Edited by Richard McKeon, with an introduction by C.D.C. Reeve Preserved by Arabic mathematicians and canonized by Christian scholars, Aristotle’s works have shaped Western thought, science, and religion for nearly two thousand years. Richard McKeon’s The Basic Works of Aristotle—constituted out of the definitive Oxford translation and in print as a Random House hardcover for sixty years—has long been considered the best available one-volume Aristotle. Appearing in ebook at long last, this edition includes selections from the Organon, On the Heavens, The Short Physical Treatises, Rhetoric, among others, and On the Soul, On Generation and Corruption, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Poetics in their entirety.

In the long history of philosophy and literature, few have been so widely read and admired as the great thinkers of Greece and Rome. For modern audiences, this eBook bundle—which collects the Modern Library editions of three classics: Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Selected Dialogues of Plato, and The Basic Works of Aristotle—is the perfect introduction to the foundation of modern knowledge. Accompanied by insightful, accessible commentary from some of today’s top scholars, including Gregory Hays, Hayden Pelliccia, and C.D.C. Reeve, this is a collection of ideas that changed the world—and have truly stood the test of time. MEDITATIONS Marcus Aurelius succeeded his adoptive father as emperor of Rome in A.D. 161—and Meditations remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. The Meditations have become required reading for statesmen and philosophers alike, while generations of readers have responded to the straightforward intimacy of the leader’s style. In Gregory Hays’s seminal translation, Marcus’s thoughts speak with a new immediacy: Never before have they been so directly and powerfully presented. SELECTED DIALOGUES OF PLATO In this volume, Hayden Pelliccia has revised five of Benjamin Jowett’s translations of Plato—classics in their own right—to produce a fresh, modern take that Library Journal calls “a needed and welcome addition to the translations of the Dialogues.” Here are Ion, Protagoras, Phaedrus, and the famous Symposium, which discuss poetry, the Socratic method, rhetoric, psychology, and love. Most dramatically, Apology puts Socrates’ art of persuasion to the ultimate test—defending his own life. THE BASIC WORKS OF ARISTOTLE Preserved by Arabic mathematicians and canonized by Christian scholars, Aristotle’s works have shaped Western thought, science, and religion for nearly two thousand years—and Richard McKeon’s edition has long been considered the best available one-volume Aristotle. Here are selections from the Organon, On the Heavens, The Short Physical Treatises, Rhetoric, among others, and On the Soul, On Generation and Corruption, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Poetics in their entirety.

Aristotle's Physics is one of the least studied "great books"--physics has come to mean something entirely different than Aristotle's inquiry into nature, and stereotyped Medieval interpretations have buried the original text. Sach's translation is really the only one that I know of that attempts to take the reader back to the text itself. -- Leon Cass, University of Chicago

Richard McKeon was a philosopher of extraordinary creativity who brought profoundly original ideas to bear on more standard ways of thinking and learning. A classicist, medievalist, and revolutionary intellectual, he fashioned an approach to philosophy as a plural conversation among varied traditions of thought, epochs, and civilizations. This second volume of McKeon's selected works demonstrates his approach to inquiry and practice in culture, education, and the arts. Together, the writings in this book show how McKeon reinvented the ancient arts of rhetoric, grammar, logic, and dialectic for the new circumstances of a global culture. In essays on creation and criticism, for instance, rhetoric is distinguished from grammar and shown to be the master art of invention, judgment, and pluralistic interpretation. Writings on themes of culture, meanwhile, explore the self-invention of mankind as justification for the arts, the development of the humanities, and the organization of the sciences. In the closing essays on education and philosophy, McKeon considers the implications of his ideas for the future of the liberal arts and higher learning.