Aristotle

In this extensively revised new edition of his 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, Shields’s 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.

This second edition includes an expanded treatment of Aristotle’s theories of perception and thinking; a new a discussion of the highly debated topic of the active intellect; an augmented assessment of Aristotle’s philosophical methods and approach to causation and explanation; a more detailed consideration of bi-valence and truth; and a fuller appraisal of Aristotle’s historical legacy, closing with an overview of contemporary Neo-Aristotelian movements in virtue theory and metaphysics.

Christopher Shields is Professor of Classical Philosophy in the University of Oxford, UK, and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. 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, second edition 2013). He is editor of The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy (2002) and The Oxford Handbook on Aristotle (2012).