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Greek Philosophy: Aristotle: Introduction to Aristotle's Philosophy
The Spiritual Bookstore Online World Religion Library
Aristotle was born in Stagira in north Greece, the son of Nichomachus,
the court physician to the Macedonian royal family. He was trained first
in medicine, and then in 367 b.c.e. he was sent to Athens to study
philosophy with Plato. He stayed at Plato's Academy until about 347 .
Though a brilliant pupil, Aristotle opposed some of Plato's teachings,
and when Plato died, Aristotle was not appointed head of the Academy.
After leaving Athens, Aristotle spent some time traveling, and possibly
studying biology, in Asia Minor (now Turkey) and its islands. He
returned to Macedonia in 338 to tutor Alexander the Great; after
Alexander conquered Athens, Aristotle returned to Athens and set up a
school of his own, known as the Lyceum. After Alexander's death, Athens
rebelled against Macedonian rule, and Aristotle's political situation
became precarious. To avoid being put to death, he fled to the island of
Euboea, where he died soon after, in 322 b.c.e.
Aristotle is said to have written 150 philosophical treatises. The 30
that survive touch on an enormous range of philosophical problems, from
biology and physics to morals to aesthetics to politics. Many, however,
are thought to be "lecture notes" instead of complete, polished
treatises, and a few may not be the work of Aristotle but of members of
his school.
Whereas Aristotle's teacher Plato had located ultimate reality in Ideas
or eternal forms, knowable only through reflection and reason, Aristotle
saw ultimate reality in physical objects, knowable through experience.
All things were composed of a potential, their matter, and of a reality,
their form; thus, a block of marble - matter - has the potential to
assume whatever form a sculptor gives it, and a seed or embryo has the
potential to grow into a living plant or animal form. In living
creatures, the form was identified with the soul; plants had the lowest
kinds of souls (vegetative soul), animals had higher souls which could
feel (sentient soul), and humans alone had rational, reasoning souls.
This basic psychological typology was to be adopted later (along with
other of his ideas) in Neoplatonism, Islamic thought, medieval
Christainity, Kabbalah, and more recently Theosophy and Anthroposophy.
Aristotle differed most sharply from medieval and modern thinkers in his
belief that the universe had never had a beginning and would never end;
it was eternal. Change, to Aristotle, was cyclical: water, for instance,
might evaporate from the sea and rain down again, and rivers might come
into existence and then perish, but overall conditions would never
change.
In the later Middle Ages, Aristotle's work was rediscovered and
enthusiastically adopted by medieval scholars. His followers called him
Ille Philosophus (The Philosopher), or "the master of them that know,"
and many accepted every word of his writings -- or at least every word
that did not contradict the Bible -- as eternal truth. Fused and
reconciled with Christian doctrine into a philosophical system known as
Scholasticism, Aristotelian philosophy became the official philosophy of
the Roman Catholic Church. As a result, some scientific discoveries in
the Middle Ages and Renaissance were criticized simply because they were
not found in Aristotle. It is one of the ironies of the history of
science that Aristotle's writings, which in many cases were based on
first-hand observation, were used to impede observational science.
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