Aristotle

View Poster

• Born: 384 B.C.
• Birthplace: Stagira, Macedonia (now Greece)
• Died: 322 B.C.
• Best Known As: The author of Ethics

Aristotle is one of the "big three" in ancient Greek philosophy, along with Plato and Socrates. (Socrates taught Plato, who in turn instructed Aristotle.) Aristotle spent nearly 20 years at Plato's Academy, first as a student and then as a teacher. After Plato's death he traveled widely and educated a famous pupil, Alexander the Great, the Macedonian who nearly conquered the world. Later Aristotle began his own school in Athens, known as the Lyceum. Aristotle is known for his carefully detailed observations about nature and the physical world, which laid the groundwork for the modern study of biology. Among his works are the texts Physics, Metaphysics, Rhetoric and Ethics. He was succeeded at the Lyceum by his student Theophrastus.

Aristotle

Library of Congress

[b. Stagira, Macedonia, Greece, 384 bce, d. Chalcis, Euboea, Greece, 322 bce]

Influenced by his father, the physician Nicomachus, Aristotle developed an early interest in science. As a student of Plato he formed a love of philosophy and logic. He then became the tutor to Alexander of Macedon (later Alexander the Great). After Alexander became king, Aristotle returned to Athens, where he founded his own school, known formally as the Lyceum and less formally as the Peripatetic ("walking around") school, because students followed their teacher as he walked in the garden. Aristotle is considered the father of biology. Alexander the Great became his patron, funding his work and arranging for Aristotle to receive samples of plants and animals from all corners of the Alexandrian empire. Ancient scholars attributed as many as 400 treatises to Aristotle, encompassing all knowledge in Antiquity about the universe. About 30 have survived and these are thought to have been compiled by his students.

The Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) organized all knowledge of his time into a coherent whole which served as the basis for much of the science and philosophy of Hellenistic and Roman times and even affected medieval science and philosophy.

Aristotle was born in the small Greek town of Stagiros (later Stagira) in the northern Greek district of Chalcidice. His father, Nicomachus, was a physician who had important social connections, and Aristotle's interest in science was surely spurred by his father's work, although Aristotle does not display a particularly keen interest in medicine as such. The events of his early life are not clear, but it is possible that his father served at the Macedonian court as physician to Amyntas II and that Aristotle spent part of his youth there.

At the age of 17 Aristotle joined Plato's circle at the Academy in Athens. There he remained for 20 years, and although his respect and admiration for Plato was always great, differences developed which ultimately caused a breach. On Plato's death in 348/347 B.C. Aristotle left for Assos in Mysia (in Asia Minor), where he and Xenocrates joined a small circle of Platonists who had already settled there under Hermias, the ruler of Atarneus. Aristotle married Pythias, the niece of Hermias, and in a fine hymn expressed his shock and dismay over Hermias's death at the hands of the Persians some time thereafter.

After 3 years in Assos with Theophrastus and Xenocrates, Aristotle went to Mytilene for 2 years. Later, Theophrastus and Aristotle made their way to the court of Philip of Macedon, where Aristotle became tutor to Alexander, who later gained immortality by becoming master of the whole Persian Empire. Scant information remains regarding the specific contents of Alexander's education at the hands of Aristotle, but it would be interesting to know what political advice Aristotle imparted to the young Alexander. The only indication of such advice is found in the fragment of a letter in which the philosopher tells Alexander that he ought to be the leader of the Greeks but the master of the barbarians (foreigners).

Peripatetic School

Aristotle returned to Athens in 335/334. Under the protection of Antipater, Alexander's representative in Athens, he established a philosophical school of his own in the gymnasium Lyceum, located near a shrine of Apollo Lyceus. The school derived its name, Peripatetic, from the colonnaded walk (peripatos). Members took meals in common, and certain formalities were established which members had to observe. The lectures were divided into morning and afternoon sessions, the more difficult ones given in the morning and the easier and more popular ones in the afternoon. Aristotle himself led the school until the death of Alexander in 323, at which time he felt it expedient to leave Athens, fearing for his safety because of his close association with the Macedonians. He went to Chalcis, where he died the following year of a gastric ailment. His will, preserved in the writings of Diogenes Laertius, provided for his daughter, Pythias, and his son, Nicomachus, as well as for his slaves.

His Writings

Aristotle produced a large number of writings, but relatively few have survived. Because of the great weight of his authority it was inevitable that several spurious treatises should find their way into the corpus of his work. His earliest writings, consisting for the most part of dialogues, were produced under the influence of Plato and the Academy. Most of these are lost, although the titles are known from the writings of Diogenes Laertius and from one of several Lives to come down from antiquity. They include his Rhetoric, Eudemus (On the Soul), Protrepticus, On Philosophy, Alexander, On Monarchy, Politicus, Sophistes, Menexenus, Symposium, On Justice, On the Poets, Nerinthus, Eroticus, On Wealth, On Prayer, On Good Birth, On Pleasure, and On Education. These were exoteric works written for the public, and they deal with popular philosophical themes. The dialogues of Plato were undoubtedly the inspiration for some of them, although the divergence in thought between Plato and his pupil - which was to become apparent later - reveals itself to a certain extent in these works too.

A second group of writings is made up of collections of scientific and historical material, among the most important of which is the surviving fragment of the Constitution of the Athenians. This formed part of the large collection of Constitutions, which Aristotle and his students collected and studied for the purpose of analyzing various political theories. The discovery of the Constitution of the Athenians in Egypt in 1890 shed new light not only on the nature of the Athenian democracy of the 5th century B.C., but also on the difference in quality between the historical and scientific works of Aristotle and his successors. The prejudices and errors shown in the Constitution reveal a mind influenced by Plato and aristocratic social prejudices, while the factual discrepancies reveal the unreliable historical sources which Aristotle used for this type of treatise. Other works in this category are the Pythian Victors, Barbarian Customs, Didascaliai (lists of dramatic performances at Athens), Homeric Questions, Problems, and Olympian Victors.

The last group of writings is made up of those that have actually survived, and they consist of both philosophical and scientific works. Among them are Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophistic Arguments, Physics, On Heaven, On Generation and Corruption, Meteorology, On the Soul, History of Animals, On the Origin of Animals, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Poetics, On Interpretation, On the Movement of Animals, On Feeling and the Senses, On Memory and Recollection, On Dreams, On a Dream, On Divination through Dreams, On the Long and Short Life, On Life and Death, and On Breathing.

Upon the death of Theophrastus, who had kept Aristotle's manuscripts after the master's death in 322, these works were hidden away in a cellar in the Troad and not brought to light again until the beginning of the 1st century B.C., when they were taken to Rome and edited by Andronicus. Our texts derive from Andronicus's recension and probably do not represent works which Aristotle himself prepared for publication. The peculiarly clipped language in which they are written indicates that they are lecture notes of some sort organized from oral discussions of the material by Aristotle. From the time of his death until the rediscovery of these writings, Aristotle was best known for the works which today are the lost writings. Ironically, modern scholars find themselves in possession of works which their ancient counterparts lacked for several centuries, while the works extant in antiquity are lost today.

Philosophical and Scientific Systems

The extant writings, however, are sufficient to show the quality of Aristotle's achievement. The Topics and the Analytics deal with logic and dialectic and reveal Aristotle's contributions to the development of the syllogism and inductive inference. His view of nature is set forth in the Physics and the Metaphysics, and we see the premise established in these works which marks the most serious difference between Aristotelianism and Platonism: that all investigation must begin with what the senses record and must move only from that point to abstract thought. As a result of this process of intellectualizing, God, who for Plato is eternal Beauty and Goodness, is for Aristotle the Unmoved Mover, Thought contemplating Itself, the highest form of being which is completely lacking in materiality. Aristotle's God neither created nor consciously controls the universe, although the universe is affected by Him (it). Man is the only creature capable of thought even remotely resembling that of the Unmoved Mover, so man's highest goal is to reason abstractly, and he is more truly human to the extent that he achieves that goal.

But such a conclusion does not lead Aristotle to the moralist position taken by Plato, or by the Stoics or Epicureans in later times. Aristotle views men and their affairs from a cooler and more pragmatic point of view, and in the Nicomachean Ethics he analyzes the human situation from the point of view of reality as his researches reveal it to him. Man cannot be happy without the usual necessities of physical life, but those necessities do not suffice for true happiness. Since only the philosopher achieves a level of intellectual activity which might be taken seriously, it is the philosopher who achieves true human happiness through the use of his acutely developed ability to think abstractly.

Aristotle's work was often misunderstood in later times. The cardinal sin which later generations committed against this most dynamic of thinkers was to ascribe to his views a rigidity and certainty which they never had. The scientific and philosophical systems set forth in his writings are not conclusions which must be taken as absolute truth, but rather tentative positions arrived at through careful observation and analysis. Modern scholarship has helped to show the vitality of Aristotle's mind, but in the stagnant intellectual climate of imperial Rome and the totally unscientific Christian Middle Ages Aristotle's views on nature and science were taken as a complete system. As a result, his prestige was enormous but not for any reason that would have pleased him.

Aristotle shares with his master, Plato, the role of synthesizer and catalyst. Each of these two giants showed how the probings of the Pre-Socratics fell short of their goals, and each constructed philosophical systems on premises which they considered sound. Plato had a more direct influence on the development of that great mystical movement in late antiquity, Neoplatonism, and Aristotle had a more profound effect on science. Antiquity produced no greater minds than those of Plato and Aristotle, and the intellectual history of the West would be radically different without them.

Further Reading

Translations of the individual works of Aristotle are too numerous to mention, but a useful starting point is Works, translated under the editorship of W.D. Ross (12 vols., 1908-1952). A one-volume Basic Works was edited by Richard McKeon (1941). One of the best short introductions to Aristotle's writings is Geoffrey R.G. Mure, Aristotle (1964), highly readable but more limited in depth than the useful works of W.D. Ross, Aristotle (1923; 5th ed. rev. 1953) and The Development of Aristotle's Thought (1957). Other useful general works include D.J. Allan, The Philosophy of Aristotle (1952), and John Herman Randall, Aristotle (1960). For historical background see M.L.W. Laistner, A History of the Greek World, from 479 to 323 B.C. (1957).

(c.384-322 bc) Greek philosopher. He was born into a wealthy family in northern Greece, where his father was physician to the King of Macedon. In 367 he came to Athens and associated himself with Plato's Academy, where he studied and taught until Plato's death in 347. After several years travelling and researching in the eastern Aegean, he was invited by Philip of Macedon to be tutor to the young Alexander the Great. In 335 he returned to Athens and established his own school of philosophy, the Lycaeum, where he worked until strong anti-Macedonian feeling prompted him to retire to Euboea; he died the following year.

His first independent researches were principally in biology, and the methods and concepts of the natural scientist permeated his thought throughout his life. His range of interests and learning was vast: apart from several fine biological works, he wrote treatises on physics, metaphysics, logic, psychology, aesthetics, ethics, and politics. He divided the sciences into three main categories: the theoretical, the productive, and the practical. Ethics and politics are practical sciences, aimed not just at knowledge but also at action, at changing the way people conduct their lives. In a move away from Plato, Aristotle believed that these practical sciences should be based on empirical data and taxonomy, and together with a team of students he researched the political structure and history of 158 constitutions, though only the Constitution of Athens has survived. Some of the results of these researches, however, can be found in his most famous political work, the Politics, which, in its mixture of analysis, prescription, and description, gives accounts of a number of constitutions, including Sparta, Crete, and Carthage. Aristotle also describes and analyses the political theories (or his versions of them) of other philosophers, notably Plato.

The biological framework of his thought also shapes his analysis of the nature, origin, and purpose of the state. Whereas some of the sophists had claimed an antithesis between nature and culture, Aristotle seeks to demonstrate that ‘man is a political animal’, by which he means the kind of animal that naturally lives in a polis or city-state. First, he examines the way the city-state comes to be. There are, he believes, two basic forms of human association: the association of male with female for the purposes of procreation; and the association of master and ‘natural slave’ for the purposes of mutual preservation. From these associations the household is formed. Households group together to form villages and villages group together to form the polis, which Aristotle perceives as a self-sufficient community bonded together by shared practices and values. Living in a polis therefore, is for humans the natural result of the two fundamental natural forms of association. There is no antithesis between nature and culture, and no artificial ‘social contract’.

The second argument rests on an analysis of human nature and human flourishing which is referred to in the Politics but expounded in most detail in the Nicomachean Ethics. To flourish, we need to exercise the intellectual and moral capacities which we possess as members of the human species: such capacities, and in particular our capacity to act justly, cannot be exercised outside the context of the state. It is precisely because the state provides everything necessary for the good and flourishing life that it is said to be self-sufficient; and it is in the provision of this good life that its main purpose lies. Here again, therefore, the state accords with human nature. Indeed, Aristotle claims that the state itself is a natural entity: not only does it have its origins in the natural associations of male and female, and of master and slave, but it is the natural end of all the earlier associations, and ‘nature is itself an end’; it follows therefore ‘that the state belongs to the class of objects which exist by nature’ (Politics I. 2). This can lead Aristotle to talk of the state as a kind of supra-being of which individuals are merely the parts, of no independent worth. Such tendencies in his thought have led to charges of totalitarianism: at one point the citizen is actually said to belong to the state (Politics VIII. 1).

But who are to count as citizens? Aristotle distinguishes three basic elements in government, the deliberative, the executive, and the judicial, and he defines citizenship as active participation in at least the deliberative and judicial functions. Such active participation requires directive reasoning powers and a certain amount of leisure and education; he further holds that these requirements will mean that only freeborn, non-artisan males can be citizens. Some humans, Aristotle believes, have only sufficient reasoning powers to obey the directions of others; they cannot deliberate for themselves. Such humans are ‘natural slaves’ and are not capable of taking part in political decision-making: indeed they will be much happier if someone else directs their lives for them. This is why the master-slave relation is basic and natural. Women will also be happier if they are directed by someone else, for though they possess the ability to reason for themselves, this faculty is not authoritative in them, being at the mercy of their emotions. Artisans and manual labourers are to be excluded on the grounds that their occupation deprives them of the leisure required both for active political participation and for the intellectual development such participation demands. As resident aliens are also to be denied citizenship, the result will be that only a comparatively small number of those living in a state are to count as its citizens. Indeed, Aristotle sometimes writes as if these non-citizens are not even to count as members of the state, but simply as its sine qua non (cf. politics III. 3 and VII. 8)—a view which, at least in the case of women and slaves, would appear to be at odds with the argument in Book I for the development of the state from the household.

In Books III and IV of the Politics Aristotle undertakes a taxonomy and analysis of the different kinds of constitution. One way of roughly distinguishing constitutions is by asking two fundamental questions: who rules and on whose behalf ? Rule may be exercised by one, few, or many, and it may be exercised well, on behalf of the population as a whole, or badly, on behalf of the rulers themselves. The three correct constitutions are monarchy, aristocracy, and ‘polity’, and the three corresponding deviations tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. In practice, however, the few will be rich and the majority poor; thus economic status will be at least as important a defining feature as number. In helping to shape the goals and values of those in power, economic conditions are also partly responsible for giving each constitution its own distinguishing mark: the goal of oligarchy, for instance, is more wealth; that of democracy, freedom. Later Aristotle qualifies this broad taxonomy. He stresses that there are several varieties of each of the six basic types and that all these varieties can be combined in a number of ways: indeed it is really more accurate to speak of a constitution as possessing, for instance, certain democratic features.

