The library of Aristotle
Across 3 of Aristotle’s 9 works in the library, the harvest finds 95 named sources — 111 citations in all. The library holds 10 of them; the rest are the corpus’s wanted list. In the other direction, 29 works in the library quote Aristotle back — 122 citations.
most drawn on Homer · Aristotle · Euripides · Plato · Iliad · Aeschylus · Constitution of the Athenians · Hesiod · Histories · Philoctetes
arrangedthe librarycited by
28 neutral 10 refuted 7 extended 7 endorsed Of the 111 citations Aristotle makes, 10 argue against the text cited.
the sources most drawn on
10 of 95-
Homer 6 citations
- Nicomachean Ethics
- book 3 · book 6 · book 7 · book 8
- 6 citations
just as Homer has represented Priam as saying of Hector, on account of his surpassing valor— nor seemed to be The son of mortal man, but of a god.
Nicomachean Ethics · book 7 · poetic authority for Superhuman Virtue ¶ -
Aristotle 3 extended 4 citations
- Nicomachean Ethics
- book 4 · book 6 · book 8
- 4 citations
It appears however that honor also, as was said in the first part of this work, has a certain virtue concerned with it, which may be held to bear the same relation to Greatness of Soul that Liberality bears to Magnificence.
Nicomachean Ethics · book 4 · self-citation extending an earlier argument of the same treatise ¶ -
Euripides 4 neutral 4 citations
- Nicomachean Ethics
- book 3 · book 5 · book 6 · book 8
- 4 citations
for instance, we think it ridiculous that Alcmaeon in Euripides’ play is compelled by certain threats to murder his mother!
Nicomachean Ethics · book 3 · literary example illustrating the limits of compulsion ¶ -
Plato 1 neutral 1 refuted 1 extended 4 citations
- Nicomachean Ethics
- book 1 · book 2 · book 10
- 4 citations
But perhaps it is desirable that we should examine the notion of a Universal Good, and review the difficulties that it involves, although such an inquiry goes against the grain because of our friendship for the authors of the Theory of Ideas.
Nicomachean Ethics · book 1 · the doctrine is repeatedly argued against on logical and practical grounds ¶ -
Iliad Homer 2 citations
- Nicomachean Ethics
- book 3 · book 5
- 2 citations
This maybe illustrated by the ancient constitutions represented in Homer:
Nicomachean Ethics · book 3 · cited as historical/poetic authority illustrating choice in kingship ¶ -
Aeschylus 1 neutral 1 citation
- Nicomachean Ethics
- book 3
- 1 citation
But a man may be ignorant of (2) what he is doing, as for instance when people say it slipped out while they were speaking, or they were not aware that the matter was a secret, as Aeschylus said of the Mysteries;
Nicomachean Ethics · book 3 · reported anecdote used as illustrative example of ignorance ¶ -
Constitution of the Athenians Aristotle 1 citation
for this is divided into three parts, thirds and races and brotherhoods, as Aristotle says in the Constitution of the Athenians.
Constitution of the Athenians · ch. 1 · cites Aristotle as source for the claim about Ion and the Ionian name ¶ -
Hesiod 1 citation
- Nicomachean Ethics
- book 1
- 1 citation
As for the person who neither knows nor can learn, let him hear the words of Hesiod:
Nicomachean Ethics · book 1 · invoked as poetic authority regarding the limits of teaching first principles ¶ -
Histories Herodotus 1 neutral 1 citation
For having first spread a report that Athena was bringing Pisistratus back, and having found a tall and beautiful woman—as Herodotus says, from the deme of the Paeanians, but as some say, a Thracian garland-seller from Collytus, whose name was Phye—he had her imitate the goddess in her adornment and brought her in along with him;
Constitution of the Athenians · ch. 1 · citation reporting a specific variant detail ¶ -
Philoctetes Sophocles 1 neutral 1 citation
- Nicomachean Ethics
- book 7
- 1 citation
And there are some who fail to abide by their resolves from some other cause than lack of self-restraint, for instance, Neoptolemus in the PhiIoctetes of Sophocles.
Nicomachean Ethics · book 7 · literary authority for example ¶
named once
85 sources · 3 worksEach of these stands at a single passage, named once and not held by the library. The work that names it carries the anchor.
