The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Reference to them is made according to the organization of Immanuel Bekker's Royal Prussian Academy edition ("Aristotelis Opera edidit Academia Regia Borussica", Berlin, 1831–1870), which in turn is based on ancient classifications of these works.
Corpus Aristotelicum
Aristotle
Aristotle | Corpus Aristotelicum
The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Yes - Andronicus of Rhodes collected the esoteric works of Aristotle's school edited them, and finally compiled them into the more cohesive, larger works. Yes, his "esoteric" works. Yes
where is the solar system located in our galaxy
user
The Solar System, is located in the Milky Way's galactic habitable zone.
assistant
what is the milky way?
user
It is the galaxy that contains our Solar System.
assistant
can you tell me the names of the stars that form a part of this galaxy?
user
The Milky Way may contain ten billion white dwarfs, a billion neutron stars, and a hundred million stellar black holes.
assistant
can this galaxy be seen from earth in the northern hemisphere?
user
The Milky Way is visible from Earth as a hazy band of white light, some 30° wide, arching across the night sky.  As viewed from Earth, the visible region of the Milky Way's galactic plane occupies an area of the sky that includes 30 constellations.
assistant
how would you describe its size?
user
The Milky Way is the second-largest galaxy in the Local Group with its stellar disk approximately in diameter and, on average, approximately thick. The Milky Way is approximately 890 billion times the mass of the Sun.
assistant
name the structural parts of this.
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
assistant
what is the estimated age of this galaxy?
user
Several individual stars have been found in the Milky Way's halo with measured ages very close to the 13.80-billion-year age of the Universe.
assistant
what are the names of the intellects who studied and observed this cluster of stars?
user
Aristotle, Anaxagoras, Democritus
assistant
what is the professional background of the first person mentioned?
user
He  was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece.
assistant
which period did he exist?
user
384–322 BC
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what was his contribution as an intellect?
user
Aristotle's work encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry. Aristotle makes philosophy in the broad sense coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as "science".
assistant
were any of his original writings recovered?
user
The Corpus Aristotelicum is the collection of Aristotle's works that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's works that were lost or intentionally destroyed, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Reference to them is made according to the organization of Immanuel Bekker's nineteenth-century edition, which in turn is based on ancient classifications of these works.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Introduction
The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Reference to them is made according to the organization of Immanuel Bekker's Royal Prussian Academy edition ("Aristotelis Opera edidit Academia Regia Borussica", Berlin, 1831–1870), which in turn is based on ancient classifications of these works.
Aristotle | Corpus Aristotelicum
Aristotle wrote his works on papyrus scrolls, the common writing medium of that era. His writings are divisible into two groups: the "exoteric", intended for the public, and the "esoteric", for use within the Lyceum school. Aristotle's "lost" works stray considerably in characterization from the surviving Aristotelian corpus. Whereas the lost works appear to have been originally written with a view to subsequent publication, the surviving works mostly resemble lecture notes not intended for publication. Cicero's description of Aristotle's literary style as "a river of gold" must have applied to the published works, not the surviving notes. A major question in the history of Aristotle's works is how the exoteric writings were all lost, and how the ones we now possess came to us.
Aristotle | Loss and preservation
The recovery of Aristotle's texts is considered a major period in medieval philosophy, leading to Aristotelianism. Because some of Aristotle's newly translated views discounted the notions of a personal God, immortal soul, or creation, various leaders of the Catholic Church were inclined to censor those views for decades, such as lists of forbidden books in the Condemnations of 1210–1277 at the University of Paris. Meanwhile, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274), at the end of that time period, was able to reconcile the viewpoints of Aristotelianism and Christianity, primarily in his work, "Summa Theologica" (1265–1274).
Recovery of Aristotle | Introduction
The paradox is that the recension that descends bears little resemblance to the library at Athens. It contains only books specifically authored by Aristotle with the inclusions of works later shown to be spurious. There are no works of Theophrastus or anyone else and no explanation of what happened to all the other books. The library that was rescued cannot possibly be the one that needed rescuing.
Corpus Aristotelicum | The authorship paradox
The "Recovery of Aristotle" (or Rediscovery) refers to the copying or re-translating of most of Aristotle's books (of ancient Greece), from Greek or Arabic text into Latin, during the Middle Ages, of the Latin West. The Recovery of Aristotle spanned about 100 years, from the middle 12th century into the 13th century, and copied or translated over 42 books (see: Corpus Aristotelicum), including Arabic texts from Arabic authors, where the previous Latin versions had only two books in general circulation: "Categories" and "On Interpretation" ("De Interpretatione"). Translations had been due to several factors, including limited techniques for copying books, lack of access to the Greek texts, and few people who could read ancient Greek, while the Arabic versions were more accessible.
Recovery of Aristotle | Introduction
Surviving fragments of the many lost works of Aristotle were included in the fifth volume of Bekker's edition, edited by Valentin Rose. These are not cited by Bekker numbers, however, but according to fragment numbers. Rose's first edition of the fragments of Aristotle was "Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus" (1863). As the title suggests, Rose considered these all to be spurious. The numeration of the fragments in a revised edition by Rose, published in the Teubner series, "Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta", Leipzig, 1886, is still commonly used (indicated by "R"), although there is a more current edition with a different numeration by Olof Gigon (published in 1987 as a new vol.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Fragments
The will contains one more bequest that is rather peculiar. It has a bearing on the nature of the "Corpus", whether it is Aristotle's, Aristotle's and Theophrastus', or of all the friends. There is as yet no solution to the problem of authorship, or rather lack of it. Ancient sources on the topic are inconsistent. There is no general scholarly consensus and no agreed preponderance of evidence. The will relates in translation "The whole of my library I give to Neleus." The heart of the school was its library, containing all the research results and analytical papers (the notebooks). Without it the friends could not produce current or meaningful lectures about the topics for which the school was known (physics, rhetoric, etc.) All the other school property was being redistributed to the friends in common (except that the foreign estates were given individual owners, probably for their management, while the slaves and the minor received individual guardians), but the heart of the school, without which it could not pump knowledge, was not to be common property, an anomalous approach for the circumstances.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Abscondence of the library by Neleus
In the Early Middle Ages, some Muslim scholars had translated Aristotle's ancient-Greek writings into the Arabic language. They had also written commentaries about those writings. The preservation of ancient Greek ideas was a major contribution of Islamic civilization. In the 4th century, the Roman grammarian Marius Victorinus translated two of Aristotle's books, about logic, into Latin: the "Categories" and "On Interpretation" ("De Interpretatione"). A little over a century later, most of Aristotle's logical works, except perhaps for the "Posterior Analytics", had been translated by Boethius, c. 510–512 (see: Corpus Aristotelicum). However, only Boethius's translations of the "Categories" and "On Interpretation" had entered into general circulation before the 12th century.
