I bought this yesterday and am on book 5 of Metaphysics. I barely understand anything. am I retarded?
I've read several other philosophers (Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza), and never had this problem. Relative to their writings, reading Aristotle feels fruitless. I understand its his lecture notes, but he is autistically meticulous and his examples and definitions just exacerbate the problem. I don't want to have wasted $25. Does he get better once you've gotten used to him?
I would recommend you start with the Nicomachean Ethics; it is, in my opinion, Aristotle's most readable work. If that still is too difficult for you, Aristotle might just not be for you.
Aristotle is brutally, horrifically difficult, and even when you think you get him, all you've really accomplished is reading enough secondary scholarship on Greek/Aristotelian philosophy that you get the mainstream idea of what he's talking about. Then you read Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle and it all falls apart again, or a handful of other, even weirder things.
If you've read Leibniz though I don't see how you could be so fucked though. I'm fine with Aristotle and Leibniz still pisses me off to read.
Just read him with extensive commentary.
Aristotle can be very difficult. Also keep in mind, Aristotle did not write, his works consist of the lectures that his students transcribed. As the other user said, start with Ethics, its his easiest and possibly his most important work. You can also try reading secondary literature like Aristotle for Everyone by Adler, its a retarded sounding title but it neatly summarizes his work which will be helpful when you read the primary source, trust me.
>Also keep in mind, Aristotle did not write, his works consist of the lectures that his students transcribed.
According to his contemporaries he wrote many books and his prose was "golden" but they're all lost now
START WITH THE GREEKS
Aristotle can be pretty hard, both for reasons related to the peculiar state of his surviving writings (no one's really fully sure whether they're notes for speaking, notes for his studies, outright treatises, transcripts by students, or the work of other figures associated with him), for reasons related to translation (a predominantly latinate and deeply scholastic set of translations that can at times bury his work if you don't have access to a reliable means of working out the terms), and reasons related to simple sheer difficulty in following very subtle arguments.
The Metaphysics is made up of inquiries related to what Aristotle calls "first philosophy", but first philosophy is not necessarily what must come temporally first for the philosopher. A seeming worthwhile hermeneutic suggestion on Aristotle's part which might help is his view that we start with the things known better by us and proceed to the things known better by nature; one might take the things known better by us as the "human"-oriented studies, like the Nicomachean Ethics, the Politics, the Topics, Sophistical Refutations, the Rhetoric, and then make the move from the Poetics to On the Soul and start studying the physical works.
No, you aren't retarded, Metaphysics is just hard as nails. I had a class on it and towards the end even a lot of philosophy master's student clocked out.
Personally, I also loathe the writing style, I'd rather read fucking Kant. Not to blame Aristotele, it's just what happens when you have a bunch of texts thousands of years old, somehow jumbled together and translated back and forth.
Btw, what's a recommend commentary on the Metaphysics in the anglosaxon world?
It's always important to remember there are people who devote their careers to understanding these texts. Don't become crestfallen when you don't understand on first, or even sixth reading.
There's a number of really good studies on the Metaphysics, though there's so much disagreement that just about any one you look at will differ in some significant respect with others.
So, translations with apparatuses:
Hippocrates Apostle - In the traditional vein of Latinate translations, but much more clear, with a very helpful glossary that tracks a large number of terms, and short commentaries that try to help fill the argument.
Joe Sachs - A much less traditional translation that strives to capture the power of Aristotle's thinking. Maybe more helpful than other translations. A very in depth glossary is included for a handful of the most important terms.
Traditional commentaries:
Look up Alexander of Aphrodisias, Averroes, and St. Thomas Aquinas, all of whom have written detailed commentaries on the Metaphysics.
Modern studies:
Franz Brentano - On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle
Joseph Owens - The Doctrine of Being in te Aristotelian Metaphysics
Heidegger - Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta 1-3
Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle
Mary Gill - Aristotle on Substance, the Paradox of Unity
Edward Halper - One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics
If you're looking for any one commentary on the Metaphysics though, try Christopher Bruell's "Aristotle as Teacher", which is a chapter by chapter close reading of the Metaphysics.
>rather read kant than aristotle
holy shit am I missing something? kant is a nightmare
metaphysics is fun I agree tho
wait till u get to the second book of poetics to get mindfucked.
Im reading Politics rn and it's pretty readable, albeit dry as ever loving fuck. Nice to learn about how the Spartans and other Hellens set up their government though senpai
You should know the Spartan constitution before your 12
excuse my pseudo-autism
sorry
Thanks user! I've read Thomas Aquinas' commentary, in fact i'm trying to write an essay comparing the two, it's just been while since my last reading of Metaphysics and i've forgotten half of it and I need to fresh my knowledge up :X
>Aristotle is brutally, horrifically difficult
Absolutely not, he's just dry. In fact his dryness is what makes him easy since he puts everything into plain language and defines all the terms he uses.
Especially in Metaphysics he is rigerous as fuck though and the lanuage is quite alien (Kant feels contemporary in comparison, although his style was of course horrible) and the concepts are often oblique (though not necessarily incredibly complex) and are hard to grasp without extended context, which is natural given the nature and age of the text.
And plain language doesn't mean anything given that it's translated greek from like 2000 years ago so a lot of words that seem obvious mean something completely different. His definitions aren't self-evidient either given that there is lots that is lost in translation or historic context that is impossible to know without secondary reading.
aristotles def not that hard, start with the categories, read physics and de anima also, then take metaphysics.
How are aquinas' commentaries? I stumbled into them a few months ago and soon saw that there's like 4000 pages worth of it for a bunch of different aristotelian works.
Okay seriously, could you try and explain to me exactly what to ti en einai signifies?
Fuck that, I ain't reading all of that. I dunno, maybe I'm overestimating him because of how dry he is. I'd rather read the Phenemology again (which is objectively harder, obviously, but at least you can aquire more Hegelian space magic) than sift through a billion 2000 year old analogies about rocks and shit.
It's quite interesting, although not very good if you want to get a modern understanding of Metaphysics, it's a good account of how metaphysics evolved through the times though. There's some literature out there comparing his commentary to the original, if you just want an overview.
The commentaries are all very thorough close readings, which makes them pretty dry as you begin them, but especially when it gets to parts where Aristotle's work is too crabbed to make great sense of (say, a premise is missing, or the argument seems incomplete somehow), Aquinas often has a great take on the subject.
Not the user you're asking, but literally "the what it was to be", or what something is being in order to be what it is whatsoever. Usually translated altogether as "essence".