Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction 5th Print Edition

by Jonathan Barnes (Author)

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From the Publisher

very short introducations, introductions, comprehensive

very short introductions, VSI, key features, concise, exper authors, analysis, grow your knowledge

Very Short Introductions, reviews, praise

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A short, sweet, and selective commentary and analysis of Aristotle's works and ideas. A fine adjunct to the reading of the translated texts. A highly recommended aid to the student meeting Aristotle ab initio. Boy, what a book!"--Steven C. Fleishman, University of Maryland

"No other work on Aristotle accomplishes so much in such brief compass; its author's care for and knowledge of Aristotle's achievements are evident on every page."--Tom Cunningham, Grand Valley State College

"One of the finest critical introductions to Aristotle ever written. Clear, concise, and intelligible."--Religious Studies Review

"As an introduction to Aristotle, I find Barnes' book ideal....his book presents the basics in an understandable manner for beginners."--Rose Maries Surwilo, College of St. Francis

"There is something here for everyone with a nose for philosophy and its history...Barnes has provided a description which does justice to the grandeur and breadth of its subject."--Sarah Waterlow, Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Jonathan Barnes taught at Oxford for 25 years, being a Fellow first of Oriel and then of Balliol. He then spent eight years at the University of Geneva, before becoming Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the Sorbonne. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences. His many publications include The Ontological Argument (Macmillan, 1972); Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (Clarendon Press, 2nd edition 1993); Aristotle (OUP, 1982); The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton UP, 1984); Truth, etc. (Clarendon Press, 2007); and Method and Metaphysics:
Essays in Ancient Philosophy I (OUP, 2011); with J. Annas, The Modes of Scepticism (CUP, 1985); Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin, 1987); The Toils of Scepticism (CUP, 1990); The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (CUP, 1995); Porphyry: Introduction (Clarendon Press, 2003).

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 5th Print edition (January 18, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0192854089
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0192854087
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1110L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.99 x 0.43 x 4.48 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #552,211 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #562 in History of Philosophy
- #956 in Greek & Roman Philosophy (Books)

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Gregory J. Casteel

An excellent introduction, and a vigorous defense

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2013

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The important thing to keep in mind when evaluating this book is that it is intended to be "A Very Short Introduction" to Aristotle, not an in-depth scholarly analysis of everything that Aristotle ever wrote. In other words, the purpose of this book is to provide the reader with the basic information that he or she needs to know about Aristotle before beginning a serious study of Aristotle's work, nothing more. So, if you are looking for a book that will explain Aristotle's philosophy in detail, you'll have to look elsewhere. But if you are looking for a book that will give you a good start in learning about who Aristotle was and what he wrote about, then this is definitely the book you're looking for. In my estimation, this book strikes a good balance between biography, survey, and apologia, providing the reader with a sound grasp of who Aristotle was, what he wrote, and why he is still worth reading today. It also strikes a good balance between covering Aristotle the philosopher and Aristotle the naturalist -- between his musings about abstract matters of logic, ethics, and metaphysics, on the one hand, and his empirical observations about biology, physics, and the natural world, on the other. All in all, this book paints a well-rounded picture of Aristotle's contributions to the intellectual history of the world.

Much of this book is devoted to defending Aristotle from his modern-day critics. While the author is not at all shy about pointing out where Aristotle got it wrong (and Aristotle did get a lot of things wrong), he is quick to quash any criticism of Aristotle that he feels to be unfair -- in particular, criticism from "men who did not read Aristotle's own works with sufficient attention and who criticized him for the faults of his successors" (p. 137). Some may find the apologia woven throughout the pages of this book to be excessive; but I feel that it is justified, given the stridency of some of Aristotle's detractors. Aristotle is still important, even today. But, if you listen to his critics, you might come to the false conclusion that there is no value in studying Aristotle. So, any introduction to Aristotle has to dispel this unfortunate popular misconception right from the outset. Students need to know that they're not wasting their time reading Aristotle. Most of Aristotle's science, and much of his philosophy, has been overtaken by more recent discoveries; but there are still many things of value in Aristotle's writings -- not only in terms of our understanding of the history of ideas, where the contributions of Aristotle can scarcely be overestimated, but also in terms of our understanding of many fundamental philosophical issues that are still relevant today. So I, for one, have no problem with the author's defense of Aristotle. After all, any "very short introduction" to the work of an important thinker has to make a case to the reader why that thinker is worth studying in the first place. If you're a devout anti-Aristotelian, you may feel that this book is pure apologia, bordering on hagiography. But, personally, I feel that the apologetic aspects of this book are fully warranted, and not at all excessive, given the amount of misdirected criticism that Aristotle so often receives. As far as I'm concerned, the author's obvious love and respect for Aristotle never detracts from his ability to paint an accurate picture of Aristotle's life and work, warts and all. He doesn't try to portray Aristotle as perfect, only as misunderstood and misjudged. He even offers his own criticisms of Aristotle when those criticisms are due. He simply wants to correct some of the misperceptions that many people seem to have about Aristotle; and I can't fault him for that.

