Not busy enough this summer

Each summer for as long as I recall, I have gone back to read one of Plato's dialogues. Great stuff, and there are a few left yet to read. But it's time for a change of pace: let's take on Aristotle's Metaphysics!

Having been inspired by David Plotz's "Blogging the Bible" project on Slate.com back in September 2006, I've also decided to blog the whole project. We'll see how it develops.

I'm inviting some friends, colleagues, and maybe students to join in actual weekly face-to-face discussions of the work. No idea who or how many yet. Not sure whether we'll try to make it through the whole work, either. Maybe a chapter a week? Dunno.

We start the first week of May. Basic ground rules: focus on the text, try to make sense of what it says, minimal reliance on commentaries. But let's not be masochists or Puritans on that last one: I've already got S. Marc Cohen's article on the Metaphysics from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and Jonathan Barnes's chapter from the Cambridge Companion to Aristotle on hand. I'm not heading into this wilderness entirely without a map.