Aristotle's views on the relative merits of these constitutions are complex. He is clear that all constitutions which aim at the common good are preferable to those which look solely to sectional interests, and he is also clear that the common good must be firmly based on a notion of distributive justice, according to which the greater share of goods and honours is distributed to the citizens who contribute most to the state. The question of what form of constitution is best, however, depends on circumstances. Should a supremely wise and good person arise, who contributes supremely to the state, then according to the transactional principles of distributive justice such a man should be given supreme power, and be permitted to rule above the law; the same argument would apply to a supremely virtuous group. In the probable absence of such an ideal monarchy or aristocracy, however, the best constitution for the majority of states is ‘polity’, a mixture of democracy and oligarchy in which power is in the hands of those of moderate wealth. This middle class, Aristotle believes, will be the most likely to act in accordance with reason, and the least likely to suffer from faction and the extremes that both wealth and poverty encourage; he explicitly, if problematically, links it to the ‘mean’ which in the Nicomachean Ethics is said to constitute virtue. Their decisions are also most likely to win general acceptance. All these factors will make for stability.

Political stability is for Aristotle one of the greatest goods, and in Books V and VI of the Politics he devotes considerable space to examining the features which promote and undermine it. He considers it worthwhile to include measures for preserving even the ‘deviant’ constitutions, though in the case of tyranny he may regard an understanding of the tyrant's tactics as the best insurance against his emergence. The chief reason for constitutional instability and revolution is said to be discontent arising from perceived inequality. Everyone agrees that there should be justice, and that this is proportional equality, but there is no agreement on what the criterion for this should be: democrats will claim it is freedom and oligarchs that it is wealth.

The way to ensure stability, therefore, is to prevent such discontent by giving as many people as possible at least some share of honours, offices, and profit. Laws should be passed to guard against extremes of wealth and poverty, and to increase the numbers of the middle class; indeed, the support of this class in general will be critical for those in power. It is also vital to seek to incorporate opponents of the constitution into its structure. The most effective safeguard of all, however, is education: through education, the state can habituate its young to the ways of the constitution; without such habituation, the laws are powerless.

This pragmatic approach to political theory is also evident in the unfinished sketch of his ideal state in Books VII and VIII of the Politics: even an ideal, Aristotle stresses, should remain always within the bounds of possibility. Given that the purpose of the state is to provide the good life, and this is the life of virtue, the ideal state will be that which best facilitates the exercise of virtue in its citizens. For this, certain physical conditions are required, and advice is given on territory, food supply, defence, and size of the population (Aristotle would consider almost all modern ‘states’ far too large to count as states at all). Easily the most important factor, however, is again education, the principal aim of which is to create good citizens. Since the good life and good citizenship are for Aristotle matters of objective fact, education for citizenship must be based on objective principles and must be the same for all; this will also ensure homogeneity, and thus stability. The only way of guaranteeing that education is the same for all is if it is organized by the state. To what extent females are to be included in this ‘all’ is a vexed question: as they are excluded from citizenship, one would not expect them to require the same training as males; yet Aristotle makes it clear that they are to receive at least some education.

For all his emphasis on moderation and practicability, Aristotle is strongly authoritarian. His ideal state decides when an individual may produce children and have non-reproductive sex; it decides what works of art may be seen or heard, and even what musical instruments a child may learn. Like Plato, Aristotle not only believes that the good life is objective, but also that knowledge of this good is possible and entitles its possessor to prescribe it for others. The possibility of a right to decline such prescriptions is never raised.

The Politics has influenced philosophers as diverse as Aquinas and Hegel, and is essential background to Machiavelli, Bodin, and Hooker. More recently, many of its notions have informed ‘communitarian’ thinkers such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Michael Sandel.

— Angela Hobbs

(click to enlarge)
Aristotle, marble bust with a restored nose, Roman copy of a Greek original, last quarter of the … (credit: Courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)

(born 384, Stagira — died 322 BC, Chalcis) Greek philosopher and scientist whose thought determined the course of Western intellectual history for two millenia. He was the son of the court physician to Amyntas III, grandfather of Alexander the Great. In 367 he became a student at the Academy of Plato in Athens; he remained there for 20 years. After Plato's death in 348/347, he returned to Macedonia, where he became tutor to the young Alexander. In 335 he founded his own school in Athens, the Lyceum. His intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts. He worked in physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, and botany; in psychology, political theory, and ethics; in logic and metaphysics; and in history, literary theory, and rhetoric. He invented the study of formal logic, devising for it a finished system, known as syllogistic, that was considered the sum of the discipline until the 19th century; his work in zoology, both observational and theoretical, also was not surpassed until the 19th century. His ethical and political theory, especially his conception of the ethical virtues and of human flourishing ("happiness"), continue to exert great influence in philosophical debate. He wrote prolifically; his major surviving works include the Organon, De Anima ("On the Soul"), Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Magna Moralia, Politics, Rhetoric, and Poetics, as well as other works on natural history and science. See also teleology.

For more information on Aristotle, visit Britannica.com.

Aristotle (Aristotelēs) (384–322 BC), Greek philosopher.

1. Life. Aristotle was born at Stageira in Chalcidice, the son of Nicomachus, physician to Amyntas II (father of Philip II), king of Macedon. In 367 he came to Athens, and for the next twenty years was a pupil of Plato, until the latter's death in 347. In that year he left Athens. It may be the case that when Plato was succeeded as head of the Academy by Speusippus, Aristotle found the latter's mathematical kind of philosophy repugnant. Perhaps more probable is the theory that Aristotle left Athens for political reasons, because Demosthenes and his anti-Macedon party were in the ascendancy. However that may be, in the same year his home town of Stageira was destroyed by the then king of Macedon, Philip II, and Aristotle settled at Assos in the Troad, where there was a small colony of philosophers from the Academy. These were supported by Hermias, the enlightened tyrant of the neighbouring city of Atarneus, to whom Aristotle later wrote a poem of praise and whose niece, Pythias, he married. He remained there for three years, probably lecturing and writing, until the philosophers were driven out after the murder of Hermias. Aristotle retreated to Mytilene in Lesbos (where he met Theophrastus), teaching there until 343/2. It was during his stay at Assos and Mytilene that he conducted many of his zoological researches. At the end of that time he was invited by Philip to be tutor to his 13-year-old son Alexander (the Great). His teaching of Alexander was probably mainly in Homer and the dramatists (he was said to have prepared for his pupil an edition of the Iliad), but the need for some political education may have stimulated Aristotle's own interest in politics (a lost work is entitled ‘Alexander, or On Colonization’).

In 335, when Alexander had succeeded to the throne and started on his expedition to Asia, Aristotle returned to Athens and taught there in a gymnasium built in a grove sacred to Apollo Lykeios and known in consequence as the Lyceum. Here he was said to have lectured to his pupils in the morning and the general public in the evening. The kind of philosophy he taught came to be known as the Peripatetic, owing its name to the covered court (peripatos) where the students walked up and down. Scholarly research of all kinds was carried on, literary, scientific, and philosophical. Aristotle collected manuscripts and maps, and formed the first considerable library of antiquity as well as a museum of natural objects. At some time during this period Pythias died, and Aristotle lived afterwards with Herpyllis, by whom he had a son Nicomachus. He enjoyed the friendship and protection of Antipater, whom Alexander had made governor of Macedon and Greece. After the death of Alexander in 323 the anti-Macedonian party at Athens became dominant, and Aristotle, having obvious Macedonian connections, was charged with impiety on the grounds that his poem to Hermias befitted a god, not a man, an accusation probably political in origin. Rather than let the Athenians ‘sin twice against philosophy’ (the first time being the execution of Socrates) Aristotle left his school to Theophrastus and departed from Athens. He died the following year at Chalcis in Euboea, where in the last months of his life he lamented his isolation. His will, reproduced by Diogenes Laertius, shows him to have been of a kindly and affectionate disposition.

2. The general character of his work. Aristotle left a vast number of works—some 400 were attributed to him—on a great variety of subjects, but only about a fifth has survived. The works we now possess belong mostly to the later period of his life and were never published in his lifetime. Those that were read in classical antiquity, by Cicero and his friends for example, were the published works of his early life and are now lost. Sometimes referred to as the ‘exoteric works’ (i.e. works for the ‘outside’ public), they were written in a fluent and polished style for the general reader, and were undoubtedly Platonic in their general assumptions (though the extent to which Aristotle in his early life adhered to the tenets of the Platonic Academy is still a matter of debate). At his death Aristotle bequeathed to Theophrastus, his successor as head of the Lyceum, not only his books but also his manuscripts. The manuscripts comprised his full lecturenotes, which had not been prepared for publication, sometimes called the ‘acroastic works’ (Gk. akroasthai, ‘to attend a lecture’); it has come about by chance that the works of Aristotle which we now possess are in origin lecture-notes, reworked over a number of years and never intended to be read by the public. They may have been set in order after Aristotle's death by his colleague Eudemos of Rhodes and his son Nicomachus. What use was made of them in the third and second centuries BC is not clear, but they cannot have been entirely unknown: there were lists of the titles in circulation, made by or for the librarians of the Alexandrian Library, and some Stoic philosophers seem to have had some knowledge of Aristotle's logic. Eventually, in a crumbling condition, the manuscripts were sold and went to Athens, whence Sulla shipped them to Rome as part of his war-booty after the Mithridatic War (89–85 BC). There they were edited by the head of the Lyceum at Athens, Andronicus of Rhodes, and this edition is the basis of all our surviving manuscripts of Aristotle both in Greek and in other languages. It was circulated and closely studied and commented upon as being more profound and original than the published books; as a consequence the latter ceased to be read and were eventually lost.

3. The works of Aristotle may be divided into three classes:

i. The early popular works of philosophy, mostly in dialogue form, published by Aristotle himself and now lost except for fragments preserved by quotation in later writers. These include the Protrepticus (‘exhortation to philosophy’) which served as a model for Cicero's Hortensius but is now lost. They were Platonic in tone.

ii. Large collections of historical and scientific facts, made by Aristotle sometimes in co-operation with others and now mostly lost. They included lists of the victors at the Olympian and Pythian games and the didascaliae (records of the dramatic performances at Athens), traces of which remain in our scholia to the extant Greek plays. The only work from this class to have survived almost entire is the Athenaiōn politeia, ‘constitution of the Athenians’, the first in a collection of 158 such accounts of the constitutions of the Greek states, recovered from an Egyptian papyrus in 1890.

iii. Philosophical and scientific works, many of which are still extant.

There are very few indications by which one may date Aristotle's works or arrange them in order of composition (and by their nature most reached their present form after being reworked over a number of years: see 2 above). On the whole they seem to reflect a progressive withdrawal from Plato's influence, although some of the works that show opposition to Plato could date from Aristotle's early years at the Academy. He did not believe in the separate existence of unchanging Ideas (or Forms) nor did he accept them as sufficient explanation of the facts of change and motion—an explanation he was still seeking in his latest work. He did not feel, as Plato felt, that physical science was founded on mathematics; hence in his physical works he was sometimes led to argue from plausible but mistaken assumptions, in the absence of actual measurement. In astronomy, for example, he made many errors, and his influence on later thought was a retarding one. In biology, however, a science which he brought into existence, exact measurement is less crucial in its early development, and his combination of close observation and acute reasoning made an outstanding contribution to knowledge. Politics he viewed in similar fashion, as a study which depends on observation and whose function it is to discover general laws governing the rise and fall of political systems, always with a practical end in view. His thought is distinguished partly by an inspired common sense which makes him avoid extremist views. This does not mean that he accepts half-hearted compromise, rather that he always recognizes equally the parts played by the senses and the intellect, the claims of mind and body; in this spirit he advocates the rule of the middle class as being the steadiest element in a state. His other striking characteristic is his love of order and system, and to this aspect of his mind we are greatly indebted for the classification of the sciences to which we still adhere, and for much of our philosophical terminology. Many of the terms that he first introduced—universal and particular, premiss and conclusion, subject and attribute, form and matter, potentiality and actuality—have become commonly used both in philosophy and outside it.

4. Extant works. The surviving treatises may be classified as follows.

i. On logic, a group which much later came to be called the Organon (‘tool’ or ‘instrument’), consisting of six treatises known as: Categoriae (‘predicates’), De interpretatione (‘on interpretation’), Analytica priora and posteriora (‘prior’ and ‘posterior analytics’), Topica (‘topics’), and De sophisticis elenchis (‘refutations in the manner of the sophists’). In these Aristotle was the first to explore the science of reasoning, both formal (in the Prior Analytics) and scientific (in the Posterior Analytics), on the basis of the syllogism, which he discovered. His analysis, as far as it went, was admirable and still remains valid.

ii. On metaphysics, a mixture of treatises or lecture notes from different periods, put together by Andronicus of Rhodes (see 2 above) and called by him Metaphysica because in his edition they came ‘after the physics’ (meta ta physika). From this the branch of philosophy now known as metaphysics takes its name, but Aristotle's name for the subject is prōtē philosophia, ‘primary philosophy’. The fourteen books, known by letters of the Greek alphabet, cover a range of topics concerned with basic realities, including the ‘being’ of things (to on, compare English ‘ontology’), matter, form, substance, and essence. The Aristotelian ‘form’, the intelligible nature of a thing, differs from the Platonic ‘idea’, at least as Aristotle conceived it, in being immanent in the thing and not existing apart from it. Aristotle concludes that the universe must have a single, unchanging, final cause (see (iii) a below), an ‘unmoved mover’ engaged in the eternal activity of pure thought or contemplation (theōria), giving supreme happiness. This ‘unmoved mover’, who may be called God, has no interest in the universe but the latter ultimately depends on him, since the eternal circular motion of the stars which brings about the change of seasons and the rhythm of birth, reproduction, and death, is in imitation of God's activity. People, through their possession of mind (nous), can imitate God by themselves engaging in pure thought (although only briefly and intermittently), and this is their highest activity.

iii. On natural science (physics, biology, psychology). The treatises in this group are: (a) Physica (‘physics’), an examination of the constituent elements of things that exist by ‘nature’ (‘nature’ being an ‘innate compulsion to movement’), and a discussion of such notions as matter and form, time, space, and movement, with an exposition of the four causes, the material cause (that out of which a thing comes to be), the formal cause (the intelligible nature of a thing, that in virtue of which it is what it is), the motive (or efficient) cause (the immediate origin of a change), and the final cause (the end or aim of the change); (b) De caelo (‘on the heavens’), on the movement of celestial and terrestrial bodies (Aristotle knew that the earth was spherical, but thought it was situated at the centre of the universe); (c) De generatione et corruptione (‘on coming into being and passing away’); (d) Meteorologica, principally on weather phenomena; (e) a group of works on biology: the nine books of the Historia animalium, (‘inquiry into animals’), a collection of facts on animal life, showing acute observation (Aristotle knew, for instance, that whales were mammals), and a series of treatises in which he deals with the classification of animals, their reproduction, and the adaptation and evolution of their organs; (f) De anima (‘on the soul’), a treatise in three books on the proposition that soul and body are two aspects of a single living thing, in the relation of form to matter. Thus the soul, which is the life force, does not survive the death of the body, though Aristotle seems also to say that the soul of man possesses a portion of ‘active reason’ which is immortal and eternal, and is perhaps akin to God; (g) several monographs known collectively as Parva naturalia (‘short works on nature’), on the general physiological conditions of life.

iv. On ethics and politics. Aristotle wrote two ethical treatises to which he gave the title Ēthika, ‘matters to do with character’, known as the Nicomachean and the Eudemian Ethics. These cover much the same ground, though with certain important differences of view. The relation between the two works is still a matter of debate; the former is the better known. It is in the main a study of the end to which conduct should be directed. Aristotle accepts ‘happiness’, eudaimonia, doing well, making a success of life, as the end of human action, and wants to instruct men how to achieve it. For a person to be happy he must do well those things which are distinctively human. Humans are distinguished from other animals by possessing intellect, ‘the god within us’. The happiness that is distinctively human is therefore achieved by intellectual activity. Not all human virtue is intellectual; there is also moral virtue. Aristotle defines the latter as a disposition to choose a certain mean, as determined by ‘a man of practical wisdom’ (phronimos), between two opposite extremes of conduct; a mean, for instance, between ascesticism and yielding to uncontrolled impulses. Aristotle lays stress on the notion of moral intention, but virtue of character is also important.

