The Metaphysics

In The Metaphysics, Aristotle laid the foundations for one of the central branches of Western philosophy. Aristotle was always passionately interested in natural phenomena. Yet when he joined Plato's Academy as a 17-year-old in the mid-360s BC, he was taught the 'idealist' doctrine that what we perceive is just a pale reflection of the true reality. After a sharp reaction against Platonism, he achieved in The Metaphysics an extraordinary synthesis, integrating the natural and rational aspects of the world. In so doing he probed some of the deepest questions of philosophy: What is existence? How is change possible? Are there things which must exist for anything else to exist at all? The seminal notion of 'substance' and associated concepts of matter and form, essence and accident and potentiality and actuality have had a profound influence upon Western thought. Lawson-Tancred's new translation achieves a readability absent from earlier versions, and in an introductory essay he highlights the central themes of one of philosophy's supreme masterpieces.

About The Author

Aristotle was born at Stageira, in the dominion of the kings of Macedonia, in 384 BC. For twenty years he studied at Athens in the Academy of Plato, on whose death in 347 he left, and, some time later, became tutor of the young Alexander the Great. When Alexander succeeded to the throne of Macedonia in 335, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his school and research institute, the Lyceum, to which his great erudition attracted a large number of scholars.

After Alexander's death in 323, anti-Macedonian feeling drove Aristotle out of Athens, and he fled to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322. His writings, which were of extraordinary range, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy, and they are still eagerly studied and debated by philosophers today. Very many of them have survived and among the most famous are the Ethics and the Politics.