Aristotle

Preface by Martin J. Gross
Essays by Benjamin Morison and Barbara Scalvini

Aristotle’s influence towers over western philosophy and science. His astonishing range and depth— philosophy and logic, the physical and natural sciences, ethics and politics—made him indisputably the most important intellectual figure in the western tradition before the modern age. Although he has been studied continuously for more than 2,000 years, his individual works were dispersed, lost,  recovered and very gradually reunited.

This new volume illustrates the ways in which the Aristotelian corpus has been transmitted over time. In particular, it focuses on the crucial moment when, thanks to the invention of printing, Aristotle’s works became widely available in Latin, Greek, and in vernacular languages in the 15th and 16th centuries. The extraordinary books and manuscripts in this volume, selected from the collection of the Martin J. Gross Foundation, demonstrate just how intellectuals received and interpreted Aristotle. Through commentaries, treatises, lecture courses in schools and above all in the written marginalia of books, the volume reveals the extent of the era’s engagement with Aristotle. It includes essays by leading scholars as well as a beautifully illustrated catalogue section featuring the covers and pages of works on Aristotelian texts from the 13th to the late 17th century, many of which show the annotations of contemporary readers and teachers.

Author biographies

Martin J. Gross is the President of the Martin J. Gross Family Foundation whose purpose is the publication of scholarly works for the benefit of the general public. He has an MA in Philosophy and Politics from Oxford University, and a JD from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Benjamin Morison is professor of Philosophy, Princeton University. He has published a monograph, On Location: Aristotle’s Concept of Place (2002), and contributed two chapters to the Cambridge Companion to Galen (2008). Other publications include contributions to two volumes of the Symposium Aristotelicum and to the volume of the Symposium Hellenisticum on Dialectic.

Dr. Barbara Scalvini is an Early Books specialist at Bernard Quaritch Ltd., London, and was formerly senior specialist, Department of Books and Manuscripts at Christie’s.

Table of contents

1. Preface by Martin J. Gross
2. Works of Aristotle
3. Aristotle: An Introduction by Benjamin Morison
4. Tradition and the Legacy of Aristotle by Barbara Scalvini
5. Catalogue
   Aldus Aristotle
   Logic/Metaphysics
   The Natural World
   Ethics and Politics
6. Further Reading
7. Publications sponsored by the Foundation