Recovery of Aristotle | Background
The consensus is that Andronicus of Rhodes collected the esoteric works of Aristotle's school which existed in the form of smaller, separate works, distinguished them from those of Theophrastus and other Peripatetics, edited them, and finally compiled them into the more cohesive, larger works as they are known today.
Aristotle | Loss and preservation
According to Diogenes Laertius, The library of the Lyceum at its peak under Aristotle comprised many types of books: works authored by the elders under their names, works authored by elders and young men, signatures uncertain, copies of works written by other authors on research topics, and research results of unspecified form. This same library continues under Theophrastus, acquiring more works of the same type, except that Aristotle is no longer a contributor. On the death of Theophrastus, we are led to believe, the library disappears for 200 years, having been safely abscinded by Neleus. Just as suddenly it reappears, having been rescued, cared for by three editors and a powerful aristocrat, to be published in a new recension by Andronicus, and to descend to us this very day as Bekker pages.
Corpus Aristotelicum | The authorship paradox
The extant works of Aristotle are broken down according to the five categories in the Corpus Aristotelicum. Not all of these works are considered genuine, but differ with respect to their connection to Aristotle, his associates and his views. Some are regarded by most scholars as products of Aristotle's "school" and compiled under his direction or supervision. (The "Constitution of the Athenians", the only major modern addition to the Corpus Aristotelicum, has also been so regarded.) Other works, such as "On Colors", may have been products of Aristotle's successors at the Lyceum, e.g., Theophrastus and Strato of Lampsacus. Still others acquired Aristotle's name through similarities in doctrine or content, such as the "De Plantis," possibly by Nicolaus of Damascus.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Overview of the extant works
Unfortunately, they appeared at the very end of the creative period of Greek thought, and therefore came to be accepted as authoritative. By the time that logical originality revived, a reign of two thousand years had made Aristotle very difficult to dethrone. Throughout modern times, practically every advance in science, in logic, or in philosophy has had to be made in the teeth of the opposition from Aristotle's disciples.
Aristotelianism | Criticism
3 in Walter de Gruyter's reprint of the Bekker edition), and a new de Gruyter edition by Eckart Schütrumpf is in preparation. For a selection of the fragments in English translation, see W. D. Ross, "Select Fragments" (Oxford 1952), and Jonathan Barnes (ed.), "The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation", vol. 2, Princeton 1984, pp. 2384–2465. A new translation exists of the fragments of Aristotle's "Protrepticus", by Hutchinson and Johnson (2015). The works surviving only in fragments include the dialogues "On Philosophy" (or "On the Good"), "Eudemus" (or "On the Soul"), "On Justice", and "On Good Birth". The possibly spurious work, "On Ideas" survives in quotations by Alexander of Aphrodisias in his commentary on Aristotle's "Metaphysics".
Corpus Aristotelicum | Fragments
By implication they meant Bekker, but even as they wrote a new manuscript was being excavated from the trash-heaps of Egypt about which Bekker knew nothing at all, or anyone else for at least a few thousand years: the Constitution of the Athenians (Aristotle). It was identified as being one of 158 political studies written by Aristotle and his students no earlier than 330 BC. It is in the "notebook" format. The content differs in that it is not an abstract treatise but is a history stating periods and dates. Not being able to fit it into an idea of the "corpus" based on Bekker, many rejected it.
Corpus Aristotelicum | The ambiguous name, Corpus Aristotelicum
Instead "Neleus took it to Skepsis and bequeathed it to his heirs, ordinary people, who kept the books locked up ..." The result, according to Strabo, was that the school "... had no books at all, with the exception of only a few, ... and were therefore able ... only to talk bombast about commonplace propositions ..." No details or motives are given. Speculations are rife. Every author has something to say, some judgement to render. All are conscious of the fact that, were it not for this perfidy, there would be no "corpus" as it is known today.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Abscondence of the library by Neleus
During the 20th century, Aristotle's work was widely criticized. The philosopher Bertrand Russell argued that "almost every serious intellectual advance has had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine". Russell called Aristotle's ethics "repulsive", and labelled his logic "as definitely antiquated as Ptolemaic astronomy". Russell stated that these errors made it difficult to do historical justice to Aristotle, until one remembered what an advance he made upon all of his predecessors. The Dutch historian of science Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis wrote that Aristotle and his predecessors showed the difficulty of science by "proceed[ing] so readily to frame a theory of such a general character" on limited evidence from their senses.
Aristotle | Modern rejection and rehabilitation
With the loss of the study of ancient Greek in the early medieval Latin West, Aristotle was practically unknown there from c. AD 600 to c. 1100 except through the Latin translation of the "Organon" made by Boethius. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, interest in Aristotle revived and Latin Christians had translations made, both from Arabic translations, such as those by Gerard of Cremona, and from the original Greek, such as those by James of Venice and William of Moerbeke. After the Scholastic Thomas Aquinas wrote his "Summa Theologica", working from Moerbeke's translations and calling Aristotle "The Philosopher", the demand for Aristotle's writings grew, and the Greek manuscripts returned to the West, stimulating a revival of Aristotelianism in Europe that continued into the Renaissance.
Aristotle | On medieval Europe
Apparently the king's system of "eyes and ears," so well developed under Alexander, failed totally, that an entire building full of books could have been received and buried without him being informed. Moreover, the event remained a family secret for the next 200 years.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Recension of Apellicon
The Auctoritates Aristotelis ("Authoritative [passages of] Aristotle") was a popular florilegium (anthology of brief extracts) probably composed around the end of the thirteenth century by the Italian scholar Marsilius of Padua. This large collection of "sententiae" (opinions) derived from scholastic texts was compiled around 1300 by de Fonte while he was a lector in theology at the Franciscan convent in Montpellier. He says in the prologue that his work is intended to provide assistance “as much for preaching to the people as study of the arts.” The work enjoyed a wide circulation, providing a convenient way to access Aristotle's philosophy, or to embellish a composition or sermon with quotations from his work.
