This is the overdue replacement of D. W. Hamlyn’s somewhat dismissive 1968 translation and commentary of the first two books of Aristotle’s De Anima. Hamlyn hardly did justice to this foundational treatise of Aristotle’s science of living beings: not only did he mistake it for a treatise on “the” philosophy of mind, he also did not bother to translate the first book apart from two snippets. Shields’s replacement is entirely free from such vices. It provides a new translation and commentary on th…
Read moreThis is the overdue replacement of D. W. Hamlyn’s somewhat dismissive 1968 translation and commentary of the first two books of Aristotle’s De Anima. Hamlyn hardly did justice to this foundational treatise of Aristotle’s science of living beings: not only did he mistake it for a treatise on “the” philosophy of mind, he also did not bother to translate the first book apart from two snippets. Shields’s replacement is entirely free from such vices. It provides a new translation and commentary on the whole argument of De Anima, and offers a much more philosophically satisfying interpretation, which is based on a precise, charitable and tolerant, yet by no means uncritical, analysis of the text.
