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Portrait of Aristotle

Philosophy

Aristotle

384–322 BC · Greek (born at Stagira, Chalcidice)

Classical Greek philosophy; Peripatetic school

Aristotle studied at Plato's Academy for some twenty years, tutored the young Alexander the Great and founded his own school, the Lyceum, in Athens. He wrote on almost every field (logic, physics, biology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetics) and founded formal logic with his theory of the syllogism. Medieval thinkers such as Aquinas called him simply "the Philosopher".

How to spot them

  • ▸The Stagirite; the Lyceum; the Peripatetics; tutor of Alexander the Great
  • ▸Eudaimonia, the golden mean, the four causes, the unmoved mover, 'man is by nature a political animal'
  • ▸The syllogism and the Organon; mimesis and catharsis in the Poetics
  • ▸'The Philosopher' for Aquinas; 'the master of those who know' in Dante's Inferno

Key works

Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BC)

The highest good is eudaimonia, achieved through virtuous activity; moral virtue as a mean between extremes

Politics (4th century BC)

Humans are by nature political animals; classifies constitutions and commends a mixed constitution (polity)

Metaphysics (4th century BC)

'First philosophy': the study of being qua being and substance, with the unmoved mover in Book Lambda (XII)

Poetics (c. 335 BC)

Tragedy as mimesis (imitation) achieving catharsis of pity and fear; its lost treatment of comedy drives Eco's The Name of the Rose

Organon (4th century BC (grouped by later editors))

His logical works, including the Categories and the Prior Analytics with its theory of the syllogism

On the Soul (De Anima) (4th century BC)

The soul (psyche) as the form of a living body, with nutritive, perceptive and rational capacities

Key ideas

  • Eudaimonia (happiness, flourishing) is the highest human good: activity of the soul in accordance with virtue over a complete life
  • Doctrine of the mean: a moral virtue lies between vices of excess and deficiency, e.g. courage between rashness and cowardice
  • Four causes: material, formal, efficient and final (the purpose or telos)
  • Hylomorphism: substances are compounds of matter and form; unlike Plato, he denied that Forms exist separately from things
  • The unmoved mover: an eternal, unchanging being, pure actuality, that causes the heavens' motion as an object of desire
  • Syllogistic logic: valid inference from two premises to a conclusion (the 'Socrates is mortal' example is a later textbook illustration)

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born at Stagira in Chalcidice, hence 'the Stagirite'; his father Nicomachus was physician to King Amyntas III of Macedon
  • •Studied at Plato's Academy from about 367 BC until Plato's death in 347 BC
  • •Tutored the young Alexander the Great from 343 BC, at the invitation of Philip II of Macedon
  • •Founded the Lyceum in Athens in 335 BC; his followers were called Peripatetics, probably from the peripatos (covered walkway) where they met
  • •After Alexander's death in 323 BC he left Athens, reportedly so the Athenians would not 'sin twice against philosophy', and died at Chalcis in 322 BC
  • •The title Metaphysics ('after the Physics') was given by later editors, traditionally linked to Andronicus of Rhodes
  • •His Rhetoric distinguishes three modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos and logos
  • •The Nicomachean Ethics is traditionally linked to his son (or father) Nicomachus; the Eudemian Ethics to his pupil Eudemus

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Sources