Corpus Aristotelicum (Complete Works of Aristotle)
Aristotle's complete surviving works as collected by Andronicus of Rhodes (~50 BCE). All 31 authentic works are present in English translation, drawn from public-domain sources: the Oxford translations of W. D. Ross & J. A. Smith (Clarendon Press, 1908-1931) for the Organon, the natural-philosophy works (Physics, On the Heavens, Generation and Corruption, Meteorology), the psychological works (De Anima and the Parva Naturalia), and the biological works (History of Animals, Parts/Movement/Progression/Generation of Animals); Perseus's TEI-XML English (CC-BY-SA-4.0, drawn from older Oxford and Loeb translations) for the Metaphysics, the two Ethics, Politics, Economics, Rhetoric, and Poetics; F. G. Kenyon's 1891 translation (recovered papyrus, cited by chapter rather than Bekker) for the Constitution of Athens. Greek text additionally included for the Metaphysics, both Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, and Poetics. OCR quality on the older Oxford volumes varies; some passages contain inline footnote artifacts and openings in Vols 3-5 are occasionally misaligned by a few lines.
Source context· Greco-Christian stream · Greco-Latin cultural age
- Stream
- Greco-Christian
- Cultural age
- Greco-Latin (4th post-Atlantean cultural age)
- Composed
- c. 350 BCE
- Soul-faculty
- Intellectual Soul
What this work carries
Aristotle gathers and systematizes the final phase of Greek mystery-philosophy, transmuting the older imaginative cognition inherited through Pherecydes, Pythagoras, and Plato into precise conceptual form. The corpus marks the moment when the intellectual soul achieves articulate self-possession, fixing categories, logic, and the doctrine of the soul that will carry Greek esoteric content into Christian scholasticism.
Language frame
Written in 4th-century BCE Attic and Ionic Greek as lecture notes and treatises from the Lyceum, the corpus is organized into the Organon, natural philosophy, psychology, biology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetics. The form is technical and demonstrative rather than dialogic, establishing the prototype of scientific prose.
Steiner’s engagement
- GA 351, 1923-10-24Steiner notes that the Greeks achieved so much for intellectual life that Greek is still required of students, because learning Greek is held to convey something of that intellectual formation.
- GA 353, 1924-03-05Steiner observes that during the Greek era those who became dependent on Greek civilization and Greek intellectual life forgot what the Indians, Egyptians, and earlier peoples had known, marking the cognitive shift the Aristotelian corpus consolidates.
- GA 221, 1923-02-18Steiner characterizes the Greek as the most perfect representative of the stage of human development emerging out of the older soul conditions, the stage in which Aristotle's conceptual work stands as the culmination.
- GA 171, 1916-09-16Steiner indicates that the Greek language itself reveals a stream flowing behind Greek spiritual life that comes from the old imaginations of the Egypto-Chaldean age, a stream still present in the substratum of Aristotle's terminology.
- GA 65, 1916-03-23Steiner describes Greek intellectual life as geared toward looking outward and forming plastic concepts from what the outer world presents, which is the cognitive gesture Aristotle raises to method.
- GA 292, 1917-10-22Steiner places the Greek impulse within the style and sense of the 4th post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch whose intellectual-soul achievement Aristotle most fully articulates.
Cross-tradition congruence
- Platonic dialoguesWhere Plato preserves the dialogical residue of mystery-instruction, Aristotle systematizes its conceptual yield, completing the same Greek philosophical stream in a different register.
- Scholasticism (Aquinas)The Aristotelian categories, doctrine of substance, and treatment of the soul are received by Christian scholasticism as the conceptual vessel for articulating Christology and creation.
- Pythagorean number-philosophyAristotle's analysis of form, potency, and act preserves in conceptual form what the Pythagorean stream held in number-and-rhythm imagination.
- 1Categories — The ten kinds of being
Opens the Organon. The ten categories (substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, having, doing, undergoing) — the basic kinds into which things said-without-combination can be classified. The starting-point of Aristotelian ontology.
