Aristotle

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Aristotle (disambiguation).

Aristotle
 Roman copy (in marble) of a Greek bronze bust of Aristotle

by Lysippos (c. 330 BCE), with modern alabaster mantle

Born 384 BCE

Stagira, Chalcidian League

Died 322 BCE (aged 61–62)

Chalcis, Euboea, Macedonian Empire

Education Platonic Academy

• Organon
Notable work
• Physics

• Metaphysics

• Nicomachean Ethics

• Politics

• Rhetoric

• Poetics

Era Ancient Greek philosophy

Region Western philosophy

 School • Peripatetic school

Notable students Alexander the Great, Theophrastus, Aristoxenus

Main interests • Logic

• Natural philosophy

• Metaphysics

• Ethics

• Politics

• Rhetoric

• Poetics

Notable ideas Aristotelianism

show

Theoretical philosophy

show

Natural philosophy

show

Practical philosophy

Aristotle (/ˈærɪˌstɒtəl/;[1] Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotélēs, pronounced [aristotélɛːs]; 384–

322 BCE) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad
range of subjects spanning the natural
sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology and the arts. As the
founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the
wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development
of modern science.

Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern
Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a
child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At 17 or 18 he joined Plato's Academy in
Athens and remained there till the age of 37 (c. 347 BCE). Shortly after Plato died,
Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his
son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum
which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.

Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues for publication, only
around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication.
Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him.
His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world,
and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical
science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance,
and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such
as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic
philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially
the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic
Church.

Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and
among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the
poet Dante called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest
known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Peter
Abelard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th
century. In addition, his ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with
the modern advent of virtue ethics.

Life
In general, the details of Aristotle's life are not well-established. The biographies written
in ancient times are often speculative and historians only agree on a few salient points. [A]

Aristotle was born in 384 BC[B] in Stagira, Chalcidice,[2] about 55 km (34 miles) east of
modern-day Thessaloniki.[3][4] His father, Nicomachus, was the personal physician
to King Amyntas of Macedon. While he was young, Aristotle learned about biology and
medical information, which was taught by his father.[5] Both of Aristotle's parents died
when he was about thirteen, and Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian.[6] Although
little information about Aristotle's childhood has survived, he probably spent some time
within the Macedonian palace, making his first connections with the Macedonian
monarchy.[7]

School of Aristotle in Mieza, Macedonia, Greece.

At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his
education at Plato's Academy.[8] He probably experienced the Eleusinian Mysteries as
he wrote when describing the sights one viewed at the Eleusinian Mysteries, "to
experience is to learn" [παθείν μαθεĩν].[9] Aristotle remained in Athens for nearly twenty
years before leaving in 348/47 BCE. The traditional story about his departure records
that he was disappointed with the Academy's direction after control passed to Plato's
nephew Speusippus, although it is possible that he feared the anti-Macedonian
sentiments in Athens at that time and left before Plato died.[10] Aristotle then
accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor.
After the death of Hermias, Aristotle travelled with his pupil Theophrastus to the island
of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island and its
sheltered lagoon. While in Lesbos, Aristotle married Pythias, either Hermias's adoptive
daughter or niece. They had a daughter, whom they also named Pythias. In 343 BCE,
Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his
son Alexander.[11][12]

"Aristotle tutoring Alexander" by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal Academy of Macedon. During
Aristotle's time in the Macedonian court, he gave lessons not only to Alexander but also
to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander.[13] Aristotle encouraged Alexander
toward eastern conquest, and Aristotle's own attitude towards Persia was
unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be "a
leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after
friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants".[13] By 335 BCE,
Aristotle had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as
the Lyceum. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While
in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira.
They had a son whom Aristotle named after his father, Nicomachus. If the Suda – an
uncritical compilation from the Middle Ages – is accurate, he may also have had
an erômenos, Palaephatus of Abydus.[14]
 Portrait bust of Aristotle; an Imperial Roman (1st or 2nd century
CE) copy of a lost bronze sculpture made by Lysippos.
This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BCE, is when Aristotle is believed to have
composed many of his works.[12] He wrote many dialogues, of which only fragments
have survived. Those works that have survived are in treatise 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 treatises
include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul and Poetics.
Aristotle studied and made significant contributions to "logic, metaphysics, mathematics,
physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance, and theatre." [15]

