Metaphysics, Volume I

Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, researcher, reasoner, and writer, was born at Stagirus in 384 BCE. He was the son of Nicomachus, a physician, and Phaestis. Aristotle studied under Plato at Athens and taught there from 367 to 347 BCE. Subsequently, he spent three years at the court of a former pupil, Hermeias, in Asia Minor, during which he married Pythias, a relation of Hermeias. After some time in Mitylene, he was appointed by King Philip of Macedon in 343–342 BCE to be the tutor of his teen-aged son, Alexander.

Following the death of Philip in 336 BCE, Aristotle became the head of his own school, the Lyceum at Athens, known for its Peripatetic philosophy. However, due to the anti-Macedonian sentiment following Alexander's death in 323 BCE, Aristotle withdrew to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322 BCE.

Nearly all of Aristotle's works that were prepared for publication are lost. The extant works, considered priceless, include lecture materials, notes, and memoranda, although some are spurious. They can be categorized as follows:

I. Practical: Nicomachean Ethics; Great Ethics (Magna Moralia); Eudemian Ethics; Politics; Oeconomica (on the good of the family); Virtues and Vices.

II. Logical: Categories; On Interpretation; Analytics (Prior and Posterior); On Sophistical Refutations; Topica.

III. Physical: Twenty-six works (some suspect) including topics on astronomy, generation and destruction, the senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, facts about animals, etc.

IV. Metaphysics: on being as being.

V. On Art: Art of Rhetoric and Poetics.

VI. Other works: including the Athenian Constitution; and more works of doubtful authorship.

VII. Fragments: of various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature; and treatises on rhetoric, politics, and metaphysics.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle is in twenty-three volumes.