Aristotle (384-322 BC)

« Aristotle (384-322 BC) Aristotle of Stagira is one of the two most important philosophers of the ancient world, and one of the four or five most important of any time or place.

He was not an Athenian, but he spent most of his life as a student and teacher of philosophy in Athens.

For twenty years he was a member of Plato's Academy; later he set up his own philosophical school, the Lyceum.

During his lifetime he published philosophical dialogues, of which only fragments now survive.

The 'Aristotelian corpus' (1462 pages of Greek text, including some spurious works) is probably derived from the lectures that he gave in the Lyceum.

Aristotle is the founder not only of philosophy as a discipline with distinct areas or branches, but, still more generally, of the conception of intellectual inquiry as falling into distinct disciplines.

He insists, for instance, that the standards of proof and evidence for deductive logic and mathematics should not be applied to the study of nature, and that neither of these disciplines should be taken as a proper model for moral and political inquiry.

He distinguishes philosophical reflection on a discipline from the practice of the discipline itself.

The corpus contains contributions to many different disciplines, not only to philosophy.

Some areas of inquiry in which Aristotle makes a fundamental contribution are these: (1) Logic.

Aristotle's Prior Analytics constitutes the first attempt to formulate a system of deductive formal logic, based on the theory of the 'syllogism'. The Posterior Analytics uses this system to formulate an account of rigorous scientific knowledge.

'Logic', as Aristotle conceives it, also includes the study of language, meaning and their relation to non-linguistic reality; hence it includes many topics that might now be assigned to philosophy of language or philosophical logic (Categories, De Interpretatione, Topics).

(2) The study of nature.

About a quarter of the corpus (see especially the History of Animals, Parts of Animals, and Generation of Animals; also Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals) consists of works concerned with biology.

Some of these contain collections of detailed observations.

(The Meteorology contains a similar collection on inanimate nature.) Others try to explain these observations in the light of the explanatory scheme that Aristotle defends in his more theoretical reflections on the study of nature.

These reflections (especially in the Physics and in Generation and Corruption) develop an account of nature, form, matter, cause and change that expresses Aristotle's views about the understanding and explanation of natural organisms and their behaviour.

Natural philosophy and cosmology are combined in On the Heavens.

(3) Metaphysics.

In his reflections on the foundations and presuppositions of other disciplines, Aristotle describes a universal 'science of being qua being', the concern of the Metaphysics.

Part of this universal science examines the foundations of inquiry into nature.

Aristotle formulates his doctrine of substance, which he explains through the connected contrasts between form and matter, and between potentiality and actuality.

One of his aims is to describe the distinctive and irreducible character of living organisms.

Another aim of the universal science is to use his examination of substance to give an account of divine substance, the ultimate principle of the cosmic order.

(4) Philosophy of mind.

The doctrine of form and matter is used to explain the relation of soul and body, and the different types of soul found in different types of living creatures.

In Aristotle's view, the soul is the form of a living body.

He examines the different aspects of this form in plants, non-rational animals and human beings, by describing nutrition, perception, thought and desire.

His discussion (in On the Soul, and also in the Parva Naturalia) ranges over topics in philosophy of mind, psychology, physiology, epistemology and theory of action.

(5) Ethics and politics (Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Magna Moralia).

In Aristotle's view, the understanding of the natural and essential aims of human agents is the right basis for a grasp of principles guiding moral and political practice.

These principles are expressed in his account of human wellbeing, and of the different virtues that constitute a good person and promote wellbeing.

The description of a society that embodies these virtues in individual and social life is a task for the Politics, which also examines the virtues and vices of actual states and societies, measuring them against the principles derived from ethical theory.

(6) Literary criticism and rhetorical theory (Poetics, Rhetoric).

These works are closely connected both to Aristotle's logic and to his ethical and political theory.

1 Life Aristotle was born in 384 BC, in the Macedonian city of Stagira, now part of northern Greece.

In his lifetime the kingdom of Macedon, first under Philip and then under Philip's son Alexander ('the Great'), conquered both the Greek cities of Europe and Asia and the Persian Empire.

Although Aristotle spent much of his adult life in Athens, he was not an Athenian citizen.

He was closely linked to the kings of Macedon, whom many Greeks regarded as foreign invaders; hence, he was affected by the volatile relations between Macedon and the Greek cities, especially Athens.

Aristotle was the son of Nicomachus, a doctor attached to the Macedonian court.

In 367 BC Aristotle came to Athens.

He belonged to Plato's Academy until the death of Plato in 347; during these years Plato wrote his important later dialogues (including the Sophist, Timaeus, Philebus, Statesman, and Laws), which reconsider many of the doctrines of his earlier dialogues and pursue new lines of thought.

Since there was no dogmatic system of 'Platonism', Aristotle was neither a disciple of such a system nor a rebel against it.

The exploratory and critical outlook of the Academy probably encouraged Aristotle's own philosophical growth.

In 347 BC Aristotle left Athens, for Assos in Asia Minor. Later he moved to Lesbos, in the eastern Aegean, and then to Macedon, where he was a tutor of Alexander.

In 334 he returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum.

In 323 Alexander died; in the resulting outbreak of anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens Aristotle left for Chalcis, on the island of Euboea, where he died in 322.

Aristotle married Pythias, a niece of Hermeias, the ruler of Assos.

They had a daughter, also called Pythias.

After the death of his wife, Aristotle formed an attachment to Herpyllis, and they had a son Nicomachus.

2 Order of Aristotle's works By the end of Aristotle's life the Lyceum must have become a well-established school.

It lasted after Aristotle's death; his successor as head of the school was his pupil Theophrastus.

Many of the works in the Aristotelian corpus appear to be closely related to Aristotle's lectures in the Lyceum.

The polished character of some passages suggests preparation for publication (for example, Parts of Animals I 5), but many passages contain incomplete sentences and compressed allusions, suggesting notes that a lecturer might expand (for example, Metaphysics VII 13).

We cannot tell how many of his treatises Aristotle regarded as 'finished' (see §11 on the Metaphysics and §21 on the Ethics).

It may be wrong, therefore, to ask about the 'date' of a particular treatise.

If Aristotle neither published nor intended to publish the treatises, a given treatise may easily contain contributions from different dates.

For similar reasons, we cannot plausibly take cross-references from one work to another as evidence of the order of the works.

External, biographical considerations are unhelpful, since we lack the evidence. »