Life
In a small Greek township of Stagira, Aristotle was born in the summer of 384 B.C., on the Chalcidie
Peninsula of Macedonia in Northern Greece. Nichomachus, his father was a court physician to the king of
Macedonia, Amyrstas III, who happened to be the grandfather of Alexander the Great.
Aristotle in all likelihood learnt at home the fundamentals of the practical skill he
displayed later on in his biological researches.
The early connection with medicine and with the rough-living court of
Macedonian largely explains the predominantly biological cast of Aristotle’s
philosophical thought and the intense dislike of princes and courts to which he gave
expression more than once.
At a young age Aristotle’s father died and became a word of Proxenus. He was
sent to Academy of Plato at Athens in 367 B. C. and remained there for 20 years.
These years formed the first of three main periods in Aristotle’s intellectual development, the period dominated
by the formative influence of Plato and his colleagues in the Academy.
Aristotle took keen interest in the activities of the Academy. He devoted some time to study rhetoric and
he wrote and spoke for the Academy in its battles against the rival school of Isocrates.
In about 348/347 B.C. Plato died, and shortly thereafter Aristotle left Athens in disgust, at not being
appointed Plato’s successor. Absence of Aristotle for 12 years from Athens nevertheless indicates that he valued
more the circle of friends who accompanied him during his travels, chief of them was Theophrastus of Eresus,
his pupil; colleague and eventual successor as head of the Lyceum.
After his visit to the Athenian Academy, Aristotle invited two of Plato’s graduates to set up a small
branch to help spread Greek rule as well as Greek philosophy to Asian soil. Aristotle came to this new
intellectual centre. Therefore first 12 chapters of Book 7 of Aristotle’s ‘Politics’ are attributed to this
period.Simultaneously, Aristotle composed "On Kingship" in which he distinguished clearly the function of the
philosopher from that of the king. He differed from Plato’s quote – for the better, it is said-by teaching that it is.
Aristotle said : ‘Not merely unnecessary for king to be a philosopher, but even a disadvantage. Rather a king
should take the advice of true philosophers. Then he would fill his reign with good deeds, not with good
words."
Aristotle then moved to Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos, after staying there for 3 years at the young
Assus Academy, established a philosophical circle patterned after the Athenian Academy, with his friend
Theophrastus, a native of that island. His centre of interest shifted to biology, in which he undertook pioneering
investigations.
In his biological researches he focused on a new type of causation, namely
theleological studies.According to Aristotle, natural organism-plants and animals have
natural ends or goals, and their structure and development can only be fully explained
when these goals are understood.Aristotle in his treatise, ‘On the generation of
Animals’ wrote "The facts have not yet been sufficiently established. If ever they are,
then credit must be given to observation rather than to theories, and to theories only
insofar as they are confirmed by the observed facts."
When Aristotle researched into plants and animal life they were associated with his reflections on the
relation of the soul to the body.With some acknowledgement to Plato, Aristotle defined the soul as the form of
the body and the body as the matter of the soul.
In about B.C. 342 when he was 42, Philip II of Macedonia invited him to teach his son Alexander, who
was 13 years old, to prepare him for his future role as a military leader.Using the model of the Greek epic hero
in Homer’s ‘Iliad’, Aristotle attempted to shape Alexander as an embossment of the classical valor of an Ajax
or Achilles enlightened by the latest achievement of Greek civilization and philosophy.
He instructed Alexander to dominate the Barbarians i.e. non-Greeks and to hold them in servility by
refraining from any physical intermixture with them.The influence that Aristotle had
on Alexander was negligible.
Later on returning to Athens, Aristotle enjoyed considerable political and
economic support from Macedonians and received help in the organization of his
biological researches.
In political ideology, a gulf separated Aristotle and Alexander. Aristotle
opposed in principle Alexander’s imperial policy, because it diminished the
importance of the city-state.
In about 339 B.C., Aristotle withdraws from Macedonian court and returned to his paternal property at
Stagira. There he confirmed the association of his philosophical circle including Theophrastus and other pupils
of Plato.
Until 335 B.C., approaching 50 Aristotle remained in Stagira, and then again went back to Athens.He
opened in 335 B.C., a rival institution in the Lyceum, a gymnasium attached to the temple of Apollo Lyceus,
situated in a grove just outside Athens.
Aristotle had given instruction in the ‘Peripatos, or covered walkway, of the gymnasium, hence the
school was very important to Aristotle because, by co-ordinating the work of a number of scholars, he was able
for the next 12 years to organize it as a centre for speculation and research in every field of inquiry and to give
lectures on a wide range on a wide range of philosophical and scientific questions.Alexander the Great died in
323 B.C., And due to vigorous anti-Macedonian agitation in Athens, Aristotle feared danger to himself. Hence
he left Athens and withdrew to his mother’s estates in Charlie’ on the island of Euboea.He died there in the
following year from a stomach illness at the age of 62.
Philosophy
Rhetoric and literature are closely connected as Aristotle found. He wrote a
historic-critical book ‘On the Poets’ and a collection of ‘Jdomeric Problems’. They
manifest Aristotle as a serious student of philosophy and literary criticism, and they
formed part of the preliminary work for the ‘Poetics’ in which Aristotle sketched his
account of the nature of tragedy, and for the third book of the ‘Rhetoric’, which is a
doctrine on language and style.
