|
|
Aristotle was born in 384 BCE at Stagirus, a Greek colony. His father Nichomachus was court physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia. He went to Athens, the intellectual center of the world, to complete his education. He joined the Academy and studied under Plato, attending his lectures for a period of twenty years. At the invitation of his friend Hermeas, ruler of Atarneus and Assos in Mysia, Aristotle left for his court. He stayed three year and, while there, married Pythias, the niece of the King. In later life he was married a second time to a woman named Herpyllis, who bore him a son, Nichomachus. At the end of three years the Persians overtook Hermeas, and Aristotle went to Mytilene. At the invitation of Philip of Macedonia he became the tutor of his 13-year-old son Alexander. There he also set up his own school, at a place called the Lyceum.
The works of Aristotle fall under three headings: (1) dialogues and other works of a popular character; (2) collections of facts and material from scientific treatment; and (3) systematic works. Among his writings of a popular nature the only one, which we possess, of any consequence, is the interesting tract On the Polity of the Athenians. The works on the second group include 200 titles, most in fragments, collected by Aristotle's school and used as research. The systematic treatises of the third group are marked by a plainness of style, with none of the golden flow of language, which the ancients praised in Aristotle.
Aristotle used the term "logic" as equivalent to verbal reasoning. The Categories of Aristotle are classifications of individual words (as opposed to propositions), and include the following ten: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, and passion. They seem to be arranged according to the order of the questions we would ask in gaining knowledge of an object.
Aristotle suggested a close connection between psychological states, and physiological processes. Aristotle defined soul as the perfect expression or realization of a natural body. Body and soul are unified in the same way that wax and an impression stamped on it are unified. Aristotle regarded soul or mind not as the product of the physiological conditions of the body, but as the truth of the body -- the substance in which only the bodily conditions gain their real meaning.
Aristotle saw the universe as a scale lying between the two extremes. Form without matter is on one end, and matter without form is on the other end. The passage of matter into form must be shown in its various stages in the world of nature. To do this was the object of Aristotle's physics, or philosophy of nature. Aristotle rejected the definition of space as the void. Empty space was an impossibility for him. Hence, he disagreed with the view of Plato and the Pythagoreans that the elements are composed of geometrical figures. He defined space as the limit of the surrounding body towards what is surrounded.
Aristotle viewed ethics as an attempt to find out our chief end or highest good, an end, which he maintained, is really final. Though many ends of life are only means to further ends, our aspirations and desires must have some final object or pursuit. Such a chief end is universally called happiness.
Aristotle didn't regarded politics as a separate science from ethics, but as the completion, and almost a verification of it. The moral ideal in political administration is only a different aspect of that, which also applies to individual happiness. Humans are by nature social beings, and the possession of rational speech (logos) in itself leads us to social union. The state is a development from the family through the village community, an offshoot of the family.
Aristotle died in 322 BCE.
