Common threads · 6 books
Use selected treatises from Basic Works, with scholarly guides to explanation, flourishing, and politics. The route names its scope rather than claiming to cover the entire corpus.
Books, curator notes, and what to read next.
Jonathan Barnes
Barnes maps Aristotle's questions and methods. Use the overview to keep the separate treatises connected without assuming one simple system.
Next: The Basic Works of Aristotle
Aristotle
Read Metaphysics I and VII, Nicomachean Ethics I, II, VI, and X, and Politics I and III from this collection. The 1941 date belongs to McKeon’s anthology.
Next: Aristotle: The Desire to Understand
Jonathan Lear
Lear connects explanation, substance, mind, and ethics. Track the role of understanding in Aristotle's account of human life.
Next: Aristotle's First Principles
Terence Irwin
Irwin studies Aristotle's method and starting points. Ask how dialectical discussion can support claims about reality.
Next: The Fragility of Goodness
Martha Nussbaum
Greek tragedy and philosophy become tests of whether a good life can be secured against luck and loss.
Next: Aristotle: Political Philosophy
Richard Kraut
Kraut develops the connection between flourishing and political institutions. Test who Aristotle includes in that picture and who he excludes.
Also includes The Fragility of Goodness
Read selected dialogues from Complete Works, then study justice, knowledge, ethics, and political rule with modern scholars. This is a topic course, not every dialogue in sequence.
Also includes The Fragility of Goodness
Pleasure, dignity, luck, and flourishing. Test the idea that a good life is simply a life with more happiness in it.
More paths featuring Martha Nussbaum
A political philosophy seminar on rights, distribution, oppression, and capabilities. Try each theory on the same real disagreement.
