Aristotle: The Politics - Couverture souple

About the Author:

"Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many different subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology.

Aristotle (together with Socrates and Plato) is one of the most important figures in Western thought. He was one of the first to systematize philosophy and science. His thinking on physics and science had a profound impact on medieval thought, which lasted until the Renaissance, and the accuracy of some of his biological observations was only confirmed in the last century. His logical works contain the earliest formal study of logic that we have and was not superseded until the late nineteenth century. In the Middle Ages, Aristotelian metaphysics had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions, and on Christian thought, where its legacy is still felt in Christian theology, for example in Orthodox theology, and especially within the Catholic tradition shaped by scholasticism. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today.

Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as a river of gold), it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost. They were lost and rediscovered several times, and it is believed that about one fifth of the original works have survived." (Quote from wikipedia.org)

This new edition of The Politics provides students with an unusually lucid and accessible account of this complex, difficult and enormously influential work. It is based on Jonathan Barnes' revision of the renowned Jowett translation, and includes detailed note, a guide to further reading and a chronology of the principal events in Aristotle's life. In his introduction Stephen Everson tackles those problems most likely to hamper students in understanding The Politics. Aristotle's political theory is closely related to claims and types of explanations which he uses and justifies elsewhere in his works, and so one of Everson's main purposes is to show how Aristotle's arguments can best be grasped through an understanding of what he has to say in The Physics about nature and in the The Ethics about human flourishing.