Auctoritates Aristotelis | Introduction
At least some of the books seem to have been sold to the library in Alexandria. In the 10th century, a catalogue of the library revealed manuscripts by both Theophrastus and Aristotle which almost had to have been obtained from Neleus. The rest seem to have been hidden by his family, known for their ignorance. The library then disappeared for several centuries until it appears to have been bought from Neleus's heirs in the 1st century BCE and returned to the school. However, when Sulla attacked Athens, the books were shipped to Rome. Throughout their travels one fifth of Aristotle's works were lost and thus are not a part of the modern Aristotelian collection.
Lyceum (Classical) | History of Aristotle's library
The Aristotelian text is unique because it is not a part of the Corpus Aristotelicum. It was lost until two leaves of a papyrus codex carrying part of the text were discovered in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt in 1879 and published in 1880. A second, more extensive papyrus text was purchased in Egypt by an American missionary in 1890. E. A. Wallis Budge of the British Museum acquired it later that year, and the first edition of it by Frederic G. Kenyon was published in January, 1891. The editions of the Greek text in widest use today are Kenyon's Oxford Classical Text of 1920 and the Teubner edition by Mortimer H.
Constitution of the Athenians (Aristotle) | Discovery
The following list gives the Bekker numbers that are used to give references to Aristotle's works; all of Aristotle's works are listed, except for the "Constitution of the Athenians", which was discovered after Bekker's edition was published, and the fragments. The titles are given in accordance with the standard set by the Revised Oxford Translation. Latin titles, still often used by scholars, are also given.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Aristotle's works by Bekker numbers
During late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the Aristotelian approach to inquiries on natural phenomena was used. Aristotle's four causes prescribed that the question "why" should be answered in four ways in order to explain things scientifically. Some ancient knowledge was lost, or in some cases kept in obscurity, during the fall of the Western Roman Empire and periodic political struggles. However, the general fields of science (or "natural philosophy" as it was called) and much of the general knowledge from the ancient world remained preserved through the works of the early Latin encyclopedists like Isidore of Seville. However, Aristotle's original texts were eventually lost in Western Europe, and only one text by Plato was widely known, the "Timaeus", which was the only Platonic dialogue, and one of the few original works of classical natural philosophy, available to Latin readers in the early Middle Ages.
Science | Medieval science
Having determined to print all of Aristotle's authentic works, as far as could be ascertained, Bekker found himself looking back over a voluminous paper trail. He chose to use the texts found in 102 manuscripts (MSS), routinely identified by library name and access number. For use in the book, he gave each MS a letter code. These appear in the footnotes. The front material of the edition includes a list of MSS. His libraries are relatively few, including the Vatican Library at Rome, the Biblioteca Marciana at Venice, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (formerly the Royal Library of Paris), and the Austrian National Library at Vienna.
Corpus Aristotelicum | The paper trail before Bekker
Most of Case's works were commentaries on various treatises of Aristotle ("Organon", "Nicomachean Ethics", "Politics", "Economics", "Physics") under curious titles; they enjoyed a large circulation during his time, and were frequently reprinted. His works include "Summa veterum interpretum in universam dialecticam Aristotelis" (1584, on the "Organon") and "Speculum moralium quaestionium in universam ethicen Aristotelis" (1585, a commentary on the "Nicomachean Ethics"; verses prefixed by Laurence Humphrey), which was the first book printed at the press presented to Oxford by their chancellor, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and which had been reprinted eight times in Frankfurt by 1625. "Sphaera Civitatis" (1588, a commentary on Aristotle's "Politics"), like other books by Case, was reprinted abroad, and Barnes, the printer, obtained an order from the university in 1590 that every bachelor should take one copy on "determining."
John Case (Aristotelian writer) | Works
Surviving fragments of the many lost works of Aristotle were included in the fifth volume of Bekker's edition, edited by Valentin Rose. These are not cited by Bekker numbers, however, but according to fragment numbers. Rose's first edition of the fragments of Aristotle was "Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus" (1863). As the title suggests, Rose considered these all to be spurious. The numeration of the fragments in a revised edition by Rose, published in the Teubner series, "Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta", Leipzig, 1886, is still commonly used (indicated by "R"), although there is a more current edition with a different numeration by Olof Gigon (published in 1987 as a new vol.
Bekker numbering | Fragments
He has also preserved for us intelligence of several more ancient readings, which now, in part, have vanished from the manuscripts without leaving any trace, and in the paraphrastic sections of his interpretations furnishes us with valuable contributions for correcting or settling the text of Aristotle. Not less valuable are the contributions towards a knowledge of the ancient astronomical systems for which we have to thank him in his commentary on the books "de Caelo". We even find in his writings some traces of a disposition for the observation of nature.
Simplicius of Cilicia | Writings
All in all, only a few major works of Aristotle were never translated into Arabic. Of these, the fate of "Politics" in particular remains uncertain. The rest of Aristotle's books were eventually translated into Latin, but over 600 years later, from about the middle of the 12th century. First, the rest of the logical works were finished, by using the translations of Boethius as the basis. Then came the "Physics", followed by the "Metaphysics" (12th century), and Averroes' "Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics" (13th century), so that all works were translated by the mid-13th century.
Recovery of Aristotle | Background
According to a distinction that originates with Aristotle himself, his writings are divisible into two groups: the "exoteric" and the "esoteric". Most scholars have understood this as a distinction between works Aristotle intended for the public (exoteric), and the more technical works intended for use within the Lyceum course / school (esoteric). Modern scholars commonly assume these latter to be Aristotle's own (unpolished) lecture notes (or in some cases possible notes by his students). However, one classic scholar offers an alternative interpretation. The 5th century neoplatonist Ammonius Hermiae writes that Aristotle's writing style is deliberately obscurantist so that "good people may for that reason stretch their mind even more, whereas empty minds that are lost through carelessness will be put to flight by the obscurity when they encounter sentences like these."
Corpus Aristotelicum | Exoteric and esoteric
Besides the three works known to ʿAbdishoʿ, there are other works by Ishoʿbokht that are partially preserved and attest his philosophical interests. Extracts from his commentary on the "Categories" of Aristotle exist in two manuscripts. There is also a note on possibilities. It is not absolutely certain that these fragments are by the Ishoʿbokht who was metropolitan of Fars. They survive only in Syriac, although that may not be their original language.
Ishoʿbokht | Philosopher
Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle's views on physical science profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. Their influence extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. Some of Aristotle's zoological observations found in his biology, such as on the hectocotyl (reproductive) arm of the octopus, were disbelieved until the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and John Buridan.
