The Aristotelian Project
Aristotle: Introduction
Life
- Born 384 BC.
- Died 322 BC.
- Plato’s student.
- Tutored Alexander the Great.
- Founded the Lyceum outside Athens.
What he was
Logician, philosopher, psychologist, moralist, scientist, biologist, political thinker, and literary critic. Father of realism and the scientific method. Nicknamed “the reader” for the time he spent with books.
The Lyceum
- School established outside Athens.
- Open to the general public, unlike Plato’s Academy.
- Offered free lectures.
- Held a substantial library.
- Gathered a group of brilliant research students around Aristotle.
His position toward Plato and Socrates
Rejected some of their teachings, yet his work is treated as the fulfilment of the Socratic impulse. Plato called him “a foal that kicks his mother after draining her dry.”
Two famous descriptions
- Eusebius: “Nature’s private secretary, dipping his pen in intellect.”
- Dante: “Master of those that know.”
Historical role
Agent of transition from the Hellenic age to the Hellenistic age.
Plato founded a school. Aristotle, after eighteen years inside it, walked out and founded his own. The two schools, the Academy and the Lyceum, set the basic shape of what European thought would do for the next two thousand years. The fork between them runs through every chapter of this guide that comes after.
The life
Aristotle was born in 384 BC in the Greek town of Stagira and died in 322 BC. He arrived at Plato’s Academy in Athens at seventeen and stayed for the next eighteen years, first as a student and then as a teacher. The Academy, by then, was the most respected school of philosophy in the Greek world. Aristotle was, by every account, its best student.
When Plato died in 347 BC, Aristotle left Athens. The leadership of the Academy went to Plato’s nephew rather than to him. He spent the next decade in Macedonia and on the coast of Asia Minor. In 343 BC the king of Macedon, Philip II, hired Aristotle to tutor his thirteen-year-old son. The son was Alexander, who would later be called Alexander the Great. Aristotle taught him for about seven years.
In 335 BC Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his own school in a grove sacred to Apollo Lyceus. The school took its name from the grove and became the Lyceum.
384 BC to 322 BC. Plato’s student. Alexander’s tutor. Founder of the Lyceum.
He arrived at Plato’s Academy at seventeen and stayed eighteen years. After Plato’s death he spent seven years tutoring the future Alexander the Great. In 335 BC he opened the Lyceum in Athens, his own school of philosophy and research.
The many descriptions of one man
Aristotle is rarely described as just a philosopher. The labels stack up: logician, psychologist, moralist, scientist, biologist, political thinker, literary critic. The reason is that he wrote serious work in all of these fields. The categories did not exist as separate disciplines yet; he is one of the figures who carved them out of one another.
He is also called the father of realism and the father of the scientific method. The two titles go together: realism says the physical world is real independent of the mind, and the scientific method is the disciplined way of studying that world. Aristotle is the philosopher who put both into systematic form.
Two later writers describe him in lines worth remembering. Eusebius called him “nature’s private secretary, dipping his pen in intellect.” The image is of a man taking dictation from the world itself. Dante, in the Inferno, placed Aristotle at the head of the great pre-Christian thinkers and called him “the master of those that know.” Neither line is modest; both reflect how seriously the ancient and medieval worlds took him.
His nickname during his school years was simpler. The other students called him “the reader,” because he spent more time with books than anyone else.
Because he did serious work in all of these fields before they were separate disciplines
The modern division of knowledge into separate subjects did not exist in his time. Aristotle is one of the figures who carved the disciplines out of one another. He is also called the father of realism and the father of the scientific method.
The Lyceum
The Lyceum is the thing that mattered most in practical terms. Aristotle ran it for the last twelve years of his life. Three features made it different from Plato’s Academy.
It was open to the general public. The Academy had been a more selective institution. The Lyceum admitted anyone who wanted to come.
It offered free lectures. There was no fee at the gate. The work was funded by Aristotle’s own resources and, indirectly, by gifts from Alexander.
It held a substantial library and a research community. Aristotle gathered around himself a group of brilliant research students, and they worked together on natural history, politics, the constitutions of cities, and the classification of animals. The Lyceum is one of the first organised research communities in Western history.
The contrast with the Academy is sharp. Plato’s school produced philosophers who argued about ideas. The Lyceum produced researchers who collected facts. Both schools mattered, but they were doing different work.
Public access, free lectures, and an organised research community
The Lyceum was open to the general public, not selective.
It offered free lectures, with no fee at the gate.
It held a substantial library and gathered brilliant research students for organised work on natural history, politics, and the classification of knowledge.
Foal and mother
The most quoted line about the Plato-Aristotle relationship is Plato’s own. He said Aristotle was “a foal that kicks his mother after draining her dry.” A foal, having taken all the milk it can from its mother, kicks her on the way out. The line is fond and bitter at once. It captures the truth of what happened.
Aristotle was Plato’s best student. He absorbed the Academy’s teaching deeply. Then he turned around and disagreed with Plato about some of the most important things. He rejected Plato’s theory of forms in the version Plato himself defended. He rejected the idea that the most real things are non-physical. He built a system in which the physical world is the real one and abstract forms exist only as patterns within real things.
This sounds like a betrayal but is not one. Ancient writers, the Christian church fathers, and the medieval Scholastics all treated Aristotle as the fulfilment of the Socratic impulse rather than its enemy. The Socratic impulse is the disciplined examination of any claim. Aristotle did it more thoroughly than anyone before him, including his teacher. That meant disagreeing with Plato where the examination led him to.
A good student of Aristotle should hold the tension. He is Plato’s heir. He is also Plato’s most serious critic. Both are true.
Because the disciplined examination Plato taught him led him to disagree with Plato
Aristotle absorbed the Academy’s teaching for eighteen years, then rejected Plato’s theory of forms and built a system in which the physical world is the real one. The Socratic-Platonic impulse is the disciplined examination of any claim; Aristotle’s disagreement was the result of that impulse applied without exception.
The historical role
One last point belongs in the introduction. Aristotle is called the agent of transition from the Hellenic age to the Hellenistic age. The Hellenic age is the classical period of small, independent Greek city-states, ending with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. The Hellenistic age is the period that follows, of large kingdoms carved out of Alexander’s empire and a Greek culture spread from Egypt to the borders of India.
Aristotle straddles the change. He taught Alexander, whose conquests created the new world. He died in 322 BC, one year after Alexander, having seen the political map of the known world remade by his former student. His thinking belongs to both periods. It is the last great work of the Hellenic city-state world and the first great work of the Hellenistic intellectual world.
The Lyceum survived him by centuries. His writings, lost and found again, would shape Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought through the medieval period and into the modern age.
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