Aristotle's Physics: A Guided Study (Masterworks of Discovery)

Excellent book. Sachs is a great translator.

This translation of Aristotle's Physics is really the best one available - and not simply because the others are terrible (some of them are not terrible), but because this one is extraordinary. As some of the other reviewers may have suggested, it can be hard to read at times because of the unfamiliar phrasings. However, I think this is irrelevant because (a) other translation are not easy reading either, (b) other translations are not as good at capturing Aristotle's meaning so that even if they were much easier to read they just make it that much easier for you to misunderstand Aristotle, (c) in fact the efforts required to follow the unfamiliar phrasings in this translation are themselves part of what makes this translation the most useful for anyone who wants to understand Aristotle, and (d) its really not all that hard to read. (And the same points go for the other translations by Sachs.) Sachs unpacks the richness of the Greek terms in his translation rather than covering it over with English terms that give you the illusion of understanding or force you to constantly adjust your thought about what the English words are supposed to mean in the context of Aristotle's philosophy. For example, Sachs' translation of energeia as "being-at-work" as opposed to "activity," and entelecheia as "being-at-work-staying-itself" as opposed to "actualization." Sachs' translations here really put the nuances of the Greek terms to the forefront, and they give you the opportunity to think through (and to think hard about) what Aristotle must mean in a beautiful way that makes reading this translation a real learning, eye-opening, awakening experience. Also Sachs provides very useful glossary, introduction, and commentary. If you're just starting Aristotle or have been studying him for years, this translation is sure to do you right. I've been studying Aristotle for about a decade and a half and I never cease to very greatly appreciate Sachs' translations. --Michael Russo

See the other reviews for notes about the translation. It's easily the best one. What is absolutely heartbreaking is that this terrific translation is bound up in arguably the worst format I've ever seen this work presented. The pages themselves are bad quality, and there's not even any line break whatsoever between the various sections. It all reads like an overly cramped, jam-packed attempt to save money on publishing. I have been checking regularly to see if Joe Sachs's translation has been reprinted elsewhere, and will continue to search until it has been.

Aristotle's Physics is one of the least studied "great books"--physics has come to mean something entirely different than Aristotle's inquiry into nature, and stereotyped Medieval interpretations have buried the original text. Sach's translation is really the only one that I know of that attempts to take the reader back to the text itself. I do have a few quibbles, mostly with the presentation. The line numbers are buried in the text, rather than set off in the margins, which is annoying. The typeface is difficult and too closely packed. The cover is one of the ugliest ever produced. The book is too expensive, given the quality. If you are going to study or teach the Physics in English, however, this is absolutely the edition you should use.

Mr. Joe Sachs is somewhat of a controversial figure in scholarly circles. He has translated the principal theoretical works of the Aristotelian Corpus, and has declared that traditional translation (i.e. those employing Latin cognates) are insufficient at best and misleading at worst. His translation is decent (that is, mostly literal) until one reaches the key technical terms: ousia, energeia, to ti en einai, archai, entelekeia, etc. Sachs wishes to translate these into clear, immediately comprehensible everyday English. Unfortunately, this is precisely what I believe he often fails to do. His translations are but sometimes immediately clear, but (to take three examples) "energeia" is rendered "being-at-work", its mate, "entelecheia", "being-at-work-staying-itself", and "ousia" is "thinghood": phrases which, to the uninitiated, remain as much, if not more obscure than their Latin competitors: "activity" and "actuality". In fact, I could not decipher them without the aid of my professors and a lexicon to return to the Greek. None of this is much different in other translations nor makes Sachs worse than the other competitors: Aristotle uses unexplained technical terms in his theoretical works and the reader will struggle regardless of translation. But to this end of comprehension, to assert Mr. Sachs's translation as the clearest is mistaken. His translation runs the risk of creating an entirely new technical jargon, the very thing he wished to avoid. Further, this edition was not seemingly made for serious study: the Bekker numbers are embedded in the text and unbolded, making them almost impossible to find quickly and there is running commentary which is easily confused at first sight for the text itself. These two factors make this edition unsuitable for serious study. Far superior, in aesthetics and in translation, is Glen Coughlin's translation of the Physics, which (appropriately enough) strikes the mean between the Latin cognates and Sachsian terminology.

Contrario a Aristóteles iniciaré con el aspecto negativo del libro, pues al ser un tema "menor", pero importante me parece digno de mención al inicio. El papel es muy blanco, lo cual hace que las letras sean muy negras, al modo que lo es una fotocopia, incluso hay partes donde las letras se ven de tamaños distintos... El contenido del libro es una maravilla, es una nueva traducción de la Física de Aristóteles, con un estudio o guía. Acceder a unos de los libros más desacreditados de la historia, por la ciencia actual es una oportunidad que nos ofrece esta nueva traducción. El mundo moderno se caracteriza por asumir verdades científicas sin reflexionarlas, hoy en día son el nuevo dogma. La ciencia es uno de las ramas del saber que parece haber "progresado" de manera constante y rápida, no obstante es una de las ramas del saber que menos reflexiva es sobre su actuar. Ni siquiera es conciente que han heredado más del 90% del vocabulario y categorías de Aristótele. Sachs te guía de una manera, amena, clara, con silogismos y con un apego generoso al espíritu de la letra.