"Basic" and enough for a solid reference and good overview

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	• The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) Aristotle Modern Library, 2001 - 1520 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Good collection of Aristotle

After Plato, Aristotle is by far the greatest Athenian Greek Philosopher. A polymathic genius whose interests ranged from poetry to theology to astronomy, physics and biology, Aristotle systematized Western thought and laid down many of the basic rules for argument and rationality which still stick with us today.

This collection includes Aristotle's major works including logic, metaphysics, scientific works, and works on ethics.

"Basic" and enough for a solid reference and good overview

This is a concise singular source on Aristotle and with enough in it to understand a great deal about him. Since so much of what he had to say has been taken apart by later philosophers it is helpful to have the real "basics" for a reference.

It's approach is especially useful in comparing him to Plato. Plato's world was one of changeless things assigned for lofty contemplation and for Aristotle, as we are told in the introduction, it was a world for empirical investigation. In this volume these works are found nearly complete: The Physics, On Generation and Corruption, On the soul, the Metaphysics, the Nicomachean ethics, the Politics, and the Poetics. The contents list a Preface, Introduction and Bibliograhpy as well as chapters on, Organon, Physica, DeCaelo, De Generatione Et Corruptione, De Anima, Parva Naturalia, Historia Animalium, De Partibus, De Generatione, Metaphysica, Ethica Nicomachea, Politica, Rhetorica, and De Poetica.

I recommend the Hardcover over the paperback. I also recommend this over the multiple volume approaches to his life and thoughts. Even if you don't find the introduction to be complete it is still very useful, as an overview of all that this author felt was needed for a "Basic Works".

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Excellent

This is an excellent collection of Aristotle's works that is very interesting and well written.

Not for a permanent place on your shelf

I won't be the first reviewer to point out that this book is shoddy in binding; my son's school copy fell apart after less than two weeks of teenage reading. Surely, if one is still to take Aristotle seriously, one will need a longer acquaintanceship. If one is only "cruising" through Aristotle, then this flimsy volume includes far too much.
Nevertheless, what a thrill to review the nearly complete works of Aristotle in one quick paragraph! No one could deny his central role in the intellectual history of the world, but one shouldn't forget that his influence was as much pernicious as valuable. If, as might well have happened, his works had perished and Anaximander's survived into the Middle Ages, would we not have dodged a lot of dogmatic bullets?

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Problems with this edition

I love Aristotle and this is a good collection, but my book fell apart! I had a course that used just this book, and despite the fact that we all took good care of our copies, nearly all of our books tore in half or lost pages. Some actually had to make a new book out of it!

reviews: page 1, 2

Preserved by Arabic mathematicians and canonized by Christian scholars, Aristotle?s works have shaped Western thought, science, and religion for nearly two thousand years. Richard McKeon?s The Basic Works of Aristotle?constituted out of the definitive Oxford translation and in print as a Random House hardcover for sixty years?has long been considered the best available one-volume Aristotle. Appearing in paperback at long last, this edition includes selections from the Organon, On the Heavens, The Short Physical Treatises, Rhetoric, among others, and On the Soul, On Generation and Corruption, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Poetics in their entirety.

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