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ARISTOTLE

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist. He was born in 384 BC at Stagira, in Macedonia, died in 322 BC.. He was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy, His father, Nicomachus, was physician to Amyntas II, king of Macedonia, and claimed to be descended from Aesculapius. Aristotle had lost his parents before he came, at about the age of seventeen, to Athens to study in the school of Plato. With that philosopher he remained for twenty years, became pre-eminent among his pupils, and was known as the Intellect of the School. Upon the death of Plato in 848 BC, he took up his residence at Atarneus, in Mysia, on the invitation of his former pupil Hermeias, the ruler of that city, on whose assassination by the Persians in 343 BC, he fled to Mitylene with his wife Pythia, the niece of Hermeias.

During his residence at Mitylene he received an invitation from Philip of Macedon to superintend the education of his son Alexander, then in his fourteenth year. This relationship between the great philosopher and the future conqueror continued for five or six years, during which the prince was instructed in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, logic, ethics, and politics, and in those branches of physics which had even then made some considerable progress. On Alexander succeeding to the throne Aristotle continued to live with him as his friend and councillor until he set out on his Asiatic campaign in 334 BC. He returned to Athens and established his school in the Lyceum, a gymnasium attached to the temple of Apollo Lyceius, which was assigned to him by the state. He delivered his lectures in the wooded walks of the Lyceum while walking up and down with his pupils. From the action itself, or more probably from the name of the walks (peripatoi), his school was called Peripatetic. Pupils gathered to him from all parts of Greece, and his school became by far the most popular in Athens. The statement that he had two circles of pupils, the exoteric and the esoteric has given rise to much controversy.

By some it has been held that Aristotle published during his lifetime popular discourses with a view to make way for his doctrines in Athenian society, then impregnated with Platonic theories, and that these are called exoteric in contradistinction to those in which are embodied his matured opinions. It was during the time of his teaching at Athens that Aristotle is believed to have composed the great bulk of his works. On the death of Alexander a revolution occurred in Athens hostile to the Macedonian interests with which Aristotle was identified. He therefore retired to Chalcis, where he soon after died.

According to Strabo he bequeathed all his works to Theophrastus, who, with other disciples of Aristotle, amended and continued them. They afterwards passed through various hands, until, about 50 BC, Andronicus of Rhodes put the various fragments together and classified them according to a systematic arrangement. Many of the books bearing his name are spurious, others are of doubtful genuineness. The whole are generally divided into logical, theoretical, and practical. The logical works are comprehended under the title Organon (instrument). The theoretical are divided into physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. The physical works (including those on natural history) are on the General Principles of Physical Science, The Heavens, Generation and Destruction, Meteorology, Natural History of Animals, On the Parts of Animals, On the Generation of Animals, On the Locomotion of Animals, On the Soul, On Memory, Sleep and Waking, Dreams, Divination. In mathematics there are two treatises, On Indivisible Lines and Mechanical Problems. The Metaphysics consist of fourteen books: the title (Ta meta ta Physika, 'the things following the Physics') is the invention of an editor. The practical works embrace ethics, politics, economics, and treatises on art, and comprise the Nicomachaean Ethics (so called because dedicated to his son Nicomachus), the Politics, (Economics, Poetry, and Rhetoric). Among the lost works are the dialogues and others to which the term exoteric is applied, and which were published during Aristotle's lifetime. His style is devoid of grace and elegance. His works were first printed in a Latin translation, with the commentaries of Averroes, at Venice in 1489; the first Greek edition was that of Aldus Manutius (published in five volules between 1495 and 1498).
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