Freshman Seminar, Second Semester

The Nicomachean Ethics is one of Aristotle's most widely read and influential works. Ideas central to ethics--that happiness is the end of human endeavor, that moral virtue is formed through action and habituation, and that good action requires prudence--found their most powerful proponent in the person medieval scholars simply called "the Philosopher." Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle's thought, Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins have produced here an English-language translation of the Ethics that is as remarkably faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering.

Aristotle is well known for the precision with which he chooses his words, and in this elegant translation his work has found its ideal match. Bartlett and Collins provide copious notes and a glossary providing context and further explanation for students, as well as an introduction and a substantial interpretive essay that sketch central arguments of the work and the seminal place of Aristotle's Ethics in his political philosophy as a whole.

The Nicomachean Ethics has engaged the serious interest of readers across centuries and civilizations--of peoples ancient, medieval, and modern; pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish--and this new edition will take its place as the standard English-language translation.

An excellent new translation and commentary. It will serve newcomers as an informative, accessible introduction to the Nicomachean Ethics and to many issues in Aristotle's philosophy, but also has much to offer advanced scholars. The commentary is noteworthy for its frequent citations of relevant passages from other works in Aristotle's corpus, which often shed new light on the texts. Reeve's translation is meticulous: it hits the virtuous mean--accurate and technical, yet readable--between translation's vicious extremes of faithlessness and indigestibility.--Jessica Moss, New York University

With a masterful sense of the place of rhetoric in both thought and practice and an ear attuned to the clarity, natural simplicity, and charm of Plato's Greek prose, James H. Nichols, Jr., offers a precise yet unusually readable translation of one of the great Platonic dialogues on rhetoric. Featuring some of Plato's most soaringly lyrical passages, the Phaedrus investigates the soul's erotic longing and its relationship to the whole cosmos, as well as inquiring into the nature of rhetoric and the problem of writing.Nichols's attention to dramatic detail brings this dialogue to life. Plato's striking variety in conversational address (names and various terms of relative warmth and coolness) is carefully reproduced, as is alteration in tone and implication even in the short responses. The translation renders references to the gods accurately and non-monotheistically for the first time, and includes a fascinating variety of oaths and invocations. Nichols believes that Plato's thought on rhetoric has been largely misunderstood, and he uses his translation as an opportunity to reconstruct the classical position on right relations between thought and public activity.

Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on.

This is a new translation, with introduction, commentary, and an explanatory glossary.

"Sachs's translation and commentary rescue Aristotle's text from the rigid, pedantic, and misleading versions that have until now obscured his thought. Thanks to Sachs's superb guidance, the Physics comes alive as a profound dialectical inquiry whose insights into the enduring questions about nature, cause, change, time, and the 'infinite' are still pertinent today. Using such guided studies in class has been exhilarating both for myself and my students." --Leon R. Kass, The Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago

Aristotle's Physics is the only complete and coherent book we have from the ancient world in which a thinker of the first rank seeks to say something about nature as a whole. For centuries, Aristotle's inquiry into the causes and conditions of motion and rest dominated science and philosophy. To understand the intellectual assumptions of a powerful world view-and the roots of the Scientific Revolution-reading Aristotle is critical. Yet existing translations of Aristotle's Physics have made it difficult to understand either Aristotle's originality or the lasting value of his work.

In this volume in the Masterworks of Discovery series, Joe Sachs provides a new plain-spoken English translation of all of Aristotle's classic treatise and accompanies it with a long interpretive introduction, a running explication of the text, and a helpful glossary. He succeeds brilliantly in fulfilling the aim of this innovative series: to give the general reader the tools to read and understand a masterwork of scientific discovery.

Richard Janko's acclaimed translation of Aristotle's Poetics is accompanied by the most comprehensive commentary available in English that does not presume knowledge of the original Greek. Two other unique features are Janko's translations with notes of both the Tractatus Coislinianus, which is argued to be a summary of the lost second book of the Poetics, and fragments of Aristotle's dialogue On Poets, including recently discovered texts about catharsis, which appear in English for the first time.

This new edition of the Politics retains and adds to Lord's already extensive notes, clarifying the flow of Aristotle's argument and identifying literary and historical references. A glossary defines key terms in Aristotle's philosophical-political vocabulary. Lord has made revisions to problematic passages throughout the translation in order to enhance both its accuracy and its readability. He has also substantially revised his introduction for the new edition, presenting an account of Aristotle's life in relation to political events of his time; the character and history of his writings and of the Politics in particular; his overall conception of political science; and his impact on subsequent political thought from antiquity to the present. Further enhancing this new edition is an up-to-date selected bibliography.

The Focus Philosophical Library's edition of Aristotle's Politics is a lucid and useful translation for the student of undergraduate philosophy, as well as for the general reader interested in the major works of western civilization. This edition includes an introductory essay, notes, glossary, and index, intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle's immediate audience.

Focus Philosophical Library books are distinguished by their commitment to faithful, clear, and consistent presentations of texts and the rich world part and parcel of those texts.