Aristotle: "The Philosopher of Wisdom"

Aristotle

    Aristotle, Greek Aristoteles, (born 384 BCE, Stagira, Chalcidice, Greece—died 322, Chalcis, Euboea), ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. Even after the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western thinking

    Aristotle’s intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts, including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory, psychology, and zoology. He was the founder of formal logic, devising for it a finished system that for centuries was regarded as the sum of the discipline; and he pioneered the study of zoology, both observational and theoretical, in which some of his work remained unsurpassed until the 19th century. But he is, of course, most outstanding as a philosopher. His writings in ethics and political theory as well as in metaphysics and the philosophy of science continue to be studied, and his work remains a powerful current in contemporary philosophical debate.

Life

The Academy

    Aristotle was born on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern Greece. His father, Nicomachus, was the physician of Amyntas III (reigned c. 393–c. 370 BCE), king of Macedonia, and grandfather of Alexander the Great (reigned 336–323 BCE). After his father died in 367, Aristotle migrated to Athens, where he joined the Academy of Plato (c. 428–c. 348 BCE). He remained there for 20 years as Plato’s pupil and colleague.

    Many of Plato’s later dialogues date from these decades, and they may reflect Aristotle’s contributions to philosophical debate at the Academy. Some of Aristotle’s writings also belong to this period, though they mostly survive in fragments. Like his master, Aristotle wrote initially in dialogue form, and his early ideas show a strong Platonic influence. His dialogue Eudemus, for example, reflects the Platonic view of the soul as imprisoned in the body and as capable of a happier life only when the body has been left behind. According to Aristotle, the dead are more blessed and happier than the living; to die is to return to one’s real home.

Travels

    When Plato died about 348, his nephew Speusippus became head of the Academy, and Aristotle left Athens. He migrated to Assus, a city on the northwestern coast of Anatolia (in present-day Turkey), where Hermias, a graduate of the Academy, was ruler. Aristotle became a close friend of Hermias and eventually married his ward Pythias. Aristotle helped Hermias to negotiate an alliance with Macedonia, which angered the Persian king, who had Hermias treacherously arrested and put to death about 341. Aristotle saluted Hermias’s memory in “Ode to Virtue,” his only surviving poem.\

    While in Assus and during the subsequent few years when he lived in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, Aristotle carried out extensive scientific research, particularly in zoology and marine biology. This work was summarized in a book later known, misleadingly, as The History of Animals, to which Aristotle added two short treatises, On the Parts of Animals and On the Generation of Animals. Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the science of zoology, his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite without precedent. He—or one of his research assistants—must have been gifted with remarkably acute eyesight, since some of the features of insects that he accurately reports were not again observed until the invention of the microscope in the 17th century.

The Lyceum of Aristotle

    While Alexander was conquering Asia, Aristotle, now 50 years old, was in Athens. Just outside the city boundary, he established his own school in a gymnasium known as the Lyceum. He built a substantial library and gathered around him a group of brilliant research students, called “peripatetics” from the cloister (peripatus) in which they walked and held their discussions. The Lyceum was not a private club like the Academy; many of the lectures there were open to the general public and given free of charge.

    Most of Aristotle’s surviving works, except the zoological treatises, probably belong to this second Athenian sojourn. There is no certainty about their chronological order, and indeed it is probable that the main treatises—on physics, metaphysics, psychology, ethics, and politics—were constantly rewritten and updated. Every proposition of Aristotle is fertile of ideas and full of energy, though his prose is commonly neither lucid nor elegant

Writings

    Aristotle’s writings fall into two groups: those that were published by him but are now almost entirely lost, and those that were not intended for publication but were collected and preserved by others. The first group consists mainly of popular works; the second group comprises treatises that Aristotle used in his teaching.

Lost works

    The lost works include poetry, letters, and essays as well as dialogues in the Platonic manner. To judge by surviving fragments, their content often differed widely from the doctrines of the surviving treatises. The commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (born c. 200) suggested that Aristotle’s works may express two truths: an “exoteric” truth for public consumption and an “esoteric” truth reserved for students in the Lyceum. Most contemporary scholars, however, believe that the popular writings reflect not Aristotle’s public views but rather an early stage of his intellectual development.

Extant works

The works that have been preserved derive from manuscripts left by Aristotle on his death. According to ancient tradition—passed on by Plutarch (46–c. 119 CE) and Strabo (c. 64 BCE–23? CE)—the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus were bequeathed to Neleus of Scepsis, whose heirs hid them in a cellar to prevent their being confiscated for the library of the kings of Pergamum (in present-day Turkey). Later, according to this tradition, the books were purchased by a collector and taken to Athens, where they were commandeered by the Roman commander Sulla when he conquered the city in 86 BCE. Taken to Rome, they were edited and published there about 60 BCE by Andronicus of Rhodes, the last head of the Lyceum. Although many elements of this story are implausible, it is still widely accepted that Andronicus edited Aristotle’s texts and published them with titles and in the form and order that are familiar today.

Publisher: M. Celio Durrani

Source: Britannica