Aristotle
THE GREEK PHILOSOPHER
Danny Nielsen | Intro to Philosophy Section Phil 1000-005 | July 29, 2014
Alexander Israilevsky
ePortfolio link: dannynielsen.yolasite.com/philosophy.php
Aristotle The Greek Philosopher
I would like to start off by speaking a little about Aristotle’s life although not
much is known about his childhood there is still plenty of interest insights about what we
do know about him. Aristotle is my favorite philosopher, in my eyes very successful life
in which everyone should strive for. If I could live a life like him I would feel very
accomplished and feel as though I have changed civilization as we know it, which is
exactly what Aristotle did. He helped form western civilization as we know it today. I
hope in this report you have a clear understanding of who Aristotle was, what he did, and
what his philosophy was about.
Aristotle, whose name interestingly enough means “best purpose”, was born in
384 BC in Stagira northern Greece. His father Nicomachus was the personal physician
to King Amyntas of Macedon. At about the age of 18, Aristotle moved to Athens to
continue his education at Plato's Academy. He remained there for nearly 20 years before
leaving Athens.
The supposed story about his departure from Plato’s academy records that he was
disappointed with the Academy's decision after Plato passed control of the academy to
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his nephew Speusippus, Aristotle thought that was a bad decision because he knew more
than Speusippus and thought that he should have control of the academy, although it is
also possible that Aristotle feared anti-Macedonian sentiments and left before Plato had
died. Aristotle and Plato's friendship has been a strongly debated topic. Plato referred to
Aristotle as a reader. When Aristotle left the academy Plato said that “Aristotle rejects
us.” Also later Aristotle would criticize many of Plato’s philosophical believes. Although
Aristotle owes much of his philosophical believes to Plato. When Aristotle left Athens he
accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor.
There, he traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they
researched wildlife of the island.
Aristotle married Pythias, who was either Hermias’s adoptive daughter or niece.
They had a daughter together, who was named after her mother Pythias. After the death
of his close friend Hermias, Aristotle was invited by Philip II to become the tutor to his
son Alexander (The Great). Aristotle was then appointed as the head of the royal
academy of Macedon. During that time he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but also to
two other future kings: Ptolemyand and Cassander. Aristotle encouraged Alexander
toward eastern conquest and his attitude towards Persia was completely one sided. In one
example, he counsels Alexander to be a leader to the Greeks and a dictator to the
barbarians, to look after the Greeks as friends and relatives, and to deal with the Persians
as you would wild beasts or plants.
By 335 BC, Aristotle had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there
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known as the Lyceum. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve
years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died during that time and Aristotle became
involved with Herpyllis of Stagira, they had a son whom he named after his
father, Nicomachus. He wrote many dialogues of which only fragments have survived.
Those works that have survived are in discourse form and were not, for the most part,
intended for widespread publication; they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his
students.
His most important papers include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean
Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul) and Poetics. Aristotle not only studied almost
every subject possible at the time, but made significant contributions to most of them.
Which to me is why he is one of my favorite philosophers. In physical science, Aristotle
studied anatomy, astronomy, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and
zoology. In philosophy, he wrote on aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics,
economics, psychology, rhetoric and theology. Yes you could say he is a very well
educated individual I feel because he loved life and wanted to know is much and help as
much as he possibly could. He also studied education, foreign customs, literature and
poetry. His combined works constitute a virtual encyclopedia of Greek knowledge.
Near the end of his life, Alexander became suspicious and wrote threatening
letters to Aristotle. Aristotle had made no secret of his dislike for Alexander's sham of
religion and the king had executed Aristotle's grandnephew Callisthenes as a traitor. A
widespread tradition in ancient times suspected Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander's
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death, but there is little evidence and that is just speculation. Following Alexander's
death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens was renewed. In 322 BC, Eurymedon the
Hierophant denounced Aristotle for not holding the gods in honor, prompting him to flee
to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining: “I will not allow the Athenians to sin
twice against philosophy” a reference to Athens's prior trial and execution of Socrates.
Aristotle died in Euboea of natural causes later that same year, having named his
student Antipater as his chief executor and leaving a will in which he asked to be buried
next to his wife. In general, the details of the life of Aristotle are not well-established.
The biographies of Aristotle written in ancient times are often speculative and historians
only agree on a few significant points.
Aristotle’s philosophy is very broad and there is a lot to know about his personal
philosophy however I will only be covering his logic and science philosophy in the rest
of this report so you will have a better understanding of what he thought about science
and logic. Aristotle placed great emphasis in his school on direct observation of nature,
and in science he taught that theory must follow fact. He considered philosophy to be the
discerning of the self-evident, changeless first principles that form the basis of all
knowledge. Logic was for Aristotle the necessary tool of any inquiry, and the conclusion
was the system that all logical thought follows. He introduced the idea of category into
logic and taught that reality could be classified according to several categories—
substance (the primary category), quality, quantity, relation, determination in time and
space, action, passion or passivity, position, and condition.
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Aristotle also taught that knowledge of a thing, beyond its classification and
description, requires an explanation of causality, or why it is. He imagined four causes or
principles of explanation: the material cause (the substance of which the thing is made);
the formal cause (its design); the efficient cause (its maker or builder); and the final cause
(its purpose or function). In modern thought the efficient cause is generally considered
the central explanation of a thing, but for Aristotle the final cause was most important.
In the larger sense of the word, Aristotle makes philosophy equal with reasoning,
which he also would describe as "science". Note, however, that his use of the term
science is a different meaning than that covered by the phrase "scientific method". For
Aristotle, "all science is either practical, poetical or theoretical". By practical science, he
means ethics and politics; by poetical science, he means the study of poetry and the other
fine arts; by theoretical science, he means physics, mathematics and metaphysics.
In the period between his two stays in Athens, between his times at the Academy
and the Lyceum, Aristotle conducted most of the scientific thinking and research for
which he is famous today. In fact, most of Aristotle's life was devoted to the study of the
objects of natural science. Aristotle's metaphysics contains observations on the nature of
numbers but he made no original contributions to mathematics. He did, however, perform
original research in the natural sciences, for instance botany, zoology, physics,
astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, and several other sciences.
At the beginning of the 16th century, scientists began applying mathematics to the
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physical sciences, and Aristotle's work in this area was considered inadequate. His
failings were largely due to the absence of concepts like mass, velocity, force and
temperature. He had a conception of speed and temperature, but no quantitative
understanding of them, which was partly due to the absence of basic experimental
devices, like clocks and thermometers. Had he had those devices today I’m sure his
findings would be a lot more adequate.
His writings provide an account of many scientific observations, a mixture of
talented guesses and curious errors. For example, in his History of Animals he claimed
that human males have more teeth than females. Galileo, showed by simple experiments
that Aristotle's theory that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect
Aristotle also believed that the earth was the center of the universe. Its true to say in
some places, Aristotle goes too far in explaining the 'laws of the universe' from a simple
observation. Today's scientific method assumes that such thinking without sufficient facts
is ineffective, and that discerning the rationality of one's hypothesis requires far more
experimentation than what Aristotle used to support his laws. Aristotle believed that the
earth was the center of the universe. Because he was the philosopher most respected by
European thinkers during and after the Renaissance, these thinkers often took Aristotle's
mistaken positions as given, which held back science in this era. However, Aristotle's
scientific shortcomings should not mislead one into forgetting his great advances in the
many scientific fields. Although not all his predictions where correct I do admire his
willingness to explore the unknown and at least try to explain the unexplained. In that
aspect I highly respect Aristotle.
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