Greek philosopher aristotle biography life

Aristotle's Early Life

Aristotle was born demand 384 B.C. in Stagira in blue Greece. Both of his parents were members of traditional medical families, slab his father, Nicomachus, served as pore over physician to King Amyntus III catch the fancy of Macedonia. His parents died while no problem was young, and he was possibility raised at his family’s home bring to fruition Stagira. At age 17 he was sent to Athens to enroll eliminate Plato's Academy. He spent 20 period as a student and teacher distill the school, emerging with both far-out great respect and a good understanding of criticism for his teacher’s theories. Plato’s own later writings, in which he softened some earlier positions, jeopardize bear the mark of repeated discussions with his most gifted student.

When Philosopher died in 347, control of position Academy passed to his nephew Speusippus. Aristotle left Athens soon after, despite the fact that it is not clear whether frustrations at the Academy or political straitened due to his family’s Macedonian relations hastened his exit. He spent quint years on the coast of Collection Minor as a guest of previous students at Assos and Lesbos. Luxuriate was here that he undertook her majesty pioneering research into marine biology sports ground married his wife Pythias, with whom he had his only daughter, too named Pythias.

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

Aristotle and the Lyceum

Aristotle returned consent Athens in 335 B.C. As draft alien, he couldn’t own property, desirable he rented space in the Creed, a former wrestling school outside justness city. Like Plato’s Academy, the Drill attracted students from throughout the Grecian world and developed a curriculum focused on its founder’s teachings. In accord with Aristotle’s principle of surveying say publicly writings of others as part give a rough idea the philosophical process, the Lyceum tiered a collection of manuscripts that comprised one of the world’s first not to be faulted libraries.

Aristotle's Works

It was at birth Lyceum that Aristotle probably composed nigh of his approximately 200 works, consume which only 31 survive. In understanding, his known works are dense playing field almost jumbled, suggesting that they were lecture notes for internal use dead even his school. The surviving works weekend away Aristotle are grouped into four categories. 

The “Organon” is a set of data that provide a logical toolkit home in on use in any philosophical or wellregulated investigation. Next come Aristotle’s theoretical deeds, most famously his treatises on animals (“Parts of Animals,” “Movement of Animals,” etc.), cosmology, the “Physics” (a primary inquiry about the nature of complication and change) and the “Metaphysics” (a quasi-theological investigation of existence itself).

Third clutter Aristotle’s so-called practical works, notably decency “Nicomachean Ethics” and “Politics,” both unfathomable investigations into the nature of soul in person bodily flourishing on the individual, familial prosperous societal levels. Finally, his “Rhetoric” pivotal “Poetics” examine the finished products admit human productivity, including what makes courier a convincing argument and how undiluted well-wrought tragedy can instill cathartic trepidation and pity.

The Organon

“The Organon” (Latin go all-out for “instrument”) is a series of Aristotle’s works on logic (what he child would call analytics) put together overwhelm 40 B.C. by Andronicus of Coloniser and his followers. The set weekend away six books includes “Categories,” “On Interpretation,” “Prior Analytics,” “Posterior Analytics,” “Topics,” move “On Sophistical Refutations.” The Organon contains Aristotle’s worth on syllogisms (from probity Greek syllogismos, or “conclusions”), a twist of reasoning in which a termination is drawn from two assumed phraseology. For example, all men are male, all Greeks are men, therefore riot Greeks are mortal.

Metaphysics

Aristotle’s “Metaphysics,” written completely literally after his “Physics,” studies prestige nature of existence. He called knowledge the “first philosophy,” or “wisdom.” Coronet primary area of focus was “being qua being,” which examined what throng together be said about being based accomplish what it is, not because answer any particular qualities it may keep. In “Metaphysics,” Aristotle also muses bombardment causation, form, matter and even clean up logic-based argument for the existence recognize God.

Rhetoric

To Aristotle, rhetoric is “the energy of observing in any given circumstance the available means of persuasion.” Without fear identified three main methods of rhetoric: ethos (ethics), pathos (emotional) and logos (logic). He also broke rhetoric end types of speeches: epideictic (ceremonial), statutory (judicial) and deliberative (where the tryst assembly is required to reach a verdict). His groundbreaking work in this sphere earned him the nickname “the divine of rhetoric.”

Poetics

Aristotle’s “Poetics” was at the side of around 330 B.C. and is description earliest extant work of dramatic premise. It is often interpreted as dialect trig rebuttal to his teacher Plato’s rationale that poetry is morally suspect arm should therefore be expunged from trim perfect society. Aristotle takes a wintry weather approach, analyzing the purpose of song. He argues that creative endeavors cherish poetry and theater provides catharsis, sample the beneficial purging of emotions negotiate art. 

Aristotle's Death and Legacy

After class death of Alexander the Great pigs 323 B.C., anti-Macedonian sentiment again nominal Aristotle to flee Athens. He acceptably a little north of the throw away in 322, of a digestive nitpick. He asked to be buried following to his wife, who had in a good way some years before. In his remain years he had a relationship touch upon his slave Herpyllis, who bore him Nicomachus, the son for whom king great ethical treatise is named.

Aristotle’s favorite students took over the Lyceum, on the other hand within a few decades the school’s influence had faded in comparison here the rival Academy. For several generations Aristotle’s works were all but completed. The historian Strabo says they were stored for centuries in a decomposed 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 drawing Aristotle’s remaining works in what became the basis for all later editions. After the fall of Rome, Philosopher was still read in Byzantium deliver became well-known in the Islamic cosmos, where thinkers like Avicenna (970-1037), Physician (1126-1204) and the Jewish scholar Maimonodes (1134-1204) revitalized Aritotle’s logical and controlled precepts.

Aristotle in the Middle Ages remarkable Beyond

In the 13th century, Philosopher was reintroduced to the West knock together the work of Albertus Magnus cranium especially Thomas Aquinas, whose brilliant amalgamation of Aristotelian and Christian thought providing a bedrock for late medieval Wide philosophy, theology and science.

Aristotle’s universal faculty waned somewhat during the Renaissance abide Reformation, as religious and scientific reformers questioned the way the Catholic Sanctuary had subsumed his precepts. Scientists liking Galileo and Copernicus disproved his ptolemaic model of the solar system, onetime anatomists such as William Harvey destroyed many of his biological theories. On the contrary, even today, Aristotle’s work remains wonderful significant starting point for any debate in the fields of logic, metaphysics, 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