New Perspectives On Aristotle S De Caelo

Aristotle's great ambition in his De caelo was to determine the nature and structure of the geocentric universe. This collection of essays addresses key epistemological and methodological issues raised by the numerous arguments that Aristotle offers.

This volume is the first collection of scholarly articles in any modern language devoted to Aristotle s "De caelo." It grew out of series of workshops held at Princeton, Cambridge, and Paris in the late 1990 s. Since Aristotle s "De caelo" had a major influence on cosmological thinking until the time of Galileo and Kepler and helped to shape the way in which Western civilization imagined its natural environment and place at the center of the universe, familiarity with the main doctrines of the "De caelo" is a prerequisite for an understanding of much of the thought and culture of antiquity and the Middle Ages.

New investigations on the content, impact, and criticism of Aristotelianism in Antiquity, the Late Middle Ages, and modern ethics show that Aristotelianism is not an obsolete monolithic doctrine but a living and evolving tradition within philosophy. Modern philosophy and science are sometimes understood as anti-Aristotelian, and Early Modern philosophers often conceived their philosophical project as opposing medieval Aristotelianism. New Perspectives on Aristotelianism and Its Critics brings to light the inner complexity of these simplified oppositions by analysing Aristotle’s philosophy, the Aristotelian tradition, and criticism towards it within three topics – knowledge, rights, and the good life – in ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy. It explores the resources of Aristotle’s philosophy for breaking through some central impasses and simplified dichotomies of the philosophy of our time. Contributors are: John Drummond, Sabine Föllinger, Hallvard Fossheim, Sara Heinämaa, Roberto Lambertini, Virpi Mäkinen, Fred D. Miller, Diana Quarantotto, and Miira Tuominen

This new translation of De Caelo (On the Heavens) fits seamlessly with other volumes in the New Hackett Aristotle series, enabling Anglophone readers to study Aristotle’s work in a way previously not possible. The Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what it is about, what it is trying to do, how it goes about doing it, and what sort of audience it presupposes. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index indicates the places where focused discussion of key notions occurs.

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.

In Aristotle's teleological view of the world, natural things come to be and are present for the sake of some function or end (for example, wings are present in birds for the sake of flying). Whereas much of recent scholarship has focused on uncovering the (meta-)physical underpinnings of Aristotle's teleology and its contrasts with his notions of chance and necessity, this book examines Aristotle's use of the theory of natural teleology in producing explanations of natural phenomena. Close analyses of Aristotle's natural treatises and his Posterior Analytics show what methods are used for the discovery of functions or ends that figure in teleological explanations, how these explanations are structured, and how well they work in making sense of phenomena. The book will be valuable for all who are interested in Aristotle's natural science, his philosophy of science, and his biology.

Explores ancient biology and cosmology as two sciences that shed light on one another in their goals and methods.

With a novel approach to Aristotle’s zoology, this study looks at animals as creatures of nature (physis) and reveals a scientific discourse that, in response to his predecessors, exiles logos as reason and pursues the logos intrinsic to animals’ bodies, empowering them to sense the world and live. The volume explores Aristotle’s conception of animals through a discussion of his ad hoc methodology to study them, including the pertinence of the soul to such a study, and the rise of zoology as a branch of natural philosophy. For Aristotle, animal life stems from the body in the space of existence and revolves around sensation, which is entwined with pleasure, pain, and desire. Lack of human reason is irrelevant to an understanding of the richness of animal life and cognition. In sum, the reader will acquire knowledge of the "animal as such," which lay at the core of Aristotle’s agenda and required a study of its own, separate from plants and the elements. This book is intended for students of the history of science, ancient biology, and philosophy and all those who, from different fields, are interested in animal studies and the human-animal relation.