Virtue cannot be practised by the solitary individual: ‘a human being is by nature a political animal’ (i.e. it is our nature to live in a city, polis). In the eight books of the Politica (‘politics’), Aristotle discusses the science of politics from the point of view of the city-state, which he assumes to be that most conducive to the fullest life of the citizen. He thinks the state was developed naturally by the grouping of families in villages, and of villages in a state, for the purpose of securing for the citizens a good and self-sufficing life. Since the essential purpose of the state is to pursue this moral, and not a material, end, it is necessary that the power should rest, not with the wealthy or with the whole body of free citizens, but with the good. He discusses citizenship, the classification of actual constitutions, and the various types of these, their diseases and the remedies; he recognizes the advantages of democracy, but finds the highest type in the monarchy of the perfect ruler if such is available, and failing this in an aristocracy of men of virtue and enlightenment. But this, too, is difficult, and on the whole he regards a limited democracy as the constitution best suited to the practical conditions of Greece in his day. He regards slavery as a natural institution, so far as it is based on the inferiority of the nature of the slave rather than on right of conquest. But the master must not abuse his authority, and slaves must have the hope of emancipation.

As the work has come down to us it is neither uniform nor complete; the various parts may well have been composed at different times. Books 7 and 8, containing the discussion of the ideal state, seem to belong to an early text in which the purely constructive method of Plato is followed. Books 4–6, dealing with actual historical states and containing an allusion to the death of Philip II of Macedon (in 336), must have been written later, when Aristotle had at his disposal the collection of the 158 constitutions of which the Athenaion politeia is the only survivor (see 3 (ii) above). That traces the development of the Athenian constitution from the earliest times (the first chapters are missing) down to the fall of the Thirty Tyrants (404), and then describes the mature democracy of Aristotle's own day.

v. On rhetoric and poetry. Aristotle's Rhetoric deals with methods of persuasion, divided into those by which the speaker produces on his audience a favourable view of his own character, those by which he produces emotion, and thirdly argument, whether by means of example or of enthymeme (Gk. enthymema, the rhetorical form of the syllogism, based on probability). It then discusses style (of which the leading characteristics should be clearness and appropriateness) and arrangement. The object of this treatise is practical, how to compose a good speech (see RHETORIC).

See also POETICS for Aristotle's treatise of that name.

5. The influence of Aristotle. The influence that Aristotle exerted on later generations of philosophers and scientists was immense, by the stimulus he gave, by the instruments of investigation which he invented, and by his actual contributions to knowledge. In western Europe in the early Middle Ages, down to about AD 1200, it was mainly his writings on logic, and not all of these, that were known and studied and became such a rigorous influence upon the disputations of medieval Schoolmen. Aristotelian logic more than any other single influence formed the European mind. His writings on science and philosophy, however, followed a different path. From about AD 800 onwards they were translated and expounded by the Arabs, first in the East and then, as a result of the Arab conquest, in Spain. The Arab versions were then retranslated into Latin and these Latin texts made their way from Spain into the rest of Europe, where they had previously been unknown, at the beginning of the thirteenth century. At first the study of these new writings was prohibited, but in the hands of Albertus Magnus (1206–80) and Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–74) they soon became the basis of a Christian philosophy which was a fusion of theology and Aristotelianism.

When at the end of the thirteenth century the Latin translations from Arabic were superseded by more accurate translations made directly from the Greek, Aristotle's authority in virtually all aspects of learning was absolute. It was particularly unfortunate that astronomy, which with alchemy made up the entire scientific interest of the Middle Ages, was the one subject in which Aristotle went furthest astray in believing the earth to be a stationary sphere and the universe geocentric. When Galileo (1564–1642) disputed the truth of it, it was against a very Aristotelian Christianity that he was offending. Galileo's English contemporary Francis Bacon (1561–1626), though contemptuous of the ancient philosophers in general, adopts Aristotle's division of the four causes, and entitles part of his own work the Novum Organum. In the sphere of literature, Aristotle's Poetics was regarded as an authority from Elizabethan days onward.

(384-322 BC) Along with Plato the most influential philosopher of the western tradition, Aristotle was born at Stagira in Macedonia, the son of Nicomachus, the court physician to the Macedonian king Amyntas II. At the age of 17 he entered Plato's Academy in Athens, and remained there until Plato's death. When the Academy under Speusippus turned to mathematical and speculative pursuits, Aristotle accepted the invitation of Hermias to reside at Assos. Upon the death of Hermias (whose niece, Pythias, he married) in 345, Aristotle went to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. To this period belong many of his zoological researches. Between 343/2 and 340 he acted as tutor to the young Alexander the Great, at the invitation of his father Philip of Macedon. In 335 he returned to Athens, and on the outskirts of the city in a grove sacred to Apollo Lyceus he founded a school, the Lyceum (where was the peripatos or covered walk from which his followers, the Peripatetics, took their name). Here he conducted and organized research on many subjects and built the first great library of antiquity. On the death of Pythias he lived with Herpyllis, by whom he had a son, Nicomachus. On the death of Alexander in 325 anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens caused Aristotle to retire to Chalcis where he died in 322. He is described as having been bald, thin, with a lisp, and of a sardonic disposition.

The works known in his lifetime include dialogues modelled on those of Plato, but these are now lost. It is also known that he accumulated an immense collection of natural and historical observations during his headship of the Lyceum, but these too are mainly lost. The extant corpus is nearly all preserved through the edition of Andronicus of Rhodes, made in the 1st century BC. The principal works of philosophical interest are (a) logical works (these form the Organon): Categories, On Interpretation (De Interpretatione), Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophistical Refutations (De Sophisticis Elenchis); (b) works on physics: Physics, On the Heavens (De Caelo), On Generation and Corruption (De Generatione et Corruptione); (c) psychology and natural history: On the Soul (De Anima), On the Parts of Animals (De Partibus Animalium), On the Movement of Animals (De Motu Animalium), On the Generation of Animals (De Generatione Animalium), and shorter works collected as the Parva Naturalia; (d) ethics: Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Magna Moralia, Politics, Rhetoric, and the Art of Poetry. Finally, (e) the general investigation of the things that are: the Metaphysics.

The scale of Aristotle's researches, and their central place in the subsequent history of philosophy, mean that his work defies brief description. His relationship to Plato is complex, with scholars on the whole repudiating the idea of a development away from an originally accepted Platonism, even to the point of detecting a swing towards Plato in the later metaphysics. The traditional contrast is between Plato's otherworldly, formal, and a priori conception of true knowledge (noēsis), as opposed to Aristotle's intense concern for the observed detail of natural phenomena, including those of thought, language, and psychology. Thus while Plato is the patron saint of transcendental theories of knowledge and especially of ethics, Aristotle is concerned to protect knowledge of the plural and multifarious world we live in. His ethics, which he regarded as a branch of the natural history of human beings, shows a subtle (some would say, unequalled) appreciation of the complexities of human motivation. Aristotle, like Kant, had a passion for categories, and as well as inventing the study of logical form may be said to have laid down the division of the sciences we habitually use, not to mention the categories that have organized virtually all subsequent philosophical thought (substance/ accident, potential/ actual, matter/ form, and the different categories of causes). His orderly mind showed the same instinct for the mean that is celebrated in his moral philosophy. He avoids all extremes, and typically does justice to each side of the divisions that split philosophers into warring camps. Aristotle was the central figure in Arabic and medieval philosophy. His fundamentally animistic conception of nature as a kind of plant or striving organism, his distinction between celestial phenomena and sublunary nature, and his conception of perception as a literal sharing of form with that which is perceived, all dominated European thought until the upheavals that produced the Galilean world view in the 17th century. His reputation declined somewhat before that period, when the attempts of both warring Protestants and Catholics to appropriate his thinking led to a general revulsion from scholasticism. In the 20th century his reputation has frequently been refurbished, and he remains a pivotal figure in political theory, ethics and aesthetics, while his logic and even some of his metaphysical doctrines received renewed attention in the late twentieth century and the new millennium. (See also syllogism, essence, accident, categories, virtue)

Life

Aristotle's father, Nicomachus, was a noted physician. Aristotle studied (367–347 B.C.) under Plato at the Academy and there wrote many dialogues that were praised for their eloquence. Only fragments of these dialogues are extant. He tutored (342–c.339 B.C.) Alexander the Great at the Macedonian court, left to live in Stagira, and then returned to Athens. In 335 B.C. he opened a school in the Lyceum; some distinguished members of the Academy followed him. His practice of lecturing in the Lyceum's portico, or covered walking place (peripatos), gave his school the name Peripatetic. During the anti-Macedonian agitation after Alexander's death, Aristotle fled in 323 B.C. to Chalcis, where he died.

Works

Aristotle's extant writings consist largely of his written versions of his lectures; some passages appear to be interpolations of notes made by his students; the texts were edited and given their present form by Andronicus of Rhodes in the 1st cent. B.C. Chief among them are the Organum, consisting of six treatises on logic; Physics; Metaphysics; De Anima [on the soul]; Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics; De Poetica [poetics]; Rhetoric; and a series of works on biology and physics. In the late 19th cent. his Constitution of Athens, an account of Athenian government, was found.

Philosophy

Logic and Metaphysics

Aristotle placed great emphasis in his school on direct observation of nature, and in science he taught that theory must follow fact. He considered philosophy to be the discerning of the self-evident, changeless first principles that form the basis of all knowledge. Logic was for Aristotle the necessary tool of any inquiry, and the syllogism was the sequence that all logical thought follows. He introduced the notion of category into logic and taught that reality could be classified according to several categories—substance (the primary category), quality, quantity, relation, determination in time and space, action, passion or passivity, position, and condition.

Aristotle also taught that knowledge of a thing, beyond its classification and description, requires an explanation of causality, or why it is. He posited four causes or principles of explanation: the material cause (the substance of which the thing is made); the formal cause (its design); the efficient cause (its maker or builder); and the final cause (its purpose or function). In modern thought the efficient cause is generally considered the central explanation of a thing, but for Aristotle the final cause had primacy.

He used this account of causes to examine the relation of form to matter, and in his conclusions differed sharply from those of his teacher, Plato. Aristotle believed that a form, with the exception of the Prime Mover, or God, had no separate existence, but rather was immanent in matter. Thus, in the Aristotelian system, form and matter together constitute concrete individual realities; the Platonic system holds that a concrete reality partakes of a form (the ideal) but does not embody it. Aristotle believed that form caused matter to move and defined motion as the process by which the potentiality of matter (the thing itself) became the actuality of form (motion itself). He held that the Prime Mover alone was pure form and as the “unmoved mover” and final cause was the goal of all motion.

Ethics and Other Aspects

Aristotle's ethical theory reflects his metaphysics. Following Plato, he argued that the goodness or virtue of a thing lay in the realization of its specific nature. The highest good for humans is the complete and habitual exercise of the specifically human function—rationality. Rationality is exercised through the practice of two kinds of virtue, moral and intellectual. Aristotle emphasized the traditional Greek notion of moral virtue as the mean between extremes. Well-being (eudaemonia) is the pursuit not of pleasure (hedonism) but rather of the Good, a composite ideal, consisting of contemplation (the intellectual life) and, subordinate to that, engagement in politics (the moral life). In the Politics, Aristotle holds that, by nature, humans form political associations, and he explores the best forms these may take. For Aristotle's aesthetic views, which are set forth in the Poetics, see tragedy.

Aristotelianism

After the decline of Rome, Aristotle's work was lost in the West. However, in the 9th cent., Arab scholars introduced Aristotle to Islam, and Muslim theology, philosophy, and natural science all took on an Aristotelian cast. It was largely through Arab and Jewish scholars that Aristotelian thought was reintroduced in the West. His works became the basis of medieval scholasticism; much of Roman Catholic theology shows, through St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotelian influence. There has also been a revival of Aristotelian influence on philosophy in the 20th cent. His teleological approach has continued to be central to biology, but it was banished from physics by the scientific revolution of the 17th cent. His work in astronomy, later elaborated by Ptolemy, was controverted by the investigations of Copernicus and Galileo.

Bibliography

See edition of his works by R. P. McKeon (1941); J. H. Randall, Aristotle (1960); G. E. R. Lloyd, Aristotle (1968); J. Barnes, Aristotle (1982); J. D. Evans, Aristotle (1987); J. Lear, Aristotle (1988); T. Irwin, Aristotle's First Principles (1989).

Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and scientist, was born in Stagira, a town in Chalcidice. At the age of seventeen he became a member of the Greek philosopher Plato's school, where he stayed for twenty years. After Plato's death in 348 B.C.E. Aristotle taught philosophy, first at Atarneus in Asia Minor, then in Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Then he became tutor of Alexander the Great at the court of Macedonia. In 335 or 334 B.C.E. he returned to Athens and founded a school called the Lyceum.

Aristotle's first writings were dialogues modeled on Plato's examples; a few have survived in fragmentary form. The main body of writings that have come down to us consists of treatises on a wide range of subjects; these were probably presented as lectures, and some may be notes on lectures taken by students. These treatises lay unused in Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the sixth century C.E., until they were recovered in the Middle Ages and studied by Muslim, Jewish, and Christian thinkers. The large scope of the treatises, together with the extraordinary intellect of their author, gained for Aristotle the title, "the master of those who know."

