Aristotle

Book Club

Book Club | November 2023: Aristotle Animals

We have now discussed the physical characteristics of animals and their methods of generation. Their habits and their modes of living vary according to their character and their food…. Opening of Book 8, translation by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson. For November, we will read selections from Aristotle’s History of Animals. In the Prefatory Note to his translation[1], D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson puts the composition of these studies in Aristotle’s middle age, started… Read more

Visiting Scholars

Open House | A New Translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, with Susan Sauvé Meyer

We were pleased to welcome Susan Sauvé Meyer, University of Pennsylvania, for an Open House discussion about her new translation abridged from the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. The discussion was streamed live on Friday October 20 at 11 a.m. EDT on the Kosmos Society YouTube channel, and was recorded. In preparation for this event you might like to read: her article ‘Aristotelian virtues for social media‘ an article from the… Read more

Topic for Discussion

Automatons

Who hasn’t dreamed of having a robot to accomplish certain tasks? For a long time people have conceived the existence and the possibility of having or creating such automatons, or robots, or androids or humanoids in their imaginary worlds, to replace them, or to do things in their place, or just to be with them. The word “robot” is recent (a 20th-century word), but the ancients used the word “automaton”… Read more

Texts

The Structure of Greek Tragedy: An Overview

There are different terms for different parts of a Greek drama, some of which modern scholars took from Aristotle and other ancient drama critics. The typical structure of an Ancient Greek tragedy is a series of alternating dialogue and choral lyric sections. (There are exceptions, and technical divisions naturally do not explain intellectual and emotional “soft power” aspects of a great Greek tragedy.) The dialogue sections are in typically speechverse,… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | January 2020: Aristotle Poetics

Let us here deal with Poetry, its essence and its several species, with the characteristic function of each species and the way in which plots must be constructed if the poem is to be a success; and also with the number and character of the constituent parts of a poem, and similarly with all other matters proper to this same inquiry; and let us, as nature directs, begin first with… Read more