Abstract

It is the peculiar impasses of contemporary philosophy that send Lugarini back to Aristotle; the ultimate purpose guiding his work is to bring to light, by means of imaginative scholarship, the roots of the whole project of philosophizing. In developing a thoroughgoing view of Aristotle, the author consciously, though unobtrusively, aims at today's central philosophical problems. He criticizes traditional Aristotelianism and claims that the "idea of philosophy" for Aristotle was founded not so much upon the presupposition of substance as upon man's vocation to find order in all phenomena. This vocation is revealed in the fundamental orexis, or wonder, that is man's defining characteristic. Lugarini is clear and painstaking; and whether the overall approach is accepted or not, his exhaustive examinations of key terms are valuable for every student of Aristotle. A major text on Aristotle. --C. D.