The treatises are investigative reports, describing a method of inquiry and the results reached. Each treatise includes: (1) a statement of the aim of the subject matter; (2) a consideration of other thinkers' ideas; (3) an examination of proposed principles with the aim of determining the one that has the best prospect of explaining the subject matter; (4) a search for the facts that illustrate the proposed principle; and (5) an explanation of the subject matter by showing how the proposed principle explains the observed facts. The treatises were essential to the work of the Lyceum, which was a school, a research institution, a library, and a museum. Aristotle and his students compiled a List of Pythian Winners; researched the records of dramatic performances at Athens; collected 158 constitutions, of which only The Constitution of Athens has survived; prepared a literary and philological study called Homeric Problems; and put together a collection of maps and a museum of objects to serve as illustrations for lectures.

Aristotle's writings on logic worked out an art of discourse, a tool for finding out the structure of the world. The other subject matters of Aristotle's treatises are of three kinds: (1) the theoretical sciences - metaphysics, mathematics, and physics - aim to know for the sake of knowing; (2) the productive sciences - such as poetics and rhetoric - aim to know for the sake of making useful or beautiful things; and (3) the practical sciences - ethics and politics - aim to know for the sake of doing, or for conduct. Aristotle said that the theoretical sciences are capable of being understood by principles which are certain and cannot be other than they are; as objects of study their subject matters are necessary and eternal. The productive sciences and the practical sciences are capable of being understood by principles that are less than certain; as objects of study their subject matters are contingent.

Thus Aristotle's idea was that distinct sciences exist, the nature of each to be determined by principles found in the midst of the subject matter that is peculiarly its own. A plurality of subject matters exists, and there is a corresponding plurality of principles explaining sets of facts belonging to each subject matter. What is learned in any subject matter may be useful in studying others; yet there is no hierarchy of subject matters in which the principles of the highest in the order of Being explain the principles of all the others.

Education for a Common End

Unlike Plato's Republic and Laws, Aristotle's treatises do not contain lengthy discussions of education. His most explicit discussion of education, in Books 7 and 8 of the Politics, ends without being completed. Yet, like Plato, Aristotle's educational thinking was inseparable from his account of pursuing the highest good for human beings in the life of a community. The science of politics takes into account the conduct of the individual as inseparable from the conduct of the community. Thus Aristotle holds that ethics is a part of politics; and equally, politics is a part of ethics. This leads him to argue that the end of individuals and states is the same. Inasmuch as human beings cannot realize their potentiality apart from the social life that is necessary for shaping their mind and character, an investigation into the nature of society is a necessary companion to an investigation into the nature of ethics. The good life is inescapably a social life - a life of conduct in a community. For Aristotle, "the Good of man must be the end of the science of Politics" (1975,1.2.1094b 7 - 8). In community life, the activity of doing cannot bring into existence something apart from doing; it can only "end" in further doing. And education, as one of the activities of doing, does not "produce" anything apart from education, but must be a continuing process that has no end except further education.

In Aristotle's explicit remarks about the aims of education, it is clear that, like all activities in pursuit of the good life, education is "practical" in that it is a way of conduct, of taking action. At the same time, in pursuing the good life, the aim is to know the nature of the best state and the highest virtues of which human beings are capable. Such knowledge enables us to have a sense of what is possible in education. Educational activity is also a "craft" in the sense that determining the means appropriate for pursuing that which we think is possible is a kind of making as well as a kind of doing. It is commonplace to say that, in doing, we try to "make things happen." Education is an attempt to find the kind of unity of doing and making that enables individuals to grow, ethically and socially.

The Politics ends by citing three aims of education: the possible, the appropriate, and the "happy mean." The idea of a happy mean is developed in the Nicomachean Ethics. There human conduct is held to consist of two kinds of virtues, moral and intellectual; moral virtues are learned by habit, while intellectual virtues are learned through teaching. As examples, while humans are not temperate or courageous by nature, they have the potentiality to become temperate and courageous. By taking on appropriate habits, their potentialities can be actualized; by conducting themselves appropriately they can learn to actualize their moral virtues. Thus children learn the moral virtues before they know what they are doing or why they are doing it. Just because young children cannot control their conduct by intellectual principles, Aristotle emphasizes habit in training them. First, children must learn the moral virtues; later, when their intellectual powers have matured, they may learn to conduct themselves according to reason by exercising the intellectual virtues.

Arguing that the state is a plurality that should be made into a community by education, Aristotle insisted that states should be responsible for educating their citizens. In the Politics, Book 8, he makes four arguments for public education: (1) from constitutional requirements; (2) from the origins of virtue; (3) from a common end to be sought by all citizens; and (4) from the inseparability of the individual and the community. In most states in the Greek world before Aristotle's time, private education had prevailed.

Finally, Aristotle's enduring legacy in education may be characterized as threefold. First is his conception of distinct subject matters, the particular nature and conclusions reached in each to be determined as the facts of its subject matter take their places in the thinking and conduct of the investigator. Second is his insistence on the conjoint activities of ethics and politics, aiming to gain the practical wisdom that can be realized only insofar as citizens strive for the highest good in the context of a community of shared ends. This means that the end of ethics and politics is an educational end. And, third, the education that states need is public education.

Although thinkers may know in a preliminary way what the highest good is - that which is required by reason - they will not actually find out what it is until they learn to live in cooperation with the highest principles of reason. The highest good is never completely known because the pursuit of it leads to further action, which has no end but more and more action. The contingent nature of social existence makes it necessary to find out what is good for us in what we do; we cannot truly learn what it is apart from conduct. While reason is a part of conduct, alone it is not sufficient for realizing the highest good. Only by our conduct can we find out what our possibilities are; and only by further conduct can we strive to make those possibilities actual.

Bibliography

Aristotle. 1944. Politics, trans. Harris Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Aristotle. 1975. Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Harris Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Aristotle. 1984. Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, 2 vols., ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Curren, Randall R. 2000. Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Edel, Abraham. 1982. Aristotle and His Philosophy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Randall, John Herman, Jr. 1960. Aristotle. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ross, William D. 1959. Aristotle: A Complete Exposition of His Works and Thought. Cleveland, OH: World Publishing.

— J. J. CHAMBLISS

Aristotle was born in 384 b.c., in Stagira, Greece. He achieved prominence as an eminent philosopher who greatly influenced the basic principles of philosophy and whose ideologies are still practiced today.

Aristotle was a student of the renowned philosopher Plato and tutored Alexander the Great, who became King of Macedonia in 336 b.c.

Aristotle established his own school in the Lyceum, near Athens, in 335 b.c. He often lectured his students in the portico, or walking place, of the Lyceum. The school was subsequently called Peripatetic, after the Greek word peripatos for "walking place."

In 323 b.c. the reign of Alexander ended with his death, and Aristotle sought refuge at Chalcis.

Aristotle formulated numerous beliefs about the reasoning power of humans and the essence of being. He stressed the importance of nature and instructed his pupils to closely study natural phenomena. When teaching science, he believed that all ideas must be supported by explanations based upon facts.

Concerning the realm of politics, Aristotle propounded that humans are inherently political and demonstrate an essential part of their humanity when participating in civic affairs.

Philosophy was a subject of great interest to Aristotle, and he theorized that philosophy was the foundation of the ability to understand the basic axioms that comprise knowledge. In order to study and question completely, Aristotle viewed logic as the basic means of reasoning. To think logically, one had to apply the syllogism, which was a form of thought comprised of two premises that led to a conclusion; Aristotle taught that this form can be applied to all logical reasoning.

To understand reality, Aristotle theorized that it must be categorized as substance, quality, quantity, relation, determination in time and space, action, passion or passivity, position, and condition. To know and understand the reality of an object required an explanation of its material cause, which is why it exists or its composition; its formal cause, or its design; its efficient cause, or its creator; and its final cause, or its reason for being.

Aristotle agreed with his mentor, Plato, concerning the field of ethics. The goodness of a being depended upon the extent to which that being achieved its highest potential. For humans, the ultimate good is the continual use and development of their reasoning powers to fullest capacity. To effect fulfillment and contentment, humans must follow a life of contemplation, rather than pleasure.

The fundamental source of Aristotle's theories were his lectures to his students, which were compiled into several volumes. They include Organum, which discusses logic; Physics; Metaphysics; De Anima, concerning the soul; Rhetoric; Politics; Nichomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics, involving principles of conduct; and De Poetica, or poetics.

He also wrote Constitution of Athens, a description of the foundations of the government of Athens. The work was discovered in the late nineteenth century.

Aristotle died in 322 b.c., in Chalcis, Greece.

Quotes:

"What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do."

"Most people would rather give than get affection."

"The two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection [Are] that a thing is your own and that it is your only one."

"Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them."

"Education is the best provision for old age."

"The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead."

See more famous quotes by Aristotle

The first systematic treatises on the nature of the soul and dreams are to be found in the philosophical writings of Aristotle. Aristotle was the third of a succession of great philosophers (the other two being Socrates and Plato) who are together considered the fathers of Western thought.

Born in the Ionian city of Stagira in Chalcidice, Aristotle (384-322 b.c.e.) Was the son of Nicomachus, the court physician to Amyntas III, king of Macedon. After his father died, he was brought up by the guardian Proxenus, who sent him to Athens. In 367 b.c.e. he entered Plato's Academy, where he remained until Plato's death in 347 b.c.e., joining then a circle of Platonists living at Assos, in the Troad (an area surrounding the ancient city of Troy), under the protection of the tyrant Hermias of Atarneus.

After three years, Aristotle moved to Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, and in 342 b.c.e. he accepted an invitation to supervise the education of Alexander III, later known as Alexander the Great, at the Macedonian court at Pella, where he spent three years. After spending the following five years at Stagira, he returned to Athens, where he opened a new school called the Lyceum. When the school was in danger of attack from the anti-Macedonian party at Athens after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 b.c.e., Aristotle took refuge in Chalcis, on the island of Euboea, where he died the following year.

Aristotle's writings can be classified as popular writings, memoranda and collections of material, and scientific and philosophical treatises. Among Aristotle's most important popular writings were his dialogues, which were based on the Platonic model, and what he refers to as "exoteric writings." None of his popular works and not many of his philosophical works, such as Eudemus, Protrepticus, On Philosophy, On the Good, and On the Ideas, survived except in quotations and references in later works. The memoranda and collections of material contain 158 constitutions of Greek states, a record of dramatic festivals known as the Didascaliae, and Problems and History of Animals. Only a few of these works survive, such as the Constitution of the Athenians.

Among the scientific and philosophical treatises, which constitute the largest surviving segment of Aristotle's writings are the psychological works De Anima and Parva Naturalia. According to Aristotle the object of psychology is to discover the essence and the attributes of the soul (psyche), which to the Greeks referred to the realm of human consciousness and subjectivity.

He developed his doctrine of the soul through three different approaches, characterizing the three periods into which his thought is usually classified. The first approach, corresponding to the period of his earliest writings (through 347 b.c.e.), in which he was an enthusiastic defender of Platonism, was characterized by a Platonic concept of the soul as a separate substance.

Aristotle's second approach, reflecting an increasingly critical attitude toward Platonism and marking the period from 347 to 335 b.c.e., was characterized by his view of the body as the instrument of the soul. This view of the soul and the body can be found both in the biological treatises and throughout the Parva Naturalia, in which the soul is given a physical basis and located in the heart, considered the central governing place of the body.

In Aristotle's final period, beginning in 335 b.c.e., during which he embraced the principle of empirical science and rejected all the essential features of Platonic metaphysics, he developed a theory of the soul as a form of the body, an extension of his earlier theory of the body as the instrument of the soul, which he postulated in Metaphysics. In the treatise De Anima, the soul and body are treated as constituting a single substance, standing to each other in the relation of form to matter.

In De Anima, Aristotle presents a detailed analysis of the faculties of the soul, which, according to him, form a hierarchy, with the highest faculty, intelligence, found only in man, so that living creatures can be classified in a series according to the number of faculties possessed. Each kind of soul presupposes all that come before it in this order, but does not imply those that follow. The minimal soul is the nutritive, existing in all living beings. It is followed by the sensitive soul, existing in all animals and including the perceptions of touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. Besides the function of perceiving, the sensitive soul also has the function of feeling pleasure and pain, and therefore of desiring. There are two other faculties, regarded as outgrowths of the sensitive one: imagination and movement, which can be found in most animals but not in all. Finally there is the highest faculty, reason, peculiar to human beings.

Imagination is considered the repercussion of perception, both in the body and in the soul, and is described as operating only after the sensed object has disappeared. The main functions of imagination are the formation of afterimages and the process of memory, which is a function of the faculty by which we perceive time and which is impossible without an image.

Another important function of imagination is dreams, which are the product of imagination during the state of sleep, and a by-product of previous sensations, since the impressions produced by our senses linger after the senses have ceased to be active. This is evident in the sensuous content of dreams whenever senses themselves are inactive. During the state of sleep, characterized by the absence of stimulus from without, the mind is more free to attend to images and, at the same time, more liable to be deceived by them. Aristotle deals with this subject in a systematic way in three treatises on sleep and dreams, De somno et vigilia, De insomniis, and De divina tione per somnum.

According to Aristotle, sleep and waking, the examination of which is indispensable for the understanding dreams, are two states of the same faculty, whereby waking is the positive and sleep is the negative state. The waking state is determined by activation of the primary or commonsense faculty, the sleeping state by its inactivity. This inactivity of the commonsense faculty can be considered the ultimate cause of dreaming.

The description of sleep as inactivity of the primary or commonsense faculty is presented in De somno et vigilia, in which Aristotle considers sleep and waking as affections of soul and body, taken as a whole. Soul is not considered something foreign to the body, and, during the state of sleep, it is considered capable of attaining the supernatural wisdom that is its original heritage. The heart, which is considered the source of functioning of all the bodily parts, is also the origin of sleep and walking, whereas the brain has a secondary function.

In De insomniis, Aristotle speaks about the illusion of "sense-perception," which, in sleep, is due to the improper functioning of the senses, which frees the way for the forming of dreams, without correction by judgement or evaluation. Neither actual perceptions nor thoughts can form any part of the process of dreaming. Finally, in De divinatione per somnum, Aristotle denies that dreams may have a divine origin, and that they may be interpreted by reliance on supernatural skills. He maintains, rather, that they may be either causes of actions or symptoms of bodily disturbances, and that "divination" through interpretation of dreams is mainly the result of coincidence.

For other uses, see Aristotle (disambiguation).

