Introduction and Overview of the Special Issue on Aristotle
Abstract
<p>Dan Robinson recently offered me his motivation for writing his seminal book on Aristotle (1989) 1 : “I wanted to learn more about the great philosophers, so I began alphabetically with ‘A’.” Presumably a book on Bishop Berkeley will be forthcoming and a book on Zeno will end the learning process some years hence. Of course, anyone with even a passing acquaintance with Aristotle (or Dr. Robinson) realizes that this has to be somewhat tongue in cheek. Aristotle happens to have had a little more going for him than alphabetical primacy. A tireless scholar and an inspiring teacher, his scientific explorations were as far-ranging as his philosophical speculations were profound. As Jonathan Barnes (1982) put it, “He bestrode antiquity like an intellectual colossus” (p. 1).</p> <p>His present influence upon Western culture and science is no less colossal. No one has had a more direct and enduring effect upon general scholarship than Aristotle. Alas, familiar turns of modern speech and constructs of conceptual distinction cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of the Aristotelian doctrines they were first forged to express. Anyone who speaks of the “golden mean” or a “liberal education” is using words which derive their significance