is about the construction of and study of drama and story (think "plays" or stories like the Illiad by Homer), and narrative structure. What we have of poetics is short, excellent, and is generally believed to be only one part of a larger teaching that has been lost to humanity. I then suggest you read Aristotle's Rhetoric and then Politics. These are easy to understand, but you will gain tremendously by re-reading them over time in greater detail. You can then move on to his Logic (which Aristotle is known as the founder of logic, he invented, or depending on your view, discovered, the tri-partite syllogism and syllogistic structure and logical argument. You can then move on to his Metaphysics, but I suggest that you read and study Plato before embarking on Aristotle's Metaphysics, as you will understand Aristotle better by first reading Plato, as Aristotle was a student of Plato, and Aristotle's Metaphysics takes into account, is a reaction to, and is an extension and modification (or overturning of most aspects- depending on your viewpoint), of Plato's metaphysics (Plato's Ideas vs. Aristotle's Universals). The Cambridge Companion to Plato is also excellent. If you are embarking on a serious study of philosophy for the first time, you may want to read Plato and the Cambridge Companion to Plato before embarking on Aristotle. You will understand Aristotle better if you understand Plato's works first. These are the two most important philosophers in Western civilization, and in my view - and depending on your viewpoint - world history and civilization.

In any event I highly recommend this Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. This is the first one I purchased and read, and I have subsequently enjoyed and found extremely useful other Cambridge Companions for other philosophers.




See what Aristotle would be like today   July 27, 2008
Gerardo Arnaez (Bowling Green, KY)
A great book, but Johnathan Barnes, the editor, must be the living embodiment of Aristotle's philosophy: Lean, uncompromising yet humorously and unknowingly pompous in the extreme. Please Please read his introduction. It reminds me of my college days when we were all so insufferable know-it-alls.

Again, if you want to see Aristotle live and breathe, get this book