The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle

by Shields, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780195187489
• ISBN10: 0195187482
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-07-26
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Oxford Handbook of Aristotlereflects the lively international character of Aristotelian studies, drawing contributors from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, and Japan; it also, appropriately, includes a preponderance of authors from the University of Oxford, which has been a center of Aristotelian studies for many centuries. The volume equally reflects the broad range of activity Aristotelian studies comprise today: such activity ranges from the primarily textual and philological to the application of broadly Aristotelian themes to contemporary problems irrespective of their narrow textual fidelity. In between these extremes one finds the core of Aristotelian scholarship as it is practiced today, and as it is primarily represented in this handbook: textual exegesis and criticism. Even within this more limited core activity, one witnesses a rich range of pursuits, with some scholars seeking primarily to understand Aristotle in his own philosophical milieu and others seeking rather to place him into direct conversation with contemporary philosophers and their present-day concerns. No one of these enterprises exhausts the field. On the contrary, one of the most welcome and enlivening features of the contemporary Aristotelian scene is precisely the cross-fertilization these mutually beneficial and complementary activities offer one another. The volume, prefaced with an introduction to Aristotle's life and works by the editor, covers the main areas of Aristotelian philosophy and intellectual enquiry: ethics, metaphysics, politics, logic, language, psychology, rhetoric, poetics, theology, physical and biological investigation, and philosophical method. It also, and distinctively, looks both backwards and forwards: two chapters recount Aristotle's treatment of earlier philosophers, who proved formative to his own orientations and methods, and another three chapters chart the long afterlife of Aristotle's philosophy, in Late Antiquity, in the Islamic World, and in the Latin West.

Author Biography

Christopher Shields is Tutor and Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall and Professor of Classical Philosophy in the University of Oxford. He is the author of Order in Multiplicity: Homonymy in the Philosophy of Aristotle, Classical Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction, Aristotle, Ancient Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction, and, with Robert Pasnau, The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. He is the editor of The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy. Forthcoming is Aristotle's De Anima, Translated with Introduction and Notes.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Notes on the Contributors	p. xiii
Abbreviations of Aristotle's Works	p. xix
Aristotle's Philosophical Milieu
Aristotle's Philosophical Life and Writings	p. 3
Aristotle on Earlier Natural Science	p. 17
Science and Scientific Inquiry in Aristotle: A Platonic Provenance	p. 46
The Framework of Philosophy: Tools and Methods
Aristotle's Categorial Scheme	p. 63
De Interpretatione	p. 81
Aristotle's Logic	p. 113
Aristotle's Philosophical Method	p. 150
Aristotle on Heuristic Inquiry and Demonstration of What It Is	p. 171
Explanation and Nature
Alteration and Persistence: Form and Matter in the Physics and De Generatione et Corruptione	p. 205
Teleological Causation	p. 227
Aristotle on the Infinite	p. 267
The Complexity of Aristotle's Study of Animals	p. 287
Aristotle on the Separability of Mind	p. 306
Being and Beings
Being qua Being	p. 343
Substances, Coincidentals, and Aristotle's Constituent Ontology	p. 372
Energeia and Dunamis	p. 400
Aristotle's Theology	p. 422
Aristotle's Philosophy of Mathematics	p. 465
Ethics and Politics
Conceptions of Happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics	p. 495
Aristotle on Becoming Good: Habituation, Reflection, and Perception	p. 529
Aristotle's Politics	p. 558
Rhetoric and the Arts
Aristotle on the Moral Psychology of Persuasion	p. 589
Aristotle on Poetry	p. 612
After Aristotle
Meaning: Ancient Comments on Five Lines of Aristotle	p. 629
Aristotle in the Arabic Commentary Tradition	p. 645
The Latin Aristotle	p. 665
General Bibliography	p. 691
Index Locorum	p. 697
Index Nominum	p. 705
Subject Index	p. 709
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