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23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Aristotle unraveled, May 17, 2000
Sir David Ross' explication of Aristotle's philosophy is most helpful. Aristotle's works that have survived to today seem to be post-lecture notes, a sort of "here's what I covered in today's lecture" recap. As such, Aristotle's books are sometimes confusing, occasionally contradictory and often just plain difficult to understand. In addition, Aristotle was a scientist first and philosopher second. This makes his works, which we read for their philosophical content, more difficult to grasp in some cases. Further, as with any translated works, various translators convey Aristotle's assertions in different ways, some of them more useful than others. Ross' deep understanding of The Philosopher, gained through years of study, teaching and translation, gives him the background needed to help the reader understand more clearly Aristotle's position on various subjects. Ross is able to reconcile some apparent contradictions, to point out some of Aristotle's underlying assumptions and make confusing passages clear. As a graduate student in philosophy, I find Ross' work to be very helpful and expect to use it extensively as background material for my thesis. But the value derived from reading and understanding Aristotle is not limited to students or philosophers, and the value of Ross' book is wide-ranging as well. Aristotle will be helpful to students, teachers or lay readers interested in philosophy but struggling with some of the archaic attitudes presented in many translations of The Philosopher's work.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good as supplement to original texts; not good for beginners, January 2, 2011
This book is a good companion book if you are puzzling through Aristotle's original texts and need help figuring out what he is saying. But for the beginner who just wants Aristotle's ideas and does not want to read Aristotle's original texts, this book is not good.
Consider this example: "In the notion of the possible two moments are included. The possible must be something that involves no impossible consequence; but also it must be something whose contrary is not necessarily false. It is thus not the contradictory of the impossible; it is that which is neither impossible nor necessary, and in view of the latter characteristic 'A may be B' is convertible with 'A may not be B'."
Note that Ross assumes that the reader knows the meaning of the technical terms "contrary", "contradictory", "moments", "convertible". Thus, no explanation is given.
For the layman with no philosophical training, Aristotle For Everybody is an easy to understand, if oversimplified, summary of Aristotle's ideas. I have also heard good things about Aristotle: The Desire To Understand, but I haven't read it.
Ross's book seems to be more of a key to the original texts, to be read as a supplement to the original texts.
It may be that this chapter on Logic which I am currently reading is hard for the beginner to understand, and that later chapters are more intelligible. The Introduction does say that "the general reader...will be well advised not to read the book straight through, nor to start at the beginning; the easiest approach would be through the chapters on ethics and politics and then on philosophy of nature."
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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Only recommended for those who need a detailed study of Aristotelian philosophy, November 15, 2009
I was thoroughly looking forward to this book on Aristotle and was greatly dissappointed. The biographical sketch of Aristotle is meager (and admittedly may be all that is available) and 90% of the book is devoted to a detailed study of Aristotelian philosophy which is extremely tedious to read. Part of the problem is that the book was originally written in the 1920s using a style of writing that is clearly directed towards a graduate level study of Aristotle. The book is also full of typographical errors which is quite unacceptable for a book that is over 80 years old and in its 6th edition.
I imagine this book will be valuable for someone looking for an exhaustive (although ponderously written) study of Aristotelian philosophy, but everyone else will likely wish to save their hard earned money for something more enjoyable. We definitely need a modern look at Aristotle along the lines of Luis Navia's wonderful book on Socrates.
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