About the Book
The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle reflects the lively international character of Aristotelian studies, drawing contributors from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, and Japan; it also, appropriately, includes a preponderance of authors from the University of Oxford, which has been a center of Aristotelian studies for many centuries. The volume equally reflects the broad range of activity Aristotelian studies comprise today: such activity ranges from the primarily textual and philological to the application of broadly Aristotelian themes to contemporary problems irrespective of their narrow textual fidelity. In between these extremes one finds the core of Aristotelian scholarship as it is practiced today, and as it is primarily represented in this handbook: textual exegesis and criticism. Even within this more limited core activity, one witnesses a rich range of pursuits, with some scholars seeking primarily to understand Aristotle in his own philosophical milieu and others seeking rather to place him into direct conversation with contemporary philosophers and their present-day concerns. No one of these enterprises exhausts the field. On the contrary, one of the most welcome and enlivening features of the contemporary Aristotelian scene is precisely the cross-fertilization these mutually beneficial and complementary activities offer one another.
The volume, prefaced with an introduction to Aristotle's life and works by the editor, covers the main areas of Aristotelian philosophy and intellectual enquiry: ethics, metaphysics, politics, logic, language, psychology, rhetoric, poetics, theology, physical and biological investigation, and philosophical method. It also, and distinctively, looks both backwards and forwards: two chapters recount Aristotle's treatment of earlier philosophers, who proved formative to his own orientations and methods, and another three chapters chart the long afterlife of Aristotle's philosophy, in Late Antiquity, in the Islamic World, and in the Latin West.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Notes on the Contributors
List of Aristotle's Works
I. Aristotle's Philosophical Milieu
1. Aristotle's Philosophical Life and Writings, Christopher Shields
2. Aristotle on Earlier Natural Science, Edward Hussey
3. Science and Scientific Inquiry in Aristotle: a Platonic Provenance, Robert Bolton
II. The Framework of Philosophy: Tools and Methods
4. Aristotle's Categorial Scheme, Paul Studtmann
5. De Interpretatione, Hermann Weidemann
6. Aristotle's Logic, Paolo Crivelli
7. Aristotle's Philosophical Method, C. D. C. Reeve
8. Aristotle on Heuristic Enquiry and Demonstration of What It Is, Kei Chiba
III. Explanation and Nature
9. Alteration and Persistence: Form and Matter in the Physics and De Generatione et Corruptione, S. Marc Cohen
10. Teleology, David Charles
11. Aristotle on the Infinite, Ursula Coope
12. The Complexity of Aristotle's Study of Animals, James Lennox
13. Aristotle on the Separability of Mind, Fred D. Miller, Jr.
IV. Being and Beings
14. Being qua Being, Christopher Shields
15. Substances, Coincidentals, and Aristotle's Constituent Ontology, Michael Loux
16. Actuality and Potentiality, Stephen Makin
17. Aristotle's Theology, Stephen Menn
18. Aristotle's Philosophy of Mathematics, David Bostock
V. Ethics and Politics
19. Conceptions of Happiness, Terence Irwin
20. Aristotle on Becoming Good: Habituation, Reflection, and Perception, Richard Kraut
21. Aristotle's Politics, Pierre Pellegrin
VI. Rhetoric and the Arts
22. Aristotle on the Moral Psychology of Persuasion, Christof Rapp
23. Aristotle on Poetry, Annamaria Schiaparelli and Paolo Crivelli
VII. After Aristotle
24. Meaning: Ancient Comments on Five Lines of Aristotle, Richard Sorabji
25. Aristotle in the Arabic Commentary Tradition, Peter Adamson
26. The Latin Aristotle, Robert Pasnau
Bibliography
Index Locorum
Index Nominum
Subject Index
About the Author :
Christopher Shields is George N. Shuster Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Order in Multiplicity: Homonymy in the Philosophy of Aristotle, Classical Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction, Aristotle, Ancient Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction, and, with Robert Pasnau, The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. He is the editor of The Blackwell Guide to
Ancient Philosophy. Forthcoming is Aristotle's De Anima, Translated with Introduction and Notes.
Review :
"A must-buy for libraries, this book brings together 25 of the world's top Aristotle scholars. Shields's editorial work is superb, and his own contributions are lucid. Highly recommended."-- CHOICE
"The work succeeds remarkably well in providing a vast panorama of the heterogeneous issues that occupied Aristotle and currently occupy Aristotle scholars. The quality of the contributions is high. And while the bulk of the volume and the degree of sophistication of some contributions risk making it intimidating for beginners, it will prove an invaluable tool for readers already acquainted with ancient philosophy, who wish to familiarise themselves with the
interpretative difficulties connected with a particular Aristotelian theme. The many
challenging views set out by the contributors are likely to stimulate reflection and debate." -- The Classical Review
