The Metaphysics of Aristotle (MacMahon)
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- John Henry MacMahon
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~340,000 words · 1,595 passages
Cite this work
- APAAristotle. (n.d.). The Metaphysics of Aristotle (MacMahon) (John Henry MacMahon, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-metaphysics-of-aristotle-macmahon
- MLAAristotle. The Metaphysics of Aristotle (MacMahon). Translated by John Henry MacMahon. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-metaphysics-of-aristotle-macmahon.
- ChicagoAristotle. The Metaphysics of Aristotle (MacMahon). Translated by John Henry MacMahon. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-metaphysics-of-aristotle-macmahon.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The book that asks what 'being' means, and which gave a whole discipline its name by accident: it was called that because it came after the Physics in the ordering of the works.
Context and history
It is not a single book but a set of treatises brought together, and it shows: there are repetitions and different beginnings. The core is the question of what Aristotle calls being qua being — not this thing or that, but what it means to say of anything that it is — and the answer runs through substance, through the distinction between potency and act, and through the criticism of the ideas of Plato, his teacher. Book XII contains the unmoved mover, which medieval theology would identify with God. Book I opens with the sentence 'all men by nature desire to know', and Book II contains the earliest surviving historical survey of philosophy.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Practically speaking, then, Taylor is almost useless to the student who, with a desire to construe the original with proper accuracy, is at the same time anxious to acquire a knowledge of the several doctrines established, and the mode of arriving at them. These imperfections I have attempted to remedy in the present Translation, by a close scrutiny of the Greek, and the assignment to each word of its proper force ; by adopting the scholastic renderings of the technical words (in opposition to Taylor, who often discards them for others not so good); by a scrupulous attention to secure for each paragraph an intelligible opening; and, lastly, by Notes and Marginal References. In the Marginal References I have endeavoured to string together the various links of Aristotle*s argument, so as to form one unbroken chain; and thus sought to unravel for the student the perplexities in which he is likely to become entangled. As to the Notes, I trust I may not be accused of presumption in laying claim to some small originality in them. I can, at any rate, disown being indebted for them to Taylor, whose labours in this department are quite unavailable for any useful purpose. Keeping in view, however, the great length to which the text itself runs, the