- Nicomachean Ethics
- extraneous discourses · Agathon · Alope · Argument on pleasure and the neutral state · Doctrine of the Pythagoreans on Reciprocity · Doctrine that Courage is Knowledge · Doctrine that like seeks like · Doctrine that the good man is happy even on the rack · Etymology of dikaion/dikast · Etymology of nomisma · Iliad (elders' words concerning Helen) · Legal prohibitions on vilification · Motto: Play in order that you may work · Odyssey (advice on steering the ship) · Old and new comic drama · Personal example of Socrates · Philoctetes (Theodectes version) · Phoenissae · Poetry (unspecified poetic tradition) · Proverb on friends' shared property · Proverb on salt and friendship · Proverbial saying ¶ · Proverbs on similarity · Pythagorean table of opposites · Pythagorean table of opposites (imagery of limited/unlimited) · Rule of Rhadamanthys · Saying of Bias ¶ · Saying on the ass and gold · Saying that amity is equality · Sayings on opposition and harmony · Solon's maxim on judging happiness · Traditional saying on noble deeds · Unknown comedy (satire on lawless states) · Unknown proverb collection · Unknown verse on habit and training · Unspecified verse (possibly Homeric or proverbial) · Verse on absence and forgotten friendship · Verse on change being sweet · Verse on the persistence of common report · Views of those who deny pleasure is good · doctrine of pleasure's superiority · doctrine that all virtues are forms of Prudence · doctrine that knowledge cannot be overpowered · epic poetry concerning Priam · epic poetry concerning Thetis and Zeus · inscription at Delos · laws of Crete and Sparta · poetic remark on the society of the good · poetic sayings · proverbial saying on hospitality · remark on the seamy side of life · sayings of the wise · traditional proverbs of friendship · unspecified saying on anger · unspecified saying on money · unspecified sayings/opinion · unspecified teaching practice report · unspecified view on happiness · verse about the Milesians · verses of Empedocles ¶
- On Virtues and Vices
- line on insolence
- Constitution of the Athenians
- Ancestral laws of Cleisthenes · Decree of Pythodorus · Decree of Thrasybulus · Draco's ordinances · Homicide law by offense category · Law of Solon on the treasurers of Athena · Law on age-class arbitration duty · Law on arbitrators' civic-rights forfeiture · Law on corn-meal and bread pricing · Law on payment for deficient officials · Law on the disabled maintenance allowance · Laws of Solon ¶ · Solon's laws ¶ · Solon's poems (verses on land redistribution) · Solon's poems (verses on the Seisachtheia) · Solon's poems (verses on the people and the powerful) · Solon's poems (verses reproaching both parties) · Terms of reconciliation (archonship of Eucleides) · Traditional scrutiny formula (dokimasia questions) · ancestral law against tyranny · drinking-songs (skolia) on Cedon · drinking-songs (skolia) on Leipsydrion · elegy on the strife of Ionia (Solon's poems) · oracles of the Pythia
cited by
122 citations · from 29 works29 works in the library quote Aristotle — 122 citations, each anchored to a verbatim passage in the work that does the quoting.
through Aristotle 102 citations · Nicomachean Ethics 6 citations · Politics 6 citations · Rhetoric 3 citations · Metaphysics 2 citations · Economics 1 citation · Poetics 1 citation · Constitution of the Athenians 1 citation
by the citing author
The harvest records where a citation is made: the paragraph in the citing book, and the chapter that paragraph stands in. It does not record which page of Aristotle is meant. Where the citing text names a locus, you will find it in the quotation.
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al-Saʻādah fī falsafat al-akhlāq Miskawayh 4 neutral 17 endorsed 22 citations · 11 passages
Logic is invoked by name as a body of established doctrine warranting the author's moves.
As for the kinds of wretchedness that stand opposite these happinesses, we have left off mentioning them, because they are known from their opposites, as is shown in logic, that the knowledge of opposites comes together in a single state.
the book of happiness ¶ -
The Rights of War and Peace Hugo Grotius 1 neutral 1 refuted 2 extended 1 endorsed 20 citations · 37 passages
book i, chapter i. 4 passages anchored here · ch. 9 · ch. 10 8 passages anchored here · ch. 11 · ch. 15 3 passages anchored here · chapter xi.: on promises. 2 passages anchored here · chapter xii.: on contracts. 2 passages anchored here · ch. 20and 11 more chapters
Aristotle is explicitly and repeatedly named as an authoritative source across the chapter.
The best division of right, in this general meaning, is to be found in Aristotle, who, defining one kind to be natural, and the other voluntary, calls it a lawful right in the strictest sense of the word law;
book i, chapter i. ¶ -
On Moral Ends Cicero, Marcus Tullius 3 neutral 2 endorsed 9 citations · 10 passages
Explicitly credited as an earlier authority for the same idea, reported neutrally
'that the whole faculty of speech (as Aristotle had said before) is divided into two parts, and that rhetoric is like the open palm, dialectic like the closed fist, because the rhetoricians speak more broadly, the dialecticians more compressed.
book 2 ¶ -
Stromata Clement of Alexandria 5 neutral 2 extended 9 citations · 14 passages
book 1 4 passages anchored here · book 2 · book 5 6 passages anchored here · book 6 · book 8 2 passages anchored hereAristotle is cited by name as declaring sophistic a form of thievery, reinforcing the critique of sophistry.
