/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21030994]

What are the most important works of this galaxy brain?

Is this list adequate?
>Organon's 6 books
>Physics
>Metaphysics
>On the Soul
>Poetics
>Ethics

[Anonymous No.21031005]

Look at this gigantic skull. Just how many brains were stuffed in this rocker?

[Anonymous No.21031017]

>>21030994
de anima, organon, and metaphysics are all that are really important. you can read topics if you are really obsessed with him though.

[Anonymous No.21031026]

>>21031017
oh, topics is part of the organon. nvm.

[Anonymous No.21031029]

>>21031017
Isn't physics very important too for understanding his causality?

[Anonymous No.21031071]

How do I read Aristotle so the words on the page have significance to me

[Anonymous No.21031083]

>>21031071
Have high IQ

[Anonymous No.21031090]

>>21031083
I triple majored in mathematics, physics and electrical engineering at university for my degree

[Anonymous No.21031096]

>>21031090
Ok have high IQ and be educated in philosophy

[Anonymous No.21031098]

>>21031096
You don't recommend reading Aristotle to become educated in philosophy?

[Anonymous No.21031101]

>>21031098
Not really, he's too advanced. Plato and presocratics are easier and reading Enligthenment philosophy may help too.

[Anonymous No.21031120]

>>21031098
Don’t listen to >>21031101
Aristotle has a pretty compelling and fairly easy to understand writing style. He laid down a lot of the fundamentals of science theory and formal logic that where relevant even 2 millenniums later (some of his biological works were cited as late as the 50s). As Kant once put it, „Logic hasn’t gone a single step forward since Aristotle“.
Just be aware that some of the notation got a slight update during enlightenment. Whereas Aristotle would put something like „it’s not raining“ as „not a“, today you would just write „a“, since a double negative becomes positive anyways, just to give you an example

[Anonymous No.21031148]

>try to read aristotle
>start with categories
>a man and a picture are homonymous because they're both animals

[Anonymous No.21031230]

>>21031120
Name a more difficult philosopher than Aristotle that is not a romantic (i.e. an obfuscator by nature)

[Anonymous No.21031233]

>>21031230
I think many are more difficult to read, for example Boetius, Descartes, Schelling (technically not romantic), Husserl, Wittgenstein, etc etc

[Anonymous No.21031268]

>>21031233
Your brain must be very different than mine or something doesn't add up at all. Descartes and Wittgenstein are very clear and organized while Aristotle is a mess, dumping random facts with no explanations or conclusions.

[Anonymous No.21032468]

buymp

[Anonymous No.21032517]

>>21030994
Nicomedean ethics is truly a must. It's where the idea of the purpose of life's being the pursuit of happiness comes from.

[Anonymous No.21032543]

>>21031268
nta but it's a mixed bag for me, some of his works are pretty easy to get ("rhetoric", "nicomachean ethics" etc.) while some are hard (e.g. most of "metaphysics" and parts of "organon")

>>21031101
>Plato
>easier
not if we're talking about some specific dialogues of his (e.g. "parmenides")

[Anonymous No.21032657]

>>21032543
Organon and metaphysics are harder than Parmenides

[Anonymous No.21032826]

>>21031029
Yes but you can get it all from Metaphysics and/or a youtube summary.
>>21031071
Unpopular opinion but you don't. You find sources, online or otherwise, to hold your hand through it, from people who dedicated their lives to it and speak fluent Classical Greek and Latin (to decipher the secondary texts from Antiquity). Also a good knowledge of everything that came before him is a must. >>21031230
>>21031268 >>21032657 is right IMO.

[Anonymous No.21032835]

>>21031071
Organon translations are notoriously awful and can't even agree on basic terms. Learn ancient greek and look at all the available translations.

[Anonymous No.21032841]

>>21031148
what would make you reveal your level of stupidity by posting something like that?

[Anonymous No.21032846]

Nicomycousian Ethics

[Anonymous No.21032853]

>>21032846

[Anonymous No.21032877]

>>21030994
I think that De Motu and De Generatione et Corruptione are also quite important.

