Introduction
Aristotle, more than any other thinker, determined the orientation and
the content of Western intellectual history. He was the author of a philosophical
and scientific system that through the centuries became the support and
vehicle for both medieval Christian and Islamic scholastic thought: until
the end of the 17th century, Western culture was Aristotelian. And, even
after the intellectual revolutions of centuries to follow, Aristotelian
concepts and ideas remained embedded in Western thinking. Aristotle's intellectual
range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts. He
worked in physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, and botany; in psychology,
political theory, and ethics; in logic and metaphysics; in history, literary
theory, and rhetoric. His greatest achievements were in two unrelated areas:
he invented the study of formal logic, devising for it a finished system,
known as Aristotelian syllogistic, that for centuries was regarded
as the sum of logic; and he pioneered the study of zoology, both observational
and theoretical, in which his work was not surpassed until the 19th century.
Even though Aristotle's zoology is now out-of-date and his thought
in the other natural sciences has long been left behind, his importance
as a scientist is unparalleled. But it is now of purely historical importance:
he, like other
scientists of the past, is not read by his successors. As a philosopher
Aristotle is equally outstanding. And here he remains more than a museum
piece. Although his syllogistic is now recognized to be only a small part
of formal
logic, his writings in ethical and political theory as well as in metaphysics
and in the philosophy of science are read and argued over by modern philosophers.
Aristotle's historical importance is second to none, and his work
remains a powerful component in current philosophical debate. This
article deals with the man, his achievements, and the Aristotelian tradition.
The Life of Aristotle
Aristotle was born in the summer of 384 BC in the small Greek township
of Stagira (or Stagirus, or Stageirus), on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia,
in northern Greece. (For this reason Aristotle is also known as the "Stagirite.")
His father, Nicomachus, was court physician to Amyntas III, king of Macedonia,
father of Philip II, and grandfather of Alexander the Great. As a doctor's
son, Aristotle was heir to a scientific tradition some 200 years old. The
case histories contained in the Epidemics of Hippocrates, the father of
Greek medicine, may have introduced him at an early age to the concepts
and practices of Greek medicine and biology. As a physician, Nicomachus
was a member of the guild of the Asclepiads, the so-called sons of Asclepius,
the legendary founder
and god of medicine. (see also Index: Greek philosophy) Because medicine
was a traditional occupation in certain families, being handed down from
father to son, Aristotle in all likelihood learned at home the
fundamentals of that practical skill he was afterward to display in
his biological researches. Had he been a medical student he would have
undergone a rigorous and varied training: he would have studied the role
in therapy of diet, drugs, and exercise; he would have learned how to check
the flow of blood, apply bandages, fit splints to broken limbs, reset dislocations,
and make poultices of flour, oil, and wine. Such, at least, were the skills
of the trained physician of his time. It is not known for certain that
Aristotle actually acquired these skills; it is known that medicine and
its history were later studied in the Lyceum, Aristotle's own institute
in Athens, and that later, in a snobbish vein, he considered a man sufficiently
educated if he knew the theory of medicine without having gained experience
practicing it. This early connection with medicine and with the rough-living
Macedonian court
largely explains both the predominantly biological cast of Aristotle's
philosophical thought and the intense dislike of princes and courts to
which he more than once gave expression.
First period: in the Academy at Athens:
While Aristotle was still a youth, his father died, and the young man
became a ward of Proxenus, probably a relative of his father. He was sent
to the Academy of Plato at Athens in 367 and remained there for 20 years.
These years formed the first of three main periods in Aristotle's intellectual
development, years dominated by the formative influence of Plato and his
colleagues in the Academy. Aristotle doubtless interested himself in the
whole range of the Academy's activities. It is known that he devoted some
time to the study of rhetoric, and he wrote and spoke for the Academy in
its battles against the rival school of Isocrates. After Plato's death
in 348/347 his nephew Speusippus was named as head of the Academy. Aristotle
shortly thereafter left Athens--in disgust, it is sometimes claimed, at
not being appointed Plato's successor. This interpretation of his motive,
however, lacks foundation, for evidence suggests that he was ineligible
to be the school's head because of his status as a resident alien who could
not hold property legally. It is more likely that his departure from Athens
may have been linked with an anti-Macedonian feeling that arose in Athens
after Philip had sacked the Greek city-state of Olynthus in 348. Aristotle's
12-year absence from Athens nevertheless indicates that he valued more
the circle of friends who accompanied him on his travels--chief among them
Theophrastus of Eresus, his pupil, colleague, and eventual successor as
head of the Lyceum--than he did his membership in the Platonic Academy.
