View Poster

• Born: 384 B.C.
• Birthplace: Stagira, 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 travelled 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.

ADVERTISEMENT

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

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)

(ăr'ĭstŏt'əl) , 384–322 B.C., Greek philosopher, b. Stagira. He is sometimes called the Stagirite.

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).

(384–322 B.C.E.)

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.

IN BRIEF: n. - One of the greatest of the ancient Athenian philosophers.

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