[Anonymous No.21033648]

was he the smartest man who ever lived?

[Anonymous No.21033698]

Everyone is always sucking this guy's dick but I really cant see whats so amazing about him, at least his metaphysics
I really cant give a fuck about him.
I dont think Kant is right at all about but he is interesting and I can see why he is such a big deal, but in Aristotle's case, why not read Plato instead?

[Anonymous No.21033731]

>>21033648
no

[Anonymous No.21033782]

>>21030994
did he misunderstand Plato's Unwritten Doctrines or what

I bet we discover some Aristotle manuscripts that completely change our understanding of him

[Anonymous No.21033806]

Reminds me of this actor

[Anonymous No.21033858]

>>21033731
then who

[Anonymous No.21033873]

>>21031148
I don't understand why this is difficult for you?

[Anonymous No.21033926]

>>21030994
ur missing politics. Otherwise you´ll be good.

[Anonymous No.21033947]

>>21031148
What you're taking issue with is precisely what he's trying to define (i.e. he's agreeing with you): things which are homo-nymous (same-name-y) are things which ONLY have the same name but NOT the same meaning. You always have to imagine the most primal possible act when reading Aristotle, because those are the ones he's referring to at the outset of his efforts to define/categorize things. The primal act in this case is "the fact that people would, and do, say 'That's Alcibiades' in front of a statue of Alcibiades even though they don't really mean the same thing as if they actually saw Alcibiades and said 'That's Alcibiades'."

The logical and ontological thinking of the Academy and Aristotle (a subset/branch of the Academic school) are always beginning with brute "factual" situations in this way, they begin by trying to enumerate all ACTUALLY said and done things. They don't skip over any details, because the first thing in their mind is to heap up every possible form of something (acts of naming, in this case) that they can possible find or think of, so that they don't miss ANYTHING in clarifying it and describing its logical relations.

[Anonymous No.21033958]

>>21033873
A picture is not an animal you cretin

[Anonymous No.21033966]

>>21032826
>Unpopular opinion but you don't.
I'm sure it's a popular opinion among other retards like yourself.

[Anonymous No.21033967]

>>21033947
But also, the issue of whether the Categories is an ontological (realist) or logical (nominalist) work is insanely contentious, starting in antiquity and going right down to today. Read the first few chapters on Rist's Mind of Aristotle - the chapters on his bio, especially his time at the Academy, and then the very first chapters on the timing/nature of his logical works, and you will get a big boost to understanding him.

Another interesting example that reveals how he is thinking is in the Metaphysics when he says that the "material" of something is its actual physical material, but the "material" of words is letters. This is jarring for us because we jump ahead of him and assume unconsciously that he's elaborating a "theory of matter" or a metaphysical system of causes, when what he's actually doing is, again, coming up with the ABSOLUTELY MINIMAL and logically parsimonious vocabulary or set of concepts necessary to describe ANYTHING, both "notional" things like words and physical things like actual physical objects. The four causes theory is, first and foremost, a phenomenological and logical one, it's the minimal set of concepts and statements needed to give an "account" of anything - ANYTHING - about which we say that it "is" or that we treat as a "thing."

In the way we actually, factually use language, we DON'T distinguish between merely notional things/beings and physical things/beings, so an absolute categorial logic of all possible ways of referring to and giving accounts of things/beings also has to be general enough not to presume any such distinction.

[Anonymous No.21033986]

>>21033967
>But also, the issue of whether the Categories is an ontological (realist) or logical (nominalist) work
The categories are obviously linguistic and disagreeing with this is stupid.

[Anonymous No.21034021]

>>21033986
Yeah it's sort of linguistic or best provisionally described as such, but you have to remember the Greeks didn't make such distinctions and were "instinctive" realists at a much deeper level than any realist today. For them, language fundamentally corresponds to being and can mirror it (when used correctly), because the fundamental function of language is ostensive, pointing to and in effect "summoning" the real being of things forth. Jacob Klein's reading of the meaning of eidos as "type" or "kind" and not as metaphysically substantialized form necessarily is important for understanding this, and for understanding Aristotle's so-called theory of universals in general. The phenomenological recovery of the Greek ontology is very difficult which is why later inheritors of this terminology had such problems understanding Aristotle's immanent "placement" of the universals (if they're not substances, "where" are they?). Actually one of the better introductions to this is in the intro to Being and Time, the two short sections where Heidegger breaks down the etymologies of phenomenon and logos, and describes Greek ontological discourse as apophantic (causing to appear or show forth in it ownness) discourse. This is good background reading for Klein.

