This book explores for the first time an idea common to both Plato and Aristotle: although people are separate, their lives need not be; one person's life may overflow into another's, so that helping someone else is a way of serving oneself. Price considers how this idea unites the philosophers' treatments of love and friendship (which are otherwise very different), and demonstrates that this view of love and friendship, applied not only to personal relationships, but also to the household and (...) even the city-state, promises to resolve the old dichotomy between egoism and altruism. (shrink)

Exploring Aristotle's philosophical method and the merits of his conclusions, Irwin here shows how Aristotle defends dialectic against the objection that it cannot justify a metaphysical realist's claims. He focuses particularly on Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics, stressing the connections between doctrines that are often discussed separately.

This is a substantially updated edition of the established guide to this key debate in modern political philosophy.

A bold new interpretation of Aristotelian thought is central to Bernard Yack's provocative new book. He shows that for Aristotle, community is a conflict-ridden fact of everyday life, as well as an ideal of social harmony and integration. From political justice and the rule of law to class struggle and moral conflict, Yack maintains that Aristotle intended to explain the conditions of everyday political life, not just, as most commentators assume, to represent the hypothetical achievements of an idealistic "best regime." (...) By showing how Aristotelian ideas can provide new insight into our own political life, Yack makes a valuable contribution to contemporary discourse and debate. His work will excite interest among a wide range of social, moral, and political theorists. (shrink)