It is impossible to overstate Aristotle’s importance in the development of Western thought. A student of Plato, Aristotle quickly distinguished himself from his teacher by rejecting the theory of forms—the belief that the characteristics of any physical thing (roundness, redness) exist apart from it in an abstract realm of forms. Aristotle taught that forms could not be properly understood apart from the physical objects. After a five-year period tutoring the young Alexander the Great, Aristotle set up his own school, the Lyceum, as a rival to Plato’s Academy.
Aristotle is known as the father of logic. He was the first thinker to establish a system of reasoning. One of his best-known rules of logic is the syllogism: for example, “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal.” Aristotle was also the first thinker to create classifications for knowledge (e.g. mathematics, poetry, etc.).
Aristotle’s works had a profound influence on Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas held Aristotle in such high regard that he refers to him simply as “the Philosopher” throughout his work.
The digital edition of this volume gives you the kind of intertextual connections that philosophers and theologians have dreamed of for centuries. This book is completely indexed and linked across all the other works in your digital library. Jump back and forth between Aristotle and Aquinas with a click. Examine Plato and Aristotle’s similarities and differences with side-by-side textual comparison. The digital edition of this volume will save you time and energy while giving you better access to some of the most important thought in history.
“All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses” (Page xv)
“Clearly then Wisdom is knowledge about certain causes and principles.” (Page xv)
“The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings. And from memory experience is produced in men; for many memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for [981a] a single experience.” (Page xv)
“There must, then, be three theoretical philosophies, mathematics, physics, and what we may call [20] theology, since it is obvious that if the divine is present anywhere, it is present in things of this sort.” (Page xv)
“To all such potency, then, actuality is prior both in formula and in substance; and in time it is prior in one sense, and in another not.” (Page xv)