Aristotle | Introduction
Works also survived when they were reused as bookbinding materials, quoted or included in other works, or as palimpsests, where an original document is imperfectly erased so the substrate on which it was written can be reused. The discovery, in 1822, of Cicero's "De re publica" was one of the first major recoveries of a lost ancient text from a palimpsest. Another famous example is the discovery of the Archimedes palimpsest, which was used to make a prayer book almost 300 years after the original work was written. A work may be recovered in a library, as a lost or mislabeled codex, or as a part of another book or codex.
Lost literary work | Introduction
The study of Aristotle's works continued by scholars who were called Peripatetics through Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the works of the Peripatetic school were lost to the Latin West, but they were preserved in Byzantium and also incorporated into early Islamic philosophy. Western Europe recovered Aristotelianism from Byzantium and from Islamic sources in the Middle Ages.
Peripatetic school | Introduction
In the story by Strabo, after Neleus has removed the books to Skepsis — many thousands in broad daylight on a caravan of wagons and in a fleet of ships, without objection or notice of any officials at Athens or Skepsis — history knows no more of him, even though he must have had plans for the books. Evidently the plans did not materialize. To take the passage literally, he must have died shortly thereafter, as the relatives received disposition of the property willed to them (the books). The books arrived at Skepsis and were stored in a large outbuilding at what must have been a country estate, as the space requirements would not have changed any since Athens.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Recension of Apellicon
Rose's first edition of the fragments of Aristotle was "Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus" (1863). As the title suggests, Rose considered these all to be spurious. The third revised edition was published at Leipzig in 1886 with the title "Aristotelis Qui Ferebantur Librorum Fragmenta". The engagement of Friedrich Nietzsche with this work has been described in the first chapter of James I. Porter, "Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future", Stanford, 2000.
Valentin Rose (classicist) | Aristotelian fragments
According to this will, dated year 1059, he bequeathed several books to a monastery of the Theotokos, which he had founded, amongst them the "Aethiopica". It was printed several times by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari in the Republic of Venice (1556, 1560, 1586) in an Italian translation from Greek by Leonardo Ghini.
Aethiopica | Rediscovery
A final category, omitted here, includes medieval palmistries, astrological and magical texts whose connection to Aristotle is purely fanciful and self-promotional. In several of the treatises, there are references to other works in the corpus. Based on such references, some scholars have suggested a possible chronological order for a number of Aristotle's writings. W.D. Ross, for instance, suggested the following broad chronology (which of course leaves out much): "Categories", "Topics", "Sophistici Elenchi", "Analytics", "Metaphysics Δ", the physical works, the "Ethics", and the rest of the "Metaphysics". Many modern scholars however, based simply on lack of evidence, are skeptical of such attempts to determine the chronological order of Aristotle's writings.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Overview of the extant works
He composed commentaries on Aristotle. A compendium of excerpts from these is extant in a Syriac manuscript discovered in Cambridge in 1901, (shelfmark Gg. 2. 14). This dates later than 1400, was acquired by Cambridge in 1632, and is very tatty and disarranged. The majority of the manuscript is a work by Dionysius Bar Salibi. The work was probably written in Rome ca. AD 1, when he attracted criticism for being too involved in philosophy to court the wealthy and powerful.
Nicolaus of Damascus | Compendium on Aristotle
Unlike some earlier scholastic philosophers, he was literate in Greek, and was therefore able to use the Greek texts of Aristotle. He devoted much effort to presenting what he considered to be the true meaning of Aristotle's texts.
Jacopo Zabarella | Work
Shute's "Discourse on Truth" (1877) was adapted into German by Goswin Karl Uphues. Shute's Conington Prize essay on the Aristotelian writings was published posthumously: there Shute held that the surviving works were not written by Aristotle himself, but had been "filtered at least through other minds".
Richard Shute | Introduction
Although some knowledge of Aristotle seems to have lingered on in the ecclesiastical centres of western Europe after the fall of the Roman empire, by the ninth century nearly all that was known of Aristotle consisted of Boethius's commentaries on the "Organon", and a few abridgments made by Latin authors of the declining empire, Isidore of Seville and Martianus Capella. From that time until the end of the eleventh century, little progress is apparent in Aristotelian knowledge. The renaissance of the 12th century saw a major search by European scholars for new learning. James of Venice, who probably spent some years in Constantinople, translated Aristotle's "Posterior Analytics" from Greek into Latin in the mid-twelfth century, thus making the complete Aristotelian logical corpus, the "Organon", available in Latin for the first time.
Aristotelianism | Western Europe
It was translated into French in 1617 by Pierre de la Noue, partially translated into English by Henry Peacham in 1638, and later fully translated in 1715. The "Rerum memorabilium" attempted to catalogue the wisdom and knowledge that had been lost from ancient civilisations which Panciroli named "deperdita" (things lost). Notably, this survey focused on (in its "deperdita") subjects in natural philosophy, alchemy and medicine that had been lost since from the ancient world, focusing less on immaterial philosophical, institutional and, religious ideas that had been lost. This had a great influential on Renaissance writers as it inspired a rebirth of study into classical works of technology and science, rediscovering this "deperdita", in opposition to the Medieval focus on ancient philosophy.
Guido Panciroli | "Rerum memorabilium, iam olim deperditarum"
The tradition best known to moderns is the "Corpus Aristotelicum", New Latin for "Aristotelic body," a term not used by Bekker. The Prussian Academy published his 1831 edition under the name "Aristoteles Graece", "Aristotle in Greek," where Aristoteles is the nominative case. In most Latin and New Latin book titles the author is in the genitive case, such as "Aristotelis Opera", "the works of Aristotle." Individual works are so named by Bekker, but none of this is any sort of "corpus". In the late 19th century the "corpus" phrase began to appear in the notes of the German historians of philosophy, such as Zeller and Windelband.
Corpus Aristotelicum | The ambiguous name, Corpus Aristotelicum
Andronicus is of special interest in the history of philosophy, from the statement of Plutarch, that he published a new edition of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, which formerly belonged to the library of Apellicon, and were brought to Rome by Sulla with the rest of Apellicon's library in 84. Tyrannion commenced this task, but apparently did not do much towards it. The arrangement which Andronicus made of Aristotle's writings seems to be the one which forms the basis of our present editions and we are probably indebted to him for the preservation of a large number of Aristotle's works.