[Anonymous No.21034042]

>>21034021
>For them, language fundamentally corresponds to being and can mirror it (when used correctly), because the fundamental function of language is ostensive
Sure, but that doesn't mean all that exists is expressible through language.

[Anonymous No.21034114]

>>21034042
For Aristotle it's arguably the case that everything that exists NECESSARILY, i.e. everything metaphysical as opposed to contingent things, can be described in language, because Aristotle has no true transcendence in his philosophy. Even God is immanent to the world.

That's also why Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Aristotelianism ran into such problems with treating the God of Abraham, who is conceived Platonically (i.e. as completely transcending His creation and not accountable either to it or by it), in Aristotelian "scientific" terms which are fundamentally immanent. It leads to describing God's essence and transcendence as if they are immanent things in this world, as if the potentia ordinata (the being of the world as it is visible to and knowable by us) is coextensive with the potentia absoluta (the actual full power of God as the source of all being).

Plato on the other hand is obviously the philosopher of transcendence par excellence, his whole philosophy is just one big series of myths and preparatory exercises for "pointing beyond" language and conceptual thought, even eidetic thought, at things that can only be experienced mystically.

That's why quasi-Platonic Augustinians and Neoplatonic mystics and fideistic nominalists all thought Thomas was a borderline pagan pantheist for immanentizing God's being into worldly being.

[Anonymous No.21034127]

>>21034114
>everything metaphysical as opposed to contingent things, can be described in language, because Aristotle has no true transcendence in his philosophy. Even God is immanent to the world.
Something doesn't have to be transcendent in order to not be communicable through words.

[Anonymous No.21034132]

>>21034127
Maybe not, but how would that apply in Aristotle's system?

[Anonymous No.21034148]

>>21034132
It would simply be missing. Why would he use language to talk about things that cannot be communicated? The point is that categories are not ontological, they're simply about language and that's it. Yes they have a corresponding with reality, but they're not exhaustive with respect to existence.

[Anonymous No.21034163]

>>21034148
I mean if you want to take a linguistic philosophy approach, like Wittgenstein's grammar or a hermeneutics perspective, then Aristotle can't very well have "had" any conceptions he was "missing." So while you may have a conception of philosophy in which there are unsaids or unsayables, that doesn't necessarily mean they were suppressed in Aristotle's system, as it existed in language, any more than Darwin's natural selection existed but was somehow suppressed in Aristotelian teleological understandings of biology before Darwin. In Aristotle's own actual thought, the categories are neither exclusively linguistic nor exclusively ontological, because these terms are themselves misleading and inappropriate within the Greek understanding of being (and thus of naming/saying), they imply a subject-object dualism and nominalism that is really only appropriate for us moderns who start from a different understanding of being instinctively.

[Anonymous No.21034166]

>>21033958
Yes? That's the point? Their definition of being is different? Literally how Aristotle defines it lol

[Anonymous No.21034182]

>>21034163
Mumbo jumbo. There's no "us moderns", it's just you and the other retards you're reading and normal people who ignore you.

[Anonymous No.21034184]

>>21031071
First read through his complete works and force yourself to do it by reading every word out loud. 90% will make no sense but you'll occasionally experience ineffable glimpses of visions.

Then read all of Plotinus, Augustine, Dionysius, and Thomas (including all Thomas's commentaries on Aristotle).

And you'll have to read the Bible somewhere in there, as a prereq for Thomas and Augustine.

Finally go back and re-read Aristotle, a 2nd time, for real this time.

(Of course this assumes you've already read all of Plato beforehand.)

