Aristotle, << AR ih `stot` uhl >> (384-322 B.C.), a Greek philosopher, educator, and scientist, was one of the greatest and most influential thinkers in Western culture. Aristotle was probably the most scholarly and learned of the classical or ancient Greek philosophers. He familiarized himself with the entire development of Greek thought preceding him. In his own writings, Aristotle considered, summarized, criticized, and further developed all the intellectual tradition that he had inherited. Aristotle and his teacher Plato are usually considered to be the most important ancient Greek philosophers.
Aristotle’s life
Aristotle was born in Stagira, a small town in northern Greece. His father, Nichomachus, was the personal physician of Amyntas II, the king of nearby Macedonia. Amyntas was the father of Philip of Macedonia and the grandfather of Alexander the Great. Aristotle’s parents died when he was a boy, and he was then raised by a guardian named Proxenus.
When Aristotle was about 18 years old, he entered Plato’s school in Athens, known as the Academy. He remained there for about 20 years. Plato recognized Aristotle as the Academy’s brightest and most learned student, and called him the “intelligence of the school” and the “reader.”
When Plato died in 347 B.C., Aristotle left the Academy to join a group of Plato’s disciples living with Hermeias, a former student at the Academy. Hermeias had become ruler of the towns of Atarneus and Assos in Asia Minor. Aristotle stayed with Hermeias for about three years and married the ruler’s adopted daughter, Pithias.
In 343 or 342 B.C., Philip II, king of Macedonia, invited Aristotle to supervise the education of his young son Alexander. Alexander later conquered all of Greece, overthrew the Persian Empire, and became known as Alexander the Great. Alexander studied under Aristotle until 336 B.C., when the youth became ruler of Macedonia after his father was assassinated (see Alexander the Great (His youth) ).
Aristotle returned to Athens, and in 335 B.C., he founded a school called the Lyceum. Aristotle’s school, his philosophy, and his followers were called peripatetic. The word probably came from the Greek term meaning covered walkway. Students at the Lyceum often were taught on such a walkway. See Lyceum ; Peripatetic philosophy .
Soon after Alexander died in 323 B.C., Aristotle was charged with impiety (lack of reverence for the gods) by the Athenians. They probably resented his friendship with Alexander, the man who had conquered them. Aristotle had not forgotten the fate of the philosopher Socrates, condemned to death on a similar charge by the Athenians in 399 B.C. He fled to the city of Chalcis so the Athenians would not, as he said, “sin twice against philosophy.” He died in Chalcis a year later.
Aristotle’s writings
Aristotle’s writings are usually divided into three groups: (1) popular writings, (2) memoranda, and (3) treatises.
The popular writings were mostly dialogues modeled on Plato’s dialogues and produced while Aristotle was still at Plato’s Academy. These works were intended for a general audience outside the school, rather than for philosophers at the school. For this reason, Aristotle referred to them as his exoteric writings (exo- means outside in Greek). These writings have not survived, but the works of later writers include many references to them and quotations from them.
The memoranda were largely collections of research materials and historical records. Prepared by Aristotle and his students, they were intended as sources of information for scholars. With few exceptions, the memoranda, like the popular writings, were lost.
The treatises make up nearly all of Aristotle’s surviving writings. They were probably written for use either as lecture notes or as textbooks at the Lyceum. Unlike the popular works, the treatises were intended only for students in the school. Thus, the treatises are called Aristotle’s esoteric works (eso- means inside in Greek).
Aristotle’s philosophy
Logic.
Aristotle’s works on logic are collectively called the Organon, which means instrument, because they investigate thought, which is the instrument of knowledge. The Organon includes The Categories, The Prior and Posterior Analytics, The Topics, and On Interpretation. Aristotle was the first philosopher to analyze the process whereby certain propositions can be logically inferred to be true from the fact that certain other propositions are true. He believed that this process of logical inference was based on a form of argument he called the syllogism. In a syllogism, a proposition is argued or logically inferred to be true from the fact that two other propositions are true. For example, from the facts that (1) all people are mortal and (2) Socrates is a person, it can be logically argued that (3) Socrates is mortal. The syllogism continued to play an important role in later philosophy. See Logic .
Philosophy of nature.