Andronicus of Rhodes | Works of Aristotle
The business of the friends was not merely education in existing knowledge. As is expressed in the first few paragraphs of "Physics", they were interested in discovering the principles, or elements of the knowledge, which was an entirely new goal in Greek education. This research was divided into specific "fields" (methodoi). First they collected written works representing the existing knowledge. Subsequently, they collected field data through interviews and specimen-hunting. Aristotle is the first known scientist to have sent out field workers, and to have sent them with military expeditions. Alexander's ethnic and political intelligence gathering as a friend of the school was certainly of greatest value in his ultimate goal, to create a new, multi-cultural world empire.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Research at the Lyceum
Though there was a considerable reverence for Platonism in Oxford during the fourteenth century, the rebirth of Aristotelianism held sway in the higher Parisian learning circuits. Dumbleton, who studied in Paris for a brief time, was not immune to this spell. In fact, his compendium "Summa Logica et Philosophiae Naturalis", has an overview of many principles found in Aristotle's "Physics". The "Summa" is broken into ten different sections. The ninth section is uncompleted in all extant manuscripts. The tenth section, which, according to Dumbleton, was supposed to examine "universals and signification," shows no evidence of ever being worked on. Although this is the case, the other sections of Dumbleton's "Summa" are filled with medieval philosophical gems.
John Dumbleton | Philosophical contributions
Greek Christian scribes played a crucial role in the preservation of Aristotle by copying all the extant Greek language manuscripts of the corpus. The first Greek Christians to comment extensively on Aristotle were Philoponus, Elias, and David in the sixth century, and Stephen of Alexandria in the early seventh century. John Philoponus stands out for having attempted a fundamental critique of Aristotle's views on the eternity of the world, movement, and other elements of Aristotelian thought. Philoponus questioned Aristotle's teaching of physics, noting its flaws and introducing the theory of impetus to explain his observations. After a hiatus of several centuries, formal commentary by Eustratius and Michael of Ephesus reappeared in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, apparently sponsored by Anna Comnena.
Aristotle | On Byzantine scholars
Aristo wrote notes on the "Libri Posteriorum" of Marcus Antistius Labeo, on "Cassius" (unclear which one, but likely Gaius Cassius Longinus or a descendant), whose pupil he had been, and on Masurius Sabinus. "Aristo in decretis Frontianis", or "Frontinianis", is once cited in the "Digest"; but what those decreta ("decisions") were has never been satisfactorily explained.
Titius Aristo | Works
He worked mainly on the tragedians, Aristophanes, Athenaeus, and the lexicons of Suidas, Hesychius and Photius. This last he twice transcribed (the first transcript was destroyed by a fire at James Perry's house) from the original among the Gale manuscripts in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was pleased when he found how often in Aristophanes he had been anticipated by Bentley, and when Niels Iversen Schow's collation of the unique manuscripts of Hesychius appeared and proved him right in some instances. In 1795 there appeared from Foulis's press at Glasgow an edition of Aeschylus in folio, printed with the same type as the Glasgow Homer, without a word of preface or anything to give a clue to the editor.
Richard Porson | Later work
According to Strabo, Neleus, son of Coriscus, a friend at the Lyceum, "inherited the library (bibliotheke) of Theophrastus, which included that of Aristotle." Theophrastus received Aristotle's library by being bequeathed it along with the school. Theophrastus was the first book collector, as far as Strabo knew. Apparently, the elders owned their own libraries and could dispose of them as they pleased. The main problems with this view are, first of all, that Aristotle's Will survives credibly in Diogenes Laertius' (D.L.'s) "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" under "Aristotle". There is not one word about a library. Moreover, Aristotle, a metic, or foreign resident of Athens, was not allowed to own property or bequeath it, so he could not have either owned the school with its library or have left it to anyone by legal process.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Transition from cooperative to private school
The rest exists only in fragments preserved in Photius and the excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.
Bibliotheca historica | Introduction
Scholars travelled to areas of Europe that once had been under Muslim rule and still had substantial Arabic-speaking populations. From central Spain, which had returned to Christian rule in the eleventh century, scholars produced many of the Latin translations of the 12th century. The most productive of these translators was Gerard of Cremona, (c. 1114–1187), who translated 87 books, which included many of the works of Aristotle such as his "Posterior Analytics", "Physics", "On the Heavens", "On Generation and Corruption", and "Meteorology". Michael Scot (c. 1175–1232) translated Averroes' commentaries on the scientific works of Aristotle. Aristotle's physical writings began to be discussed openly, and at a time when Aristotle's method was permeating all theology, these treatises were sufficient to cause his prohibition for heterodoxy in the Condemnations of 1210–1277.
Aristotelianism | Western Europe
From his point of view, Aristotelianism is a decline in intellectual history, a falsification and destruction of the knowledge of earlier thinkers. The fourth book serves to prove errors in Aristotelian natural philosophy.
Franciscus Patricius | " Discussiones peripateticae "
Pace’s only work which is still extant is Elucidario in quatru libru Phisicoru Aristotelis ("An Examination of the first four Books of Aristotle’s ‘Physics’"), written in 1649 (begun in May of that year). The manuscript is written in old Italian or Sicilian, and held at the National Library of Malta, Valletta, marked as MS. 1465. Its pages are not numbered. The work is a detailed philosophical examination of the first four out of the eight books of Aristotle’s "Physics". Its division is typical of Scholasticism, and hence organised in Articles and Conclusions.
Saverius Pace | Known works
Since the 19th century, when inquiry was initiated by Jakob Bernays (1863), several scholars have attempted to reconstruct the work. Attempted reconstructions include:
Protrepticus (Aristotle) | Reconstructions
Aristotle discusses this in "Sophistical Refutations" and in "Prior Analytics" book II, (64b, 34–65a 9, for circular reasoning see 57b, 18–59b, 1). The stylized dialectical exchanges Aristotle discusses in the "Topics" included rules for scoring the debate, and one important issue was precisely the matter of "asking for the initial thing"—which included not just making the actual thesis adopted by the answerer into a question, but also making a question out of a sentence that was too close to that thesis (for example, "PA" II 16).
Begging the question | History
What we today call "Aristotelian logic" with its types of syllogism (methods of logical argument), Aristotle himself would have labelled "analytics". The term "logic" he reserved to mean "dialectics". Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form, because it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into a set of six books called the "Organon" around 40 BC by Andronicus of Rhodes or others among his followers. The books are: The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings.
Aristotle | "Organon"
Heath defended of Aristotle against what he saw as misconceptions by George Grote and others. He wrote on the "Arabicus Mons", and on the "Cratylus" of Plato. He also published papers on the veracity of Herodotus, and his views were strengthened by a journey up the River Nile as far as Dongola in 1874-5.