Plato outright called sophistic a "base art," and Aristotle, following him, declares it a kind of thievery, inasmuch as it plausibly filches the whole work of wisdom and professes a wisdom it has not practised.
book 1 ¶ -
Tusculan Disputations Cicero, Marcus Tullius 2 neutral 2 endorsed 7 citations · 8 passages
Aristotle's fifth-nature theory of the soul is presented with respect and later invoked as the authoritative standard against which Aristoxenus should defer.
Aristotle — far excelling all others, save that I always except Plato, both in genius and in diligence — when he had embraced those four familiar kinds of first principles from which all things arise, holds that there is a certain fifth nature, from which mind comes.
book 1 ¶ -
On the Nature of the Gods Cicero, Marcus Tullius 1 refuted 3 endorsed 6 citations · 7 passages
The third book of Aristotle's Philosophy is explicitly named as the source of the critiqued doctrines.
And Aristotle, in the third book of his Philosophy, throws much into confusion, dissenting from his master Plato;
book 1 ¶ -
Risālat baqāʼ al-nafs baʻda fanāʼ al-jasad Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī 3 neutral 2 refuted 6 citations · 15 passages
ch. 2 9 passages anchored here · ch. 3 · ch. 4 · as for the rational soul · ch. 6 3 passages anchored hereTwo headings announce Aristotle's madhhab by name, his positions are set out in detail, and the theologians are said to hold the soul's relation to the body as he holds it.
while for Aristotle, although it is not material, the existence of the body is a condition for the overflowing of the soul to it from the Originator, exalted be He — so that upon his view the soul is not existent before the body.
ch. 2 ¶ -
Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle 3 extended 4 citations · 6 passages
The passage explicitly refers back to an earlier part of the same work regarding honor and ambition.
It appears however that honor also, as was said in the first part of this work, has a certain virtue concerned with it, which may be held to bear the same relation to Greatness of Soul that Liberality bears to Magnificence.
book 4 ¶ -
The Freedom of the Seas (Mare Liberum) Hugo Grotius 4 citations · 16 passages
ch. 12 3 passages anchored here · ch. 26 3 passages anchored here · ch. 30 · letter ii 9 passages anchored hereAristotle's Politics and related statements are explicitly named and invoked as authority for the naturalness and classification of trade.
Aristotle, in a very clever phrase, in his work entitled the Politics, has said that the art of exchange is a completion of the independence which Nature requires.
ch. 26 ¶ -
On Anger Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 1 neutral 3 refuted 4 citations · 6 passages
Aristotle's definition of anger is explicitly cited and compared to Seneca's, without clear endorsement or refutation at this point.
The definition of Aristotle is not far from our own;
book 1 ¶ -
Mukhtaṣar fī ʻilm al-nafs al-insānīyah Bar Hebraeus 1 extended 2 endorsed 3 citations · 11 passages
ch. 1 · ch. 2 2 passages anchored here · ch. 4 · ch. 5 · ch. 10 · ch. 11 4 passages anchored here · ch. 12Aristotle's psychological doctrine is quoted and expounded as the treatise's own position, which is endorsement rather than mere report.
But Arisṭūṭālīs and his followers and the whole body of the Christians claimed that the soul is neither a body nor an accident;
ch. 1 ¶ -
Ancient Law Henry Sumner Maine 3 neutral 3 citations
The passage names 'Aristotle' and 'his Treatise on Rhetoric' as a source of evidence.
The remains of the Orators and the forensic commonplaces preserved by Aristotle in his Treatise on Rhetoric, show that questions of pure law were constantly argued on every consideration which could possibly influence the mind of the judges.
ch. 8 ¶ -
Kitāb mīzān al-ḥaqq fī al-manṭiq Salīm al-Jazāʼirī 3 neutral 3 citations · 2 passages
A named book invoked by title within the history of the discipline
that he found among those who came before him nothing but the Book of the Categories (al-Maqūlāt);
introduction ¶ -
Risālah fī ʻilm al-akhlāq Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī 1 endorsed 2 citations · 3 passages
Aristotle is named as the holder of the position, and the treatise proceeds on it as its own, which is endorsement rather than bare report.
Arisṭū and those who followed him held that this endures so long as one keeps to the use of the means, which are the virtues confined between the extremes.
ch. 2 ¶ -
Orations Dio Chrysostom 2 neutral 2 citations
Named and quoted in paragraphs 9-11 and referenced again in paragraph 13 of Oration 47.