According to Aristotle, Rhetoric is also connected with logic, of course, in the
‘Gryluss’, ‘Aristotle claimed that Rhetoric should not excite the passions by fine
language, but should rather persuade the reason by fine arguments. Aristotle had
profound love for Plato and his philosophy. On death of Plato, he wrote a moving elegy
in which he praised him as a man ‘whom it is not right for evil men even to praise; who alone or first of mortals
proved clearly, by his own life and by the course of his arguments, that a man becomes good and happy at the
same time.Aristotle believed that knowledge must be systematic and unified. Its structure is given by logic, and
its unity rests at bottom on ontology. Aristotle was equally impressed as Plato by the power of axiomatisation,
but did not believe that all knowledge could be founded upon a single set of axioms, because of apparent
independence of the sciences.
Aristotle practiced the greatest veneration for such genius : that is apparent from every
page of his doctrine on the arts ‘The Poetics’. It is short and available in a curtailed form. It is
short and available in a curtailed form. It is an interesting essay on language and linguistics,
which should be supplemented by the style in Book III of the ‘Rhetorick’. It contains literary
theory or criticism. However, Aristotle saw his tract; the ‘Poetics’ is a contribution to
productive science – its aim is to tell us not how to judge a work of art, but how to produce
one.
According to a Aristotle, ‘Art’ is a matter of Imitation or Representation. ‘Epics and
tragic poetry, and also comedy and dithyrambs and most flute and harp-music, are all by and
large imitations’. Art imitates or represents human life, and in particular human actions.
Human actions differ in character, ‘and it is this difference which distinguishes tragedy from comedy; for the
later is suppose to imitate the men who are worse, the former men who are better, then those of today’. ‘Poetics’
is devoted much to tragedy. He defined tragedy : "Tragedy is an imitation of an action which is serious and
complete, and which has a certain magnitude. Its language is well seasoned, with each of the kinds of seasoning
used separately in its different parts. It is in dramatic, not narrative, forms. And through pity and fear it
accomplishes a purgation of emotions of that sort’.
Aristotle distinguished 6 elements of tragedy – plot, character, language, thought, spectacle and song –
of these, plot is the most important; and only through its plot off that a tragedy will perform its purgative
function : ‘the chief means by which a tragedy works on the emotions are parts of the plot, namely discoveries
and reversals’.In the productive sciences, the pleasure of learning is very important. The direct aim of the
theoretical sciences are truth and knowledge, as a part of everyman’s nature and that is the patently dominant
aspect of his own personality, which informs and unifies the tripartite structure of Aristotelian philosophy.
Achievements
Aristotle is known today, as a profoundly systematic thinker. After all, philosophy is nothing, if it is not
systematic, and his system – his ‘world picture’ – has for centuries. Aristotle’s scientific doctrines are never
presented in an axiomatic fashion. On the aporetic interpretation, the treatises represent the essence of
Aristotle’s philosophy : his occasional reflections on systematization are not to be taken too seriously – they are
ritual gestures towards a platonic notion of science, evidence of Aristotle’s own fundamental convictions.
Aristotle has said quite enough to enable us to see how, in a perfect world, he would have presented and
organized the scientific knowledge, he had industriously amassed. But his systematic plans are plans for a
complete science, and he could not live long enough to discover everything.
Science is about real things, which is knowledge rather than fantasy. The question of ontology is : what
are the fundamental items with which science must concern itself ? And Aristotle devoted much attention to this
question. Most of his ontological thoughts are found in the ‘Metaphysics’.
Aristotle thought that most of the key terms of philosophy were ambiguous. In the ‘Sophistical
Refutations’ he spent some time in expounding and solving sophistical puzzles that are based on ambiguity, and
Book V of the ‘Metaphysics’, sometimes called Aristotle’s "Philosophical Lexicon’, is a set of short essays on
the different senses of a number of philosophical terms.
According to Aristotle, there can be, four kinds of change : a thing can change in respect of substance, of
quality, of quantity and of place. And that, in every change there is an initial state and an end state may be
granted; and the states must be distinct, or else no change will have occurred.
Aristotle had much more to say about change. Change takes place in time and space, and the Physics
offers intricate theories about the nature of time, of place and empty space. Since space and time are infinitely
divisible, Aristotle analyzed the notion of infinity. He discussed a number of particular problems concerning the
relation of motion to time, including a brief treatment of Zero’s celebrated paradoxes of motion. Saying about
‘Cause’ Aristotle said : ‘Not all explanations need actually have that specific form’; but he held that all
explanations can be couched in that form, and that the form exhibits the nature of causal connections most
perspicuously.
Quotations
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
Most people would rather give than get affection.
Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.
What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have
peace.
Wicked men obey out of fear; good men, out of love.
The moral virtues, then, are produced in us, neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed,
prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from
evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness
.
Chronology
384 BC
Aristotle was born at Stagira
367 BC
Aristotle migrated to Athens and joined Plato’s Academy
356 BC
Birth of Alexander the Great
347 BC
Death of Plato; Aristotle left Athens for the court of Hermias at Atarneus, and settled at
Assos
345 BC
Aristotle moved to Mytilene on Lesbos (and later returned to Stagira)
343 BC
Philip of Macedonia invited him to Mieza to tutor Alexander
341 BC
Death of Hermias
336 BC
Philip was killed and Alexander was crowned
335 BC
Aristotle returned to Athens and began teaching in the Lyceum
323 BC
Death of Alexander the Great
322 BC
Aristotle left Athens for Chalcis, where he died.
Guided by : P. Balaji
Done by : M. Murugan, B. Vinoth Kumar, K. Anand, K. Neelamegam, S. A. Jamal of IX C