15,701 words - 2On Interpretation (De Interpretatione) — Subject and predicate; the structure of the proposition
On the structure of the proposition: the noun, the verb, affirmation and denial, contradiction and contrariety. Contains the famous sea-battle discussion of future contingents — the locus classicus for the problem of determinism in classical logic.
12,806 words - 3Prior Analytics — The syllogism — Aristotle's deductive system
The foundational treatise on the syllogism. The three figures, the moods, perfect and imperfect syllogisms; how every valid deduction reduces to syllogistic form. Two thousand years of logic in two books.
55,379 words - 4Posterior Analytics — Scientific demonstration and first principles
On scientific demonstration (apodeixis): what counts as genuine knowledge, the structure of demonstrative science, the regress problem and the role of first principles known by nous. Aristotle's epistemology of episteme.
54,799 words - 5Topics — Dialectical argument from accepted premises
On dialectical reasoning — argument from generally-accepted premises rather than from first principles. Eight books on argumentative strategies, distinctions, and the classification of predicables (definition, genus, property, accident).
76,953 words - 6Sophistical Refutations — The art of detecting fallacy
Closes the Organon. Catalogue of fallacies — the apparent refutations used by sophists — classified as either depending on language (equivocation, amphiboly, accent) or independent of it (begging the question, false cause, many questions).
52,602 words - 7Physics — The principles of nature; change, place, time, infinity
Opens the natural-philosophy works. The four causes; the principles of natural change; place, void, time, infinity; the first unmoved mover. The foundational treatise on physis — that whose being is changing-of-itself.
100,950 words - 8On the Heavens (De Caelo) — The cosmology of the eternal heavens and the four sublunary elements
Aristotle's cosmology: the eternal incorruptible heavens of the fifth element (aether); the four sublunary elements (earth, water, air, fire) and their natural motions; the sphericity and rest of the earth at the center.
58,484 words - 9On Generation and Corruption (De Generatione et Corruptione) — Becoming and perishing — the transmutation of the elements
How the four sublunary elements transmute into each other; the distinction between generation/corruption (substantial change) and alteration (qualitative change). On mixture, contact, action and passion.
32,854 words - 10Meteorology — The phenomena of the sublunary atmosphere
On phenomena occurring in the region between earth and the sphere of the moon: comets and the Milky Way, winds, dew, frost, rain, hail, thunder, lightning, rainbows, and (in Book IV, sometimes treated as separate) the chemical properties of matter.
69,693 words - 11On the Soul (De Anima) — The first actuality of a natural body with organs
Aristotle's psychology. The soul as first actuality (entelecheia) of a natural body having life potentially; the three souls (nutritive, sensitive, rational); the unmixed character of nous and its peculiar relation to its objects.
36,422 words - 12On Sense and Sensibilia (De Sensu et Sensibilibus) — Parva Naturalia — the senses and their proper objects
Opens the Parva Naturalia. On the five senses and their proper objects (colour, sound, odour, flavour, tangible qualities); the common sensibles; the question of whether all bodies are infinitely divisible into sense-perceptible parts.
18,688 words - 13On Memory and Recollection — How memory differs from imagination; the art of recollection
On memory (a habit) and recollection (a deliberate retrieval). Why memory belongs to the perceptive part of the soul; why only humans possess recollection; the associative chains through which we retrieve the forgotten.
9,261 words - 14On Sleep and Waking — The cessation of sense-activity in the common sensorium
Why animals sleep: the cessation of sense-activity in the common sensorium during digestion. The physiological account of sleep as nutritive necessity for the perceptive faculty.
6,429 words - 15On Dreams (De Insomniis) — Dreams as residual sense-movements during sleep
Aristotle's theory of dreams: not divinations but residual sense-movements lingering after waking perception, interpreted by the imagination (phantasia) under the conditions of sleep. Companion to On Divination in Sleep.
6,414 words - 16On Length and Shortness of Life — Why some living things live long and others briefly
On the causes of longevity: the balance of innate heat and moisture; the relationship between size, perfection of organism, and length of life. Plants vs. animals; the case of large versus small species.