Second period: his travels:
With him went another Academy member of note, Xenocrates of Chalcedon,
whose lethargy became the target of Plato's ridicule. Plato reportedly
contrasted it with Aristotle's more energetic manner: "The one needs a
spur, the other a bridle . . . . See what an ass I am training to compete
with what a horse." The distinctive characters of the two men, however,
seem to have integrated well in establishing a new academy on the Asian
side of the Aegean at the newly built town of Assus. At Assus, Hermeias
of Atarneus, a Greek soldier of fortune, had first acquired fiscal and
then political control of northwestern Asia Minor, as a vassal of Persian
overlords. After a visit to the Athenian Academy he 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. To this period may belong the first 12 chapters of Book 7 of Aristotle's
Politics. There he sketches the connection between philosophy and politics,
namely, that the highest purpose of a city-state (polis) is to secure the
conditions in which those who are capable of it can live the philosophical
life. Such a life, however, lies only within the capacity of the Greeks,
whose superiority qualifies them to employ the non-Greek tribal peoples
as serfs or slaves for the performance of all menial labour. Thus, citizenship
and service in the armed forces are considered to be the exclusive rights
and duties of the Greeks. Aristotle's espousal of an enlightened oligarchy,
nonetheless, actually
constituted an advance over the political concepts flourishing at the
time and it should be viewed in its context as a positive development in
the establishment of the noble civilization created by the Greeks. At about
the same time, Aristotle composed the work, now lost, On Kingship, in which
he clearly distinguishes the function of the philosopher from that of the
king. He alters Plato's dictum--for the better, it is said--by teaching
that it is (see also Index: philosopher-king) . . . not merely
unnecessary for a 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 thus strove to
assure the independent role of the philosopher. Aristotle was on good terms
with his patron, Hermeias, and married his niece, Pythias. She bore Aristotle
a daughter, whom he called by her mother's name. In the Politics, Aristotle
prescribed the ideal ages for marriage--37 for the husband and 18 for the
wife. Because Aristotle was himself 37 at this time, it is tempting to
guess that Pythias was 18. It is also possible that their own marital relations
are reflected in his further, somewhat cryptic, observation: "As for adultery,
let it be held disgraceful for any man or woman to be found in any way
unfaithful once they are married and call each other husband and wife."
In his will Aristotle ordered that "Wherever they bury me, there the bones
of Pythias shall be laid, in accordance with her own instructions." Pythias
did not live long, however; and after her death Aristotle chose another
companion, Herpyllis (whether concubine or wife is uncertain), by whom
he then had a son, Nicomachus. She outlived Aristotle, and he made ample
and considerate provision for her in his will "in recognition of the steady
affection she has shown me." After three years at the young Assus Academy,
Aristotle moved to the nearby island of Lesbos and settled in Mytilene,
the capital city. With his friend Theophrastus, a native of that island,
he established a philosophical circle patterned after the Athenian Academy.
There his centre of interest shifted to biology, in which he undertook
pioneering investigations. (The landlocked lagoon of Pyrrha in the centre
of Lesbos has been identified as one of his favourite haunts.) He appears
to have felt it necessary to justify this new attention to biology by rejecting
the arguments that had classed it as an inferior, unattractive study. In
his biological researches he focused on a new type of causation, namely
teleological. Teleological causation has to do with the aim, or end, of
nature, a type that is distinct from mechanical causation but one that
is, nonetheless, operative in the inorganic sphere. According to Aristotle,
natural organisms--plants and animals--have natural ends or goals, and
their structure and development can only be fully explained when these
goals are understood. To admit the existence of such ends, or aims, in
nature is to argue teleologically (Greek telos, "an end") or to admit the
idea of a final cause (Latin finis, "end"). Teleology, and theory in general,
is important in Aristotle's biology; but it is always, in principle at
least, subordinate to observation. Thus, confessing his ignorance of the
mode of generation of bees, Aristotle wrote in his treatise On the Generation
of Animals: 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. Associated with his researches into
plant and animal life were his reflections on the relation of the soul
to the body. As revealed by his tract On the Soul, Aristotle distanced
himself from the Platonic conception of the soul as an independently existing
substance that is only temporarily resident in the body. With greater emphasis
on the positive value of material existence, he suggested instead that
the soul is the vital principle essentially united with the body to form
the individual person. With some acknowledgment to Plato, he then proceeded
to define the soul as the form of the body and the body as the matter of
the soul. In late 343 or early 342 Aristotle, at about the age of 42, was
invited by Philip II of Macedon to his capital at Pella to tutor his 13-year-old
son, Alexander. As the leading intellectual figure in Greece, Aristotle
was commissioned to prepare Alexander for his future role as a military
leader. As it turned out, Alexander was to dominate the Greek world and
defend it against the Persian Empire. Using the model of the epic Greek
hero, as in Homer's Iliad, Aristotle attempted to form Alexander as an
embodiment of the classical valour of an Ajax or Achilles enlightened by
the latest achievement of Greek civilization, philosophy. With his firm
conviction of the superiority of Greeks over foreigners, 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. Despite this advice, however, Alexander later became
committed to intermarriage; he chose a wife from the Persian nobility and
forced his high-ranking officers (and encouraged his troops) to do likewise.
