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Aristotle (384-322 BCE.)
Aristotle was born at Stagirius, a Greek colony on the coast of
Thrace. His father was the court physician for the king of
Macedonia. When he was 17, Aristotle was sent to Athens to
study at Plato's Academy. He stayed at the Academy for 20 years
both as a student and then as a teacher.
After Plato died in 347, Aristotle left Athens, eventually ending up
in Macedonia, where he became the tutor of Alexander (the
Great), son of the Macedonian king. When Alexander became
king in 335, Aristotle returned to Athens to establish his own
school called the Lyceum. At the Lyceum, discussions were held
while the teachers and students walked around the grounds of
the school, earning it the name of the "peripatetic", or walking, school.
Aristotle's philosophy stresses biology, instead of mathematics like Plato. He believed the
world was made up of individuals (substances) occurring in fixed natural kinds (species). Each
individual has built-in patterns of development, which help it grow toward becoming a fully
developed individual of its kind. Nature has built into each individual patterns for growth,
purpose, and direction.
To organize these patterns, Aristotle introduced the philosophic idea of causality. He believed
that each thing or event has more than one "reason" that helps to explain what, why, and
where it is. To Aristotle the four causes are: the material cause, what something is made out
of; the efficient cause, the source of motion; the formal cause, the species, kind, or type; and
the final cause, the full development of an individual or the intended function of an invention.
For example, a young lion is made up of tissue and organs (material cause) by its parents who
generated it (efficient cause). The formal cause is its species, lion; and its final cause is its
instinct and drive to become a mature lion. Aristotle believed that all things could be better
understood when its causes were stated in specific terms. He used his causal pattern to
organize all knowledge. Some of Aristotle's words of wisdom:
• "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit."
• "Dignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them."
• "Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."
• "Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all
when he lives without law, and without justice."
• "It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen."
• "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."
• "We make war that we may live in peace."
• "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous."
• "Man is by nature a political animal."
• "Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish."
• "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without
accepting it."
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2/9/2016