14 people found this helpful

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L

Frustrating. Do not recommend

Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2022

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It feels like the author wanted to encode information. So people who want to receive information from this book would have to first decode it to normal English to get an opportunity to understand what did the author wanted to say.

I think if someone is ok with this kind of “I found the rarest synonym for every normal word” language he probably knows philosophy already.

One person found this helpful

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Marcus

For The Love of Knowledge

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2015

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This volume of the Very Short Introduction series, written by an Aristotle's scholar, provides a good overview of his works and describes the position he has in the history of philosophy. Jonathan Barnes exposed the main concepts of Aristotle's thought and his most importants works. Some interpretations of Aristotle's assertions are rebutted in favor of rival conceptions. The author himself gave his understandings about Aristotle's works. Reading this small book, one has a pretty decent view about aristotelian thought and can, if wanted, submerges in his philosophy.

2 people found this helpful

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Boogie

Adler's is better

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2020

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The author does a good job covering a lot of the bases. Adler's Aristotle for Everyone is better, however, for what it's trying to do--be an intro. Adler writes with greater clarity.

3 people found this helpful

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Sarah

Not bad, but too pedantic

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2021

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The content is decent, however the writer tends to use flowery and over complicated words that are not necessary to understand the material.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Good for an overview of accomplishments

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2021

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I wanted the book to focus more on Aristotle’s philosophy, logic, and other more complex works. It seemed to give all areas of his studies the same amount of pages. I felt some of those areas, such as the zoology chapter, couldn’t have been reduced to allow for more room on other topics.

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2003

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Barnes tries to give a unified presentation of Aristotle's work, but his method of quoting often from Aristotle's work makes the writing seem choppy. The reader does understand that reading Aristotle's work is even more unpleasant than reading this book. A better example of a short introduction that is done successfully is "Plato" by R.M. Hare, also from Oxford U. Press. I have no quarrel with the quality of the content in the book by Jonathan Barnes, just the organization that makes Aristotle's work seem disjointed and the presentation that makes the book dull.

So many philosophy books only touch the mind, not our lives. For books that touch your life I recommend "Socrates Cafe" by Christopher Phillips, although it was written to follow contemporary publishers formulas. "Achieve Lasting Happiness" by Robert Canright does not follow formulas. It is unique, but it does not follow the Greek traditions. It follows Chinese traditions, but Canright shows the Ancient Chinese had much in common with Aristotle.

17 people found this helpful

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Gene C. Bammel

Aristotle in a hundred pages!

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2014

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Barnes speaks with real authority, as he highlights the most basic Aristotelian issues. whether you are an Aristotle scholar, or someone wondering about why people ever speak of Aristotle, this is a very useful book...

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Top reviews from other countries

trini

Aristotle's influence on philosophy and theology in Western civilization for 2,400 years

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2019

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I rate this book at only three stars out of five, because though it makes a good effort to describe the (admittedly difficult) fact and nature of Aristotle's double achievement - in the fields of both the 'natural sciences' (especially biology) and the 'rational' sciences of logic, philosophy and theology - there is needed, and lacking, a discussion of the ongoing significance of Aristotle from the time of his life in the Greek world of the fourth century BC, through the great Christian centuries in early and medieval and Renaissance history, to the present day.

