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“... to be taught in the Schools, to supplant Aristotelianism, and to become himself ‘the new Aristotle’, building a new all-embracing philosophical system, with a new metaphysics and a new method that could deliver all the mechanical, medical and moral goods that Aristotelian philosophy purported to supply but spectacularly failed to. That was not an ...”

“... in moderation. That would ensure health and longevity, and that was all one should care about. Aristotle specifically looked down his nose at cooks. Knowing how to cook was the sort of instrumental knowledge suitable for a slave. If you were going to live the life of virtue, you needed the right number and sort of slaves, but the idea that you would learn ...”

“... time one has reached the remarkable expiration, like a dying breath, with which the book closes. Aristotle recommends, in his Rhetoric, that the best way out of a stylistic bind is publicly to correct oneself, and it may at first seem that this is all Coetzee is up to. Thus, at various moments, he has Costello think to herself that argument is ‘not her ...”

“... beer, returning to tipple throughout the day with no ill effects. (Unlike parrots, which as Aristotle knew, have no head for alcohol: in Australia, where they binge on over-ripe pears, birdwatchers have seen them getting legless, Amy Winehouse-style, faltering on branches and plummeting from trees.) For a long time no one in avian taxonomy knew where to ...”

“... bunch with links to Arab circles, and Frederick himself had a reputation for being fond of Aristotle and of the dissolute life. At the Council of Lyon in 1245, the papal representative called Frederick a ‘new Lucifer’. A book that exists only as a rumour can have as many authors as required, and the charge of being the originator or disseminator of ...”

“... he so coveted. He knew that small, highly visible displays of enlightenment, like hiring Aristotle to tutor his son, could win him support among sophisticated Greeks. It would be a strange irony indeed if, after all the ancient Athenians did to unmask and resist him, Philip succeeded in winning the hearts of their modern heirs. Yet it appears this is ...”

“... means the book ends up as a monument to error’s beguiling vitality, and evidence of what Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, called the ‘one thousand forms of error’ in contrast to the (impoverished) singularity of truth. In Areopagitica, a defence of freedom of expression, Milton made an even bolder case for the ethical importance of getting ...”

“... so now in bringing his thoughts together in what he describes as his ‘philosophy of society’. Aristotle, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Habermas, Bourdieu and Foucault are all dismissed in a sentence here, Locke in a footnote. They all took it for granted that we are language-speaking animals, and were then ‘off and running with an account of society, social ...”

“... man seemed harmless enough – a cultured monarch who had brought poets and thinkers, including Aristotle, to his court – and his new power might, some Athenians hoped, provide a counterweight to that of their neighbouring rival, Thebes; it might even, as the essayist Isocrates fervently urged, bind the Greeks together in a retaliatory war against the ...”

“... he also points out that classical political theory had a direct impact outside the European world. Aristotle enjoyed a high profile across Asia from the 17th century onwards, translations of his works contributing to Ottoman ideals of good governance, Chinese reform movements and even anti-colonial sentiment in the greater Islamic world from Arabia to ...”

“... and often for no very good reason, Wittgenstein, Auster, Nabokov, Barnes, McEwan, Spinoza, Amis, Aristotle, Zeno, Shakespeare, Pasternak, Banville, Dostoevsky, Frost, Cervantes, Updike, Beckett, Chekhov (and others) make guest appearances with paraphrased words of wisdom, or just words. Erdal does not wear her reading lightly. She has a penchant for the ...”

“... Nothing quite like this had been said since Ramus in the 16th century declared that ‘whatever Aristotle has said is false.’ Few of today’s historians of the 16th century are so engaged, or write with such ideological passion. What we now see is what Elton ostensibly most desired, a history marked by value-free and highly technical excellence, but ...”

“... species has essential, unalterable characteristics, which can be traced back at least as far as Aristotle. The mysteries were, first, over what it is about life that distinguishes it from death, and second, the process by which a fully developed organism, be it chicken or human, emerges from a fertilised egg. The first mystery was solved, tautologically, by ...”

“... in the brain, the heart was responsible for feeling and desire, for it was there, according to Aristotle, that the sentient soul dwelled. Likened to a glowing sun, the heart flooded the body with vital heat. Although the full circulatory system was only discovered in the 17th century, physicians were aware that the heart pumped blood outward to all the ...”

“... to Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus as they wrestle with the form/matter opposition inherited from Aristotle and riddle out where to place Christ’s body in such a scheme. Whether or not the corpse is a nonperson, it resembles a human being, at least for a time, and must be disposed of before that resemblance collapses. This status as ‘semblant body’ is a ...”