For Aristotle, the most striking aspect of nature was change. He even defined the philosophy of nature in his Physics as the study of things that change. Aristotle argued that to understand change, a distinction must be made between the form and matter of a thing. For example, a sculpture might have the form of a human being, and bronze as its matter. Aristotle believed that change essentially consists of the same matter acquiring new form. In our example, change occurs if the bronze sculpture is molded into a new form.
To better understand change, Aristotle studied its causes. He distinguished four kinds of causes: (1) material, (2) efficient, (3) formal, and (4) final. The material cause of the sculpture is the material of which it is made. Its efficient cause is the activity of the sculptor who made it. Its formal cause is the form in which the bronze is molded. Its final cause is the plan or design in the sculptor’s mind.
Aristotle studied movement as a kind of change and wrote about the movement of the heavenly bodies in On the Heavens. In On Coming-to-be and Passing-away, he investigated the changes that occur when something seems to be created or destroyed.
Aristotle’s philosophy of nature includes psychology and biology. In On the Soul, he investigated the various functions of the soul and the relationship between the soul and the body. Aristotle was the world’s first great biologist. He gathered vast amounts of information about the variety, structure, and behavior of animals and plants. Aristotle analyzed the parts of living organisms teleologically, that is, in terms of the purposes they serve.
Metaphysics.
In his Metaphysics, Aristotle tried to develop a science of things that never change and investigate the most general and basic principles of reality and knowledge. Since the most important of these unchanging things is God, Aristotle sometimes called this science theology, the study of God. He also called this branch of his philosophy first philosophy, because of its fundamental importance. Aristotle himself never used the name metaphysics, which literally means after the physics. This name was given to the work centuries later simply because it followed the Physics in the written edition of Aristotle’s works. But the word metaphysics has now come to mean any philosophic study of the basic principles of reality and knowledge.
Ethics and politics.
For Aristotle, ethics and politics both study practical knowledge, that is, knowledge that enables people to act properly and live happily. Aristotle’s works on this subject include the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics.
Aristotle argued that the goal of human beings is happiness, and that we achieve happiness when we fulfill our function. Therefore, it is necessary to determine what our function is. The function of a thing is what it alone can do, or what it can do best. For example, the function of the eye is to see, and the function of a knife is to cut. Aristotle declared that a human being is “the rational animal” whose function is to reason. Thus, according to Aristotle, a happy life for human beings is a life governed by reason.
Aristotle believed that a person who has difficulty behaving ethically is morally imperfect. His ideal person practices behaving reasonably and properly until he or she can do so naturally and without effort. Aristotle believed that moral virtue is a matter of avoiding extremes in behavior and finding instead the mean between the extremes. For example, the virtue of courage is the mean between the vices of cowardice at one extreme and foolhardiness at the other. Similarly, the virtue of generosity is the mean between stinginess and wastefulness.
Literary criticism.
Aristotle’s Poetics has probably been the single most influential work in all literary criticism. The Poetics examines the nature of tragedy, and takes as its prime example Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex. Aristotle believed that tragedy affects the spectator by arousing the emotions of pity and fear, and then purifying and cleansing the spectator of these emotions. He called this process of purifying and cleansing catharsis.
Aristotle’s place in Western thought
After Aristotle’s death, his philosophy continued to be taught at the Peripatetic school by a long line of successors. One of these philosophers, Critolaus, went to Rome in 155 B.C. and gave the Romans their first contact with Greek philosophy. About 50 B.C., Andronicus of Rhodes edited Aristotle’s works. This edition stimulated much scholarly analysis of Aristotle’s philosophy, particularly in Alexandria. From about A.D. 500 to 1100, knowledge of his philosophy was almost completely lost in the West. During this period, it was preserved by Arab and Syrian scholars who reintroduced it to the Christian culture of Western Europe in the 1100’s and 1200’s.
Aristotle enjoyed tremendous prestige during this time. To some leading Christian, Jewish, and Arab scholars of the Middle Ages, his writings seemed to contain the sum total of human knowledge. Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the most influential philosophers of the Middle Ages, considered Aristotle “the philosopher.” Dante Alighieri, perhaps the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, called Aristotle the “master of those who know.”
Aristotle’s authority has declined since the Middle Ages, but many philosophers of the modern period owe much to him. The extent of Aristotle’s influence is difficult to judge, because many of his ideas have been absorbed into the language of science and philosophy.
