Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle

The power of his mind and his inquisitiveness went far beyond what most people are even capable of conceiving. The Greek philosopher Aristotle didn’t simply ask questions, the way regular scientists do, for instance, about how the natural world works and what principles are responsible for its uniformity… he went far beyond this, and consequently investigated the very principles upon which our experience of that world rests (abstract concepts like substance, identity, multiplicity, change over time, essence, matter, etc.), and he also discovered and formalized conceptual rules of thought and reason without which our experience would be inherently incoherent and contradictory.

The breath and depth of his influence was so overwhelming in virtually all intellectual disciplines (philosophy, aesthetics, science, rhetoric, politics, theology, ethics, etc.) that for two thousand years, Aristotle was simply referred to as the philosopher, and his word was basically taken as the definitive truth on any given subject.

In this deliciously thought-provoking discussion, American philosopher Martha Nussbaum discusses the importance and legacy of Aristotle’s philosophy with Bryan Magee


Check out similar fascinating discussions on Plato, Hegel & Marx, Schopenhauer.
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