In other ways too the influence that Aristotle had on Alexander was negligible.
Although later, on his return to Athens, Aristotle enjoyed considerable
political and economic support from the Macedonians and perhaps received
assistance in the organization of his biological researches, it is not
likely--as some have held--that Alexander collected and dispatched to Aristotle
specimens of rare animals from Persia and India; in fact, Alexander's first
penetration of the valley of the Indus did not occur until 328/327, less
than six years before Aristotle's death. Indeed, the relation between the
two was embittered by the execution of Aristotle's nephew, the historian
Callisthenes of
Olynthus, who was charged with treason while accompanying Alexander
to Persia early in 328 in order to write a chronicle of the campaign. It
has even been reported that Alexander meditated revenge on Aristotle himself
because he was a blood relative of the victim. But Alexander was diverted
by his preoccupation with the invasion of India. Clearly, in matters of
political ideology, a gulf separated Aristotle and Alexander. Aristotle
showed no awareness of the fundamental changes that Alexander's conquests
were bringing to the Greek world; indeed, he was opposed in principle to
Alexander's imperial policy because it diminished the importance of the
city-state. On the other hand, Alexander gratified his tutor by rebuilding
the town of Stagira, Aristotle's birthplace, which Philip II had destroyed
earlier. After three years at the Macedonian court, Aristotle withdrew
and returned to
his paternal property at Stagira (c. 339). There he continued the associations
of his philosophical circle, which still included Theophrastus and other
pupils of Plato.
Third period: founding and directing of the Lyceum:
Aristotle remained in Stagira until 335, when, nearing 50 years of
age, he once again returned to Athens. At this time the presidency of the
Academy became vacant by the death of Speusippus, and Xenocrates of Chalcedon,
his old associate in biological research, was elected to the post. Although
Aristotle appears never to have wholly severed his links with the Academy,
he nonetheless opened, in 335, a rival institution in the Lyceum, a gymnasium
attached to the temple of Apollo Lyceus, situated in a grove just outside
Athens. The place had for some time been frequented by other teachers--Plato
even mentions it as having been one of Socrates' haunts--and the name of
the temple came to be applied to Aristotle's school in particular. But
it was probably only after Aristotle's death that the school, under Theophrastus,
acquired extensive property. From the fact that his instruction was given
in the peripatos, or covered walkway, of the gymnasium, the school has
derived its name of Peripatetic. Informal as the school may have been under
Aristotle, it was very important to him because, by coordinating 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 of scientific and philosophical questions.
The chief difference between the new school and the Academy was that the
scientific interests of the Platonists centred on mathematics whereas the
main contributions of the Lyceum lay in biology and history. On the death
of Alexander the Great in 323 a brief but vigorous anti-Macedonian agitation
broke out in Athens. Aristotle, who had long-standing Macedonian connections
and was a friend of Antipater, the Macedonian regent of Athens, felt
himself in danger. He therefore left Athens and withdrew to his mother's
estates in Chalcis on the island of Euboea. There he died in the following
year from a stomach illness at the age of 62 or 63. It was reported that
he abandoned Athens in order to save the Athenians from sinning twice against
philosophy (referring to Socrates as the earlier victim).
Personality, character, and philosophical stance:
The features of Aristotle, familiar from busts and engravings, appear
handsome and refined. An ancient tradition, possibly from an unfriendly
source, says, however, that Aristotle had spindleshanks and small eyes
and that he spoke with a lisp. In compensation for these physical defects,
he was notably well dressed. His cloak and sandals were of the best quality
and he sported rings. Presumably he was rich, with large family holdings
at Stagira. One use that he made of his money was to collect books. Plato,
with a touch of contempt for Aristotle's devotion to reading and perhaps
not without some envy of his affluence, called him "the reader." Aristotle
was an intellectual but not devoid of passion. A story is told of Plato
giving a reading of his Phaedo, a purported record of Socrates' last day.
