I am so happy to see these every day. I am SO inspired to read some of the many, many things I‘ve not read-and then read all the new translations of things I have not reread recently. Thank you. And thank you-at least as much-for making it clear that there are at least a few books that I can give myself permission to skip!

Which of Wittgenstein's books are long? Almost all of his work is epigrammatic and published in short, skinny volumes.

I love this series! I'm learning so much from you. I can't wait to read Horace and just purchased a used copy of your recommendation from your Horace video. It's so annoying that they stopped printing these books though.. lots of love from Turkey!

I read a dialogue by Plato every year, and it took until last year for me to complete a full work of Aristotle’s (other than Poetics when I studied Greek tragedy in college). Ethics was an absolute slog! I enjoyed some of the final bits about friendship, but the llllooooonnnggg middle section of definitions could have been jettisoned. I’ve joked with my wife for years that Aristotle is my cure for insomnia.

My favourite daily penguin so far😂 I had to read the Politics for a course on political theory back in 91 and remember how tedious he was, and thinking, it must be me, but no, it was Aristotle. Thanks for confirming that Steve Donoghue.

You are partly wrong here. Aristotle wrote approximately 200 works, of which only 33 survive. The surviving works are, in all probability, either lecture notes or, worse, students’ notes of his lectures. They were not meant to be read. In his early years, we know he wrote Dialogues, after Plato. He also apparently wrote other works that were meant for reading. None of these survive. Were they any better? Of course, it’s impossible to say. But Cicero famously said that if Plato’s prose was silver, Aristotle’s was a flowing river of gold. I think it’s fair to surmise that he was talking about other works than those available to us. Also, Wittgenstein’s books are both short and readable (except the Tractatus, which while very short, is quite difficult to read). I doubt they would be for you since the project of the later works is to remove people from the spell of philosophy. That wouldn’t appeal to someone who is not prone to falling under that spell.

As a self professed fan of Aristotle (and happen to have that huge brick of a tomb from Modern Library), I still find your comments hilariously spot on. Some of the needless examining does get a bit dull, but the bedrock he lays out for other, more interesting readers somehow makes him more enjoyable to me.

The very fact that sadomasochism is a thing should clue us all into the fact that the pain/pleasure dichotomy perhaps isn't as clear as you suggest. And speaking of hard rocks ... the Mohs scale is actually meant to calculate the hardness of rocks, as some are far harder than others. It's far from true that all rocks are hard. Talc actually breaks apart until gentle pressure in your hand.

The material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. Dear Steve, surely you will admit that all physical reality *must* be constructed from an amalgam of these four constituent causes!

So you are saying that logic is gibberish? And the 13 fallacies? Aristotle may be boring but the little I have read has made a lot of sense.

Wow. I look forward, then, to what you have to say about The Philosopher's influence on Thomas Aquinas! (Ralph McInerny's Selected Writings in Penguin).

South Boston speaks for the rest of us when it comes to these kinds of inquiries. Who has time for that?

So right and wrong are self-evident, eh?

Top 3 most readable philosophers? Besides Plato, Aurelius, Marx and Camus.

Ayn Rand's favorite philosopher (though how much of him she actually read is questionable).

It's not Aristotle's fault that all we have from his writings are lecture notes, not finished literary works.

HA! So how do you really fell about Aristotle? Thank you so much for these videos. I am completely addicted to this series. Camus is one of my favorite authors.

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An immensely enjoyable video! Who was that philosopher we just lost? Is that that Hitchens fellow?

Loool, I will always defend pfilohophy in your videos, it doesn;t mater how much I love you :) My job is to build applied ontologies (one of the types of AI behind alexa, siri and the such), and for most of my job, the categories of Aristotle still hold! Sure, there are nuances that are discussed, but in the heart of it Aristotle got it right! I think that this is just amazing :) Huge fan of Aristotle here :)

I hope we are going to get aesop soon!

South Boston sounds interesting...

I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t read any Aristotle since college. I’m long overdue.

I dunno, man-scholastic philosophers 100 times as smart as you found him a consistent source of inspiration.

Hmm... I have to disagree that Aristotle is not readable. Granted the works he produced that were known in the ancient world for their beauty are lost to us now. All we have are his lecture notes. One can not dismiss his incredible significance nor his "brilliant dryness" as Schopenhauer puts it.

I don't care for him either.

I’m approaching Aristotle in my reading through your western canon starter kit, and I have to say I’m not exactly looking forward to it! Looks horrible. I’m not a huge fan of philosophy, other than Schopenhauer and Spinoza, everything else seems like gibberish.

Good, bad, up, down all intuitive? Not needed to be argued for? Well sir Steve some would people say the same about... God 🤔🤔🤔