Aristotle: A Quick Immersion (Quick Immersions)

"Τhis splendid book offers a powerful set of insights into how to read Aristotle in a holistic way, by allowing his ideas to emerge out of his own texts. The tenacity, rigor, and interpretive boldness with which Reeve explores these texts, and the clarity of his own writing, makes this an ideal “immersion” in Aristotle for non-experts, but experts too will have much to learn from it." —Pavlos Kontos, Professor of Philosophy, University of Patras"C. D. C. Reeve is one the world’s most accomplished scholars of Aristotle’s thought. His publications bear on nearly every aspect of Aristotle’s philosophy. His translations of many of Aristotle’s works are of great value to specialists and students alike. Here, in this brief overview of the whole of Aristotle’s philosophy, he makes this difficult thinker intelligible and appealing to any reader." —Richard Kraut, Charles and Emma Morrison Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University"This quick immersion into the depths of Aristotle’s thought is breathtaking and an eye-opener. David Reeve shows convincingly how the fact that Aristotle (unlike his teacher Plato) attributed life (and soul) to plants as well, had important consequences for his doctrine of reproduction of man and animals. He explains also why pneuma (the life-bearing spirit with its vital heat) as a soul- and form- transmitting body is necessary for all generation of new life. In this way he shows that Aristotle’s famous book De Anima (On the Soul), containing his theory about soul and the understanding, provides the background for his seminal biological work Generation of Animals." —Abraham P. Bos, Professor of Ancient and Patristic philosophy (retired), Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam"In this compact and elegantly organized monograph, David Reeve provides a comprehensive - and extremely comprehensible - overview of Aristotle’s vast and diverse body of work in science and philosophy. Perhaps because most of his works were apparently class lecture notes, Aristotle is always ready to delve into the nice details and complications of the issues he discusses in order to ensure adequate understanding on the part of his audience. As a result, to understand him it is not enough just to know the philosophical positions he adopts; one must also, as in Reeve’s book, understand how he arrives at them. This “immersion” will be an invaluable resource as an introduction to Aristotle not only for students, but for anyone preparing to learn about the groundbreaking contributions of this most innovative and influential thinker to the Western intellectual tradition." —Michael Ferejohn, Professor of Philosophy, Duke UniversityThis book shows you what it is like to think along with Aristotle and helps you to see the universe and our place in it as he thought they they had to be seen to be scientifically intelligible. As a portrait is composed of colors and shapes that collectively represent someone, so Aristotle’s works are composed of arguments that collectively represent the causal structure of the universe, from the stones, plants, and animals around us to the starry heavens above and the god beyond them. The aim of this brief immersion is to guide you through those arguments in a way that lets you understand for yourself why they proceed as they do and end where they do.