Aristotle. More than two thousand years ago, Aristotles investigation into these questions established unique standards of philosophic inquiry, observation and judgment. The following is centered around his life, the works behind his philosophical idea

Authors Avatar

                LVV4U

                Aristotle Essay

 Aristotle’s Tribute To The World

The importance of Aristotle in the intellectual history of Europe is too well known to need explanation or defense. The range and power of his achievements place him without question in the shortest of short lists of the giants of Western thought. To many generations of thinkers he was known simply as, “ The Philosopher.”        However, Aristotle was not only a Greek philosopher, he was also a student of Plato, and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He was the first to create a logical system on Western philosophy and wrote on many subjects, such as, physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, ethnics, biology, morality, zoology and much more.  How is the mind related to the body? To what end is human life to be directed? What is the place of the individual in human society? More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle’s investigation into these questions established unique standards of philosophic inquiry, observation and judgment. The following is centered around his life, the works behind his philosophical ideas and his practical theory on politics.

        Aristotle is one of the greatest thinkers in the Western tradition. He was born in 384BC, in the small township of Stagira in northern Greece. His father, Nicomachus, was a doctor, friend and physician to King         Amyntas of Macedon. His mother, Phaestis, was rich in her own right.  In 367 Aristotle moved to Athens, where he became a member of the intellectual circle, which centered on Plato. No doubt he had learned some philosophy as a boy in Stagira; perhaps he had read some of Plato’s philosophical dialogues. It is not for certain, but maybe he moved to Athens precisely in order to study philosophy with Plato. Plato was a celebrated figure; perhaps a controversial figure. His fame had attracted intellectuals from abroad and the Platonic circle, “Plato’s Academy”, included some of the most eminent philosophers and scientists of the age. The circle met, either at Plato’s house or in the public gymnasium of the Academy. The Academy was also in some sense a school and there was a keen rivalry between it and the establishment, which the orator Isocrates had set up for the political education of the Athenian youth. Aristotle may properly be called a student at the Academy insofar as he received teaching there; and in addition the Academy may have had some of the features of a modern club; senior and junior membership, officers, regular meetings, dinners. Afterwards, Aristotle stayed in Athens for the next twenty years, always associated with the Academy; and he surely spent much of his time in listening to philosophers and scientists, and eventually in writing and teaching himself. It is reasonable to suppose that the Academicians debated the matters, which Plato discussed in his dialogues- ethics and political theory, psychology, metaphysics and epistemology and mathematics and of astronomy. Plato died in 347 and Aristotle left Athens. Why he left is uncertain, but political reasons have been hypothesized. Aristotle had Macedonian connections, and the Athenians are reported to have set up an inscription in his honor, thanking him in particular for intervening with the king of Macedon in their interest. But in 347 the northern town of Olynthus had just fallen to the Macedonian army and the anti Macedonian party in Athens, led by the orator Demosthenes, was in the ascendant. Aristotle was not then, or ever an Athenian citizen and his situation may have been delicate.  However that may be, he went with Xenocrates, a fellow Academic to Atarneus, on the coast of Asia Minor: Hermias, the “tyrant” of the place, had connections with the Academy, and there appears to have been a small Academic community at Atarneus. From Atarneus Arisotle moved to the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. There he met Theophratus a native of the island, who was to become his most famous pupil.  It is reasonable to suppose there is circumstantial evidence in Aristotle’s works, because there is circumstantial evidence in his works that he devoted part of his time in the eastern Aegean to the study of marine biology. After Mytilene, a brief period home in Stagira. And then, in 343, Alexander the Great in succession to his father invited Aristotle to the court at Mieza and to the tutorship of his son, Alexander. Thus began the association between the most powerful mind of the age and the most powerful man. In 335 Aristotle returned to Athens. Platos Academy was flourishing under a new head, but Aristotle preferred to set up an establishment of his own, and while the Platonists walked and talked in the Academy, Aristotle did the same in the Lyceum. A dozen years later, Alexander the Great died, and shortly afterwards in 322, Aristotle left Athens. He did so, allegedly said, “in order that the Athenians might not commit a second hand crime against philosophy” in order that they might not condemn him to death as they had condemned Socrates to death. Aristotle retired to Chalcis, on the island of Euboea, where his mother’s family had estates, and there in 322 B.C. he died of an unknown stomach illness.

Join now!

        Did Aristotle view all or most of his works as parts of, or contributions towards, some systematic whole? Is there a such thing as Artotelianism? For centuries these questions were answered with a confident affirmative and you were then given an outline of the Aristotelian system of thought. Twentieth century scholarship had by and large preferred what seems to be a more sophiscated approach to the texts. It is a mere truism that Aristotle cannot have written all his works in the same week; and it is a fact that there are differences- perhaps even downright contradictions and inconsistencies among ...

This is a preview of the whole essay