The dialogue is moving and solemn. As Plato was reading, however, his audience
gradually melted away. In the end, Aristotle alone was left. Probably fictitious,
the anecdote was invented to express a truth:
Aristotle was, in fact, spellbound by the Socratic doctrine of immortality
as expounded by Plato. It not only interested him intellectually but also
absorbed him emotionally. His earliest works, dialogues written when he
was still a member of the Academy (now lost except for some fragments),
were in part concerned with thoughts of the next world and the worthlessness
of this one. The anecdotes related of him reveal him as a kindly, affectionate
character, and they show barely any trace of the self-importance that some
scholars think they can detect in his works. His will, which has been preserved,
exhibits the same kindly traits; he makes references to his happy family
life and takes solicitous care of his children, as well as his servants.
This personal happiness is reflected in On Philosophy, perhaps the last
of his strictly literary works. After writing this work, which he completed
in around 348, he devoted his energies to research, teaching, and the writing
of more technical treatises. The greatness of On Philosophy, which survives
only in fragments, is evident in its influence on the thought of later
antiquity; perhaps more than any other single work it established philosophy
as a profession. In the extant part, Aristotle defines the specific role
of the philosopher. Dividing the historical development of civilization
into five main stages, Aristotle sees the emergence of philosophy as its
culmination. First, men are compelled to devote themselves to the creation
of the necessities because without them they could not survive. Next come
the arts that refine life and then the discovery of the art of politics,
the prerequisite of the good life as Aristotle conceived it. To these necessities
and refinements of life is added the knowledge of their proper use in the
fourth stage. Only with the emergence of the well-regulated state comes
the leisure for intellectual adventure, used at first for the study of
the material causes of existing things. Finally comes the shift from natural
to divine philosophy, when the mind lifts itself above the material world
and grasps the formal and final causes of things, realizing the intelligible
aspect of reality and the purpose that informs all change. This divine
philosophy gave its attention to the astral gods. Aristotle had experienced
in Athens the long intellectual struggle to discover perfect order in the
heavens. He had learned that perfection was not to be confined to the mathematical
abstractions, to which Plato had at first directed the attention of his
pupils, but had come to recognize that the visible heavens themselves could
be accepted as the embodiment of the divine. With the declaration of this
intimacy between the deities and the work of their hands in the material
universe, Aristotle issued his manifesto, which is an optimistic affirmation
of the values of this world; simultaneously he rejected the Platonic doctrine
that the soul is imprisoned in the body and in need of struggling free
from the bonds of matter. It was by this stroke that Aristotle established
his own identity in the history of thought.
Writings:
Aristotle's writings fall into two groups: the first consists of works
published by Aristotle but now lost; the second of works not published
by Aristotle and, in fact, not intended for publication but collected and
preserved by others. In the first group are included (1) the writings that
Aristotle himself termed "exoteric," or popular--that is, those written
in dialogue or other current literary forms and meant for the general reading
public--and (2) those that he termed "hypomnematic," or notes to aid the
memory, and collections of materials for further work. Of these, only fragments
are extant. Finally, the writings that generally have survived, termed
"acroamatic," or treatises (logoi, methodoi, pragmateiai), were meant for
use in Aristotle's school and were written in a concise and individualistic
style. In later antiquity Aristotle's writings filled several hundred rolls;
today the surviving 30 works fill some 2,000 printed pages. Three ancient
catalogs list a total of more than 170 separate works by Aristotle, a figure
corroborated by references and lists of titles in the extant treatises
as well as by a number of citations and paraphrases in early commentators.
Cicero must have been alluding to Aristotle's popular dialogues when he
described in the Academica "the suave style of Aristotle . . . . A river
of gold." The extant works contain several passages of polished prose,
but for the most part their style is clipped.
Lost works published by Aristotle:
The lost popular works include poetry and letters as well as essays
and dialogues in the Platonic manner. Several problems have confronted
scholars in their attempts to reconstitute these lost popular works. The
lost dialogues, for example, appear to diverge widely from the doctrines
of the surviving treatises. Indeed, they appear to outdo Plato in his own
teaching. Thus, what is known of Aristotle's dialogue Eudemus, or On the
Soul, compares the relation of the soul to the body with an unnatural union,
like that of the torture that the Tyrrhenian pirates inflicted on their
prisoners by binding each of them to a corpse. Inasmuch as Aristotle in
his extant treatises criticized his Platonist friends for making soul and
body enemies, Alexander of Aphrodisias, an authoritative Aristotelian commentator
of the late 2nd century AD, raised the question whether he expressed "two
truths," one "exoteric" for public consumption, the other "esoteric" and
reserved for his students in the Lyceum. The present consensus of scholars
is that Aristotle's popular writings generally derived from the early stage
of his intellectual development during his time in Plato's Academy: they
represent not his "public" but his juvenile thoughts.
