I'm struggling with the CategoriesAristotle keeps using various technical terms like subject and predicate and honestly, I have no idea what they meanare there any good books on Aristotle which summarize and explain his thought? I would read Aristotle himself afterwards
>>25359935>Aristotle keeps using various technical terms like subject and predicate and honestlyThose are grammar terms. You should really start by looking into grammar before looking into logic. When you have a basic understanding of grammar, read this introduction to Aristotelian logic.
>>25359935>are there any good books on Aristotle which summarize and explain his thought?yeah, Lloyd Gerson
>>25359935Lear’s book on Aristotle, the desire to understand. Read Reeve’s individual translations of Aristotle’s works for his endnotes, he connects the concepts that are spread across the totality of aristotle’s works. It is true that to understand Aristotle you have to have read ALL of Aristotle first. Although this is true of any first-rate philosopher it’s especially true of Aristotle due to the structure of his works, Reeves’ endnotes connect that web together.
>>25360371They are grammar terms but throughout the logical works he uses grammatical terms in non-grammatical ways. Aristotle's logic isn't about how we talk about things it's about how we think about them, it's prior to language. He already draws your attention to this in the first paragraph - his notion of homonymousness does not map onto merely linguistic homonymousness. For example, the word "is" is linguistically univocal if I say "it is red", or "it is moving", but Aristotle sees the copula as homonymous because he's thinking about what the "is" really means, the logico-ontological relation it expresses. This is part of what filters people about Aristotle's logic I think, it's neither like modern logic concerned with the relations of concepts in actual thinking and speaking, but it's not metaphysics either. Its subject is like al-Farabi says, being qua thought, or being in the intellect. His notion of subject and predicate is pointing forward to his full theory of substance which is only finally explained and defended in the Metaphysics. In the Categories he simply presupposes that there ARE things ('subjects') of which things are said ('predicates') - "the cat is walking". But again note that this is not grammatical - in a proposition like "red is a color" the subject is 'red' but 'red' is still not a substance. When Aristotle draws a distinction between primary and secondary substance he's taking an anti-Platonic stance; though he doesn't defend himself here, this is a first shot across the bow. He's saying that primary substance, primary being, is NOT intelligible as such, or as you'll learn in the Analytics noesis is prior to episteme. This is extremely important, it's still a live, controversial idea in modern philosophy. In Kant for example the idea that what is primary is paradoxically unintelligible shows up in his theory of freedom, and then you have people like Hegel who take the 'Platonic' stance, who think being is intelligible through and through. So the Categories is short, difficult, and boring, but there's actually a lot going on here and you appreciate it more the more you read. I can already anticipate how tradcath pseuds will get buttblasted by some of the things I said here and raise pissant objections.
>>25360733mate, what makes you think he will understand this post? >>25359935have two predicates. go get some gatorade
>>25360733 (me)Especially when I say Platonism is essentially the position that reality is intelligible through and through, this will buttblast them because they're in love with this pseud Platonic mysticism. The point is that Plato ruthlessly prioritizes the universal over the individual. In this way you can say he's looking "forward" to Hegel and the worst aspects of modernity, as Heidegger says as well. Even his conception of the self as a charioteer in the Phaedrus is looking forward to the modern liberal-capitalist order.
>>25360591>Aristotle and Plato are ackshually the same!Yeah Hegel has a similar take, his reading like Gerson's is heavily influenced by Alexandrian neoplatonism. It's completely retarded by the way.
>>25360747are you >>25360733perchance?
Aristotle got a lot of shit right.But how much shit did Aristotle get wrong (and why?).Is there a branch of philosophy that deals with dead philosophies (probably meta-philosophy, I guess).Like people figured out "Cogito, ergo sum" doesn't make sense, but people still operate under this fallacy (if I stop thinking, I don't stop existing; hence the non-sequitur).
>>25359935For specific help with the Categories, there's an excellent new translation by Matthew Wells under the the title Allegations. Fresh new translation, discusses some notable alternative manuscript readings in the footnotes, plus a chapter by chapter close commentary in the fashion of the ancient and medieval commentaries, and tries to grant Aristotle maximum charity in seeing how the opening chapters relate and fit into the rest of the work while suggesting how they also fit in Aristotle's thought. That said, be a little wary of general summaries of his thought.>>25360591Gerson is not a good guide on Aristotle, not even on Plato, really. Almost only on the Neoplatonists.
>>25360775>taking a meme thread this seriously>oblivious to the fact OP isn't replying to anyoneheh
>>25360738doesn't plato think that the forms are sort of mystical things that transcend experience?
>>25360371He doesn't need to read that in order to understand the Categories though?
>>25360928is that a question or a statement?
