Aristotle

We explain who Aristotle was and what the contributions of this philosopher were. Also, its general characteristics and forms of government.

Who was Aristotle?

Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC) was a Greek philosopher who was born in Stagira and died in the city of Chalcis. A disciple of Plato and founder of the Lyceum, he is considered one of the most important thinkers of humanity. His ideas and reflections, collected in almost 200 treatises (of which only 31 survive), influenced the intellectual history of the West for more than two thousand years.

During his life cultivated a large number of interests. His studies include logic, politics, ethics, physics, biology, rhetoric, poetics and astronomy. In all of them he played an innovative, even foundational role, since he proposed the first systematic studies of each subject.

Aristotle was a disciple of other important philosophers of the time, such as Plato and Eudoxus.during the twenty years in which he trained at the Academy of Athens. In that same city he founded the Lyceum, where he taught his own disciples.

After the fall of Alexander of Macedonia (known as Alexander the Great), his disciple, Aristotle He went to the city of Chalcis, where he died.

See also: Plato

Life of Aristotle

Aristotle He was born in the city of Stagira in the year 384 BC. c. His parents were Nicomachus, physician to King Amyntas III of Macedonia, and Festis, also linked to the Asclepiaeans, who professed medicine in ancient Greece. Both died when Aristotle was very young and, at the age of 17, he was left in the care of Proxenus of Atarneus, his tutor, who sent him to study at Plato's Academy in Athens.

The Stagirite (as Aristotle is called, after his place of birth) He remained at the Academy for twenty yearsfrom 367 BC. C. to 347 BC. C. There he met Eudoxus, who notably influenced Aristotle's philosophical decision to find an explanatory principle that kept things as they appeared at their appearance (which he later called phainomena, “phenomenon”). He also linked with Philip of Opunte, Coriscus, Speusippus and Erastus, all thinkers and students of Plato.

It is assumed that at this same time participated in the Eleusinian Mysterieswhich were annual initiation rites held in Eleusis in honor of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. He even wrote about them that “experience is learning,” as his original phrase translates, pathein mathein (παθείν μαθεĩν).

In 347 BC C., and coinciding with the death of Plato, Aristotle He left Athens and moved to Atarneus and Aso.. From there he went to the island of Lesbos and married Pythias of Aso, niece of the governor of Aso, Hermias. With Pythias he had a daughter whom he named Pythias, in honor of his mother. In 343 BC C. was summoned to Pella, Macedonia, to teach Alexander the Great, of whom he was tutor for two years.

After going through military service, and after being tutor to Ptolemy and Cassander (both future kings), Aristotle He returned to Athens in 335 BC. c. There he founded the Lyceum, which was his own school. This gets its name because it was built in a temple dedicated to the god Apollo Lycian and, unlike the Academy, it was a public school that even gave free classes. The students of the Lyceum were known as “the peripatetics”, a term that comes from the Greek peripatētikós (περιπατητικός) and means “itinerant”, since they had the habit of arguing while walking.

During the time of the Lyceum, Aristotle wrote many dialogues and treatises. Of these, only the treatises survived, and it is believed that most of them were not intended for the public. In those years his wife, Pythias, died, and Aristotle married Herpilis, a woman from Stagira. With Herpilis he had a son, Nicomachus, to whom he dedicated his treatise on ethics, Ethics for Nicomachus. This is considered one of the most important books on ethics as an autonomous discipline in its entire history.

In the year 323 BC. C. Alexander the Great died and, seeing that Athens no longer received the Macedonians kindly, Aristotle decided to leave for Chalcis, on the island of Euboea. He died the following year, at age 61, believed to be due to a digestive illness.

Aristotelian thought

Like most thinkers of his time, Aristotle he did philosophy in a broad sense. This means that he was interested in all branches of knowledge accessible at that time, and even began research in many areas.

His thinking is usually classified according to the distinction that he himself made of the sciences: practical knowledge, productive knowledge and theoretical or contemplative knowledge:

Practical knowledge

Practical knowledge included ethics and politics. He wrote different works on both disciplines, although it is true that his greatest contribution was to ethics, a branch to which he dedicated at least three known writings: Nicomachean ethics either Ethics for Nicomachus, Eudemia ethics and Magna moralia.

Aristotle thought that ethics was practical knowledge oriented towards an ethics of virtues.. As such, ethics should teach how to seek happiness understood as the end of man. This is so because all human activity tends, according to Aristotle, towards good. Since happiness (eudaimonia) is the supreme good, there was talk then of a eudemia or eudaemonist ethic.