Douglas Heath | Works
A recension is a selection of a specific text for publication. The manuscripts on a given work attributed to Aristotle offer textual variants. One recension makes a selection of one continuous text, but typically gives notes stating the alternative sections of text. Determining which text is to be presented as "original" is a detailed scholarly investigation. The recension is often known by its scholar's name.
Physics (Aristotle) | Recensions of "Physics" in the ancient Greek
The edition of Wehrli presents the surviving evidence for works with the following titles (not including several fragments of uncertain origin):
Aristoxenus | Other works
The concept of the form as being what makes knowledge possible dates back to the time of Socrates. Aristotle is credited with making the distinction that led to the idea of the intelligible form. He argued that the mind is divided into the active and passive intellect, where the passive intellect receives the forms of things in order to be known, and the active intellect then turns possible knowledge into knowledge in act.
Intelligible form | Aristotle
He collected a large quantity of historical papers during his life. They became the property of the University of Oxford, and were deposited in the Bodleian Library, where they are known as the Carte Manuscripts.
Thomas Carte | Works
The latter is in substance a more didactic repetition of the former. Albert's activity, however, was more philosophical than theological (see Scholasticism). The philosophical works, occupying the first six and the last of the 21 volumes, are generally divided according to the Aristotelian scheme of the sciences, and consist of interpretations and condensations of Aristotle's relative works, with supplementary discussions upon contemporary topics, and occasional divergences from the opinions of the master. Albert believed that Aristotle's approach to natural philosophy did not pose any obstacle to the development of a Christian philosophical view of the natural order.
Albertus Magnus | Writings
The Quaestiones are contained in an octavo notebook, currently in the Cambridge University Library, which was Newton's basic notebook in which he set down in 1661 his readings in the required curriculum in Cambridge and his later readings in mechanical philosophy. He entered notes from both ends. The initial notes, in Greek, were on Aristotle's logic at one end and his ethics, at the other. But following this, he drew a line across the page, below which appears his first notes on the new natural philosophy of his day— a compendium of limits on the radii of stars as determined by Galileo and Auzout.
Quaestiones quaedam philosophicae | Introduction
Aristotle (; "Aristotélēs", ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Aristotle | Introduction
This does not mean that at one time it thinks but at another time it does not think, but when separated it is just exactly what it is, and this alone is deathless and everlasting (though we have no memory, because this sort of intellect is not acted upon, while the sort that is acted upon is destructible), and without this nothing thinks. The passage tries to explain "how the human intellect passes from its original state, in which it does not think, to a subsequent state, in which it does." He inferred that the energeia/dunamis distinction must also exist in the soul itself.
Active intellect | Aristotle's conception
As a result, Kukkonen argues, any analysis of reality today "will almost certainly carry Aristotelian overtones ... evidence of an exceptionally forceful mind." Jonathan Barnes wrote that "an account of Aristotle's intellectual afterlife would be little less than a history of European thought".
Aristotle | Influence
Bekker numbers, the standard form of reference to works in the Corpus Aristotelicum, are based on the page numbers used in the Prussian Academy of Sciences edition of the complete works of Aristotle ("Aristotelis Opera edidit Academia Regia Borussica", Berlin, 1831–1870). They take their name from the editor of that edition, the classical philologist August Immanuel Bekker (1785–1871).
Corpus Aristotelicum | Bekker numbers
His commentaries can, therefore, be regarded as the richest in their contents of any that have come down to us concerning Aristotle. But for them, we should be without the most important fragments of the writings of the Eleatics, of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, and others, which were at that time already very scarce, as well as without many extracts from the lost books of Aristotle, Theophrastus and Eudemus: but for them we should hardly be able to unriddle the doctrine of the Categories, so important for the system of the Stoics. It is true he himself complains that in his time both the school and the writings of the followers of Zeno had perished.
Simplicius of Cilicia | Writings
234 manuscripts of works by Aelius Aristides are catalogued by Charles A. Behr. The earliest of them are four papyrus fragments dating from the fifth to the seventh centuries AD. Two are from "Panathenaicus" (Or. 1), and the others are from "In Defense of the Four" (Or. 3) and the "Sacred Tales". The earliest surviving medieval manuscript is codex A (written ca.917 by the scribe John the Calligrapher for the archbishop Arethas of Caesarea), now divided in two: Parisinus graecus 2951 and Laurentianus 60.3. It contains 42 of 53 surviving speeches and is the only one to preserve the fragmentary Or.
Aelius Aristides | Manuscripts
Chariton Charitonidis published many grammatical, critical and interpretative remarks to ancient writers. The full list of his works can be found in the "Yearbook of the School of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki", vol. 7, pp. vii-xviii (1957, in Greek). PDF versions of some of his works can be retrieved using the online search engine of the Library of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. For more books see full list of works
Chariton Charitonidis | Publications
Sachs comments that the nature of the active intellect was "the source of a massive amount of commentary and of fierce disagreement"; elsewhere, chapter 5 of "De Anima" has been referred to as "the most intensely studied sentences in the history of philosophy". As Davidson remarks: Just what Aristotle meant by potential intellect and active intellect - terms not even explicit in the "De anima" and at best implied - and just how he understood the interaction between them remains moot. Students of the history of philosophy continue to debate Aristotle's intent, particularly the question whether he considered the active intellect to be an aspect of the human soul or an entity existing independently of man.
Active intellect | Interpretations
No explanation at all is to be found in ancient sources. The moderns almost universally retrieve one explanation, that Neleus was the intended heir of the archonship, although that, strangely, is nowhere suggested. The law still required an archon with property rights over the school. Whatever the implied expectation, Neleus did not become the scholiarch; instead, Strato of Lampsacus did. Again, there are no details of how or why he acquired the position or any statement of Neleus's feelings about it, inviting speculation. Strabo then relates what is universally considered an act of perfidy against the school. He was given the library with the understanding that it would be shared as common property.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Abscondence of the library by Neleus
xii. ‘Ælmeri monachi ecclesiæ Christi Cantuariensis epistolæ, in quibus tractat de munditia cordis, . . . et querimonia de absentia metus Dei. Liber asceticus et vere pius;’ 100 f. This manuscript was almost entirely destroyed by the fire of 10 July 1865; the few charred fragments that remain form the seventh portion of a volume, marked as above, which begins with some fragments of a manuscript of Asser, the only contents noticed in the Museum catalogue. Another copy is in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, Gale MS. O. 10, 16 (Wright). The titles of other works are given by Bale.