[Anonymous No.21034194]

>>21034182
Y-You can't talk to me like this! Fuck you!

But seriously I don't really know what position you're holding or advocating. I didn't even know we were fighting.

[Anonymous No.21034209]

>>21034194
Not fighting, just got bored of reading your overly enthusiastic posts that didn't say nothing. Now I realized you're probably Frater, and that's why your posts are what they are.

[Anonymous No.21034223]

>>21034209
Frater is nice, I haven't seen him in a bit. You should always be charitable and polite to people even if you disagree with them or think they're missing the mark.

[Anonymous No.21034233]

>>21032657
Understanding Parmenides is relatively easy, making sense of what it ultimately conveys is the hard part.

[Anonymous No.21034238]

>>21034223
Didn't ask for life advice from you buddy but ok.

[Anonymous No.21034267]

I gave up on Aristotle a while back after banging my head against the intolerably dry Prior Analytics but I managed to get through Categories okay and Ethics isn't very difficult at all. I'm rereading some Plato at the moment and plan to give Aristotle another try after as I'd really like to obtain familiarity with the Greeks. Any suggestions before I give Aristotle another go or is "just read it" the only answer I'm going to get? I'm planning to reread Ethics and then Politics and then start the Organon over again.

[Anonymous No.21034283]

>>21033986
>The categories are obviously linguistic
Not really. Or at the vert least, it begs the question of what it really is to be "linguistic" in the sense that categories are. I'm assuming your answer would be that a linguistic thing is something contingently invented by us, but the two obvious rejections then are the universality of grammatical and categorical features of language and thought, and the universality of certain truths which are clearly beyond the scope of language itself (ie not invented by language as such), yet are universally describable with language (the typical example being mathematical properties of triangles).
>but that doesn't mean all that exists is expressible through language.
Depends what you mean by expressible. It's describable (a description necessarily always being imperfect, and imperfect to different degrees), but not the same in type of being.
>Something doesn't have to be transcendent in order to not be communicable through words.
Correct, and Aristotle would agree with you (although again depending on what exactly you mean by "communicable", because there are still gestures used to indicate universals from particulars). This was his ad hoc solution to the nominalism/realism debate, which he was not aware of per se, he just solved the problem naturally as part of his intellectual procession. Particulars (ie direct sights and other perceptions) are clearly not transcendent, yet they are, according to Aristotle, not capable of definition (subsuming to categories) nor scientific understanding, and as such are not capable of being directly expressed through language, they are only graspable through a certain kind of intuition (a combination of sight and active intellect, although this manner is slightly debatable). So yes, language is if anything an intermediary between the particular and universal. According to Aristotle, language is neither capable of fully grasping particulars nor universals, at the highest end you have intellectual intuition of universals, at the lowest end sensory, or other, intuition of particulars.

[Anonymous No.21034308]

>>21034267
Try reading the first couple chapters of Rist's Mind of Aristotle, the biographical ones that also explain Aristotle's relation to the Academy and Plato's thought, and then give a good chronological and developmental overview of his thought. It's pretty short and will make Aristotle's project come to life by showing how it made sense and was actually a very plausible and interesting twist on things that were already going on at the Academy, which was a bustling place with lots of intellectual variety.

The best advice I can give for understanding Aristotle is what I was mentioning in an above post, that his method (like some of the other people who shared his inclinations at the Academy) is almost phenomenological and starts from a descriptive account of what is sometimes called "the furniture of the world." Like how Sellars described philosophy:
>The aim [is] to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.
The key to understanding Aristotle is in really assimilating that the "broadest possible sense" of thing and hanging together is broader than our normal thinking encompasses.

