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Aristotle completes the great philosophical triumvirate of ancient Greece.
Born in 384 B.C. to the court physician of the king of Macedonia, he began to
study the natural sciences at an early age. After his father died in about 367
B.C., the young philosopher went to Athens to further his education. In Athens,
Aristotle became a member of Plato's Academy and maintained a constant dialogue
on many subjects with Plato until Plato’s death around twenty years later.
After Plato's death, Aristotle left Athens, founded new academies in Assus
and Mytilene, and for three years (345-342 B.C.) tutored the young Alexander
the Great at Pella, the capital of Macedonia. In 335 B.C. he returned to Athens
and established the Lyceum, a rival school to the Academy of Plato. Indicative
of Aristotle's competing philosophical position, the Lyceum was a center for
philosophic contemplation and empirical research. Aristotle's surviving works
appear to have been lectures given at the school. They cover a variety of topics,
including politics, physics, ethics, economics, a historical analysis of the
Athenian Constitution, and much more. In epistemology, Aristotle is best known
for his argument in favor of the validity of sense perception and scientific
observation against the Platonic view of ideal forms dimly perceived through
corrupted matter. After Alexander died, an anti-Macedonian backlash in Athens
forced Aristotle to flee northward to Chalcis, where he died a year later, in
322 B.C.
Aristotle's philosophy was as influential on Western thought as Plato's. The
medieval Scholastic movement was in its essence an attempt to reconcile both
philosophies with Christian doctrine. From this effort came the modern discipline
of theology.
Bibliography
Works by the Author
Aristotle. On Poetry and Style. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. New
York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958.
Aristotle. Politics. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1932.
Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press,1926.
Aristotle. The Organon, The Categories. Translated by Hugh Tredennick.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938.
Aristotle. On The Heavens. Translated by W. K. C. Guthrie. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1939.
Aristotle. The Poetics, Longinus, On the Sublime. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1927.
Aristotle. Meteoroligica. Translated by H. D. P. Lee. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1952.
Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Translated by Richard McKeon.
New York: Random House, 1941.
Aristotle. Aristotle's Politics. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Oxford:
Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1931.
Aristotle. Aristotle's Constitution of Athens and Related Texts.
Translated by Kurt von Fritz and Ernest Kapp. New York: Hafner Publishing Company
of New York, 1950.
Aristotle. Aristotle's Politics. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. New
York: Modern Library, 1943.
Aristotle. On Poetry and Music. Translated by S. H. Butcher. New York:
Liberal Arts Press, 1950.
Aristotle. Aristotle and the Athenian Constitution. Translated by
H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932.
Source
The biographical material about the author originally appeared on The
Goodrich Room: Interactive Tour website.
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