Aristotle

In this excellent introduction, Christopher Shields introduces and assesses the whole of Aristotle’s philosophy, showing how his powerful conception of human nature shaped much of his thinking on the nature of the soul and the mind, ethics, politics and the arts.

Beginning with a brief biography, Christopher Shields carefully explains the fundamental elements of Aristotle’s thought: his explanatory framework, his philosophical methodology and his four-causal explanatory scheme. Subsequently he discusses Aristotle’s metaphysics and the theory of categories and logical theory and his conception of the human being and soul and body.

In the last part, he concentrates on Aristotle’s value theory as applied to ethics and politics, and assesses his approach to happiness, virtues and the best life for human beings. He concludes with an appraisal of Aristotelianism today.

Christopher Shields is a Tutorial Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and Professor of Classical Philosophy at the University of Oxford, UK. His books include Order in Multiplicity: Homonymy in the Philosophy of Aristotle (1999), Classical Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2003) and (with Robert Pasnau) The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (2003). He is editor of The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy (2002) and The Oxford Handbook on Aristotle (2007).

1. Life and Works 2. Explaining Nature and the Nature of Explanation 3. Thinking Scientifically, Thinking Philosophically 4. Categories of Being 5. Puzzles of Nature 6. Being qua Being and Substance 7. Living Beings 8. Living Well 9. Political Association 10. The Arts, Rhetoric, and Tragedy 11. Aristotle’s Legacy. Glossary of Aristotelian Terms. Index