The Works of Aristotle
Logic, physics, ethics, politics — the toolkit the medieval church would one day borrow whole.
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Unmoved Mover | Rationality | Argument | 60 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Golden Mean | Ethics | Argument | 50 | 100% | 20 |
| 8 | Steelman | Rationality | Type shift | — | — | 10 |
| 15 | A Slave by Nature | Ethics | Argument | 65 | 100% | 99 |
| 50 | Speak Greek | History | Status | — | 100% | 5 |
How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.
Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.
“It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.”
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.3 (trans. W. D. Ross, 1908, public domain). Hence the mean: courage between cowardice and rashness, generosity between stinginess and waste — a settled habit, not a feeling.public domain
In the gameVirtue as the middle path between excess and defect.
Aristotle reasoned to a first cause that moves all things while itself unmoved — a pagan argument the church would later put to work.
Aristotle, Metaphysics 12.
In the gameEvery motion needs a mover; the chain cannot run back forever.
“Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.”
James 1:19 (WEB).
In the gameRestate the foe’s position in its strongest form — exposing its true weak point. Lowers the foe’s Defend. Always fair; never a bad move to use.
“For he who can be, and therefore is another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, reason, is a slave by nature… It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right.”
Aristotle, Politics 1.5 (trans. Benjamin Jowett, 1885/1905, public domain). (trimmed quote)public domain
In the gameNot an aside — the conclusion of a sustained argument, Politics Book 1, chapters 3–7. Aristotle means every word of it.