Hackett Publishing Co, Inc Metaphysics Paperback – Import, 1 March 2016

I think this series of translations of Aristotle’s works rivals the moon landing in importance for human civilization. If you’re an English speaker who’s serious about wanting to read and understand Aristotle—and you have little or no Greek—you have no choice but to work with Reeve’s translations. (Without them, I think you’d be better off to just start learning ancient Greek).1. For the most part, these are the most natural-sounding and easily-readable translations of Aristotle out there. I know enough Greek to know how much effort it takes to (a) convey all the meaning of a Greek sentence into English, and (b) do it in a way that sounds remotely close to something an English-speaker would say. With everything else that’s so great about what Reeve’s doing in this series, the readability of the translations themselves shouldn’t go unnoticed.2. Wherever the translation is a bit awkward, it’s a feature not a defect. The best thing about this series is Reeve translates Aristotle’s key terms consistently everywhere: not just within one work (e.g. the Metaphysics), but across all of them (the Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, etc.) For instance, the intellectual virtues are a big deal in Aristotle. In most translations, if you see a word like “wisdom” or “knowledge,” you have no clue whether it’s translating “sophia” or “phronesis” or “episteme” or “nous” or something else. And that’s a problem: Aristotle’s *whole point* is to define these terms carefully, distinguish them, and explain how they work together. If you can’t tell when Aristotle is talking about one versus the other, there’s not much point to reading it in the first place. Reeve is solving this problem in a way that (to my knowledge) no one else has ever done. He *always* translates sophia as theoretical wisdom. He *always* translates phronesis as practical wisdom. And so on. In some places, this causes a phrase like “deliberate choice, deliberately choose, deliberately chosen” to repeat about 10 times in 5 lines, which can sound sort of strange. But the virtue is (since Reeve always translates “prohairesis” with “deliberate choice”) you know those 5 lines are talking about “prohairesis.” The slight awkwardness is a small price for a huge upside: a word like “prohairesis” is a key term in Aristotle’s works. He defines it carefully and at length. And when he uses it, he means it in precisely the sense he defined. If the translation were aiming for “natural-sounding English” above all else, several different English words might be used to translate prohairesis depending on the context. But Reeve forces “deliberate choice” into the translation any way he can, even if it sounds a little awkward. This way, you can look up “deliberate choice” in the index—(of the work you’re reading or any other in the series)—and easily find when and where Aristotle talks about prohairesis.It’s hard to explain how important of a difference this makes. But it’s the difference between rolling your eyes over words to feel like you’re reading Aristotle and actually meeting minds with Aristotle through translation. It’s even more important that he does this consistently throughout all of Aristotle’s works because it lets you see how they all fit together. (N.B. This is especially important with the Metaphysics—if you plan on reading just one Aristotle book, I recommend you pick a different one).3. Reeve’s endnotes are the main selling point, and they’re all they’re cracked up to be. (There are 1,644 of them in the Metaphysics—the endnotes are longer than the work itself). Sometimes they’re in Reeve’s own words, and when they are, he’s clear, direct, and helpful. But most of them are in Aristotle’s words: i.e. cross-references to (and extended quotes from) Aristotle’s other works. The cross-references often explain a concept in detail that Aristotle takes for granted in the sentence you’re reading.4. The table of contents and index are a godsend. I probably spend 30% of my time reading (and re-reading) the table of contents and going through the index to review terms with especially long entries. The words with long index entries are usually Aristotle’s key terms. Reading Aristotle is amazing when you start getting familiar with them. But it’s grueling while you’re not. And it’s pointless if the translation obscures those terms from the get-go—and in these translations, Reeve does everything in his power to make them more clear rather than less).5. The works all begin with a 20-30 page introduction written by Reeve. At first, they underwhelmed me. But having worked through several from the series, my mind has changed. “Introduction” might be the wrong word for them. With the Metaphysics, for example, the Introduction isn’t an outline of the Metaphysics itself as much as an explanation of how the Metaphysics fits in with Aristotle’s works as a whole. It’s a chicken-and-the-egg problem if you know nothing about the Metaphysics or Aristotle generally—if that’s the case, the Introduction probably won’t help you much on either front. (For a ground-level outline/intro, you’re better off starting with the table of contents and the index). However, his Introductions are much more valuable once you’ve spent time digging into a few works themselves. For me, they work better as essays to come back to later.In short, this book is a buy. And if you like what you see, buy the rest of them ASAP—because having them all in hand at once makes each of them exponentially better.

In short, this edition and translation are the most expedient way to make sense of this complicated text. I explain why below.I currently own at least 3 translations of this text, making this the fourth edition/translation I have purchased. I am a competent Aristotle student, if not even slightly better than average in ability and aggressiveness in the effort I’m willing to expend (I spend about an hour per page trying to get everything out of each page, and I actively cross-reference between texts and authors).Nonetheless, Aristotle’s Metaphysics is referred to “the Everest of ancient philosophy” for a reason. I have been stalled multiple times and the translations and notes that C.D.C Reeve supplies make this text user-friendly for modern people. While the older translations may at times be more faithful to the Greek or Aristotle’s circuitous style of discourse, this translation and its Notes have bailed me out of a few situations that no amount of googling or secondary sources were able to supply.Trust me, this is the translation you are looking for! Whether you are looking because you are frustrated or confused with a different translation, or if you are thinking of picking up the Metaphysics for the first time and don’t want to be totally lost, this is the best way to interact with it, short of learning Ancient Greek. The supplementary resources at the back of the book cross reference to Plato, Aristotle’s Topics, Posterior Analytics etc. as a sort of argument for why Reeve translated the meaning of different sentences in different ways. There are over 1500 such notes with usually about 4-5 per page. I would really be in a tight spot without this!

One does not read Aristotle for the pleasure of it, but his works are of almost encyclopedic historical value. For instance, I had an idea, rationalized at last into a tenet of philosophy. Well, I thought it just might have been original. A bit of study, however, and there it is, in Aristotle no less.In the "Metaphysics," to be specific. This massive volume may once in a while have been mistaken for a doorstop! But as what we call dramatics, in Aristotle's lexicon was the "Poetics," a slender volume indeed by comparison. In that way, metaphysics would become "natural philosophy," and only twenty-odd centuries later would metamorphose into science with the arrival of Isaac Newton. So, philosophers, gather around. Refer if you will to Aristotle for research, for ideas. If you seek an evening's pleasant read, look elsewhere.

This book has received very positive reviews for the high quality of the translation. Being a Greekless reader, I can't comment on this. But I do trust Christopher Shields, a world-class Aristotle scholar, who praises this translation. I have read deeply in the Aristotle literature, including Reeve's important book Substantial Knowledge, which deals with Aristotle's metaphysics in great depth. There is no doubt in my mind that David Reeve is one of the top two or three best Aristotle scholars in the world. Hackett has always provided us with good translations at excellent prices, and it's nice to know that with Reeve's new translations they are actually improving on their stellar reputation.

This is a beautiful book which pairs lucid translation with meaty commentary. In the introduction, Reeve helpfully addresses the types of questions contemporary readers might pose (i.e. "Is the Investigation in the Metaphysics a Scientific One?"), helping to ensure that concepts aren't "lost in translation." Notes throughout the text open windows into difficult passages. Reeve also often provides the valences of meaning with the original Greek.The decades Reeve has spent with Plato and Aristotle form a total benefit to the reader: here he presents Aristotle's most difficult work in a manner both accessible and erudite. Buy this book!