Personally the way I unlocked Aristotle (and he then became one of the most exciting philosophers for me to read, like following a brilliant mathematical proof) was through Heidegger and Husserl, like Gadamer said:
>Heidegger followed the principle put forward in Plato’s Sophist, that one should make the dialogical partner the stronger. Heidegger did this so well that he almost appeared like an Aristoteles redivivus [Aristotle brought back to life], an Aristotle who, through the power of intuition and the boldness of his highly original conceptuality, cast a spell over everyone.
If you don't mind Heidegger I highly recommend reading the sections I referred to above in Being and Time, just the sections in the preface on logos and phenomenon (where he breaks down the meaning of phenomenology by giving their etymology). And if you can handle really difficult reading, the first 100~ pages of Jacob Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought but it's frustratingly difficult at first, especially the first chapter or two (where you will have no idea what the fuck he's talking about or why). Maybe just skip ahead and skim the chapters on Plato and Aristotle for his description of noesis and eidos.

But all this is only if you don't mind phenomenological stuff, I know it's not everybody's cup of tea. Mainly try the Rist, which is very straightforward, and the other chapters are great guides to his specific texts too.

>>21034283
Good post, I agree with this and the only thing I would add is: since intellectual intuition is becoming a more common buzzword online, in this context it means noesis of eide (as described in the Klein chapters described above), not something mystical.

>>21034238
No worries, in both this case and as regards my earlier posts, see Matthew 13:9.

[Anonymous No.21034336]

>>21034267
>Any suggestions before I give Aristotle another go
My suggestion is don't even touch Prior Analytics unless you have some autistic obsession with logical form. You picked the worst possible starting point and I don't blame you for wanting to quit there. If you find the Organon too dry itself (it's nowhere near as bad as Prior Analytics alone though), my recommendation would be to alternate between that and Metaphysics, De Anima or Physics, so you have some substantive content alongside it. It's fine to read things if you're not understanding every single sentence, just always keep in mind that there are things you're missing so you know it's something to come back to if you end up finding it worthwhile.

[Anonymous No.21034350]

>>21031071
Read it first thing in the morning after getting up and just read a couple pages per day

[Anonymous No.21034393]

Anyone knows what Aristotle says about not being able to describe red to a blind person?

[Anonymous No.21034430]

Be warned There is some kind of curse on that work Aristotle that makes anybody who reads them hungry for Cock 24/7. I have seen top men turned into absolute pigs after absorbing enough Aristotle. For the uncircumcised man there is nothing in Aristotle that isn't retouched in modern Logic and Science other than trivial historical details. If you have the Heterosexual Signet Ring I suppose it's safe.

[Anonymous No.21034434]

>>21031120
Yeah but logic was soon completely revolutionized soon after to the complete and utter embarrassment of kant’s legacy, who basically handwaived away the most important element of his logic.

[Anonymous No.21034507]

>>21034267
>>21034336
>mfw that guy finally finishes reading Prior Analytics---he's half dead, covered in blood, barely even breathing but at least he made it through---only to stumble smack into Posterior Analytics

[Anonymous No.21034580]

>>21034308
>>21034336
I appreciate the suggestions from both of you and I'll keep these things in mind when I plan out my return to his work. Thanks, friends.

[Anonymous No.21035274]

>>21034393
He said that?

[Anonymous No.21035277]

Bump

[Anonymous No.21035278]

>>21035277
what else is there to say? Just let the thread die.

[Anonymous No.21035340]

>>21035278
No, I want to read people fighting over what Aristotle meant

[Anonymous No.21036046]

>>21034267
All you need from Prior Analytics are the first 7 chapters of book 1 unless you want to memorize all the forms of syllogism for some reason in which case, if you're having a hard time, you should look for a Scholastic reading group or Catholic school.
I worked through it myself but this helped me clarify I was making sense of what I read:
https://youtu.be/0mRL-pa7WUU
https://youtu.be/ExC_3CaU0hQ
https://youtu.be/WOqleVlu2tQ

[Anonymous No.21036488]

>>21036046
NTA but thanks
>you should look for a Scholastic reading group
Is that an actual thing or are you just recommending things no one does. Do you have any experience with it?

[Anonymous No.21036557]

>>21036488
No idea lol. My point was it's always useful to find others learning the same thing and discuss with them.

[Anonymous No.21036715]

>>21036557
How long would it take a reading group to get through, e.g., Summa Theologica. I mean, I love reading groups but they read sloooooow. It would take like a hundred years to get through even Part 1 of the Summa