Near the end of his life, Alexander and Aristotle became estranged over Alexander's
relationship with Persia and Persians. A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected
Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander's death, but the only evidence of this is
an unlikely claim made some six years after the death.[16] Following Alexander's death,
anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens was rekindled. In 322 BCE, Demophilus
and Eurymedon the Hierophant reportedly denounced Aristotle for impiety,[17] prompting
him to flee to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, on Euboea, at which occasion he
was said to have stated: "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against
philosophy"[18][19][20] – a reference to Athens's trial and execution of Socrates. He died in
Chalcis, Euboea[2][21][15] 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.[22]

Theoretical philosophy
Logic
Main article: Term logic
Further information: Non-Aristotelian logic
With the Prior Analytics, Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic,[23] and
his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th-century advances
in mathematical logic.[24] Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that with Aristotle
logic reached its completion.[25]
Organon
Main article: Organon
One of Aristotle's types of syllogism[C]

In
In words In equations[E]
terms[D]

All men are mortal. MaP

All Greeks are men. SaM

∴ All Greeks are mortal. S a P

What is today called Aristotelian logic with its types of syllogism (methods of logical
argument),[26] Aristotle himself would have labelled "analytics". The term "logic" he
reserved to mean dialectics. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form,
because it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of
Aristotle were compiled into a set of six books called the Organon around 40 BCE
by Andronicus of Rhodes or others among his followers.[28] The books are:

1. Categories
2. On Interpretation
3. Prior Analytics
4. Posterior Analytics
5. Topics
6. On Sophistical Refutations

Plato (left) and Aristotle in Raphael's 1509 fresco, The School of

Athens. Aristotle holds his Nicomachean Ethics and gestures to the earth, representing
his view in immanent realism, whilst Plato gestures to the heavens, indicating his
Theory of Forms, and holds his Timaeus.[29][30]
The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain,
but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the
analysis of simple terms in the Categories, the analysis of propositions and their
elementary relations in On Interpretation, to the study of more complex forms, namely,
syllogisms (in the Analytics)[31][32] and dialectics (in the Topics and Sophistical
Refutations). The first three treatises form the core of the logical theory stricto sensu:
the grammar of the language of logic and the correct rules of reasoning. The Rhetoric is
not conventionally included, but it states that it relies on the Topics.[33]

Metaphysics
Main article: Metaphysics (Aristotle)
The word "metaphysics" appears to have been coined by the first century CE editor who
assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works to the treatise we know by the
name Metaphysics.[34] Aristotle called it "first philosophy", and distinguished it from
mathematics and natural science (physics) as the contemplative (theoretikē) philosophy
which is "theological" and studies the divine. He wrote in his Metaphysics (1026a16):

if there were no other independent things besides the composite natural ones, the study
of nature would be the primary kind of knowledge; but if there is some motionless
independent thing, the knowledge of this precedes it and is first philosophy, and it is
universal in just this way, because it is first. And it belongs to this sort of philosophy to
study being as being, both what it is and what belongs to it just by virtue of being. [35]
Substance
Further information: Hylomorphism
Aristotle examines the concepts of substance (ousia) and essence (to ti ên einai, "the
what it was to be") in his Metaphysics (Book VII), and he concludes that a particular
substance is a combination of both matter and form, a philosophical theory
called hylomorphism. In Book VIII, he distinguishes the matter of the substance as
the substratum, or the stuff of which it is composed. For example, the matter of a house
is the bricks, stones, timbers, etc., or whatever constitutes the potential house, while the
form of the substance is the actual house, namely 'covering for bodies and chattels' or
any other differentia that let us define something as a house. The formula that gives the
components is the account of the matter, and the formula that gives the differentia is the
account of the form.[36][34]

