The Metaphysics

[note: this is NOT the Prometheus edition, the NuVision edition nor the Digiread edition and is not full of typos!. It was first published in Sept. 2012 so any earlier review is not of this edition, which is an accurate and well presented edition of the translation by W.D.Ross, generally recognised as an excellent English translation]

Translated by Sir David Ross, one time White's Professor of Moral Philosophy and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University.

This volume contains that part of the philosophy of Aristotle which is concerned with "first philosophy", the search for true wisdom, at the core of which Aristotle places the study of being (now known as ontology). It consist of 14 books (corresponding to scrolls in the original) in one paperback.

The excellent translation by W.D. Ross has been re-typeset for this edition using LaTeX, in Patatino 10 point typeface. A detailed contents list (with titles for each Book and Part) and an extended index have been added to help the reader locate the parts most relevant to his studies. Page headers and footers have been carefully designed to assist the reader in finding his way around the work.

This edition was prepared by Roger Bishop Jones

Revision: 1.17 Date: 2012-09-26 08:53:34

Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. in the town of Stagira in Macedonia (now called Stavros). At the age of 17 he entered Plato's Academy in Athens, where he remained until Plato's death nineteen years later. During this time he first thoroughly absorbed the ideas of Plato and then began to move apart on his own philosophical path. On the death of Plato Aristotle spent some time away from Athens including a period when he acted as tutor to prince Alexander, later to be Alexander the Great, returning to Athens at about 50 years in age to begin his most fruitful period as a philosopher. Close to Athens, Aristotle founded his own school, the Lyceum, and began the first of the great libraries. Here Aristotle remained until the death of Alexander in 323 B.C. after which a rise in anti-Macedonian feeling obliged him to leave. He died in 322 B.C. The surviving works of Aristotle date from this last period at the Lyceum, and were the academic textbooks of the time. Substantial, original, and broadly scoped, they were to dominate the intellectual history of Western Europe for over a thousand years, and remain of the greatest importance to this day.