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Protrepticus (Exhortation to Philosophy) — Aristotle

Written work

Protrepticus (Exhortation to Philosophy)

Προτρεπτικός

Busto de Aristóteles (Museo Nacional Romano, Palazzo Altemps)
byAristotle

An exhortation to the philosophical life, written in the Academy. It argues that one must philosophise even to decide whether to philosophise, that intelligence is what is divine in human beings and that the life devoted to knowing is the fullest and happiest. Cicero imitated it in his Hortensius, the book which, according to the Confessions, awakened Augustine's philosophical vocation.

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Editions and translations · 5

EnglishGriego antiguoEspañol

Authorship note

A lost work, surviving only in fragments and testimonies preserved by later authors. It belongs to the “exoteric” writings, intended for a wide public, which Aristotle published in his lifetime and which antiquity read more than the treatises. Addressed to Themison, a prince of Cyprus. Much of the text has been reconstructed from Iamblichus's Protrepticus (third–fourth century CE), which copied it extensively; the reconstruction by Hutchinson and Johnson (2005) is now the reference.

Editions and translations

Editions in your language first, without hiding the others. Each with its cover and its store.

English

  • The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation — Aristotle

    The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation

    Princeton University Press, 1984

    Translation: Varios (traducción de Oxford revisada, ed. Jonathan Barnes)

    ISBN 0691016518

    Edición en dos volúmenes (Bollingen Series LXXI.2); ISBN del registro de Open Library de la obra completa.

    Buy the book · Amazon (amazon.com)
  • Protrepticus: A Reconstruction — Aristotle

    Protrepticus: A Reconstruction

    University of Notre Dame Press, 1964

    Translation: Anton-Hermann Chroust

    ISBN 9780268000134

    Buy the book · Amazon (amazon.com)

Griego antiguo

  • Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta (ed. Valentin Rose)

    Teubner, 1886

    Edición clásica de los fragmentos; la de Olof Gigon (De Gruyter, 1987) es la más reciente.

Español

Other works by Aristotle

Sources

  • Rose, Valentin (ed.). Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta. Leipzig: Teubner, 1886; y Gigon, Olof (ed.). Aristotelis Opera III: Librorum deperditorum fragmenta. Berlín: De Gruyter, 1987.

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