Aristotle

Western philosophy Ancient philosophy
Statue of Aristotle (1915) by Cipri Adolf Bermann at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau.
Full name	Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs
School/tradition	Peripatetic school Aristotelianism
Main interests	Physics, Metaphysics, Poetry, Theatre, Music, Rhetoric, Politics, Government, Ethics, Biology, Zoology
Notable ideas	Golden mean, Reason, Logic, Passion
Influenced by Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Heraclitus, Democritus
Influenced Alexander the Great, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, and most of Islamic philosophy, Jewish philosophy, Christian philosophy, Western philosophy, and science in general

Part of a series on Aristotle

Aristotelianism · Peripatetic school · Physics · Ethics · Virtue ethics · Golden mean · Four causes · View of God · Potentiality and actuality · Universals · Term logic

Corpus Aristotelicum

Physics · Organon · Nicomachean Ethics · Politics · Metaphysics · On the Soul · Rhetoric · Poetics

Influences and Followers

Heraclitus · Democritus · Plato · Alexander the Great · Theophrastus · Avicenna · Averroes · Maimonides · St. Thomas Aquinas · Alasdair MacIntyre

Related

Platonism · Commentaries on Aristotle · Scholasticism · Conimbricenses

This box: view • talk • edit

Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology.

Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. He was the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian Physics. In the biological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the nineteenth century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late nineteenth century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially Eastern Orthodox theology, and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today.

Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold"), it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived.^[1]

Contents 1 Life 2 Logic 2.1 History 2.2 Analytics and the Organon 3 Aristotle's scientific method 4 Physics 4.1 The five elements 4.2 Causality, The Four Causes 4.3 Optics 4.4 Chance and spontaneity 5 Metaphysics 5.1 Substance, potentiality and actuality 5.2 Universals and particulars 6 Biology and medicine 6.1 Empirical research program 6.2 Classification of living things 6.3 Successor: Theophrastus 6.4 Influence on Hellenistic medicine 7 Practical philosophy 7.1 Ethics 7.2 Politics 7.3 Rhetoric and poetics 8 Loss of his works 9 Legacy 10 List of works 11 See also 12 Notes and references 13 Further reading 14 External links

Life

Aristotle was born in Stageira, Chalcidice, in 384 BC, about 55 km east of modern-day Thessaloniki.^[2] His father Nicomachus was the personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Aristotle was trained and educated as a member of the aristocracy. At about the age of eighteen, he went to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy. Aristotle remained at the academy for nearly twenty years, not leaving until after Plato's death in 347 BC. He then traveled with Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. While in Asia, Aristotle traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Hermias's adoptive daughter (or niece) Pythias. She bore him a daughter, whom they named Pythias. Soon after Hermias' death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander the Great in 343 B.C.^[3]

Early Islamic portrayal of Aristotle

Aristotle portrayed in the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle as a 15th-century-A.D. scholar

Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During that time he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. In his Politics, Aristotle states that only one thing could justify monarchy, and that was if the virtue of the king and his family were greater than the virtue of the rest of the citizens put together. Tactfully, he included the young prince and his father in that category. Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be 'a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants'.^[4] Near the end of Alexander's life he began to suspect plots, and threatened Aristotle in letters. Aristotle had made no secret of his contempt for Alexander's pretense of divinity, and the king had executed Aristotle's grandnephew Callisthenes as a traitor. A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander's death, but there is little evidence for this.^[5]

By 335 BC he had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as the Lyceum. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stageira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus. According to the Suda, he also had an eromenos, Palaephatus of Abydus.^[6]

It is during this period in Athens from 335 B.C. to 323 B.C. when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works.^[3] Aristotle wrote many dialogues, only fragments of which survived. The works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for widespread publication, as they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students. His most important treatises include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul) and Poetics.

Aristotle not only studied almost every subject possible at the time, but made significant contributions to most of them. In physical science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy, economics, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology. In philosophy, he wrote on aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, psychology, rhetoric and theology. He also studied education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works constitute a virtual encyclopedia of Greek knowledge. It has been suggested that Aristotle was probably the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.^[7]

Upon Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens once again flared. Eurymedon the hierophant denounced Aristotle for not holding the gods in honor. Aristotle fled the city to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining, "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy,"^[8] a reference to Athens's prior trial and execution of Socrates. However, he died in Euboea of natural causes within the year (in 322 BC). Aristotle named chief executor his student Antipater and left a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.^[9]

Logic

Main article: Term logic

For more details on this topic, see Non-Aristotelian logic.

With the Prior Analytics, Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic, and his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th century advances in mathematical logic. Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that Aristotle's theory of logic completely accounted for the core of deductive inference.

History

Aristotle "says that 'on the subject of reasoning' he 'had nothing else on an earlier date to speak of'".^[10] However, Plato reports that syntax was devised before him, by Prodicus of Ceos, who was concerned by the correct use of words. Logic seems to have emerged from dialectics; the earlier philosophers made frequent use of concepts like reductio ad absurdum in their discussions, but never truly understood the logical implications. Even Plato had difficulties with logic; although he had a reasonable conception of a deduction system, he could never actually construct one and relied instead on his dialectic.^[11] Plato believed that deduction would simply follow from premises, hence he focused on maintaining solid premises so that the conclusion would logically follow. Consequently, Plato realized that a method for obtaining conclusions would be most beneficial. He never succeeded in devising such a method, but his best attempt was published in his book Sophist, where he introduced his division method.^[12]

Analytics and the Organon

Main article: Organon

What we today call Aristotelian logic, Aristotle himself would have labeled "analytics". The term "logic" he reserved to mean dialectics. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form, since it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into six books in about the early 1st century AD:

1. Categories
2. On Interpretation
3. Prior Analytics
4. Posterior Analytics
5. Topics
6. On Sophistical Refutations

The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of simple terms in the Categories, to the study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the Analytics) and dialectics (in the Topics and Sophistical Refutations). There is one volume of Aristotle's concerning logic not found in the Organon, namely the fourth book of Metaphysics..^[11]

Aristotle's scientific method

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand, whilst Plato gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in The Forms.

For more details on this topic, see Aristotle's theory of universals.

Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aims at the universal. Aristotle, however, found the universal in particular things, which he called the essence of things, while Plato finds that the universal exists apart from particular things, and is related to them as their prototype or exemplar. For Aristotle, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for Plato philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) to a contemplation of particular imitations of these. For Aristotle, "form" still refers to the unconditional basis of phenomena but is "instantiated" in a particular substance (see Universals and particulars, below). In a certain sense, Aristotle's method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato's is essentially deductive from a priori principles.^[13]

In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and includes fields that would be regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences. In modern times, the scope of philosophy has become limited to more generic or abstract inquiries, such as ethics and metaphysics, in which logic plays a major role. Today's philosophy tends to exclude empirical study of the natural world by means of the scientific method. In contrast, Aristotle's philosophical endeavors encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry.

In the larger sense of the word, Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as "science". Note, however, that his use of the term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For Aristotle, "all science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical" (Metaphysics 1025b25). By practical science, he means ethics and politics; by poetical science, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; by theoretical science, he means physics, mathematics and metaphysics.

If logic (or "analytics") is regarded as a study preliminary to philosophy, the divisions of Aristotelian philosophy would consist of: (1) Logic; (2) Theoretical Philosophy, including Metaphysics, Physics, Mathematics, (3) Practical Philosophy and (4) Poetical Philosophy.

In the period between his two stays in Athens, between his times at the Academy and the Lyceum, Aristotle conducted most of the scientific thinking and research for which he is renowned today. In fact, most of Aristotle's life was devoted to the study of the objects of natural science. Aristotle's metaphysics contains observations on the nature of numbers but he made no original contributions to mathematics. He did, however, perform original research in the natural sciences, e.g., botany, zoology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, and several other sciences.

Aristotle's writings on science are largely qualitative, as opposed to quantitative. Beginning in the sixteenth century, scientists began applying mathematics to the physical sciences, and Aristotle's work in this area was deemed hopelessly inadequate. His failings were largely due to the absence of concepts like mass, velocity, force and temperature. He had a conception of speed and temperature, but no quantitative understanding of them, which was partly due to the absence of basic experimental devices, like clocks and thermometers.

A green and red Perseid meteor is striking the sky.

His writings provide an account of many scientific observations, a mixture of precocious accuracy and curious errors. For example, in his History of Animals he claimed that human males have more teeth than females^[14] and in the Generation of Animals he said the female is as it were a deformed male.^[15]

In a similar vein, John Philoponus, and later Galileo, showed by simple experiments that Aristotle's theory that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect.^[16] On the other hand, Aristotle refuted Democritus's claim that the Milky Way was made up of "those stars which are shaded by the earth from the sun's rays," pointing out (correctly, even if such reasoning was bound to be dismissed for a long time) that, given "current astronomical demonstrations" that "the size of the sun is greater than that of the earth and the distance of the stars from the earth many times greater than that of the sun, then...the sun shines on all the stars and the earth screens none of them."^[17]

In places, Aristotle goes too far in deriving 'laws of the universe' from simple observation and over-stretched reason. Today's scientific method assumes that such thinking without sufficient facts is ineffective, and that discerning the validity of one's hypothesis requires far more rigorous experimentation than that which Aristotle used to support his laws.

Aristotle also had some scientific blind spots. He posited a geocentric cosmology that we may discern in selections of the Metaphysics, which was widely accepted up until the 1500s. From the 3rd century to the 1500s, the dominant view held that the Earth was the center of the universe (geocentrism).

Since he was perhaps the philosopher most respected by European thinkers during and after the Renaissance, these thinkers often took Aristotle's erroneous positions as given, which held back science in this epoch.^[18] However, Aristotle's scientific shortcomings should not mislead one into forgetting his great advances in the many scientific fields. For instance, he founded logic as a formal science and created foundations to biology that were not superseded for two millennia. Moreover, he introduced the fundamental notion that nature is composed of things that change and that studying such changes can provide useful knowledge of underlying constants.

Physics

Main article: Physics (Aristotle)

The five elements

Main article: Classical element

• Fire, which is hot and dry.
• Earth, which is cold and dry.
• Air, which is hot and wet.
• Water, which is cold and wet.
• Aether, which is the divine substance that makes up the heavenly spheres and heavenly bodies (stars and planets).

Each of the four earthly elements has its natural place; the earth at the centre of the universe, then water, then air, then fire. When they are out of their natural place they have natural motion, requiring no external cause, which is towards that place; so bodies sink in water, air bubbles rise up, rain falls, flame rises in air. The heavenly element has perpetual circular motion.

Causality, The Four Causes

Main article: Four causes

• Material cause describes the material out of which something is composed. Thus the material cause of a table is wood, and the material cause of a car is rubber and steel. It is not about action. It does not mean one domino knocks over another domino.
• The formal cause tells us what a thing is, that any thing is determined by the definition, form, pattern, essence, whole, synthesis or archetype. It embraces the account of causes in terms of fundamental principles or general laws, as the whole (i.e., macrostructure) is the cause of its parts, a relationship known as the whole-part causation. Plainly put the formal cause according to which a statue or a domino, is made is the idea existing in the first place as exemplar in the mind of the sculptor, and in the second place as intrinsic, determining cause, embodied in the matter. Formal cause could only refer to the essential quality of causation. A more simple example of the formal cause is the blueprint or plan that one has before making or causing a human made object to exist.

• The efficient cause is that from which the change or the ending of the change first starts. It identifies 'what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed' and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the sources of change or movement or rest. Representing the current understanding of causality as the relation of cause and effect, this covers the modern definitions of "cause" as either the agent or agency or particular events or states of affairs. More simply again that which immediately sets the thing in motion. So take the two dominos this time of equal weighting, the first is knocked over causing the second also to fall over. This is effectively efficient cause.
• The final cause is that for the sake of which a thing exists or is done, including both purposeful and instrumental actions and activities. The final cause or telos is the purpose or end that something is supposed to serve, or it is that from which and that to which the change is. This also covers modern ideas of mental causation involving such psychological causes as volition, need, motivation or motives, rational, irrational, ethical, and all that gives purpose to behavior.

Additionally, things can be causes of one another, causing each other reciprocally, as hard work causes fitness and vice versa, although not in the same way or function, the one is as the beginning of change, the other as the goal. (Thus Aristotle first suggested a reciprocal or circular causality as a relation of mutual dependence or influence of cause upon effect). Moreover, Aristotle indicated that the same thing can be the cause of contrary effects; its presence and absence may result in different outcomes. Simply it is the goal or purpose that brings about an event (not necessarily a mental goal). Taking our two dominos, it requires someone to intentionally knock the dominos over as they cannot fall themselves.

Aristotle marked two modes of causation: proper (prior) causation and accidental (chance) causation. All causes, proper and incidental, can be spoken as potential or as actual, particular or generic. The same language refers to the effects of causes, so that generic effects assigned to generic causes, particular effects to particular causes, operating causes to actual effects. Essentially, causality does not suggest a temporal relation between the cause and the effect.

All further investigations of causality will consist of imposing the favorite hierarchies on the order causes, such as final > efficient > material > formal (Thomas Aquinas), or of restricting all causality to the material and efficient causes or to the efficient causality (deterministic or chance) or just to regular sequences and correlations of natural phenomena (the natural sciences describing how things happen instead of explaining the whys and wherefores).

Optics

Aristotle held more accurate theories on some optical concepts than other philosophers of his day. The earliest known written evidence of a camera obscura can be found in Aristotle's documentation of such a device in 350 BC in Problemata. Aristotle's apparatus contained a dark chamber that had a single small hole, or aperture, to allow for sunlight to enter. Aristotle used the device to make observations of the sun and noted that no matter what shape the hole was, the sun would still be correctly displayed as a round object. In modern cameras, this is analogous to the diaphragm. Aristotle also made the observation that when the distance between the tiny hole and the surface with the image increased, the image was amplified.^[19]

Chance and spontaneity

Spontaneity and chance are causes of effects. Chance as an incidental cause lies in the realm of accidental things. It is "from what is spontaneous" (but note that what is spontaneous does not come from chance). For a better understanding of Aristotle's conception of "chance" it might be better to think of "coincidence": Something takes place by chance if a person sets out with the intent of having one thing take place, but with the result of another thing (not intended) taking place. For example: A person seeks donations. That person may find another person willing to donate a substantial sum. However, if the person seeking the donations met the person donating, not for the purpose of collecting donations, but for some other purpose, Aristotle would call the collecting of the donation by that particular donator a result of chance. It must be unusual that something happens by chance. In other words, if something happens all or most of the time, we cannot say that it is by chance.

There is also more specific kind of chance, which Aristotle names "luck", that can only apply to human beings, since it is in the sphere of moral actions. According to Aristotle, luck must involve choice (and thus deliberation), and only humans are capable of deliberation and choice. "What is not capable of action cannot do anything by chance".^[20]

Metaphysics

Main article: Metaphysics (Aristotle)

Aristotle defines metaphysics as "the knowledge of immaterial being," or of "being in the highest degree of abstraction." He refers to metaphysics as "first philosophy", as well as "the theologic science."

Substance, potentiality and actuality

See also: Potentiality and actuality (Aristotle)

Aristotle examines the concept of substance and essence (ousia) in his Metaphysics, Book VII and he concludes that a particular substance is a combination of both matter and form. As he proceeds to the book VIII, he concludes that the matter of the substance is the substratum or the stuff of which it is composed, e.g. the matter of the house are the bricks, stones, timbers etc., or whatever constitutes the potential house. While the form of the substance, is the actual house, namely 'covering for bodies and chattels' or any other differentia (see also predicables). The formula that gives the components is the account of the matter, and the formula that gives the differentia is the account of the form.^[21]

With regard to the change (kinesis) and its causes now, as he defines in his Physics and On Generation and Corruption 319b-320a, he distinguishes the coming to be from: 1) growth and diminution, which is change in quantity; 2) locomotion, which is change in space; and 3) alteration, which is change in quality.

