The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle

The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle reflects the lively
international character of Aristotelian studies, drawing contributors
from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France,
Switzerland, Italy, Canada, and Japan; it also, appropriately, includes a
preponderance of authors from the University of Oxford, which has
been a center of Aristotelian studies for many centuries. The volume
equally reflects the broad range of activity Aristotelian studies
comprise today: such activity ranges from the primarily textual and
philological to the application of broadly Aristotelian themes to contemporary
problems irrespective of their narrow textual fidelity. In between
these extremes one finds the core of Aristotelian scholarship as it is
practiced today, and as it is primarily represented in this Handbook: textual exegesis and criticism. Even within this more limited core activity,
one
witnesses a rich range of pursuits, with some scholars seeking
primarily to understand Aristotle in his own philosophical milieu and
others seeking rather to place him into direct conversation with
contemporary philosophers and their present-day concerns. No one of
these enterprises exhausts the
field. On the contrary, one of the
most welcome and enlivening features of the contemporary Aristotelian
scene is precisely the cross-fertilization these mutually beneficial and
complementary activities offer one another.
The volume,
prefaced with an introduction to Aristotle's life and works by the
editor, covers the main areas of Aristotelian philosophy and
intellectual enquiry: ethics, metaphysics, politics, logic, language,
psychology, rhetoric, poetics, theology, physical and biological
investigation, and philosophical method. It also, and distinctively,
looks both backwards and forwards: two chapters recount Aristotle's
treatment of earlier philosophers, who proved formative to his own
orientations and methods, and another three chapters chart the long
afterlife of Aristotle's philosophy, in Late Antiquity, in the Islamic World, and in the Latin West.