While I am fully aware of the great present-day issues of climate change and the effects of the technological revolution and the value of medical and scientific advances, the most significant debate today is between:

(A) on the one hand, the experts in the 'natural' sciences (cosmology, biology, chemistry, mathematics, neurology and so on) who claim explicitly that ''there is nothing more than matter'', and that the universe ''created itself out of nothing according to non-existent laws of non-existent nature'', that there is no essential difference between the brute beast and human beings, and that 'human beings' have no free will, and that there is no such thing as morality. Leaders in this misguided belief are Stephen Hawking and Richad Dawkins - and one of my present targets, the neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow, interviewed in the Daily Telegraph under the heading (which Critchlow incrediby defends with a 'yes' answer): ''Is our fate decided the moment we're born?'' Of course our genetic inheritance influences our free human behaviour; but Critchlow preaches that it TOTALLY predetermines our every action throughout our lives;

and (B) on the other hand those who believe that human beings are 'more than matter', and that the world around us demands the prior existence of a creator-God, who made human beings to be something special, with a wealth of human activities and human values which are simply not deducible from the blind brute atoms preached by tha atheists. Of course the religious believer has no difficulty about accepting the general results of the purely 'natural' physical sciences too.

And the viewpoint which I will develop is that Aristotle is, solidly, not only on the side of the more-than-matter school, but is one of the two fundamental rational, theological and philosophical sources which establish, over the past 2,400 years, the reality of the God-made world and God-made mankind, the other source being the self-revelation of God through the Old Testament and in Jesus Christ in the New Testament.

To briefly summarize here, the philosophical and theological views of Aristotle back up the teachings of Jesus as given in the gospel of Matthew (chapter 22, verses as shown):
[34] But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.
[35] Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
[36] Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
[37] Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
[38] This is the first and great commandment.
[39] And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
[40] On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

On these two great commandments, detailed as the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament and their explanation and development by Jesus and his apostles in the New Testament, depend all the specifically human virtues by which all human beings exist and strrive to live - including atheists who claim to live by these values, yet, in total self-contradiction, deny that there is any foundation for them.

There has to be an explanation, different from the atheism of Hawking and Dawkins, for what ought to be, what must be, the central feature of any Grand Design: explaining the self-conscious, rational, scientific, mathematical, cosmological, biological, psychological, logical, philosophizing, theologizing, artistic, musical, poetic, literary, remembering, planning, loving, hating, altruistic, selfish, sexual, racial, moral, immoral, believing, hoping, God-fearing, peak-of-creation human being.

In his book ''The Grand Design - New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life''. Hawking confesses abjectly on page 171'':
''The laws of nature tell us HOW the universe behaves, but they don't answer the WHY? questions that we posed at the start of this book:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why do we exist?
Why this particular set of laws and not some other?''
(HOW and WHY and the last three questions are in italics in Hawking).

In her interesting book, ''The Map of Knowledge - How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found: A History in Seven Cities'' [Alexandria, Baghdad, Cordoba, Toledo, Salerno, Palermo, Venice], Violet Moller (Picador, 2019) shows how every scholar, and every centre of civilization, in the whole Mediterranean world, in its eastern and western and northern and southern, European and African homelands, from Aristotle's own day (about 380 BC) to the Renaissance (say to about 1600 AD) and on to the present day - all these civilizations, for 2,000 years and more, copied and studied and translated the works of Aristotle into Latin and Arabic and Italian and German and Spanish and English, as an essential part of what they saved from every dying civilization and introduced into every new centre of human scholarship. Aristotle is the key rational foundation for the philosophical/theological defence of the case for a Creator-God, and specifically for the God of Christianity. A very interesting emphasis in Moller's book is that the Muslim/Arabs who conquered much of the Mediterranean/Christian world, from Baghdad to Alexandria to Constantinople to Morocco, to southern Italy and the Mediterranean islands, and Spain, between 650 AD and 1500 AD, also enthusiastically embraced and handed on the teachings of Aristotle.

5 people found this helpful

F.D.M

I love the 'A very short Introduction' collection and own quite ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 1, 2018

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I love the 'A very short Introduction' collection and own quite a few. They have been very helpful to me with essay writing for my most recent OU module. I would highly recommend them, and already have to my fellow students.

2 people found this helpful

Zeeshan Mahmood

Good introduction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 17, 2016

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Barnes gives a biographical sketch of the philosopher whilst mentioning his famous works and ideas at the same time. He tackles the Aristotelian worldview - showing where it differs from modern day understanding of life, science etc. Overall, a good read.

3 people found this helpful

Michele g.

Aristotle

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 13, 2021

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Small book with lots of information

J. H. C. Leach

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 28, 2017

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