The coming to be is a change where nothing persists of which the resultant is a property. In that particular change he introduces the concept of potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (entelecheia) in association with the matter and the form.

Referring to potentiality, this is what a thing is capable of doing, or being acted upon, if it is not prevented by something else. For example, the seed of a plant in the soil is potentially (dynamei) plant, and if is not prevented by something, it will become a plant. Potentially beings can either 'act' (poiein) or 'be acted upon' (paschein), which can be either innate or learned. For example, the eyes possess the potentiality of sight (innate - being acted upon), while the capability of playing the flute can be possessed by learning (exercise - acting).

Actuality is the fulfillment of the end of the potentiality. Because the end (telos) is the principle of every change, and for the sake of the end exists potentiality, therefore actuality is the end. Referring then to our previous example, we could say that actuality is when the seed of the plant becomes a plant.

" For that for the sake of which a thing is, is its principle, and the becoming is for the sake of the end; and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired. For animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see."^[22]

In conclusion, the matter of the house is its potentiality and the form is its actuality. The formal cause (aitia) then of that change from potential to actual house, is the reason (logos) of the house builder and the final cause is the end, namely the house itself. Then Aristotle proceeds and concludes that the actuality is prior to potentiality in formula, in time and in substantiality.

With this definition of the particular substance (i.e., matter and form), Aristotle tries to solve the problem of the unity of the beings, e.g., what is that makes the man one? Since, according to Plato there are two Ideas: animal and biped, how then is man a unity? However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same thing.^[23]

Universals and particulars

Main article: Aristotle's theory of universals

Aristotle's predecessor, Plato, argued that all things have a universal form, which could be either a property, or a relation to other things. When we look at an apple, for example, we see an apple, and we can also analyze a form of an apple. In this distinction, there is a particular apple and a universal form of an apple. Moreover, we can place an apple next to a book, so that we can speak of both the book and apple as being next to each other.

Plato argued that there are some universal forms that are not a part of particular things. For example, it is possible that there is no particular good in existence, but "good" is still a proper universal form. Bertrand Russell is a contemporary philosopher that agreed with Plato on the existence of "uninstantiated universals".

Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this point, arguing that all universals are instantiated. Aristotle argued that there are no universals that are unattached to existing things. According to Aristotle, if a universal exists, either as a particular or a relation, then there must have been, must be currently, or must be in the future, something on which the universal can be predicated. Consequently, according to Aristotle, if it is not the case that some universal can be predicated to an object that exists at some period of time, then it does not exist.

One way for contemporary philosophers to justify this position is by asserting the eleatic principle.

In addition, Aristotle disagreed with Plato about the location of universals. As Plato spoke of the world of the forms, a location where all universal forms subsist, Aristotle maintained that universals exist within each thing on which each universal is predicated. So, according to Aristotle, the form of apple exists within each apple, rather than in the world of the forms.

Biology and medicine

In Aristotelian science, most especially in biology, things he saw himself have stood the test of time better than his retelling of the reports of others, which contain error and superstition. He dissected animals, but not humans and his ideas on how the human body works have been almost entirely superseded.

Empirical research program

Octopus swimming

Torpedo fuscomaculata

Aristotle is the earliest natural historian whose work has survived in some detail. Aristotle certainly did research on the natural history of Lesbos, and the surrounding seas and neighbouring areas. The works that reflect this research, such as History of Animals, Generation of Animals, and Parts of Animals, contain some observations and interpretations, along with sundry myths and mistakes. The most striking passages are about the sea-life visible from observation on Lesbos and available from the catches of fishermen. His observations on catfish, electric fish (Torpedo) and angler-fish are detailed, as is his writing on cephalopods, namely, Octopus, Sepia (cuttlefish) and the paper nautilus (Argonauta argo). His description of the hectocotyl arm was about two thousand years ahead of its time, and widely disbelieved until its rediscovery in the nineteenth century. He separated the aquatic mammals from fish, and knew that sharks and rays were part of the group he called Selachē (selachians).^[24]

Leopard shark

Another good example of his methods comes from the Generation of Animals in which Aristotle describes breaking open fertilized chicken eggs at intervals to observe when visible organs were generated.

He gave accurate descriptions of ruminants' four-chambered fore-stomachs, and of the ovoviviparous embryological development of the hound shark Mustelus mustelus.^[25]

Classification of living things

Aristotle's classification of living things contains some elements which still existed in the nineteenth century. What the modern zoologist would call vertebrates and invertebrates, Aristotle called 'animals with blood' and 'animals without blood' (he was not to know that complex invertebrates do make use of haemoglobin, but of a different kind from vertebrates). Animals with blood were divided into live-bearing (humans and mammals), and egg-bearing (birds and fish). Invertebrates ('animals without blood') are insects, crustacea (divided into non-shelled – cephalopods – and shelled) and testacea (molluscs). In some respects, this incomplete classification is better than that of Linnaeus, who crowded the invertebrata together into two groups, Insecta and Vermes (worms).

For Charles Singer, "Nothing is more remarkable than [Aristotle's] efforts to [exhibit] the relationships of living things as a scala naturae"^[24] Aristotle's History of Animals classified organisms in relation to a hierarchical "Ladder of Life" (scala naturae), placing them according to complexity of structure and function so that higher organisms showed greater vitality and ability to move.^[26]

Aristotle believed that intellectual purposes, i.e., formal causes, guided all natural processes. Such a teleological view gave Aristotle cause to justify his observed data as an expression of formal design. Noting that "no animal has, at the same time, both tusks and horns," and "a single-hooved animal with two horns I have never seen," Aristotle suggested that Nature, giving no animal both horns and tusks, was staving off vanity, and giving creatures faculties only to such a degree as they are necessary. Noting that ruminants had a multiple stomachs and weak teeth, he supposed the first was to compensate for the latter, with Nature trying to preserve a type of balance.^[27]

In a similar fashion, Aristotle believed that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of perfection rising from plants on up to man, the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being.^[28] His system had eleven grades, arranged according "to the degree to which they are infected with potentiality", expressed in their form at birth. The highest animals laid warm and wet creatures alive, the lowest bore theirs cold, dry, and in thick eggs.

Aristotle also held that the level of a creature's perfection was reflected in its form, but not preordained by that form. Ideas like this, and his ideas about souls, are not regarded as science at all in modern times.

He placed emphasis on the type(s) of soul an organism possessed, asserting that plants possess a vegetative soul, responsible for reproduction and growth, animals a vegetative and a sensitive soul, responsible for mobility and sensation, and humans a vegetative, a sensitive, and a rational soul, capable of thought and reflection.^[29]

Aristotle, in contrast to earlier philosophers, but in accordance with the Egyptians, placed the rational soul in the heart, rather than the brain.^[30] Notable is Aristotle's division of sensation and thought, which generally went against previous philosophers, with the exception of Alcmaeon.^[31]

Successor: Theophrastus

Frontispiece to a 1644 version of the expanded and illustrated edition of Historia Plantarum (ca. 1200), which was originally written around 200 BC

Main articles: Theophrastus and Historia Plantarum

Aristotle's successor at the Lyceum, Theophrastus, wrote a series of books on botany—the History of Plants—which survived as the most important contribution of antiquity to botany, even into the Middle Ages. Many of Theophrastus' names survive into modern times, such as carpos for fruit, and pericarpion for seed vessel.

Rather than focus on formal causes, as Aristotle did, Theophrastus suggested a mechanistic scheme, drawing analogies between natural and artificial processes, and relying on Aristotle's concept of the efficient cause. Theophrastus also recognized the role of sex in the reproduction of some higher plants, though this last discovery was lost in later ages.^[32]

Influence on Hellenistic medicine

For more details on this topic, see Medicine in ancient Greece.

After Theophrastus, the Lyceum failed to produce any original work. Though interest in Aristotle's ideas survived, they were generally taken unquestioningly.^[33] It is not until the age of Alexandria under the Ptolemies that advances in biology can be again found.

The first medical teacher at Alexandria Herophilus of Chalcedon, corrected Aristotle, placing intelligence in the brain, and connected the nervous system to motion and sensation. Herophilus also distinguished between veins and arteries, noting that the latter pulse while the former do not.^[34] Though a few ancient atomists such as Lucretius challenged the teleological viewpoint of Aristotelian ideas about life, teleology (and after the rise of Christianity, natural theology) would remain central to biological thought essentially until the 18th and 19th centuries. Ernst Mayr claimed that there was "nothing of any real consequence in biology after Lucretius and Galen until the Renaissance."^[35] Aristotle's ideas of natural history and medicine survived, but they were generally taken unquestioningly.^[36]

Practical philosophy

Ethics

Main article: Aristotelian ethics

Aristotle considered ethics to be a practical science, i.e., one mastered by doing rather than merely reasoning. Further, Aristotle believed that ethical knowledge is not certain knowledge (such as metaphysics or epistemology) but is general knowledge. He wrote several treatises on ethics, including most notably, Nichomachean Ethics, in which he outlines what is commonly called virtue ethics.

Aristotle taught that virtue has to do with the proper function of a thing. An eye is only a good eye in so much as it can see, because the proper function of an eye is sight. Aristotle reasoned that man must have a function uncommon to anything else, and that this function must be an activity of the soul. Aristotle identified the best activity of the soul as eudaimonia: a happiness or joy that pervades the good life. Aristotle taught that to achieve the good life, one must live a balanced life and avoid excess. This balance, he taught, varies among different persons and situations, and exists as a golden mean between two vices - one an excess and one a deficiency.

Politics

Main article: Politics (Aristotle)

In addition to his works on ethics, which address the individual, Aristotle addressed the city in his work titled Politics. Aristotle's conception of the city is organic, and he is considered one of the first to conceive of the city in this manner.^[37] Aristotle considered the city to be a natural community. Moreover, he considered the city to be prior to the family which in turn is prior to the individual, i.e., last in the order of becoming, but first in the order of being . He is also famous for his statement that "man is by nature a political animal." Aristotle conceived of politics as being like an organism rather than like a machine, and as a collection of parts none of which can exist without the others.

It should be noted that the modern understanding of a political community is that of the state. However, the state was foreign to Aristotle. He referred to political communities as cities. Aristotle understood a city as a political "partnership" and not one of a social contract (or compact) or a political community as understood by Niccolò Machiavelli. Subsequently, a city is created not to avoid injustice or for economic stability , but rather to live a good life: "The political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together" . This can be distinguished from the social contract theory which individuals leave the state of nature because of "fear of violent death" or its "inconveniences."^[38]

Rhetoric and poetics

Main articles: Rhetoric (Aristotle) and Poetics (Aristotle)

Aristotle considered epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry and music to be imitative, each varying in imitation by media, object, and manner.^[39] For example, music imitates with the media of rhythm and harmony, whereas dance imitates with rhythm alone, and poetry with language. The forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is a dramatic imitation of men worse than average; whereas tragedy imitates men slightly better than average. Lastly, the forms differ in their manner of imitation - through narrative or character, through change or no change, and through drama or no drama.^[40] Aristotle believed that imitation is natural to mankind and constitutes one of mankind's advantages over animals.^[41]

While it is believed that Aristotle's Poetics comprised two books - one on comedy and one on tragedy - only the portion that focuses on tragedy has survived. Aristotle taught that tragedy is composed of six elements: plot-structure, character, style, spectacle, and lyric poetry.^[42] The characters in a tragedy are merely a means of driving the story; and the plot, not the characters, is the chief focus of tragedy. Tragedy is the imitation of action arousing pity and fear, and is meant to effect the catharsis of those same emotions. Aristotle concludes Poetics with a discussion on which, if either, is superior: epic or tragic mimesis. He suggests that because tragedy possesses all the attributes of an epic, possibly possesses additional attributes such as spectacle and music, is more unified, and achieves the aim of its mimesis in shorter scope, it can be considered superior to epic.^[43]

Aristotle was a keen systematic collector of riddles, folklore, and proverbs; he and his school had a special interest in the riddles of the Delphic Oracle and studied the fables of Aesop.^[44]

Loss of his works

According to a distinction that originates with Aristotle himself, his writings are divisible into two groups: the "exoteric" and the "esoteric".^[45] Most scholars have understood this as a distinction between works Aristotle intended for the public (exoteric), and the more technical works (esoteric) intended for the narrower audience of Aristotle's students and other philosophers who were familiar with the jargon and issues typical of the Platonic and Aristotelian schools. Another common assumption is that none of the exoteric works is extant - that all of Aristotle's extant writings are of the esoteric kind. Current knowledge of what exactly the exoteric writings were like is scant and dubious, though many of them may have been in dialogue form. (Fragments of some of Aristotle's dialogues have survived.) Perhaps it is to these that Cicero refers when he characterized Aristotle's writing style as "a river of gold";^[46] it is hard for many modern readers to accept that one could seriously so admire the style of those works currently available to us.^[47] However, some modern scholars have warned that we cannot know for certain that Cicero's praise was reserved specifically for the exoteric works; a few modern scholars have actually admired the concise writing style found in Aristotle's extant works.^[48]

One major question in the history of Aristotle's works, then, is how were the exoteric writings all lost, and how did the ones we now possess come to us?^[49] The story of the original manuscripts of the esoteric treatises is described by Strabo in his Geography and Plutarch in his Parallel Lives.^[50] The manuscripts were left from Aristotle to his successor Theophrastus, who in turn willed them to Neleus of Scepsis. Neleus supposedly took the writings from Athens to Scepsis, where his heirs let them languish in a cellar until the first century BC, when Apellicon of Teos discovered and purchased the manuscripts, bringing them back to Athens. According to the story, Apellicon tried to repair some of the damage that was done during the manuscripts' stay in the basement, introducing a number of errors into the text. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla occupied Athens in 86 BC, he carried off the library of Apellicon to Rome, where they were first published in 60 BC by the grammarian Tyrannion of Amisus and then by philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes.

Carnes Lord attributes the popular belief in this story to the fact that it provides "the most plausible explanation for the rapid eclipse of the Peripatetic school after the middle of the third century, and for the absence of widespread knowledge of the specialized treatises of Aristotle throughout the Hellenistic period, as well as for the sudden reappearance of a flourishing Aristotelianism during the first century B.C."^[51] Lord voices a number of reservations concerning this story, however. First, the condition of the texts is far too good for them to have suffered considerable damage followed by Apellicon's inexpert attempt at repair. Second, there is "incontrovertible evidence," Lord says, that the treatises were in circulation during the time in which Strabo and Plutarch suggest they were confined within the cellar in Scepsis. Third, the definitive edition of Aristotle's texts seems to have been made in Athens some fifty years before Andronicus supposedly compiled his. And fourth, ancient library catalogues predating Andronicus' intervention list an Aristotelean corpus quite similar to the one we currently possess. Lord sees a number of post-Aristotelean interpolations in the Politics, for example, but is generally confident that the work has come down to us relatively intact.