Politics, for its part, was a study of the way in which laws and customs were related to everyday life. Aristotle's political ideas were compiled by the philosopher in his book Policythe main work in which his doctrines are found.

Productive knowledge

Productive knowledge It was oriented towards the arts, especially poetry. In fact, the most important Aristotelian aesthetic text is called Poetics. This text is not dedicated to rambling about the beautiful but rather works and thinks about the material and concrete arts. Unlike the Rhetoric Aristotelian, dedicated to the art of communicating convincingly, the Poetics investigates the art of literary creation.

Theoretical knowledge

Theoretical knowledge included physics, mathematics and metaphysics. The latter is considered the first philosophy, since it presents the theory of the general principles of thought. It is, at the same time, a doctrine of being as such.

Some of the main ideas of Aristotelian metaphysics are:

• Metaphysics as first philosophy. This idea maintains that no particular science studies universally what is, but rather each one is dedicated to a part of concrete reality. Metaphysics is the most general science because it studies being as being.
• Being is said in many ways. This Aristotelian statement emphasizes the idea of ​​the polysemy of being (which is said “being” in many senses). Whether “being” is a power, act, substance or accident, all these forms are valid depending on the level and line of analysis.
• Metaphysics is theology. Metaphysics as theology must be understood as the study of a hypothetical figure, which fulfills the function of being the first immobile engine of the universe: what gives the beginning and vital impulse to all things that exist.

Regarding physics and mathematics, there are several Aristotelian treatises that work on each of these disciplines. Broadly speaking, we can speak of a natural philosophy that contemplates the movement, generation and corruption of things, as well as the denial of emptiness and the idea of ​​ether (all points in space are full of matter). Mathematics, for its part, intersects with logic, although it is worth clarifying that the latter was not considered by Aristotle as substantial knowledge.

See also: Aristotelian thought

Work of Aristotle

The works of Aristotle that survived the passage of time were ordered in Corpus Aristotelicum by the philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes. Andronicus's organization was adapted to the edition of the classical philologist August Immanuel Bekker between 1831 and 1870. This corpus is divided into five large groups:

• Logic or Organon. In this group we find the following works:
  • Categories (Categoriae)
  • Of interpretation (De interpretatione)
  • First analytics (Analytica priora)
  • Analytical seconds (Analytica posteriora)
  • Topics (Topica)
  • Sophistical refutations (De sophisticis elenchis)
• natural philosophy. In this group we find the following works:
  • Physics
  • Above the sky (De caelo)
  • About generation and corruption (De generatione et corruptione)
  • Meteorology (Meteorologica)
  • Of the soul (De anima)
  • Small treatises on nature (Parva naturalia and other writings)
• Metaphysics. In this group we find the following work:
  • Metaphysics (Metaphysica)
• Ethics and politics. In this group we find the following works:
  • Nicomachean ethics either Ethics for Nicomachus (Ethica Nicomachea)
  • Eudemia ethics either Ethics for Eudemo (Ethica Eudemia)
  • Politics (Politics)
• Rhetoric and poetics. In this group we find the following works:
  • rhetorical art either Rhetoric (Ars rhetorica)
  • Poetics (Ars poetica)

Beyond the classification of Andromache of Rhodes, Aristotle's work does not have a clear order. There is no specific dating of each of the treaties, except for Eudemodedicated to a friend who died in 354 BC. C., and Protrepticdedicated to Themisón around the year 315 BC. C. However, it is proposed as a general criterion to divide the work into three large periods that comprise the following years:

• First period (368-348 BC). Academy era.
• Second period (348-335 BC). Time of leaving the Academy and first ideas of own thought.
• Third period (335-322 BC). Lyceum era and empirical studies.

Both Andromache's classification and that given by periods fulfill a merely organizational and, in any case, didactic function. None of these works has a clear publication date. It is also not known exactly if they were written to be read by a general public or if their use was limited (as is commonly believed) to internal circulation within the Lyceum. There is still debate about it today.

Continue with: Pythagoras

References

• Guthrie, W.K.C. (1993). History of Greek philosophy. Vol. VI: Introduction to Aristotle. Gredos.
• Guthrie, W. (1953). The Greek philosophers. From Thales to Aristotle. FCE.
• Barnes, J. (1987). Aristotle. Chair.