Work

An ancient biographer of Aristotle has asserted that : ‘there follows a list of some 150 items, which, taken together and published in the modern style, would amount to fifty substantial volumes of print. And that list does not include all of Aristotle’s writings – indeed, it is not inclusive of two of his great, works, the ‘Metaphysics’ and the ‘Nichomachean Ethics’, because of which he is remembered today. It is remarkable for its scope and multiplicity of subjects.

In the catalogue of Aristotle’s titles included are : ‘On Justice’. ‘On the Poets’, ‘On Wealth’, ‘On Pleasure’, ‘On the Sciences’, ‘On Soul’, ‘On Species and Genus’, ‘Definitions’, ‘Lectures on Political Theory’ (in eight volumes), ‘The Art of Rhetoric’, ‘On the Pythagoreans’, ‘On Animals’ (in nine volumes), ‘Dissections’ (in seven volumes), ‘On Plants’, ‘On Motion’, ‘On Astronomy’, ‘Homeric Problems’ (in six volumes), ‘On Magnets’, ‘Olympic Victors’, ‘Proverbs’, ‘On the River Nile’.

Aristotle had worked on logic and language, arts, ethics and politics and law, constitutional history, and natural history-zoology, biology, botany, chemistry, astronomy, mechanics, mathematics, philosophy of science and the nature of motion, space and time, metaphysics and the theory of knowledge.

Aristotle’s writings are by and large lecture-notes and not intended for publication. Their fine, style was admired by the ancient critics. Aristotle’s treatises are a unique challenge to the readers, and once the reader has taken up the challenge, he would not have the treatises in any other form.

Reading the treatise of Aristotle is not a dull slog. He has a vigorous style of writing which on intimate acquaintance proves no less attractive than Plato’s lovely prose