As the influence of the falsafa grew in the West, in part due to Gerard of Cremona's translations and the spread of Averroism, the demand for Aristotle's works grew. William of Moerbeke translated a number of them into Latin. When Thomas Aquinas wrote his theology, working from Moerbeke's translations, the demand for Aristotle's writings grew and the Greek manuscripts returned to the West, stimulating a revival of Aristotelianism in Europe, and ultimately revitalizing European thought through Muslim influence in Spain to fan the embers of the Renaissance.

Legacy

Twenty-three hundred years after his death, Aristotle remains one of the most influential people who ever lived. He was the founder of formal logic, pioneered the study of zoology, and left every future scientist and philosopher in his debt through his contributions to the scientific method.^[52][53] Despite these accolades, many of Aristotle's errors held back science considerably. Bertrand Russell notes that "almost every serious intellectual advance has had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine". Russell also refers to Aristotle's ethics as "repulsive", and calls his logic "as definitely antiquated as Ptolemaic astronomy". Russell notes that these errors make it difficult to do historical justice to Aristotle, until one remembers how large of an advance he made upon all of his predecessors.^[3] Of course, the problem of excessive devotion to Aristotle is more a problem of those later centuries and not of Aristotle himself.

Portrait of Aristoteles. Pentelic marble, copy of the Imperial Period (1st or 2nd century) of a lost bronze sculpture made by Lysippos.

The immediate influence of Aristotle's work was felt as the Lyceum grew into the Peripatetic school. Aristotle's notable students included Aristoxenus, Dicaearchus, Demetrius of Phalerum, Eudemos of Rhodes, Harpalus, Hephaestion, Meno, Mnason of Phocis, Nicomachus, and Theophrastus. Aristotle's influence over Alexander the Great is seen in the latter's bringing with him on his expedition a host of zoologists, botanists, and researchers. He had also learned a great deal about Persian customs and traditions from his teacher. Although his respect for Aristotle was diminished as his travels made it clear that much of Aristotle's geography was clearly wrong, when the old philosopher released his works to the public, Alexander complained "Thou hast not done well to publish thy acroamatic doctrines; for in what shall I surpass other men if those doctrines wherein I have been trained are to be all men's common property?"^[54]

Aristotle is referred to as "The Philosopher" by Scholastic thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. See Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 3, etc. These thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. It required a repudiation of some Aristotelian principles for the sciences and the arts to free themselves for the discovery of modern scientific laws and empirical methods. The medieval English poet Chaucer describes his student as being happy by having

                      at his beddes heed

Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,

Of aristotle and his philosophie,^[55]

The Italian poet Dante says of Aristotle in the first circles of hell,

I saw the Master there of those who know,

Amid the philosophic family,

By all admired, and by all reverenced;

There Plato too I saw, and Socrates,

Who stood beside him closer than the rest.^[56]

Aristotle believed that women are colder than men and thus a lower form of life.^[57] His assumption unfortunately carried forward unexamined to Galen and others for almost two thousand years until the sixteenth century.^[58] He also believed that females could not be fully human.^[59] His analysis of procreation is frequently criticized on the grounds that it presupposes an active, ensouling masculine element bringing life to an inert, passive, lumpen female element; it is on these grounds that Aristotle is considered by some feminist critics to have been a misogynist.^[60]

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has been said to have taken nearly all of his political philosophy from Aristotle.^[61] However implausible this is, it is certainly the case that Aristotle's rigid separation of action from production, and his justification of the subservience of slaves and others to the virtue - or arete - of a few justified the ideal of aristocracy. It is Martin Heidegger, not Nietzsche, who elaborated a new interpretation of Aristotle, intended to warrant his deconstruction of scholastic and philosophical tradition. More recently, Alasdair MacIntyre has attempted to reform what he calls the Aristotelian tradition in a way that is anti-elitist and capable of disputing the claims of both liberals and Nietzscheans.^[62]

List of works

Main article: Corpus Aristotelicum

See also

• Aristotelian ethics
• Aristotelian physics
• Aristotelian view of God
• List of writers influenced by Aristotle
• List of teachings attributed to Aristotle
• Corpus Aristotelicum
• Conimbricenses
• Hylomorphism
• Philia
• Phronesis

Notes and references

1. ^ Jonathan Barnes, "Life and Work" in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (1995), p. 9.
2. ^ McLeish, Kenneth (1999). Aristotle: The Dancing Queen, The Great Philosophers. Routledge. p. 5. ISBN 0-415-92392-1. 
3. ^ ^{a b c} Bertrand Russell, "A History of Western Philosophy", Simon & Schuster, 1972
4. ^ Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon, 1991 University of California Press, Ltd. Oxford, England. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, p.58-59
5. ^ Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon, 1991 University of California Press, Ltd. Oxford, England. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, p.379,459
6. ^ William George Smith,Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. 3, p. 88
7. ^ Neill, Alex; Aaron Ridley (1995). The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern. McGraw Hill. p. 488. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0070461929/. 
8. ^ Jones, W.T. (1980). The Classical Mind: A History of Western Philosophy. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 216. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0155383124/. , cf. Vita Marciana 41.
9. ^ Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt by Hildegard Temporini, Wolfgang HaaseAristotle's Will
10. ^ Bocheński, I. M. (1951). Ancient Formal Logic. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company. 
11. ^ ^{a b} Bocheński, 1951.
12. ^ Rose, Lynn E. (1968). Aristotle's Syllogistic. Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher. 
13. ^ Jori, Alberto (2003). Aristotele. Milano: Bruno Mondadori Editore. 
14. ^ Aristotle, History of Animals, 2.3.
15. ^ Aristotle, 1943 (1953). Generation of animals. Harvard University Press via Google Books. 
16. ^ "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy". Plato.stanford.edu. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philoponus/#2.2. Retrieved on 2009-04-26. 
17. ^ Aristotle, Meteorology 1.8, trans. E.W. Webster, rev. J. Barnes.
18. ^ Burent, John. 1928. Platonism, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 61, 103-104.
19. ^ Michael Lahanas. "Optics and ancient Greeks". Mlahanas.de. http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Optics.htm. Retrieved on 2009-04-26. 
20. ^ Aristotle, Physics 2.6
21. ^ Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII 1043a 10-30
22. ^ Aristotle, Metaphysics IX 1050a 5-10
23. ^ Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII 1045a-b
24. ^ ^{a b} Singer, Charles. A short history of biology. Oxford 1931.
25. ^ Emily Kearns, "Animals, knowledge about," in Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., 1996, p. 92.
26. ^ Aristotle, of course, is not responsible for the later use made of this idea by clerics.
27. ^ Mason, A History of the Sciences pp 43-44
28. ^ Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp 201-202; see also: Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being
29. ^ Aristotle, De Anima II 3
30. ^ Mason, A History of the Sciences pp 45
31. ^ Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy Vol. 1 pp. 348
32. ^ Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp 90-91; Mason, A History of the Sciences, p 46
33. ^ Annas, Classical Greek Philosophy pp 252
34. ^ Mason, A History of the Sciences pp 56
35. ^ Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp 90-94; quotation from p 91
36. ^ Annas, Classical Greek Philosophy, p 252
37. ^ Ebenstein, Alan; William Ebenstein (2002). Introduction to Political Thinkers. Wadsworth Group. p. 59. 
38. ^ For a different reading of social and economic processes in the Nicomacean Ethics and Politics see Polanyi, K. (1957) "Aristotle Discovers the Economy" in Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi ed. G. Dalton, Boston 1971, 78-115
39. ^ Aristotle, Poetics I 1447a
40. ^ Aristotle, Poetics III
41. ^ Aristotle, Poetics IV
42. ^ Aristotle, Poetics VI
43. ^ Aristotle, Poetics XXVI
44. ^ Temple, Olivia, and Temple, Robert (translators), The Complete Fables By Aesop Penguin Classics, 1998. ISBN 0140446494 Cf. Introduction, pp. xi-xii.
45. ^ Jonathan Barnes, "Life and Work" in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (1995), p. 12; Aristotle himself: Nichomachean Ethics 1102a26-27. Aristotle himself never uses the term "esoteric" or "acroamatic". For other passages where Aristotle speaks of exōterikoi logoi, see W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics (1953), vol. 2, pp. 408-410. Ross defends an interpretation according to which the phrase, at least in Aristotle's own works, usually refers generally to "discussions not peculiar to the Peripatetic school", rather than to specific works of Aristotle's own.
46. ^ Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106BC-43BC). ""flumen orationis aureum fundens Aristoteles"". Academica. http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/gutenberg/1/4/9/7/14970/14970-h/14970-h.htm#BkII_119. Retrieved on 25 January 2007. 
47. ^ Barnes, "Life and Work", p. 12.
48. ^ Barnes, "Roman Aristotle", in Gregory Nagy, Greek Literature, Routledge 2001, vol. 8, p. 174 n. 240.
49. ^ The definitive, English study of these questions is Barnes, "Roman Aristotle".
50. ^ "Sulla."
51. ^ Lord, Carnes (1984). Introduction to the Politics, by Aristotle. Chicago: Chicago University Press. p. 11. 
52. ^ "Aristotle (Greek philosopher) - Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/34560/Aristotle. Retrieved on 2009-04-26. 
53. ^ Durant, Will (1926 (2006)). The Story of Philosophy. United States: Simon & Schuster, Inc.. p. 92. ISBN 9780671739164. 
54. ^ Plutarch, Life of Alexander
55. ^ Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Prologue, lines 295-295
56. ^ vidi ’l maestro di color che sanno
    seder tra filosofica famiglia.
    Tutti lo miran, tutti onor li fanno:
    quivi vid’ïo Socrate e Platone
    che ’nnanzi a li altri più presso li stanno;
    Dante, L’Inferno (Hell), Canto IV. Lines 131-135
57. ^ Lovejoy, Arthur (1964). The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674361539. 
58. ^ Tuana, Nancy (1993). The Less Noble Sex: Scientific, Religious and Philosophical Conceptions of Women's Nature. Indiana University Press. pp. 21, 169. ISBN 0-253-36098-6. 
59. ^ Tuana, The Less Noble Sex p. 19, and footnote 8 p. 176
60. ^ Harding, Sandra; Merrill B. Hintikka (31 December 1999). Discovering Reality,: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Springer. p. 372. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/9027714967/. 
61. ^ Durant, p. 86
62. ^ Kelvin Knight, Aristotelian Philosophy, Polity Press, 2007, passim.

Further reading

The secondary literature on Aristotle is vast. The following references are only a small selection.

• Ackrill J. L. 2001. Essays on Plato and Aristotle, Oxford University Press, USA
• Adler, Mortimer J. (1978). Aristotle for Everybody. New York: Macmillan.  A popular exposition for the general reader.
• Bakalis Nikolaos. 2005. Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing ISBN 1-4120-4843-5
• Barnes J. 1995. The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, Cambridge University Press
• Bocheński, I. M. (1951). Ancient Formal Logic. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company. 
• Bolotin, David (1998). An Approach to Aristotle's Physics: With Particular Attention to the Role of His Manner of Writing. Albany: SUNY Press. A contribution to our understanding of how to read Aristotle's scientific works.
• Burnyeat, M. F. et al. 1979. Notes on Book Zeta of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Oxford: Sub-faculty of Philosophy
• Chappell, V. 1973. Aristotle's Conception of Matter, Journal of Philosophy 70: 679-696
• Code, Alan. 1995. Potentiality in Aristotle's Science and Metaphysics, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 76
• Frede, Michael. 1987. Essays in Ancient Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
• Gill, Mary Louise. 1989. Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity. Princeton: Princeton University Press
• Guthrie, W. K. C. (1981). A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 6. Cambridge University Press. 
• Halper, Edward C. (2007) One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics, Volume 1: Books Alpha — Delta, Parmenides Publishing, ISBN 978-1-930972-21-6
• Halper, Edward C. (2005) One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics, Volume 2: The Central Books, Parmenides Publishing, ISBN 978-1-930972-05-6
• Irwin, T. H. 1988. Aristotle's First Principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press
• Jori, Alberto. 2003. Aristotele, Milano: Bruno Mondadori Editore (Prize 2003 of the "International Academy of the History of Science") ISBN 88-424-9737-1
• Knight, Kelvin. 2007. Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre, Polity Press.
• Lewis, Frank A. 1991. Substance and Predication in Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lloyd, G. E. R. 1968. Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of his Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., ISBN 0-521-09456-9.
• Lord, Carnes. 1984. Introduction to The Politics, by Aristotle. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
• Loux, Michael J. 1991. Primary Ousia: An Essay on Aristotle's Metaphysics Ζ and Η. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
• Owen, G. E. L. 1965c. The Platonism of Aristotle, Proceedings of the British Academy 50 125-150. Reprinted in J. Barnes, M. Schofield, and R. R. K. Sorabji (eds.), Articles on Aristotle, Vol 1. Science. London: Duckworth (1975). 14-34
• Pangle, Lorraine Smith (2003). Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aristotle's conception of the deepest human relationship viewed in the light of the history of philosophic thought on friendship.
• Reeve, C. D. C. 2000. Substantial Knowledge: Aristotle's Metaphysics. Indianapolis: Hackett.
• Rose, Lynn E. (1968). Aristotle's Syllogistic. Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher. 
• Ross, Sir David (1995). Aristotle (6^th ed.). London: Routledge.  A classic overview by one of Aristotle's most prominent English translators, in print since 1923.
• Scaltsas, T. 1994. Substances and Universals in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Strauss, Leo. "On Aristotle's Politics" (1964), in The City and Man, Chicago; Rand McNally.
• Swanson, Judith (1992). The Public and the Private in Aristotle's Political Philosoophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 
• Taylor, Henry Osborn (1922). "Chapter 3: Aristotle's Biology". Greek Biology and Medicine. http://web.archive.org/web/20060327222953/http://www.ancientlibrary.com/medicine/0051.html. 
• Veatch, Henry B. (1974). Aristotle: A Contemporary Appreciation. Bloomington: Indiana U. Press.  For the general reader.
• Woods, M. J. 1991b. "Universals and Particular Forms in Aristotle's Metaphysics." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy supplement. 41-56

External links

Find more about Aristotle on Wikipedia's sister projects: Definitions from Wiktionary

Textbooks from Wikibooks
Quotations from Wikiquote
Source texts from Wikisource
Images and media from Commons
News stories from Wikinews

Learning resources from Wikiversity

• The Catholic Encyclopedia (general article)
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (general article)
• Scholarly surveys of focused topics from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: articles on Aristotle, Aristotle in the Renaissance, Biology, Causality, Commentators on Aristotle, Ethics, Logic, Mathematics, Metaphysics, Natural philosophy, Non-contradiction, Political theory, Psychology, Rhetoric

Collections of works

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology - primarily in English
• P. Remacle's collection - primarily Greek texts
• Project Gutenberg - English texts
• Tufts University - at the Perseus Project, in both English and Greek
• University of Adelaide - primarily in English

Other

• Works by or about Aristotle in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Timeline of Aristotle's life

This article incorporates material from Aristotle on PlanetMath, which is licensed under the GFDL.

