Reddit reviews Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy

Quick and dirty introduction in Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy by Mortimer Adler.

https://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Everybody-Difficult-Thought-Made/dp/0684838230

Hmmm...so many recommendations. First, you need to have a basic grasp of philosophy (particularly Aristotelian philosophy, which leads to Thomistic thought).

• Aristotle for Everybody is very handy for getting a very basic grasp of philosophy as it pertains to the four causes and natural law.
  
  
• Handbook of Catholic Apologetics: Reasoned Answers to Questions of Faith uses a lot of natural philosophy and Thomistic thought to give "reasoned answers to questions of Faith."
  
  
• Transformation in Christ: On the Christian Attitude is a very dense, philosophical tome on Catholic philosophical thought. Very insightful and...really a work of art.
  
  
• Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio is a beautiful work from John Paul II explaining how the Church uses faith and reason together to defend Her claims.
  
  There are...so many more recommendations I could give, but working your way through these will take some time.
  
  >My dislike more from the fact that Catholics seem to think that these views should be encoded in society's laws rather than that they hold them.
  
  All of civil law ought to find its root cause in natural moral law. The Church uses not simply faith alone to defend Her claims, but also natural law. As such, there are certain Truths present (and observable) in natural law that should be reflected in our everyday behavior and legislated by the civil authority.
  
  We believe in an objective right and an objective wrong: a defined good and a defined evil. The difficulty, I think, is getting people to see the same thing!

Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy: Mortimer J. Adler.

https://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Everybody-Difficult-Thought-Made/dp/0684838230

I've had this book for over 20 years and have read it at least 3 times, highly recommend.

I've also heard of this book which might interest the OP. But yeah, if you're looking for a good book on Thomism, you can't go wrong with Feser.

If you are looking to get handle on the Aristotle metaphysical worldview first, which is incredibly helpful since Aquinas builds on it, I recommend the fairly short book Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy. The book is only 200 pages and is written by Mortimer Adler, a renowned polymath and professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago (who actually ended up becoming Catholic before he died).

In fact, while u/Suppa-time recommends Feser's Aquinas, which is an absolutely great recommendation, I found reading Aristotle for Everybody first was enormously helpful and that I was able to hit the ground running when I picked up Feser's book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684838230?pc_redir=1407365328&robot_redir=1

That's "aristotle for everybody" by Mortimer J. Adler.

I am a philosophy and theology major, and I had a lecture class by a guy with three PhDs as my introduction. I don't really know where to point you other than the dialogues by Plato. In that class we went from the pre-Socratics all the way to Dawkins and Hitchens just basically talking about the main parts of each philosopher's philosophical thought. Also what might help is looking up philosophical terms first so you can understand what people mean when they say things. The word "soul" is a good example of this. The popular concept of soul as such is very far from what Plato would have thought or Aristotle or Aquinas or Augustine or Descartes or whomever you want.

My favorite books by him include How to Read a Book and Aristotle for Everybody.

I would highly recommend this author for anyone looking to study Thomas Aquinas - or for anyone who simply would like an introduction to philosophy.

http://www.amazon.ca/Aristotle-Everybody-Mortimer-J-Adler/dp/0684838230

is a good book containing the essence of Aristotle. It's not too difficult for young people to understand.

I absorbed my ethics from parents, school and the surrounding society, initially unquestioningly. But as I matured I re-examined them in the light of experience and cold logic (which is common among Atheists), and I retain those that make sense.