Immanent realism
Main article: Aristotle's theory of universals
 Plato's forms exist as universals, like the
ideal form of an apple. For Aristotle, both matter and form belong to the individual thing
(hylomorphism).
Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aims at the universal.
Aristotle's ontology places the universal (katholou) in particulars (kath' hekaston), things
in the world, whereas for Plato the universal is a separately existing form which actual
things imitate. For Aristotle, "form" is still what phenomena are based on, but is
"instantiated" in a particular substance.[34]

Plato argued that all things have a universal form, which could be either a property or a
relation to other things. When one looks at an apple, for example, one sees an apple,
and one can also analyse a form of an apple. In this distinction, there is a particular
apple and a universal form of an apple. Moreover, one can place an apple next to a
book, so that one can speak of both the book and apple as being next to each other.
Plato argued that there are some universal forms that are not a part of particular things.
For example, it is possible that there is no particular good in existence, but "good" is still
a proper universal form. Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this point, arguing that all
universals are instantiated at some period of time, and that there are no universals that
are unattached to existing things. In addition, Aristotle disagreed with Plato about the
location of universals. Where Plato spoke of the forms as existing separately from the
things that participate in them, Aristotle maintained that universals exist within each
thing on which each universal is predicated. So, according to Aristotle, the form of apple
exists within each apple, rather than in the world of the forms.[34][37]

Potentiality and actuality

Concerning the nature of change (kinesis) and its causes, as he outlines in
his Physics and On Generation and Corruption (319b–320a), he distinguishes coming-
to-be (genesis, also translated as 'generation') from:

1. growth and diminution, which is change in quantity;

2. locomotion, which is change in space; and
3. alteration, which is change in quality.
 Aristotle argued that a capability like playing the flute
could be acquired – the potential made actual – by learning.
Coming-to-be is a change where the substrate of the thing that has undergone the
change has itself changed. In that particular change he introduces the concept of
potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (entelecheia) in association with the matter and the
form. Referring to potentiality, this is what a thing is capable of doing or being acted
upon if the conditions are right and it is not prevented by something else. For example,
the seed of a plant in the soil is potentially (dynamei) a plant, and if it is not prevented
by something, it will become a plant. Potentially beings can either 'act' (poiein) or 'be
acted upon' (paschein), which can be either innate or learned. For example, the eyes
possess the potentiality of sight (innate – being acted upon), while the capability of
playing the flute can be possessed by learning (exercise – acting). Actuality is the
fulfilment of the end of the potentiality. Because the end (telos) is the principle of every
change, and potentiality exists for the sake of the end, actuality, accordingly, is the end.
Referring then to the previous example, it can be said that an actuality is when a plant
does one of the activities that plants do.[34]

For that for the sake of which (to hou heneka) a thing is, is its principle, and the
becoming is for the sake of the end; and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of
this that the potentiality is acquired. For animals do not see in order that they may have
sight, but they have sight that they may see.[38]
In summary, the matter used to make a house has potentiality to be a house and both
the activity of building and the form of the final house are actualities, which is also a final
cause or end. Then Aristotle proceeds and concludes that the actuality is prior to
potentiality in formula, in time and in substantiality. With this definition of the particular
substance (i.e., matter and form), Aristotle tries to solve the problem of the unity of the
beings, for example, "what is it that makes a man one"? Since, according to Plato there
are two Ideas: animal and biped, how then is man a unity? However, according to
Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the
same.[34][39]

Epistemology
Aristotle's immanent realism means his epistemology is based on the study of things
that exist or happen in the world, and rises to knowledge of the universal, whereas for
Plato epistemology begins with knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) and descends
to knowledge of particular imitations of these.[33] Aristotle uses induction from examples
alongside deduction, whereas Plato relies on deduction from a priori principles.[33]

Natural philosophy
Aristotle's "natural philosophy" spans a wide range of natural phenomena including
those now covered by physics, biology and other natural sciences.[40] In Aristotle's
terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena
of the natural world, and includes fields that would be regarded today as physics,
biology and other natural sciences. Aristotle's work encompassed virtually all facets of
intellectual inquiry. Aristotle makes philosophy in the broad sense coextensive with
reasoning, which he also would describe as "science". However, his use of the
term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific
method". For Aristotle, "all science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical"
(Metaphysics 1025b25). His practical science includes ethics and politics; his poetical
science means the study of fine arts including poetry; his theoretical science covers
physics, mathematics and metaphysics.[40]

