Saturday, January 5, 2008

PRINT-Aristotle for Everybody by Mortimer J. Adler

Mortimer J. Adler's Aristotle for Everybody is a great introduction to the work of who I consider to be the greatest philosopher who ever lived--Aristotle. You will breeze through the book because it is easy to read, but your mind will linger on it for a long time as you consider the ideas in it.

Basically, Aristotle was a common sense philosopher. Unlike Plato, Aristotle believed in observation. Instead of philosophizing, Aristotle looked at how the world operated. The necessity of philosophy is to come up with structures and terms and whatnot in order to understand that world. This is the beauty of Aristotle. He essentially started what would come to be modern science and many of our academic disciplines today. Aristotle was fundamentally a scientist while his teacher, Plato, was a bit of a religious fuckhead. But these are my opinions and not Mr. Adler's. Adler simply unpacks and explains what Aristotle had going on.

Aristotle is life. His thinking results in living, knowledge, and things like the Renaissance. It is world embracing as opposed to world denying like Platonism. Aristotle was a fucking genius. Aristotle is the light. Plato was the darkness.

If you want to get into Aristotle, this book is the place to start.

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