Herlewin | Introduction
Bertrand Russell criticizes Aristotle's logic on the following points: In addition, Russell ends his review of the Aristotelian logic with these words: I conclude that the Aristotelian doctrines with which we have been concerned in this chapter are wholly false, with the exception of the formal theory of the syllogism, which is unimportant. Any person in the present day who wishes to learn logic will be wasting his time if he reads Aristotle or any of his disciples. Nonetheless, Aristotle's logical writings show great ability, and would have been useful to mankind if they had appeared at a time when intellectual originality was still active.
Aristotelianism | Criticism
At the request of Aquinas, so it is assumed—the source document is not clear—he undertook a complete translation of the works of Aristotle directly from the Greek or, for some portions, a revision of existing translations. The reason for the request was that many of the copies of Aristotle in Latin then in circulation had originated in Spain (see Toledo School of Translators), from Arabic whose texts in turn had often passed through Syriac versions rather than being translated from the originals. Aquinas wrote his commentary on Aristotle's "De anima", the translation of which from the Greek was completed by Moerbeke in 1267 while Aquinas was regent at the "studium provinciale" at the convent of Santa Sabina in Rome, the forerunner of the 16th century College of Saint Thomas at Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, "Angelicum".
William of Moerbeke | Translations
The conclusions of the Jourdain inquiry were as follows: until the beginning of the 13th, the texts of Aristotle (apart from the "Logica vetus", that is to say the translation of three or four Treatises on logic by Boethius), were neither widespread nor used in the Christian West, nor were those of the Aristotelian Arabic philosophers Avicenna, Averroes). In 1274 (the year of the death of Thomas Aquinas), all Aristotle's work was known and used in the universities of Paris, Oxford, etc. ; It entered them massively from the years 1220-25, and by both Arab and Byzantine ways (according to the texts).
Amable Jourdain | Work
The Problems (; ) is an Aristotelian or possibly pseudo-Aristotelian, as its authenticity has been questioned, collection of problems written in a question and answer format. The collection, gradually assembled by the peripatetic school, reached its final form anywhere between the third century BC to the 6th century AD. The work is divided by topic into 38 sections, and the whole contains almost 900 problems. Later writers of "Problemata" include Plutarch, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Cassius Iatrosophista.
Problems (Aristotle) | Introduction
Until 1815, the only extant works ascribed (erroneously) to Fronto were two grammatical treatises, "De nominum verborumque differentiis" and "Exempla elocutionum" (the latter being really by Arusianus Messius). In that year, Angelo Mai discovered in the Ambrosian library at Milan a palimpsest manuscript, on which had been originally written some of Fronto's letters to his imperial pupils and their replies; four years later Mai found several more sheets from this manuscript in the Vatican. These palimpsests had originally belonged to the famous convent of St Columbanus at Bobbio, and had been written over by the monks with the acts of the First Council of Chalcedon.
Marcus Cornelius Fronto | Surviving works
Pomponazzi claimed the right to study Aristotle for himself, and devoted himself to the "De anima" with the view of showing that Thomas Aquinas had entirely misconceived the Aristotelian theory of the active and the passive intellect.
Pietro Pomponazzi | Biography
The date being quite ancient, the majority view is to accept it as of Alexandrian provenience, the only instance of an Aristotelicum from the library and school there. The acceptance of the "Constitution of the Athenians" with the same credibility as the Bekkerian "corpus" lends a certain ambiguity to the meaning of "corpus". If it is to be only the works in Bekker, then such misleading phrases as "the original corpus" are possible, as though the works in Bekker are more authentic than any works out of it. Not even the works in Bekker are authentic beyond any doubt.
Corpus Aristotelicum | The ambiguous name, Corpus Aristotelicum
The first Pseudo-Aristotelian works were produced by the members of the Peripatetic school which was founded by Aristotle. However, many more works were written much later, during the Middle Ages. Because Aristotle had produced so many works on such a variety of subjects it was possible for writers in many different contexts—notably medieval Europeans, North Africans and Arabs—to write a work and ascribe it to Aristotle. Attaching his name to such a work guaranteed it a certain amount of respect and acceptance, since Aristotle was regarded as one of the most authoritative ancient writers for the learned men of both Christian Europe and the Muslim Arab lands.
Pseudo-Aristotle | History
Other works have been attributed to him without strong consensus among modern scholars. Some, for example, have inferred from a passage in Aulus Gellius, that he wrote "de furtis"; and, from passages in the "Digest", that he published books titled "Digesta" and "Responsa".
Titius Aristo | Other Possible Works
A small number of verses from these three of Aeschylus' lost works have been saved: fifty-four from "Myrmidons", seven from "Nereids" and twenty-one from "Phrygians." A sense of the pace at which additions to this corpus are made can be gleaned from the fact that a papyrus fragment containing seven letters on three lines that could be fitted over a two-line quote from Justin Martyr's dialogue "Trypho", to show that the quote was in fact from the opening of "Myrmidons" was worth publishing in a note in "Classical Philology", 1971.
Achilleis (trilogy) | The text
To reach his own conclusion about the best life, however, Aristotle tries to isolate the function of humans. The argument he develops here is accordingly widely known as "the function argument," and is among the most-discussed arguments made by any ancient philosopher. He argues that while humans undergo nutrition and growth, so do other living things, and while humans are capable of perception, this is shared with animals ("NE" I.1098b22-1098a15). Thus neither of these characteristics is particular to humans. According to Aristotle, what remains and what is distinctively human is reason. Thus he concludes that the human function is some kind of excellent exercise of the intellect.
Aristotelian ethics | Aristotle's starting point
For the dialogues, see also the editions of Richard Rudolf Walzer, "Aristotelis Dialogorum fragmenta, in usum scholarum" (Florence 1934), and Renato Laurenti, "Aristotele: I frammenti dei dialoghi" (2 vols.), Naples: Luigi Loffredo, 1987.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Fragments
Volume II, made up of 615 back to back folios, includes two "Tractatus" (or studies), one, "In Octo Aristotelis Libros De Physico Auditu" ("On the Eight Books of Aristotle on Physics"), and the other, "De Cælo et Mundo" ("On the Heavens and the Earth"). The former deals with Aristotle’s physics, of course, and the latter with Aristotelian cosmology. Volume III comprises 731 back to back folios. It contains five "Tractatus" (or studies), which are the following: "De Generatione et Corrupione" ("On Coming-To-Be and Passing Away"), "De Meteoris" ("On Meteors"), "De Anima" ("On the Soul"), "Compendiaria Notitia eorum quæ Mirabilem Humani Corporis Structuram Componunt" ("A Compendium of Information concerning Parts which Form the Marvellous Structure of the Human Body"), and "Tractatus in XII Aristotelis Stagirite Libros Metaphysicorum" ("Study on the 12th Book of Aristotle the Stagirite’s ‘Metaphysics’").