Links to related articles v • d • e Philosophy Western philosophy · Eastern philosophy History Ancient Buddhist · Chinese · Greek · Hellenistic · Hindu · Indian · Jain · Persian Medieval Scholasticism · Thomism · Scotism · Early Islamic · Judeo-Islamic Modern Empiricism · Rationalism Contemporary Analytic · Continental Lists Outline · Topic · School of Philosophies · Glossary · Philosophers · Movements Branches Metaphysics · Epistemology · Logic · Ethics · Aesthetics Philosophy of Action · Art · Biology · Chemistry · Education · Economics · Environment · Geography · Information · Healthcare · History · Human nature · Humor · Language · Law · Literature · Mathematics · Mind · Music · Being · Philosophy · Physics · Politics · Psychology · Religion · Science · Social science · Technology · War Schools Africana · Anarchism · Aristotelianism · Averroism · Avicennism · Classical liberalism · Critical theory · Cynicism · Deconstructionism · Deism · Deontology · Dialectical materialism · Dualism · Egoism · Epicureanism · Epiphenomenalism · Existentialism · Feminism · Functionalism · Hedonism · Hegelianism · Hermeneutics · Humanism · Idealism · Kantianism · Kyoto School · Individualism · Legal positivism · Logical positivism · Marxism · Materialism · Modernism · Monism · Naturalism · Neoplatonism · New Philosophers · Nihilism · Ordinary language · Particularism · Peripatetic · Phenomenology · Platonism · Posthumanism · Postmodernism · Post-structuralism · Pragmatism · Presocratic · Process · Psychoanalysis · Solipsism · Realism · Relativism · Scholasticism · Skepticism · Stoicism · Structuralism · Thomism · Utilitarianism Portal · Category · WikiProject · changes v • d • e Logic   History and core topics History General · Chinese · Greek · Indian · Islamic Core topics Reason · Philosophical logic · Philosophy of logic · Mathematical logic · Metalogic · Logic in computer science   Key concepts and logics Reasoning Deduction · Induction · Abduction Informal Proposition · Inference · Argument · Validity · Cogency · Term logic · Critical thinking · Fallacies · Syllogism · Argumentation theory Philosophy of logic Platonic realism · Logical atomism · Logicism · Formalism · Nominalism  · Fictionalism · Realism · Intuitionism · Constructivism · Finitism Mathematical Formal language · Formation rule · Formal system · Deductive system · Formal proof · Interpretation · Formal semantics · Well-formed formula · Set · Element · Class · Axiom · Rule of inference · Relation · Theorem · Logical consequence · Consistency · Soundness · Completeness · Decidability · Satisfiability · Independence · Set theory · Axiomatic system · Proof theory · Model theory · Recursion theory · Type theory · Syntax Propositional Boolean functions · Monadic predicate calculus · Propositional calculus · Logical connectives · Quantifiers · Truth tables Predicate First-order · Quantifiers · Predicate · Second-order Modal Alethic · Axiologic · Deontic · Doxastic · Epistemic · Temporal Other non classical Computability · Fuzzy · Linear · Relevance · Non-monotonic   Controversies Paraconsistent logic · Dialetheism · Intuitionistic logic · Paradoxes · Antinomies · Is logic empirical?   Key figures Alfarabi · Algazel · Alkindus · Al-Razi · Aristotle · Averroes · Avicenna · Boole · Cantor · Carnap · Church · Dharmakirti · Dignāga · Frege · Gentzen · Kanada · Gödel · Gotama · Hilbert · Ibn al-Nafis · Ibn Hazm · Ibn Taymiyyah · Kripke · Leibniz · Mozi · Nagarjuna · Pāṇini · Peano · Peirce · Putnam · Quine · Russell · Skolem · Suhrawardi · Tarski · Turing · Whitehead · Zadeh   Lists Topics Outline of logic · General · Basic · Mathematical logic · Boolean algebra · Set theory Other Logicians · Rules of inference · Paradoxes · Fallacies · Logic symbols Portal · Category · WikiProject · Logic stubs · Mathlogic stubs · Cleanup · Talk · changes v • d • e Ancient Greece topics Timeline Cycladic civilization · Minoan civilization · Mycenaean civilization · Greek Dark Ages · Archaic period · Classical Greece · Hellenistic Greece · Roman Greece Geography Aegean Sea · Hellespont · Macedon · Sparta · Athens · Corinth · Thebes · Thermopylae · Antioch · Alexandria · Pergamon · Miletus · Ephesus · Delphi · Delos  · Olympia · Troy · Rhodes · Crete · Peloponnesus  · Cyprus Life Agriculture · Cuisine · Democracy · Economy · Education · Law · Medicine · Pederasty · Prostitution · Religion · Slavery · Technology · Olympic Games  · Warfare  · Wine People Philosophers Anaxagoras · Anaximander · Anaximenes · Antisthenes · Aristotle · Democritus · Diogenes of Sinope · Epicurus · Empedocles · Heraclitus · Leucippus · Gorgias · Parmenides · Plato · Protagoras · Pythagoras · Socrates · Thales · Zeno Authors Aeschylus · Aesop · Aristophanes · Euripides · Herodotus · Hesiod · Homer · Lucian · Menander · Pindar · Plutarch · Polybius · Sappho · Sophocles · Theognis of Megara · Thucydides · Xenophon Others Alexander the Great · Lycurgus · Leonidas · Alcibiades · Demosthenes · Pericles · Solon · Themistocles · Archimedes · Hippocrates · Aspasia · Milo of Croton Buildings Parthenon · Temple of Artemis · Acropolis · Ancient Agora · Temple of Zeus at Olympia · Temple of Hephaestus · Samothrace temple complex Arts Architecture · Coinage · Literature · Music · Pottery · Sculpture · Theatre Language Proto-Greek · Mycenaean  · Homeric · Dialects (Aeolic • Arcadocypriot • Attic • Doric • Ionic • Locrian • Macedonian) · Koine v • d • e Peripatetic philosophers Greek era Aristotle · Eudemus · Theophrastus · Aristoxenus · Chamaeleon · Phanias · Praxiphanes · Dicaearchus · Nicomachus · Demetrius Phalereus · Strato of Lampsacus · Clearchus · Hieronymus of Rhodes · Lyco of Troas · Aristo of Ceos · Satyrus · Critolaus · Diodorus of Tyre Roman era Cratippus · Andronicus of Rhodes · Boethus of Sidon · Aristocles of Messene · Aspasius · Adrastus · Alexander of Aphrodisias · Olympiodorus the Elder v • d • e Metaphysics Related articles Ontology · Cosmology · Teleology · Philosophy of mind · Philosophy of space and time · Axiology · Theoretical physics Concepts in metaphysics Action · Abstract object · Being · Category of being · Causality · Change · Choice · Concept · Cogito ergo sum · Embodied cognition · Entity · Essence · Existence · Experience · Form · Free will · Freedom · Idea · Identity · Intention · Matter · Mind · Meaning · Meaning of life · Mental representation · Modality · Motion · Necessity · Object · Pattern · Physical object · Perception · Principle · Properties · Quality · Reality · Self · Subject · Substance  · Time  · Truth · Type · Unity · Universal · Unobservables · Value · more ... Metaphysical theories Anti-realism · Cartesian dualism · Materialism · Idealism · Existentialism · Essentialism · Libertarianism · Determinism · Naturalism · Monism · Platonic idealism · Hindu idealism · Phenomenalism · Nihilism · Realism · Physicalism · MOQ · Relativism · Scientific realism · Solipsism · Subjectivism · Substance theory · Types Metaphysicians Parmenides · Plato · Aristotle · Plotinus · John Duns Scotus · Thomas Aquinas · René Descartes · John Locke · David Hume · Immanuel Kant · Isaac Newton · Arthur Schopenhauer · Baruch Spinoza · Georg W. F. Hegel · George Berkeley · Gottfried Leibniz · Henri Bergson · Charles Sanders Peirce · Ludwig Wittgenstein · Martin Heidegger · Alfred N. Whitehead · Bertrand Russell · Dorothy Emmet · George Edward Moore · Jean-Paul Sartre · Gilbert Ryle · Hilary Putnam · P. F. Strawson · R. G. Collingwood · Adolph Stöhr · Rudolf Carnap · Saul Kripke · Willard V. O. Quine · Donald Davidson · more ... Portal · Category · Task Force · Stubs · Discussion v • d • e Philosophy of science Related articles: Epistemology · History and philosophy of science · History of science · History of evolutionary thought · Philosophy of biology · Philosophy of chemistry · Philosophy of physics · Philosophy of mind · Philosophy of artificial intelligence · Philosophy of information · Philosophy of perception · Philosophy of space and time · Philosophy of thermal and statistical physics · Philosophy of social sciences · Philosophy of environment · Philosophy of psychology · Philosophy of technology · Philosophy of computer science · Pseudoscience · Relationship between religion and science · Rhetoric of science · Sociology of scientific knowledge Concepts in philosophy of science Analysis • Analytic-synthetic distinction • A priori and a posteriori • Artificial intelligence • Causality • Commensurability • Construct • Demarcation problem • Explanatory power • Fact • Falsifiability • Ignoramus et ignorabimus • Inductive reasoning • Ingenuity • Inquiry • Models of scientific inquiry • Nature • Objectivity • Observation • Paradigm • Problem of induction • Scientific explanation • Scientific law • Scientific method • Scientific revolution • Scientific theory • Testability • Theory choice • more... • Theories of science Confirmation holism • Coherentism • Contextualism • Conventionalism • Deductive-nomological model • Determinism · Empiricism · Fallibilism · Foundationalism · Hypothetico-deductive model • Infinitism · Instrumentalism · Positivism • Pragmatism • Rationalism • Received view of theories • Reductionism • Semantic view of theories • Scientific realism • Scientism · Scientific anti-realism · Skepticism • Uniformitarianism • Vitalism Philosophers of science Albert Einstein • Alfred North Whitehead • Aristotle • Auguste Comte • Averroes • Berlin Circle • Carl Gustav Hempel • C. D. Broad • Charles Sanders Peirce • Dominicus Gundissalinus • Daniel Dennett • Epicurians • Francis Bacon • Friedrich Schelling • Galileo Galilei • Henri Poincaré • Herbert Spencer • Hugh of Saint Victor • Immanuel Kant • Imre Lakatos • Isaac Newton • John Dewey • John Stuart Mill • Jürgen Habermas • Karl Pearson • Karl Popper • Karl Theodor Jaspers • Otto Neurath • Paul Haeberlin • Paul Karl Feyerabend • Pierre Duhem • Pierre Gassendi • Plato • R.B. Braithwaite • René Descartes • Robert Kilwardby • Roger Bacon • Rudolf Carnap • Stephen Toulmin • Stoics • Thomas Hobbes • Thomas Samuel Kuhn • Vienna Circle • W.V.O. Quine • Wilhelm Windelband • Wilhelm Wundt • William of Ockham • William Whewell • more... Portal · Category · Task Force · Discussion · Changes v • d • e Philosophy of language Related articles: Analytic philosophy • Language • Philosophy of information • Philosophical logic • Linguistics • Pragmatics • Rhetoric • Semantics • Formal semantics • General semantics • Semiotics Concepts in language Ambiguity • Linguistic relativity • Meaning • Language • Truthbearer • Proposition • Use–mention distinction • Concept • Categories • Set • Class • Intension • Logical form • Metalanguage • Mental representation • Principle of compositionality • Property • Sign • Sense and reference • Speech act • Symbol • Entity • Sentence  • Statement • more... Theories of language Causal theory of reference • Contrast theory of meaning • Contrastivism • Conventionalism • Cratylism • Deconstruction • Descriptivist theory of names • Direct reference theory • Dramatism • Expressivism • Linguistic determinism • Logical atomism • Logical positivism • Mediated reference theory • Nominalism • Non-cognitivism • Phallogocentrism • Quietism • Relevance theory • Semantic externalism • Semantic holism • Structuralism • Supposition theory • Symbiosism • Theological noncognitivism • Theory of descriptions • Verification theory Philosophers of language Plato (Cratylus) • Confucius • Xun Zi • Aristotle • Stoics • Pyrrhonists • Scholasticism • Thomas Hobbes • Gottfried Leibniz • Johann Herder • Wilhelm von Humboldt • Fritz Mauthner • Paul Ricoeur • Ferdinand de Saussure • Gottlob Frege • Franz Boas • Paul Tillich • Edward Sapir • Leonard Bloomfield • Zhuangzi • Henri Bergson • Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations  • Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)  • Bertrand Russell • Rudolf Carnap • Jacques Derrida (Of Grammatology  • Limited Inc)  • Benjamin Lee Whorf • Gustav Bergmann • J. L. Austin • Noam Chomsky • Hans Georg Gadamer • Saul Kripke • Alfred Jules Ayer • Donald Davidson • Paul Grice • Gilbert Ryle • P. F. Strawson Portal · Category · Task Force · Discussion · Changes v • d • e Philosophy of mind Related articles: Metaphysics • Philosophy of artificial intelligence • Philosophy of information • Philosophy of perception • Concepts in mind Abstract object • Artificial intelligence • Chinese room • Cognition • Concept • Concept and object • Consciousness • Idea • Identity • Ingenuity • Intelligence • Intentionality • Introspection • Intuition • Language of thought • Materialism • Mental events • Mental image • Mental functions • Mental property • Mental representation • Mind • Mind-body dichotomy • Pain • Problem of other minds • Propositional attitude • Qualia • Self • Tabula rasa • Understanding • more... Theories of mind Behaviourism • Biological naturalism • Dualism  • Eliminative materialism • Emergent materialism • Epiphenomenalism • Functionalism • Identity theory • Interactionism • Materialism • Mind-body problem • Monism • Naïve realism • Neutral monism • Phenomenalism • Phenomenology (Existential phenomenology)  • Physicalism • Pragmatism • Property dualism • Representational theory of mind • Solipsism • Substance dualism • Type physicalism • Philosophers of mind J. L. Austin • Henri Bergson • Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya • C. D. Broad • Daniel Dennett • Dharmakirti • Donald Davidson • René Descartes • Alvin Goldman • Martin Heidegger • Edmund Husserl • William James • Søren Kierkegaard • Gottfried Leibniz • Maurice Merleau-Ponty • Marvin Minsky • George Edward Moore • Thomas Nagel • Karl Popper • Richard Rorty • Gilbert Ryle • John Searle • Baruch Spinoza • Alan Turing • Vasubandhu • Zhuangzi • more... Portal · Category · Task Force · Discussion · Changes

Persondata
NAME	Aristotle
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Ἀριστοτέλης (Greek)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Greek philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH	384 BC
PLACE OF BIRTH	Stageira
DATE OF DEATH	322 BC
PLACE OF DEATH	Chalcis

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)