/lit/ - Literature

Read it, if you get stuck. Post here. That cover is beautiful, hopefully you own that copy

>>6640976
Welp, penguin was the only one in the library. I know penguins supposed to be shit, but I'd rather have a physical copy open to note taking than an ebook, regardless of translation quality

>>6641016
You should really only buy books for aesthetic purposes and if you will actually read it imo. Penguin is shit tier.

>>6641031
>library
>buy
Nah m8, I'm too poor to shell out 15 bucks every time I want to read something. This is from the public lib.

>>6641031
>not liking penguin's great covers and minimal spine design
you are the definition of pleb

>>6640935
Expect it to be more winding than almost anything else you'll read by Aristotle. Most scholarship takes it that it was originally a bunch of separate treatises on what Aristotle characterized as "first philosophy" that were compiled by a later editor; this might be true, but there's no evidence of it, just an assumption that there isn't a true unity to the work (which strikes me as lazy interpretation, personally...).

But it certainly is confusing; the science that Aristotle keeps trying to found he characterizes roughly three or four different ways: as the science of first causes, as the science of being qua being, as the science of being qua being understood as substance, and as the science of eternal and unchanging things (and so theology). Whether they all relate well or not is still a question most scholars have a great deal of trouble with, so be prepared to spend some time being humbled by the difficulty of the subject.

If you'd like, I just put together a .rar of a bunch of essential commentaries, studies, and articles on the Metaphysics that might help, including a translation by Joe Sachs that's probably much better than the Penguin your using, if you'd like another rendition of the text to refer to in addition. (Just so you know, some of the files are in .djvu format, so you'd need something like WinDjView or something to read them.)

https://mega.co.nz/#!TQpB3TQQ!N4mP-_C1lKgO88kepQwnTNfV5YbunJRsWTpcMQrryTU

There's also a recently published book by Christopher Bruell, "Aristotle as Teacher: His Introduction to a Philosophic Science," that looks to be one of the most interesting commentaries put forth in the last few decades. If you find yourself digging the Metaphysics, and you happen to have some spare money, it might be worth getting.

>>6641177
Thanks a lot man. I will download that archive for certain. Truth be told, I'm only about 1/4th way through book alpha (notated in my book as "alpha 3"), and I'm certainly digging the book thus far. There has been minimal confusion; though Aristotle's (maybe the translator's) writing style is rather compact, it's very logical in terms of substance, and I've a very clear understanding of the problems Aristotle had chosen to investigate thus far (epistemological wisdom vs sensory perception, the distinction between the "that" and the "because", the function of metaphysics as a science, etc).

This looks to be a very promising read. Does it get more confusing hereafter?

>>6641177
>>6641267
And by confusing, I mean in terms of logical organization and terminology, not substance

>>6641276
Not particularly. It gets difficult, but the real confusion is how the different books relate. An example would be how book Alpha is followed by what's called book Little Alpha, which looks like a whole new introduction. This is then followed by book Beta which is a list of "aporias" or problems, some of which get addressed explicitly later on, and some of which don't. Then Gamma seems to dig into the topic, and BOOM, we get fucking Delta which is a kind of setting out of the terms used. The actual argumentation is very impressive, but the flow of the work as a whole is what's confusing.

Either which way, glad to hear that you're enjoying it so far, anon! Good luck!

>>6640935
If you get a chance, maybe get a copy of the Physics and read the first book, which details what's up with the causes, and keep it around for when you get the prime mover later on, so you can compare how it's dealt with in both works.

>>6641177
Thank you sincerely

I love Aristotle's writing style. That Euclidean, straightfoward propositional style without any ornamentation or hesitation.

Check out this part from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (which is very short and so you should just read it to start with http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/posterior.1.i.html))

>Some hold that, owing to the necessity of knowing the primary premisses, there is no scientific knowledge. Others think there is, but that all truths are demonstrable. Neither doctrine is either true or a necessary deduction from the premisses. The first school, assuming that there is no way of knowing other than by demonstration, maintain that an infinite regress is involved, on the ground that if behind the prior stands no primary, we could not know the posterior through the prior (wherein they are right, for one cannot traverse an infinite series): if on the other hand-they say-the series terminates and there are primary premisses, yet these are unknowable because incapable of demonstration, which according to them is the only form of knowledge. And since thus one cannot know the primary premisses, knowledge of the conclusions which follow from them is not pure scientific knowledge nor properly knowing at all, but rests on the mere supposition that the premisses are true. The other party agree with them as regards knowing, holding that it is only possible by demonstration, but they see no difficulty in holding that all truths are demonstrated, on the ground that demonstration may be circular and reciprocal.

>Our own doctrine is that not all knowledge is demonstrative: on the contrary, knowledge of the immediate premisses is independent of demonstration. (The necessity of this is obvious; for since we must know the prior premisses from which the demonstration is drawn, and since the regress must end in immediate truths, those truths must be indemonstrable.) Such, then, is our doctrine, and in addition we maintain that besides scientific knowledge there is its originative source which enables us to recognize the definitions.

This is really important work. It anticipates the famous "Munchhausen Trilemma" thousands of years in advance. Karl Popper phrased it as "Dogmatism, Infinite Regress, Psychologism", i.e. we either know things by simple dogmatism (what Aristotle calls circular reasoning), or there as an infinite regress so no complete knowledge is available to us, or we can have complete knowledge but the first principles cannot be demonstrated, they are intuitively grasped by us, and this is Aristotle's position.

>>6641177
More of Aquinas' commentaries on Aristotle are available here:

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/

>>6641177
You are a good guy

>>6641946
You too, you are also one of the good guys

>>6641946
I really really like this post

>>6641946
Godel's Incompleteness Theorem also ties into this. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem essentially states what Aristotle states, viz. there is no formal system of definition that is "complete" in that it can give us scientific knowledge, either the axioms of the system will be simply asserted by circular reasoning (they are true because they are true), OR the system itself will have to rely on something OUTSIDE of the formal system, namely, the human intellect which is capable of grasping first principles intutively outside of demonstration. For example, Euclid's book on geometry, the Elements. It's first axioms such as "a point is that which has no part", and, "a line is breadthless length", are not themselves demonstrated (demonstration proceeds from these axioms, but the axioms themselves are not demonstrated/proven). This means that the system in and of itself does not provide knowledge, because while its deductions from the axioms may all be valid, its axioms/premisses are not themselves proven to be sound. Therefore, according to Aristotle, all formal systems really rest in the intuitive grasp of the human intellect of first principles. That a point is "that which has no part", a first principle of geometry, is not something that can be demonstrated, but is something that our intellect immediately perceives.

>>6642439
Also, it's this intuitive grasp of first principles that is colloquially known as, "common sense".

>>6642445

Aristotle is irrelevant now. Honestly I read his physics and it's just plain wrong - and his ethics are completely irrelevant to 2015.

>>6643415
Spoken like a true pleb.

>>6643428
>>6643415
That's not me, although aristotle's work is fairly heterosexist and archaic

>>6643415
>>6643436
>doesn't know about philosophical esotericism
>thinks Aristotle explicitly says what he thinks without qualification
>also steve howe hates this poster