Physics

The four classical elements (fire, air, water, earth)

of Empedocles and Aristotle illustrated with a burning log. The log releases all four
elements as it is destroyed.
Main article: Aristotelian physics
Five elements
Main article: Classical element
In his On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle related each of the four elements
proposed earlier by Empedocles, earth, water, air, and fire, to two of the four sensible
qualities, hot, cold, wet, and dry. In the Empedoclean scheme, all matter was made of
the four elements, in differing proportions. Aristotle's scheme added the
heavenly aether, the divine substance of the heavenly spheres, stars and planets.[41]

Aristotle's elements[41]

Modern state
Element Hot/Cold Wet/Dry Motion
of matter

Earth Cold Dry Down Solid

Water Cold Wet Down Liquid

Air Hot Wet Up Gas

Fire Hot Dry Up Plasma

(divine Circular
Aether — Vacuum
substance) (in heavens)

Motion
Further information: History of classical mechanics
Aristotle describes two kinds of motion: "violent" or "unnatural motion", such as that of a
thrown stone, in the Physics (254b10), and "natural motion", such as of a falling object,
in On the Heavens (300a20). In violent motion, as soon as the agent stops causing it,
the motion stops also: in other words, the natural state of an object is to be at
rest,[42][F] since Aristotle does not address friction.[43] With this understanding, it can be
observed that, as Aristotle stated, heavy objects (on the ground, say) require more force
to make them move; and objects pushed with greater force move faster.[44][G] This would
imply the equation[44]

,
incorrect in modern physics.[44]

Natural motion depends on the element concerned: the aether naturally moves in a
circle around the heavens,[H] while the 4 Empedoclean elements move vertically up
(like fire, as is observed) or down (like earth) towards their natural resting
places.[45][43][I]
 Aristotle's laws of motion.
In Physics he states that objects fall at a speed proportional to their weight and
inversely proportional to the density of the fluid they are immersed in.[43] This is a
correct approximation for objects in Earth's gravitational field moving in air or
water.[45]
In the Physics (215a25), Aristotle effectively states a quantitative law, that the
speed, v, of a falling body is proportional (say, with constant c) to its weight, W, and
inversely proportional to the density,[J] ρ, of the fluid in which it is falling:;[45][43]

Aristotle implies that in a vacuum the speed of fall would become infinite, and
concludes from this apparent absurdity that a vacuum is not
possible.[45][43] Opinions have varied on whether Aristotle intended to state
quantitative laws. Henri Carteron held the "extreme view"[43] that Aristotle's
concept of force was basically qualitative,[46] but other authors reject this.[43]

Archimedes corrected Aristotle's theory that bodies move towards their natural
resting places; metal boats can float if they displace enough water; floating
depends in Archimedes' scheme on the mass and volume of the object, not, as
Aristotle thought, its elementary composition.[45]

Aristotle's writings on motion remained influential until the Early

Modern period. John Philoponus (in Late antiquity) and Galileo (in Early modern
period) are said to have shown by experiment that Aristotle's claim that a heavier
object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect.[40] A contrary opinion is given
by Carlo Rovelli, who argues that Aristotle's physics of motion is correct within its
domain of validity, that of objects in the Earth's gravitational field immersed in a
fluid such as air. In this system, heavy bodies in steady fall indeed travel faster
than light ones (whether friction is ignored, or not[45]), and they do fall more slowly
in a denser medium.[44][K]
Newton's "forced" motion corresponds to Aristotle's "violent" motion with its
external agent, but Aristotle's assumption that the agent's effect stops
immediately it stops acting (e.g., the ball leaves the thrower's hand) has
awkward consequences: he has to suppose that surrounding fluid helps to push
the ball along to make it continue to rise even though the hand is no longer
acting on it, resulting in the Medieval theory of impetus.[45]

Four causes
Main article: Four causes