On Aristotle: Saving Politics from Philosophy

Ryan (former warden, New Coll., Oxford Univ.; politics, Princeton Univ.; John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism) begins with this short work on Aristotle to distill his larger two-volume On Politics into a projected 12 volumes of pocket editions devoted to individual thinkers. Equally a history of both Athenian and Aristotelian political thought, which both, argues Ryan, are necessary to understanding our own conceptions of political theory, the book's first half attempts to bring us forward from Aristotle's Athens, through the Middle Ages, and into the modern period with discourse on ethics and politics but also on economics, economic activity, political analysis, citizenship, ideal states, and slavery. Readers will become familiar with select passages from Benjamin Jowett's translation of The Politics and James Edward Cowell Welldon's translation of The Nicomachean Ethics. On Machiavelli contains a finely crafted analysis of the subject's place in the political cannon. Ryan has selected long passages from The Prince (itself a short work), excluding outdated historical examples, and a shorter selection from The Discourses. The second title to inaugurate Liveright's new "Classics" series, this is as much about the development of political thought of the time leading to, during, and subsequent to the 16th-century reformation in Italy as it is about the philosopher's contributions.