Wednesday, November 27, 2013
- Born: 384 BC, Stagira, Greece
- Died: 322 BC, Chalcis, Greece
- Full name: Aristotle
- Education: Platonic Academy (367 BC–347 BC)
- Children: Nicomachus, Pythias
Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE) was a Greek philosopher born in Stagirus in 384 BCE. His father, Nicomachus died when Aristotle was a child and he lived under a guardian's care. At the age of eighteen, he joined Plato’s Academy in Athens and continued to stay until the age of thirty-seven, around 347 BCE. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing ethics, aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics. Shortly after Plato died Aristotle left Athens. With the request of Philip of Macedonia he became a tutor for Alexander in 356-323 BCE.
Aristotle achieved merit through teaching Alexander the Great. This distinction allowed him many opportunities, including an abundance of supplies. He established a library in the Lyceum with which many of his hundreds of books were produced. The fact that Aristotle was a pupil of Plato contributed to his former views of Platonism, but following Plato’s death, Aristotle immersed himself in empirical studies and shifted from Platonism to empiricism . He believed all peoples concepts and all of their knowledge was ultimately based on perception. Aristotle’s views on natural sciences, including philosophy of the mind, body, sensory experience, memory, and biology represent the groundwork underlying many of his works. Many aspects of Aristotelian thought remain an active academic study, however, many of his writing are now lost with only one-third of his original works still surviving .
Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic.
In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as 'المعلم الأول' – "The First Teacher".
His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold"), it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived
