After spending the past few weeks explaining how Stoicism is a better life philosophy than Aristotelianism, I want to pause and show a little respect to the man who is, after all, the most influential philosopher in history. Aristotle may have gotten a few things wrong, but he also got many things right. It’s important to acknowledge his achievements, even if we don’t see eye to eye in some ways. And to do this, we’ll turn to another one of my favorite contemporary thinkers, John Sellars, and his new book Aristotle: Understanding the World’s Greatest Philosopher.
As a great admirer of Sellars’ work on Stoicism (The Art of Living; Stoicism; Marcus Aurelius, to name just a few) and ancient philosophy (Hellenistic Philosophy; The Fourfold Remedy), I was very eager to read his new introductory work on Aristotle. And the book does not disappoint: Aristotle is a well-conceived, informative, highly readable introduction to a notoriously unreadable philosopher. Clocking in at a modest 109 pages for the main text, it offers a well-portioned and delicious taste of The Philosopher for those who are not quite ready for a full course meal.
The key to this book’s success—besides Sellars’ easygoing style—is its very broad view of Aristotle’s accomplishments, framed within his life and his legacy. The back cover sums up the main points of inquiry: Why has Aristotle had such an astounding influence on the world? What are his key ideas? What can he still teach us today?
To answer these questions, Sellars takes us on a chronological and thematic journey from Aristotle’s early training with Plato (theme: the contemplative life) to his biological studies on Lesbos (themes: studying nature and a rational animal) to his tutoring of Alexander (theme: social animals) and back to the Lyceum in Athens (themes: the benefits of literature, a good life, a life of inquiry). Throughout the journey, we learn about Aristotle’s intense curiosity about the natural world, his preference for reading and study over dialectical conversation, and the careful, methodical system of observation and analysis that he applied to all his work and subsequently bequeathed to Western science.
For me, what sets this book apart is the author’s clear admiration for the spirit of Aristotle’s philosophy over the dogmatic position his work acquired over the centuries. From the very beginning, we learn that “Aristotle wasn’t a rigid system builder; he was an inquirer, a man in pursuit of knowledge, restlessly in search of answers to every conceivable question” (p. 5). Sellars emphasizes again and again that Aristotle’s goal was not to construct an authoritative system but to understand. For example, while conducting his biological research:
Although he doesn’t know how the process works, he nevertheless manages to map out all the possible explanatory options and tries to rule out the least likely. The most interesting part, however, is his final comment: ‘the facts have not been sufficiently ascertained; if at any future time they are ascertained, then credence must be given to the direct evidence of the senses more than to theories.’
p. 28
Aristotle wasn’t afraid to admit the provisional nature of his understanding. More than the specific facts he discovered about the world, Sellars suggests that his most important legacy is his process, which he applied to everything from cuttlefish to drama to ethics. Here Sellars explains how Aristotle’s contributions to logic, when fused with his empirical research, changed the course of history:
Aristotle’s animal research on Lesbos, involving careful observation and classification, laid some of the foundations for empirical science – but only some. A huge catalogue of information is not on its own enough to generate scientific knowledge. Imagine an old-fashioned museum full of samples of insects or rocks or fossils…Someone needs to come along and examine all this material, classifying like items with like, but then going further to analyze and reason about all this information, making connections and drawing conclusions. Aristotle was of course already doing this in his biological works, but his works on logic—especially the Analytics—take this to the next level, setting out the formal rules for such analysis. In the process, he laid down the remaining foundations for scientific knowledge. To have done either of these would have been a major achievement; to have done both is awe-inspiring.
p. 57
Ultimately, what emerges here is a portrait of insatiable curiosity, unstoppable intellect, and a joy of learning and discovery. Sellars has helped me to appreciate Aristotle as a person, even if I do not agree with some of the dogmatic Aristotelian positions. Indeed, he explicitly distinguishes between these two types of Aristotelianism: the dogmatic kind, which insists on “slavishly following the letter of his texts” (p. 108), and the pragmatic kind, which is “committed to a life of inquiry, a life of continual investigation and observation in the pursuit of knowledge” (p. 109).
In any case, I enjoyed a pleasant afternoon in the company of Aristotle, and I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to freshen up their perspective on the man who is, without doubt, the most influential philosopher in Western history. Even if we don’t always agree with him, we can take inspiration from his approach to the world. Referring to this broader, open-minded way of following Aristotle, Sellars concludes (p. 109):
To be an Aristotelian in this second sense is simply to be a human being in the fullest possible way. It doesn’t require us to accept anything that Aristotle said as true—indeed we might think that some of what he thought is now obviously false; instead, it simply involves joining him in the ongoing process of trying to understand the world in which we live. For naturally curious animals like us, it’s what living the life of a human being is all about.