3,370 words - 17On Youth and Old Age, Life and Death — The heart as the seat of life
On the principle of life as the innate heat located in the heart; the gradual cooling that constitutes aging and death; the relation of nutrition, respiration, and life-heat across the kinds of living things.
2,768 words - 18On Respiration — The cooling of the innate heat
On breathing as the cooling-mechanism for the innate heat of the heart. Why animals with lungs breathe; why bloodless animals do not; the analogous role of gills in fish. Continues the On Youth and Old Age discussion.
20,082 words - 19History of Animals (Historia Animalium) — The great catalogue of animal kinds and their differentiae
Aristotle's foundational empirical zoology. Ten books cataloguing animal kinds by their differentiae — parts, modes of life, activities, dispositions. The largest single work in the corpus; the wellspring of biological observation through the Renaissance.
206,266 words - 20Parts of Animals (De Partibus Animalium) — The functions of animal parts; teleological biology
On the parts (limbs, organs, tissues) of animals as means to the activities by which animals live. Opens with the methodological book that establishes teleology in biology — nature does nothing in vain.
104,168 words - 21Movement of Animals (De Motu Animalium) — How animals initiate motion
Short treatise on how animals initiate motion: the role of desire, the practical syllogism, the central organ (the heart), the innate pneuma. Bridges psychology and biology.
9,842 words - 22Progression of Animals (De Incessu Animalium) — The mechanics of animal locomotion
On the parts by which animals progress: the number of legs in different kinds, the geometry of bending and unbending, the role of the right side, why human beings are upright.
20,559 words - 23Generation of Animals (De Generatione Animalium) — Reproduction — the form-giving male principle
The largest theoretical work in Aristotelian biology. Five books on animal reproduction; the male as the source of form (the soul-conveying pneuma), the female as the source of matter; embryological development through the kinds.
109,323 words - 24Metaphysics — First philosophy — being qua being, substance, the Prime Mover
Aristotle's first philosophy. Fourteen books on the nature of being qua being; substance (ousia) as the primary kind of being; form and matter, potency and act; the Prime Mover at the close of Book Λ — pure act, eternal, thinking thinking itself.
123,790 words - 25Nicomachean Ethics — Eudaimonia, virtue, friendship, contemplation
Aristotle's chief ethical work, dedicated to his son Nicomachus. Ten books on happiness (eudaimonia) as the activity of the soul in accord with virtue; the moral and intellectual virtues; weakness of will; friendship; the contemplative life as highest happiness.
105,841 words - 26Eudemian Ethics — The companion ethical treatise
The other major ethical work — earlier and shorter than the Nicomachean. Three books shared with NE (the common books on moral virtue, justice, intellectual virtue) and unique treatments of friendship, fortune, and the good and the gods.
47,684 words - 27Politics — The polis as the perfecting community of human nature
The political treatise. Eight books on the polis as the community in which human nature finds completion; the household and slavery; ideal and actual constitutions; the causes of stability and revolution; the best regime and the education of citizens.
107,903 words - 28Constitution of Athens (Athenaiōn Politeia) — Athens's constitutional history + the working machinery of democracy
Discovered on papyrus in 1879. Part I: the constitutional history of Athens from the kings through Solon, Peisistratus, Cleisthenes, and the democratic reforms. Part II: a detailed account of the working machinery of Athenian democracy in Aristotle's own day.
36,478 words - 29Rhetoric — The counterpart of dialectic — persuasion in the public sphere
Three books on the art of finding the available means of persuasion. Ethos, pathos, logos; the three genres (deliberative, forensic, epideictic); the topics of argument; the emotions and how they are aroused; style and arrangement.
82,315 words - 30Poetics — Tragedy as the mimesis of an action that is serious and complete
On tragedy as the mimesis of a serious action with magnitude — purging through pity and fear (katharsis). The six elements (plot, character, thought, diction, melody, spectacle); the unities; the priority of plot; the famous discussion of reversal (peripeteia) and recognition (anagnorisis).
14,837 words - 31Economics — Household management and statecraft (probably spurious)
Three books on household management and the management of revenues. Now generally regarded as the work of a member of Aristotle's school rather than Aristotle himself — but transmitted in the corpus since antiquity.
10,365 words
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