For I, seeing other cities ambitious about such things, supposed — I mean not only those in Asia and Syria and Cilicia, but these neighbouring ones close at hand, the city of the Nicomedians, that of the Nicaeans, these Caesareans, men noble and thoroughly Greek, but inhabiting a city far smaller than ours, and the men engaged in public affairs in each, even if they are at variance about other mat …
oration 47 ¶ -
Institutes of Roman Law Gaius 2 neutral 2 citations
Cited once as comparative philosophical authority, distinct from the Rhetoric citation.
Arist. Eth. v. 7.
ch. 121 ¶ -
Dissertations on Early Law and Custom Henry Sumner Maine 1 neutral 2 citations · 1 passage
Mentioned as a lost treatise relevant to Aristotle's authority, without being drawn upon directly.
And he left a special treatise on ‘Barbarian Customs’ (νόμιμα βαρβαρικὰ), now unfortunately lost.
ch. 8 ¶ -
Letters to Lucilius Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 1 neutral 1 extended 2 citations · 8 passages
Explicitly attributed: 'Man is a species, as Aristotle says.'
Man is a species, as Aristotle says;
letter 58 ¶ -
De Anima Tertullian 2 neutral 2 citations
Named as one of several philosophical positions surveyed without singling it out for special attack.
We say that the human soul can in no way be transferred into beasts, even if, according to the philosophers, it were reckoned from elemental substances.
de anima ¶ -
Constitution of the Athenians Aristotle 1 citation · 6 passages
Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians is invoked repeatedly as the authoritative source underlying nearly every testimonium in this window, including one paragraph that quotes it directly by name.
for this is divided into three parts, thirds and races and brotherhoods, as Aristotle says in the Constitution of the Athenians.
ch. 1 ¶ -
Letters Basil of Caesarea 1 neutral 1 citation
Aristotle named explicitly as one of the classical authorities invoked.
Tell me, Basil, do you live in Athens and not know it of yourself?
letter 355 ¶ -
Lucullus Cicero, Marcus Tullius 1 neutral 1 citation
Aristotle's specific counter-doctrine is reported directly and used to show that the wise man cannot hold both views comprehended.
nor will he any more approve that it is now light than, since he is a Stoic, that this world is wise, that it has a mind which has fashioned both itself and the world and moderates, moves, rules all things;
book 1 ¶ -
Protrepticus Clement of Alexandria 1 neutral 1 citation
Explicitly named as reckoning the various Apollos.
Yes, and as for Apollo, Aristotle reckons the first the son of Hephaestus and Athena — here, then, Athena is no longer a virgin;
protrepticus ¶ -
On the Happy Life Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 1 neutral 1 citation
The passage cites the accusation made against Aristotle concerning money as an example of critics' complaints.
Cast it in Plato's teeth that he sought money, in Aristotle's that he took it, in Democritus's that he neglected it, in Epicurus's that he spent it;
on the happy life ¶ -
On the Shortness of Life Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 1 refuted 1 citation
Seneca explicitly characterizes Aristotle's complaint as unbefitting a wise man, signaling disagreement, and the essay's subsequent argument (paragraphs 3-5) refutes the premise that life itself is too short.
Hence too the grievance of Aristotle, ill befitting a wise man, when he arraigns Nature:
on the shortness of life ¶ -
On Tranquillity of Mind Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 1 citation
The passage cites Aristotle's saying as authority that no great genius exists without a mixture of madness.
For whether we believe the Greek poet that 'sometimes it is pleasant even to be mad,' or Plato that 'the man in possession of his senses has knocked in vain at the doors of poetry,' or Aristotle that 'no great genius has ever existed without a mixture of madness':
on tranquillity of mind ¶ -
De Carnis Resurrectione Tertullian 1 refuted 1 citation
Aristotle's manner of treating the soul is named as the source followed by the heretic Lucanus, whose doctrine is refuted.
Let some one Lucanus see to it — he who does not spare even this substance, but, dissolving it after Aristotle's manner, substitutes for it something else, intending to raise up some third thing, neither soul nor flesh, that is, not a man, but perhaps a bear, in so far as he is a Lucanus.
de carnis resurrectione ¶ -
De Praescriptionibus Hereticorum Tertullian 1 refuted 1 citation
Explicitly named and criticized as the philosophical method source of heretical contentiousness.
who taught them dialectic, that craftsman of building up and pulling down, shifty in its propositions, forced in its conjectures, harsh in its arguments, a worker of contentions, a burden even to itself, retracting everything so as to have treated nothing at all.
ch. 1 ¶ -
Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John William Sharp McKechnie 1 neutral 1 citation
Aristotle's tradition of constitutional inquiry is merely identified as a point of contrast with medieval practical politics.
On the other hand, all that interesting group of problems connected with the ideal form of government, much discussed in the days of Aristotle as in our own, is notably absent, never having been forced by the logic of events upon the mind of medieval Europe.
ch. 3 ¶