Constance Vella | Extant work
The other fragments are mainly quotes found in the work of other authors (for example Augustine and Nonius Marcellus). Through these other authors' discussion of Cicero's treatise, the main topics of each book can be surmised. The discovery in 1819 by Cardinal Angelo Mai was one of the first major recoveries of an ancient text from a palimpsest, and although Mai's techniques were crude by comparison with later scholars', his discovery of "De Republica" heralded a new era of rediscovery and inspired him and other scholars of his time to seek more palimpsests.
De re publica | History of the text
Questions on Aristotle were printed in a number of editions at Cologne, from 1485 onwards.
John Versor | Works
In 1985, the biologist Peter Medawar could still state in "pure seventeenth century" tones that Aristotle had assembled "a strange and generally speaking rather tiresome farrago of hearsay, imperfect observation, wishful thinking and credulity amounting to downright gullibility". By the start of the 21st century, however, Aristotle was taken more seriously: Kukkonen noted that "In the best 20th-century scholarship Aristotle comes alive as a thinker wrestling with the full weight of the Greek philosophical tradition." Alasdair MacIntyre has attempted to reform what he calls the Aristotelian tradition in a way that is anti-elitist and capable of disputing the claims of both liberals and Nietzscheans.
Aristotle | Modern rejection and rehabilitation
Three Aristotelian ethical works survive today which are considered to be either by Aristotle, or from relatively soon after: The exact origins of these texts is unclear, although they were already considered the works of Aristotle in ancient times. Textual oddities suggest that they may not have been put in their current form by Aristotle himself. For example, Books IV–VI of "Eudemian Ethics" also appear as Books V–VII of "Nicomachean Ethics". The authenticity of the "Magna Moralia" has been doubted, whereas almost no modern scholar doubts that Aristotle wrote the "Nicomachean Ethics" and the "Eudemian Ethics" himself, even if an editor also played some part in giving us those texts in their current forms.
Aristotelian ethics | Three ethical treatises
In Sprat's account, the Royal Society explicitly rejected anything that seemed like scholasticism. For Sprat, as for a number of the founders of the Royal Society, science was Protestant: its reasons and explanations had to be comprehensible to all. There would be no priests in science, and anyone could reproduce the experiments and hear their lessons. Similarly, he emphasised the need for conciseness in description, as well as reproducibility of experiments. William Temple, after he retired from being what today would be called Secretary of State, wrote several bucolic prose works in praise of retirement, contemplation, and direct observation of nature.
Restoration literature | Philosophical writing
Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca ["edita consilio et auctoritate academiae litterarum Regiae Borussicae"] (CAG) is the standard collection of extant ancient Greek commentaries on Aristotle. The 23 volumes in the series were released between the years 1882 and 1909 by the publisher Reimer. Many of these commentaries have since been translated into English by the Ancient commentators project.
Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca | Introduction
Diogenes Laërtius lists in his "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" the works of Aristotle comprising 156 titles divided into approximately 400 books, which he reports as totaling 445,270 lines of writing. The list is as follows:
Corpus Aristotelicum | Diogenes Laërtius' list
Even if he were not a metic, he could not have disposed of the land and buildings, which were municipal property. None of the other friends could either. According to the laws in effect on the day Aristotle died, no one could own or bequeath the school to anyone. The city owned it. As to whether Aristotle and Theophrastus had additional personal libraries of their own, first, private ownership was not in the spirit of the school, and second, the fate of the school after Theophrastus suggests that the library was in fact the school library. After the death of Alexander, Athens staged a brief revolt against the Macedonians.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Transition from cooperative to private school
At least 24 surviving manuscripts are known to have belonged to Chortasmenos' library. Among the more notable is the Juliana Anicia Codex of Dioscurides, which he had restored, rebound, and a table of contents and extensive scholia added in Byzantine Greek minuscule in 1406. Beside the same problem in Diophantus' manuscript next to which Fermat would later write his famous marginalia (Fermat's Last Theorem), Chortasmenos wrote, "Thy soul, Diophantus, be with Satan because of the difficulty of your other theorems and particularly of the present theorem."
John Chortasmenos | Library
In 335 BCE, Athens fell under Macedonian rule and Aristotle, aged 50, returned from Asia. Upon his return, Aristotle began teaching regularly in the morning in the Lyceum and founded an official school called "The Lyceum". After morning lessons, Aristotle would frequently lecture on the grounds for the public, and manuscripts of his compiled lectures were eventually circulated. The group of scholars who followed the Aristotelian doctrine came to be known as the Peripatetics due to Aristotle's tendency to walk as he taught. Aristotle's main focus as a teacher was cooperative research, an idea which he founded through his natural history work and systematic collection of philosophical works to contribute to his library.
Lyceum (Classical) | Aristotle's school and library
Unfortunately, many of his manuscripts are lost; shortly after his death, his entire library—books, manuscripts and correspondence—was dispersed. The most famous of the known letters included in the original Archive Boulliau include correspondence with notable luminaries, including Galileo, Marin Mersenne, Henry Oldenburg, Christiaan Huygens, and Fermat. In addition to his own letters, Bullialdus contributed to "The Archives of the Scientific Revolution". Among Bullialdus' papers were notes and examinations of rare manuscripts. Also found among his letters were copies of his contemporaries' manuscripts which he had preserved. Arguably most notable were the ten volumes of original autographs addressed to Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc.
Ismaël Bullialdus | Involvement in the Republic of Letters
The few small rooms of an ordinary dwelling in town would not have been suitable. Perhaps the relatives were not so poor and uneducated as depicted. As one man could not possibly have moved an entire library by himself, Neleus must have had a retinue of servants. Hearing that Eumenes II, the Attalid king of Pergamon, was hunting books, the Corascid family "hid their books underground in a kind of trench." The king must not even have suspected the presence of a huge underground cache at Skepsis, as kings have methods of investigation and confiscation not available to ordinary citizens.
Corpus Aristotelicum | Recension of Apellicon