Aristotle's Metaphysics Alpha

The volumes of the 'Symposium Aristotelicum' have become obligatory reference works for Aristotle studies. In this eighteenth volume a distinguished group of scholars offers a chapter-by-chapter study of the first book of the Metaphysics. Aristotle presents here his philosophical project as a search for wisdom, which is found in the knowledge of the first principles allowing us to explain whatever exists. As he shows, earlier philosophers had been seekingsuch a wisdom, though they had divergent views on what these first principles were. Before Aristotle sets out his own views, he offers a critical examination of his predecessors' views, ending up with a lengthy discussion of Plato's doctrine of Forms. Book Alpha is not just a fundamental text for reconstructingthe early history of Greek philosophy; it sets the agenda for Aristotle's own project of wisdom on the basis of what he had learned from his predecessors. The volume comprises eleven chapters, each dealing with a different section of the text, and a new edition of the Greek text of Metaphysics Alpha by Oliver Primavesi, based on an exhaustive examination of the complex manuscript and indirect tradition. The introduction to the edition offers new insights into the question which hashaunted editors of the Metaphysics since Bekker, namely the relation between the two divergent traditions of the text.

This book is extremely rich, and the reader will discover in each of its chapters much food for thinking about a great number of topics and problems.

Carlos Steel is emeritus Professor for ancient and medieval philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Leuven and director of the international project 'Aristoteles Latinus'. Steel has devoted most of his research to the study of the Platonic tradition from late antiquity to Ficino with a particular emphasis on the philosophy of Proclus. He is the editor of Proclus' commentary on the Parmendes in Oxford Classical Studies and different volumes inthe Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series Oliver Primavesi holds the chair of Greek (I) at the University of Munich. His research has been devoted mainly to Aristotle and to the Presocratics, in particular to Empedocles. His books include Die Aristotelische Topik (1996) and Empedokles: Physika I (2008). He has co-authored, with A. Martin, LEmpédocle de Strasbourg (1999) and with J. Mansfeld, Die Vorsokratiker Griechisch/Deutsch (2011); and has edited, with K. Luchner, The Presocratics fromthe Latin Middle Ages to Hermann Diels (2011).