In addition to being one of the world's most influential philosophers, Aristotle can also be credited with the creation of both the science of biology and the philosophy of biology. He was the first thinker to treat the investigations of the living world as a distinct inquiry with its own special concepts and principles. This book focuses on a seminal event in the history of biology - Aristotle's delineation of a special branch of theoretical knowledge devoted to the systematic investigation of animals. Aristotle approached the creation of zoology with the tools of subtle and systematic philosophies of nature and of science that were then carefully tailored to the investigation of animals. The papers collected in this 2001 volume, written by a pre-eminent figure in the field of Aristotle's philosophy and biology, examine Aristotle's approach to biological inquiry and explanation, his concepts of matter, form and kind, and his teleology.

Historically and philosophically informed introduction to the embryological, zoological, and medical views presented in this sophisticated and challenging text.

Examines Aristotle's approaches to how to develop a political community based on the notions of justice and friendship.

This volume draws together a selection of Gisela Striker's essays from the last forty years in the areas of research for which she is best known: Aristotle's logic and ethics, and Hellenistic epistemology and ethics.

Ancient Greek thought saw the birth, in Western philosophy, of the study now known as moral psychology. In its broadest sense, moral psychology encompasses the study of those aspects of human psychology relevant to our moral lives—desire, emotion, ethical knowledge, practical moral reasoning, and moral imagination—and their role in apprehending or responding to sources of value. This volume draws together contributions from leading international scholars in ancient philosophy, exploring central issues in the moral psychology of Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools. Through a series of chapters and responses, these contributions challenge and develop interpretations of ancient views on topics from Socratic intellectualism to the nature of appetitive desires and their relation to goodness, from the role of pleasure and pain in virtue, to our capacities for memory, anticipation and choice and their role in practical action, to the question of the sufficiency or otherwise of the virtues for a flourishing human life.

This book examines a widespread, and often misunderstood, doctrine within the medieval Aristotelian tradition, namely the inclusion of Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics within the scope of the Organon. It studies this doctrine, as presented by the Islamic philosophers Al- Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes, from a purely philosophical perspective, and argues that the logical construal of the arts of rhetoric and poetics is both interesting and illuminating. The book begins by examining some prevalent misconceptions regarding the logical interpretation of the Rhetoric and Poetics. Chapter two considers the Greek background of the doctrine, first through an examination of the Aristotelian divisions of the sciences, and then through an examination of the beginnings of the logical classification of the Rhetoric and Poetics among the Greek commentators from the school of Alexandria. The remainder of the work is devoted to a detailed consideration of the Arabic philosophers' development of the doctrine, both their understanding of its general epistemological and logical underpinnings, and their elaboration of the specific logical structures upon which poetical and rhetorical discourse is based. Consideration is also given to the relationship between contemporary philosophical views of rhetoric and poetics, and the views of these medieval authors.