Jonathan Lear

I can hardly praise this book too highly. It’s truly exceptional. A few years ago, after reading many of Plato’s dialogues, I decided to try tackling Aristotle and got the Modern Library Basic Works. But where to start? With Plato it’s fairly easy – early, then middle, then late dialogues, and beginning with those centered on Socrates’ death. And Plato’s a literary great – his art draws you into his philosophy. Aristotle’s a far harder case: his extant works are probably lecture notes, famously dry. And there’s no obvious point of entry or sequence of study. But concepts that are spread throughout his work are integral to an understanding of the parts and the whole.

I was at a loss until I found Lear’s book. He’s clearly spent many years contemplating Aristotle’s thought, with the result being breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding, fortuitously combined with lucidity in explication and an inspired choice of the sequence of topics. Then he adds invaluably to this by making reading suggestions at each chapter and most subheads. I followed these suggestions, so it took a while to get through the book – getting through hundreds of pages of Aristotle in the process – but Lear shines all the more when taking that approach. I highly recommend it.

This will necessarily be overly simple, but I’ll give a sense of the book’s content and flow. It starts with Aristotle’s view of man as the rational animal, having a desire to understand - the product (and reflection, more or less) of an intelligible cosmos. So this desire is integral to the nature of the cosmos. Lear very clearly explains Aristotle’s complex and nuanced causality – something pretty foreign to the modern mind but important throughout Aristotle’s thought, as is his affinity for the mean and for finding solutions through the middle of conundrums. Lear takes us through fundamental Aristotelian concepts from his Physics – the nature and structure of the physical cosmos and of time and change (critical issues in Pre-Socratic philosophy), of life (from the biological works) and the soul and mind. Then ethics and the good life (primarily from the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics), leading through the logical works (a great achievement) to the heart of the Metaphysics.

It gets dense here, but Lear’s paved the way brilliantly. This last part revolves around substance and essence; Aristotle’s God, his activity and relationship to the cosmos; the concept that all things ��desire” God, however unconsciously, and are most fully actualized in pursuing this desire; and that man is most fully actualized, paradoxically, by transcending his nature (as a political and social, i.e. ethical, animal) and becoming the most God-like he can be through the contemplative life. Lear points out that some of this is conjecture on his part and varies from some common traditional understandings of the Metaphysics.

There’s much in Aristotle’s conception of God I don’t accept, and I have problems with aspects of his conceptions of the good life and the best life, along with some other things in his thought. But studying Aristotle has been richly rewarding and has given me concepts and perspectives I hadn’t even conceived of before (as with Plato). I don’t know how I would have approached Aristotle or processed much of it without Lear’s help. Perhaps the book weakens slightly at the end as Lear seems to want to tidily wrap up Aristotle’s philosophy as a self-consistent, reasonable and fairly comprehensive whole. Perhaps. But that’s a minor quibble and maybe not even a fair or accurate one. I’d have to study Aristotle longer and more deeply to better judge that. Regardless, if you’re looking for a guide to Aristotle’s philosophy, Lear’s outstanding and I imagine you could hardly find a better one than him.
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This is a valuable book for individuals working with people or groups of people whose way of life is undergoing change due to the pressure of outside forces. This includes refugees; immigrants; the young and adult children of refugees and immigrant; cultural and social minority communities; employees working long-term in a culturally and socially foreign country; individuals grieving a spouse or child; etc. The author looks at the intersection of social and cultural anthropology, philosophy, and ethics. To locate his heady analysis in real life circumstances, the author utilizes the autobiography-as-told-to Frank B. Linderman of Plenty-Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow. Plenty-Coups led his tribe through the transition from their Plains Indian life hunting buffalo and warring with neighboring land-hungry tribes into a world dominated by the Euro-American settlers, an absence of buffalo, and restriction to reservation land. His wisdom and radical hope enabled the Crow Nation to retain almost all their land.

To best appreciate Lear's book, it is necessary to first read "Plenty-Coups: Chief of the Crows" by Frank B. Linderman, preferably the 2002 "New Edition."… (more)