The Works of Aristotle, Volume II

by Aristotle

Publishers:

Robert P. Gwinn; Encyclopedia Britannica

, 1990

Overview

The makers of Encyclopaedia Britannica bring you one of the Great Books of the Western World. This text captures major ideas, stories, and discoveries that helped shape Western culture.

Contents

Top Highlights

“Now if you take away from a living being action, and still more production, what is left but contemplation? Therefore the activity of God, which surpasses all others in blessedness, must be contemplative; and of human activities, therefore, that which is most akin to this must be most of the nature of happiness.” (Page 433)

“For this reason also the question is asked, whether happiness is to be acquired by learning or by habituation or some other sort of [10] training, or comes in virtue of some divine providence or again by chance. Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry; happiness seems, however, even if it [15] is not god-sent but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning or training, to be among the most godlike things; for that which is the prize and end of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something godlike and blessed.” (Page 345)

“Another [20] belief which harmonizes with our account is that the happy man lives well and does well; for we have practically defined happiness as a sort of good life and good action. The characteristics that are looked for in happiness seem also, all of them, to belong to what we have defined happiness as being. For some identify happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with a kind of philosophic wisdom, [25] others with these, or one of these, accompanied by pleasure or not without pleasure; while others include also external prosperity.” (Page 344)

Product Details

• Title: The Works of Aristotle, Volume II
• Author: Aristotle
• Edition: Second Edition
• Series: Great Books of the Western World
• Volume: 8
• Publishers: Robert P. Gwinn, Encyclopedia Britannica
• Print Publication Date: 1990
• Logos Release Date: 2016
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Philosophy, Ancient
• ISBNs: 0852295316, 9780852295311
• Resource ID: LLS:GBWW08
• Resource Type: text.monograph.ancient-manuscript.translation
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:11:03Z

About Aristotle

Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born in the Greek colony of Stagirus, on the coast of Thrace. When he was 17, Aristotle went to Athens, where he studied under Plato at the Academy for 20 years. Following the death of Plato, and due to Aristotle’s divergence from platonic ideas, Aristotle left the Academy. He was later hired by Philip of Macedonia as a tutor for his son, Alexander (who would grow up to become Alexander the Great). After tutoring Alexander for five years, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum as a rival to Plato’s Academy. Because he was in the practice of walking while he taught, his followers became known as peripatetics, a Greek word meaning “to walk about.”

Known as the father of logic, Aristotle was the first philosopher to develop a system of reasoning. He was also the first to classify human knowledge into specific disciplines (e.g. mathematics, biology, etc.). He is most famous known for rejecting the platonic theory of forms, setting up a dichotomy that has dominated philosophy to this day.