>>25360784No he says they are the universal 'in itself'. Aristotle is denying that universals even have an 'in itself' or that it makes sense to speak of them in that way. A retard like Gerson can say, more or less:>Aristotle is of course right but he just didn't understand Plato because Plato never meant to make universals into entities, rather the Forms are in a relatively simple divine intellectBut Aristotle's point is that all of Plato's arguments, including the arguments for a One that is 'beyond' all plurality, or for a 'nous' below the One, the entire hierarchy, rest on hypostasizing universals. Aristotle was aware that Plato's first principle goes beyond universals, he writes a lot about the One actually. Gerson is just taking retarded commentaries from the dark ages when everyone had lead poisoning and re-presenting them in modern academic form. Then these retards take it up because they think they're somehow taking a stance 'against' modernity and things they don't like by embracing retarded positions from the dark ages.
>>25360738 (me)In his essay “on a recent tone of superiority” that Kant wrote against reactionary, mystick Platonists, the tradcath zoomers of 1790s Germany, Kant refers to the Plato of the seventh letter as a “pseudo-Plato” multiple times. I kept chuckling at work reading it as “pseud-Plato”. But I especially liked when he endorses Aristotle’s philosophy except for its theology. He characterizes his metaphysics as “a dismemberment of all knowledge a priori into its elements.” Completely accurate though in the passage he’s only apparently directly thinking of the Categories. Kant and Aristotle are extremely close to one another because they both start from phenomena and they both endorse the unthinkable and make it primary.
>>25361470>my interest in philosophy is like that of people arguing over xbox or playstationBack to your booze, toilet cleaner.
>>25360775What do you recommend for each of the rest of the books in the Organon?
>>25362424If you're fine with dling a bunch of volumes, the ancient and medieval commentators are very helpful, even when you start to realize that they have pretty different takes on this or that.
>>25360778I forgot I made this threadI just want a decent enough philosophical education to understand Hegel
>>25359935Draw a diagram
>>25361470>>25360738Have another Natty Daddy. Your takes certainly couldn't get worse.Saint Augustine > Plato > Aristotle
>>25362840Well with any philosopher the more you’ve read the more context you have but as far as simply understanding Hegel’s autistic prose and general arguments I think Kant and Fichte would suffice with an IEP acquaintance with Schelling. That’s still a heavy lift even understanding those two desu. Aristotle offers a lot of context though, his logical theories especially are deeply anti-Hegelian because Aristotle thinks there have to be immediate propositions (something just is and you can’t ratiocinate it) while Hegel thinks everything is mediated in a giant circle. Aristotle attacks just this view in Post An. In the problem of universals too Aristotle argues there are non-thinkables, the particular, so do Kant and Fichte in their own way. Hegel thinks everything is logical. But you’d already get the counter-Hegel from Kant and Fichte. >>25363056Fuck you.
>>25363310Don't you have an appointment to catch jumping in front of demon driven cars, retard?
>>25363454It was real in my mind.
>>25360775>Googled Matthew Wells Allegations>results include slapping an autistic child, felony child abuse, sexual assault, disorderly conduct (as a sex offender), etc. Didn't make it easy for himself lmao.
>>25363607Lmao, incredible. It's the following btw:https://www.mupress.org/mobile/Allegations-A-New-Translation-of-the-Categories-with-an-Introduction-and-Interpretive-Essay-P1330.aspx
>>25363624what's so good about it? there doesn't seem to be any reviews about it yet anywhere. also, does Aristotle beat the allegations?
>>25363649It was just released in the last few months, it'll take a little bit for reviews to come in. As a translation, it's just a solid literal translation; nothing fancy, but also doesn't try to make the ordinary Greek of it (where it is ordinary) sound more technical than it really is (I like Reeve, but he tends to do this). The only thing really out of the ordinary is translating katagorein and its derivatives as "to allege" and so on, and Wells reflects in the intro on why Aristotle might've chosen this word which in ordinary use means "to accuse" (and fwiw, it's a strange enough choice that Porphyry in his commentary practically begins by discussing this choice, though his explanation ends up being a shrug, "I dunno, philosophers just do this sometimes."). The big benefit though is an engaging commentary that makes up most of the volume. Wells avoids trying to fit it into the standard modern commentariat tradition, with its need for citations to numerous modern papers, frameworks, development hypotheses, etc., and, when he cites anyone, it's just Aristotle's other works or the ancient and medieval commentators. His concern is with why the Categories had been settled upon as THE introduction to Aristotle’s works and as an introduction to Aristotle’s philosophical science, and whether it can still be an appropriate or most appropriate introduction for Aristotle’s new readers today. He doesn't do boilerplate academic summaries, and he doesn't really seem to give a shit about what modern departments think, just whether we can learn from the text, and he balances being helpful without hand holding, and it kinda reads more like he's a thoughtful interlocutor carefully teasing out a bunch of strands and showing bother how they might fit altogether in the Categories and in Aristotle’s other works.
