Aristotle

Born in Stagira, Greece, Aristotle (384–322 BC)was the son of the physician to the King of Macedonia. When he was in his late teens, he moved to Athens and joined Plato. He stayed at Plato's academy for nearly 20 years. After Plato's death, Aristotle married and became the tutor to Alexander the Great. From 335 BC to 323 BC, Aristotle again took up residence in Athens, where he wrote most of the works we honor today. When Alexander died, Aristotle fled Athens, as did others who were considered friends of the conqueror.

In 1946, Bertrand Russell referred to Aristotle's philosophy as similar to Plato's mixed with common sense. Aristotle did not believe in Plato's notion of reality as a pursuit of ideal forms that were transcendent. Aristotle rejected Plato's theory of ideas and substituted the theory of universals, in which he concentrated on a thing's essence, which he divided into matter and form. Matter becomes definite when it assumes a specific form. Matter without form is only a possibility, a kind of potentiality. Aristotle's importance to early Christianity is to be found in this distinction because he believed that undifferentiated matter contained the possibility of all forms. As matter becomes more differentiated, it becomes more “real.” God, in Aristotle's mind, was pure form and pure reality. From this perspective, the evolution of form was its own answer and reason for being. Here was the notion of progress, the idea that something is continually becoming better over time. And God was the unmoved mover of all things, eternal, existing in pure thought, complete and perfect.

Aristotle wrote on ethics, politics, and physics. While highly influential for hundreds of years following his death, his ideas are not so influential today, though certain vestiges of influence remain. Aristotle believed that the aim of the state, at least as it related to education, was to produce cultured gentlemen who honored learning for the sake of learning and were schooled in the arts. Virtue, or the “golden mean,” was the position between two extremes. Thus, modesty was the mean between being demure and defiant.

Perhaps Aristotle's most lasting contribution has been in his logics. In this respect, his method of reasoning using syllogisms is still used by teachers today, especially in Catholic education. A syllogism consists of three statements:

• 1.
  All men are mortal.
• 2.
  All Americans are men.
• 3.
  All Americans are mortal.

Although Bertrand Russell pointed out the defects within this system, Aristotle's approach marked the beginning of formal logic. The use of such syllogisms can still be found in the modern educational writings of someone such as Mortimer Adler's 1982 The Paideia Proposal.

The tradition of syllogistic logic used by Aristotle continues to reach into the modern school curriculum within a conservative ideology for schooling called by William O'Neill in 1981 educational intellectualism, one of three educational ideologies within the conservative educational tradition.

In the broader intellectual streams of Platonic-Aristotelian discourse rests the current ideology of some of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration who are disciples of the writings of Leo Strauss (1899–1973), a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who specialized in the writings of Plato and other philosophers. The neoconservative Republicans are concerned about the loss of manliness in the feminization of politics. Liberal critics of Strauss and his disciples see the reestablishment of authoritarianism in the ideals of leadership they personify. The legacy of Aristotle is indeed a long one.

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