p.5 in 343 [BC], Philip II, King of Macedon in succession to his father Amyntas, invited Aristotle to the
court at Mieza - and to the tutorship of his son, Alexander. Thus began the association between the most powerful mind of
the age and the most powerful man.
p.85 Medicine, Aristotle remarks, "has the healthy as its subject," but this does not imply that
there exist healthy items separate from perceptible objects - on the contrary, medical scientists are concerned with
ordinary perceptible bodies (with animal bodies) and not with anything apart from ordinary perceptible bodies. They treat
perceptible bodies qua healthy (or perhaps rather qua subject to health and disease): the object
of their attention is one particular aspect of physical bodies, but the ontology which they presuppose does not require
any substantial items other than these physical bodies. If you study Fs qua G, then Fs form the domain of
your inquiry, and the ontology presupposed by any inquiry consists precisely of the items within its domain.
p.95 The distinction between dunamis and energeia... is at bottom the commonplace
distinction between being capable of doing or being something and actually doing or being it. I
can (now) speak a sort of French, I have the capacity - the "potency" - to do so; but I am not (now) actually
speaking French. When I do speak French, then I "actualize" my capacity for speaking French - that is to say, I actually do
something which I can do.
p.110 To have scientific knowledge, then, is to have explanatory understanding: not merely to "know" a fact
incidentally, to be able to assent to something which is true, but to know why it is a fact. The proper function
of science is to provide explanations
p.113 for realists like Aristotle, the structure of scientific explanations must properly mirror the composition
of the reality it explains
p.121 Episteme involves knowing the fundamental structure of things, of why they
are the sorts of things they are
p.124-125 What matters then, for Aristotle, is not animal species' differences as such, nor their complete
descriptions per se, but rather those differences which point to their causal relations with one another
p.200 There are actually only three reputable reasons to prefer living to not living: enjoying
the more refined pleasures; earning a good name for yourself in your own eyes and in the eyes of others in your community;
and appreciating an understanding of the universe in which we find ourselves. These correspond to the three career
choices open to young gentlemen of property: a life of pleasant amusement; a career of public service; and a life devoted
to philosophy.
p.204 the proper thing is to treat amusement as relaxation, amusing oneself in order to
be better able to work at the serious business of life
p.207 All in all, practical wisdom is an appreciation of what is good and bad for us at
the highest level, together with a correct apprehension of the facts of experience, together with the skill
to make the correct inferences about how to apply our general moral knowledge to our particular situation, and to do so quickly
and reliably.
p.208 real wisdom involves knowing the right values, "the things that are good or bad for
man," as well as being able to put them into practice; so it is not possible to be really wise without having
the moral virtues as well.
p.219 The symposium, or drinking-party, was an evening of dining, heavy drinking, and amusement,
usually with paid entertainers and prostitutes. Obviously this could be taken too far, and Aristotle criticizes the
excessive desire for food, drink, and sex as the serious vice he calls dissoluteness (or intemperance or profligacy). Aristotle
thinks that we should have only a little desire for such pleasures [JLJ - all right, I'll cut out the paid entertainers...]
