We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle. Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. in Stagira, a small town on the northern coast of Greece. He was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist who is still considered one of the greatest thinkers to date. He was a student of Plato and is considered one of the most important figures in philosophy. Famous for his writings on physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology, he is still considered much ahead of his time. His writings on western philosophy became the pillars of both Islamic and Christian scholastic thoughts and his contribution towards almost all subjects on earth and its influence makes him one of the most famous and top personalities of all time.
Aristotle was born in northern Greece and was the son of Nicomachus, the court physician to the Macedonian royal family. Very little is known about Aristotle’s mother, Phaestis; she is also believed to have died when Aristotle was young. When Aristotle turned 17, Proxenus sent him to Athens to pursue a higher education. In Athens, he enrolled in Plato’s Academy and proved himself to be a great student. Aristotle maintained a good relationship with the Greek philosopher Plato, and his academy for over twenty years. Plato died in 347 B.C. Because Aristotle had disagreed with some of Plato’s philosophical treatises, Aristotle did not get the position of director of the academy, as many imagined he would.
After leaving Athens, Aristotle spent time traveling and studying biology, in Asia Minor (now Turkey) and its islands. He returned to Macedonia in 338 B.C. to tutor Alexander the Great. Aristotle returned to Athens and set up a school of his own, known as the Lyceum. Aristotle wrote around 200 works and most of them were in the form of notes. These works comprise of dialogues, records of scientific observations and systematic works. His major works include Rhetoric, Eudemus (On the Soul), on philosophy, on Alexander, on Sophistes, on justice, on wealth, on prayer and on education.
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It might be said that Aristotle had to overcome all of the philosophers who came before him, especially Socrates and Plato because they were directly ahead of him in the order of importance in philosophy. Aristotle said the opposite of almost everything Plato said. But he didn’t say Plato was wrong. He simply wrote what he himself knew or believed to be correct. Therefore, when Plato died he did not get the director position at the academy that Plato started. The Greek republic threatened his life, as it had threatened Socrates’ life, and so Aristotle and his followers fled to the Isle of Lesbos. There, Aristotle met Theophrastus, his successor. It was also at Lesbos that Aristotle made some of his most famous zoological observations and marine experiments in biology.
Despite the fact that only around thirty treatises remained in existence, Aristotle’s work has directed academic pursuits in the West since the middle ages. Among his most influential works are Politics, Physics, Metaphysics, Generation of Animals, History of Animals, Nicomachean Ethics (named after his son, Nicomachus, who is thought to have edited his father’s work), Rhetoric, Poetics, On the Heavens, Meteorology, and Prior Analytics. Aristotle’s work might be viewed as an attempt to understand naturalism. Aristotle preferred and developed the processes of scientific observation and experimentation in the material world. He is credited with establishing systems and categories of scholarly research that have survived to this day. Aristotle’s work has been critical in the development of much of Western philosophical thought through to the nineteenth century.
Bibliography
- Author. Title. date. website
- Leigh T. Denault, Philosophy: The Athenian Philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Copyright 2003, http://www.watson.org/~leigh/philo.html
- Biography.com Editors, Aristotle Biography, Copyright November 16, 2017, https://www.biography.com/people/aristotle-9188415,
