Philosophy A Discourse on Aristotle
Philosophy - A Discourse on AristotleAristotle was born in 384 BC and lived until 322 BC. He was a Greek philosopher and scientist,
who shares with Plato being considered the most famous of ancient philosophers. He was born at
Stagira, in Macedonia, the son of a physician to the royal court. When he was 17, he went to Athens
to study at Plato’s Academy. He stayed for about 20 years, as a student and then as a teacher.
When Plato died in 347 BC, Aristotle moved to Assos, a city in Asia Minor, where a friend
of his named Hermias was the ruler. He counseled Hermias and married his niece and adopted
daughter, Pythias (wierd names, huh). After Hermias was captured and executed by the Persians,
Aristotle went to Pella, Macedonia’s capital, and became the tutor of the king’s young son
Alexander, later known as Alexander the Great. In 335, when Alexander became king, Aristotle
went back to Athens and established his own school, the Lyceum.Since a lot of the lessons
happenned when teachers and students were walking, it was nicknamed the Peripatetic school
(Peripatetic means walking). When Alexander died in 323 BC, strong anti-Macedonian feeling
was felt in Athens, and Aristotle went to a family estate in Euboea. He died there the following
year.
Aristotle, like Plato, used his dialogue in his beginning years at the Academy. Apart from a
few fragments in the works of later writers, his dialogues have been wholly lost. Aristotle also wrote
some short technical writings, including a dictionary of philosophic terms and a summary of the
“doctrines of Pythagoras” (the guy from the Pythagorean Theorem). Of these, only a few short pieces
have survived. Still in good shape, though, are Aristotle’s lecture notes for carefully outlined courses
treating almost every type of knowledge and art. The writings that made him famous are mostly these,
which were collected by other editors. .
Among the writings are short informative lectures on logic, called Organon
(which means “instrument”), because “they provide the means by which positive knowledge is to be
attained”(They’re not my words, I’m quoting him). His writing on natural science include Physics,
which gives a huge amount of information on astronomy, meteorology, plants, and animals. His
writings on the nature, scope, and properties of being, (I know what one of them means!) which
Aristotle called First Philosophy (to him it was “Prote philosophia”), were given the title Metaphysics
in the first published version of his works (around 60 BC), because in that edition they followed
Physics. His belief of the “Prime Mover”, or first cause, was pure intellect, perfect in unity,
immutable,
and, as he said, “the thought of thought,” is given in the Metaphysics. Other famous works include his
Rhetoric, his Poetics (which we only have incomplete pieces of), and his Politics (also incomplete).
Because of the influence of his father’s medical profession, Aristotle’s philosophy was mainly stressed
on biology, the opposite of Plato’s emphasis...
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