Chief among the lost works are: Eudemus, in the tradition of Plato's
Phaedo; On Philosophy, a type of philosophical program containing themes
to be developed later in his Metaphysics; the Protrepticus, or exhortation
to the life of philosophy; Gryllus, or On Rhetoric; On Justice, expressing
nascent themes of his Politics; and On Ideas, which criticizes Plato's
theory of Forms.
Extant works:
The works that have been preserved derive from manuscripts left by
Aristotle on his death; many of them were probably used by him as lecture
notes. These are the "esoteric" writings of a concentrated, academic nature
intended for the ears of the initiates. From classical antiquity romanticized
accounts circulated of the way these manuscripts were preserved; e.g.,
in Plutarch's Sulla, chapter 26; and in Strabo's Geography 13:54. According
to these versions, Aristotle's and Theophrastus' notes had been bequeathed
to an old colleague, Neleus of Scepsis, whose heirs apparently were not
interested in the contents but, in order to prevent them from being confiscated
for the library of the kings of Pergamum, hid them in a cellar in Scepsis.
Long afterward, in the 1st century BC, the descendants sold them to Apellicon
of Teos, a philosopher, who brought them back to Athens. When Athens was
conquered by Sulla in 86 BC, he appropriated the books and sent them to
Rome, where they were purchased by Tyrannion the grammarian. The manuscripts
suffered further maltreatment, first at the hands of copyists, then through
subjective restoration of worm-eaten passages and systematic ordering irrespective
of actual chronology, until Andronicus of Rhodes, the last head of the
Lyceum, acquired the copies and edited and published them about 60 BC.
The story is improbable. It is difficult to imagine that the Lyceum
would have allowed the manuscripts of its founder to have been so carelessly
looked after. And it is now known that the "esoteric" writings were not
wholly ignored in the two centuries after Theophrastus' death. It is true,
nevertheless, that the Andronicus edition is the first publication of Aristotle's
works, even if the story of the edition's appearance was spread by Andronicus
to emphasize its novelty. The form, titles, and order of Aristotle's texts
that are studied today were given to them by Andronicus almost three centuries
after the philosopher's death, and the long history of commentary upon
them began at this stage.
These facts have affected the interpretation of Aristotle. The books
of Aristotle that are known today were, in effect, never edited by him.
Thus, for example, Aristotle is not the author of the work called Metaphysics;
rather, he wrote a dozen little treatises: on the theory of causes in the
history of philosophy, on the chief philosophical problems, on the multiplicity
of meanings of certain key philosophical terms, on act and potency, on
being and essence, on the philosophy of mathematics, and on God. Those
that the editors thought worth collecting were given the title Metaphysics;
i.e., the tract that is to be read after the Physics. It is not surprising,
then, that the Metaphysics and the other works of Aristotle sometimes seem
to lack unity or any clear progression of thought, that they are sometimes
repetitious and at times even contradictory. The texts furthermore suggest
that students or subsequent members of the Lyceum even revised Aristotle's
expressions. It is probable that Aristotle would never have released the
work. Andronicus, assisted by previous editors, imposed a logical and didactic
order upon all the writings, undoubtedly influenced by Aristotle's own
emphasis on logic as the propaedeutic (preparatory study) of all understanding.
By ignoring the chronological order of the treatises and by grouping dissertations
from different periods under the same title, the editors fashioned the
Aristotelian corpus into a systematic whole. It is quite likely that Aristotle
himself had never thought of his writings in this way.
Aristotle's treatises reveal the philosopher at work. He defines the
problem he is to deal with, assesses the views of his predecessors, formulates
his own preliminary opinion, considers whether there is a need to modify
it in the light of difficulties and objections, rehearses the arguments
for different points of view--always searching, in short, for the most
adequate solution or resolution of his problem. The reader, therefore,
sees Aristotle at work, not dogmatically propounding a doctrine but often
laboriously developing a perspective or an insight that emerges from difficulties,
contradictions, and paradoxes. Not surprisingly, few syllogisms appear
in Aristotle's treatises; the reader, however, should perceive in them
a structure that Aristotle himself terms "dialectical"; i.e., in the manner
of a dialogue by an exchange of arguments for and against.
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