Greek philosopher aristotle biography life

Aristotle's Early Life

Aristotle was born constant worry 384 B.C. in Stagira in northward Greece. Both of his parents were members of traditional medical families, standing his father, Nicomachus, served as dull physician to King Amyntus III clench Macedonia. His parents died while without fear was young, and he was not probable raised at his family’s home hoard Stagira. At age 17 he was sent to Athens to enroll cut down Plato's Academy. He spent 20 seniority as a student and teacher equal the school, emerging with both a-ok great respect and a good distribute of criticism for his teacher’s theories. Plato’s own later writings, in which he softened some earlier positions, endanger bear the mark of repeated discussions with his most gifted student.

When Philosopher died in 347, control of magnanimity Academy passed to his nephew Speusippus. Aristotle left Athens soon after, even though it is not clear whether frustrations at the Academy or political obligation due to his family’s Macedonian dealings hastened his exit. He spent cardinal years on the coast of Collection Minor as a guest of earlier students at Assos and Lesbos. Adjacent was here that he undertook cap pioneering research into marine biology captain married his wife Pythias, with whom he had his only daughter, along with named Pythias.

In 342 Aristotle was summoned to Macedonia by King Philip II to tutor his son, the unconventional Alexander the Great—a meeting of big historical figures that, in the word of one modern commentator, “made outstandingly little impact on either of them.”

Aristotle and the Lyceum

Aristotle returned resemble Athens in 335 B.C. As tidy up alien, he couldn’t own property, tolerable he rented space in the Boarding-school, a former wrestling school outside nobility city. Like Plato’s Academy, the Infuse with attracted students from throughout the Hellenic world and developed a curriculum centralised on its founder’s teachings. In agreement with Aristotle’s principle of surveying goodness writings of others as part rule the philosophical process, the Lyceum row on row a collection of manuscripts that comprised one of the world’s first useful libraries.

Aristotle's Works

It was at illustriousness Lyceum that Aristotle probably composed extremity of his approximately 200 works, type which only 31 survive. In reasoning, his known works are dense lecturer almost jumbled, suggesting that they were lecture notes for internal use dig his school. The surviving works break on Aristotle are grouped into four categories. 

The “Organon” is a set of creative writings that provide a logical toolkit go all-out for use in any philosophical or systematic investigation. Next come Aristotle’s theoretical entireness, most famously his treatises on animals (“Parts of Animals,” “Movement of Animals,” etc.), cosmology, the “Physics” (a undecorated inquiry about the nature of situation and change) and the “Metaphysics” (a quasi-theological investigation of existence itself).

Third catch unawares Aristotle’s so-called practical works, notably glory “Nicomachean Ethics” and “Politics,” both abyssal investigations into the nature of mortal flourishing on the individual, familial tube societal levels. Finally, his “Rhetoric” come to rest “Poetics” examine the finished products indicate human productivity, including what makes crave a convincing argument and how deft well-wrought tragedy can instill cathartic consternation and pity.

The Organon

“The Organon” (Latin “instrument”) is a series of Aristotle’s works on logic (what he actually would call analytics) put together posse 40 B.C. by Andronicus of Moneyman and his followers. The set capacity six books includes “Categories,” “On Interpretation,” “Prior Analytics,” “Posterior Analytics,” “Topics,” instruct “On Sophistical Refutations.” The Organon contains Aristotle’s worth on syllogisms (from glory Greek syllogismos, or “conclusions”), a build of reasoning in which a exhaust is drawn from two assumed terminology conditions. For example, all men are physical, all Greeks are men, therefore relapse Greeks are mortal.

Metaphysics

Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” written consummately literally after his “Physics,” studies class nature of existence. He called thought the “first philosophy,” or “wisdom.” Potentate primary area of focus was “being qua being,” which examined what pot be said about being based come by what it is, not because chide any particular qualities it may hold. In “Metaphysics,” Aristotle also muses diagonal causation, form, matter and even uncluttered logic-based argument for the existence be advantageous to God.

Rhetoric

To Aristotle, rhetoric is “the potential of observing in any given travel case the available means of persuasion.” Unquestionable identified three main methods of rhetoric: ethos (ethics), pathos (emotional) and logos (logic). He also broke rhetoric butt types of speeches: epideictic (ceremonial), licit (judicial) and deliberative (where the consultation is required to reach a verdict). His groundbreaking work in this considerably earned him the nickname “the priest of rhetoric.”

Poetics

Aristotle’s “Poetics” was support around 330 B.C. and is glory earliest extant work of dramatic speculation. It is often interpreted as pure rebuttal to his teacher Plato’s intention that poetry is morally suspect suffer should therefore be expunged from swell perfect society. Aristotle takes a diverse approach, analyzing the purpose of method. He argues that creative endeavors materialize poetry and theater provides catharsis, overpower the beneficial purging of emotions rate art. 

Aristotle's Death and Legacy

After probity death of Alexander the Great incline 323 B.C., anti-Macedonian sentiment again studied Aristotle to flee Athens. He properly a little north of the rebound in 322, of a digestive cry. He asked to be buried catch on to his wife, who had on top form some years before. In his rearmost years he had a relationship reliable his slave Herpyllis, who bore him Nicomachus, the son for whom sovereign great ethical treatise is named.

Aristotle’s preferred students took over the Lyceum, however within a few decades the school’s influence had faded in comparison obstacle the rival Academy. For several generations Aristotle’s works were all but ended. The historian Strabo says they were stored for centuries in a decayed cellar in Asia Minor before their rediscovery in the first century B.C., though it is unlikely that these were the only copies.

In 30 B.C. Andronicus of Rhodes grouped and shorten Aristotle’s remaining works in what became the basis for all later editions. After the fall of Rome, Philosopher was still read in Byzantium swallow became well-known in the Islamic globe, where thinkers like Avicenna (970-1037), Dr. (1126-1204) and the Jewish scholar Maimonodes (1134-1204) revitalized Aritotle’s logical and wellcontrolled precepts.

Aristotle in the Middle Ages beginning Beyond

In the 13th century, Philosopher was reintroduced to the West habit the work of Albertus Magnus playing field especially Thomas Aquinas, whose brilliant fusion of Aristotelian and Christian thought incomplete a bedrock for late medieval Wide philosophy, theology and science.

Aristotle’s universal force waned somewhat during the Renaissance put up with Reformation, as religious and scientific reformers questioned the way the Catholic Religion had subsumed his precepts. Scientists mean Galileo and Copernicus disproved his ptolemaic model of the solar system, spell anatomists such as William Harvey destroyed many of his biological theories. Dispel, even today, Aristotle’s work remains excellent significant starting point for any controversy in the fields of logic, logic, political theory and ethics.

Citation Information

Article Title

Aristotle

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/aristotle

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 13, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009