Aristotle (384–322 BCE)

Greek philosopher

Few philosophers have influenced ideas about so many subjects in so many parts of the world as Aristotle. While some of his writings have been lost, what remains of his work is impressive in its size and scope. Aristotle's research ranged from meteorology to metaphysics and from poetics to ethics. He wrote on sleep, dreams, colors, plants, animals, memory, the senses, the soul, rhetoric, metaphysics, aesthetics, and the universe. He was, among other things, a scientist, moralist, logician, poet, psychologist, and political scientist. Aristotle was not only a leader through his ideas, but the founder of three schools and tutor to one of the greatest leaders of his time.

Aristotle was born in Stagira in 384 BCE. His father, Nicomachus, was a physician in the Macedonian court at Pella. Nicomachus died when Aristotle was quite young and Aristotle went to live with relatives in Atarneus in Asia Minor. When he was seventeen, Aristotle was sent to study at Plato's Academy in Athens. Aristotle studied and then taught at the academy for twenty years. When Plato died in 348/347 BCE, Aristotle accepted an invitation from the ruler Hermias of Atarneus to settle there.

Hermias was a eunuch of lowly birth who gained favor with the Persian administration and was made a prince. He slowly accumulated political power and land, and entered into treatises with King Philip II of Macedon. Hermias studied geometry, ethics, and dialectic with Aristotle, and Erastus and Coriscus (two colleagues from Plato's Academy). Under the influence of his teachers, Hermias, an avid student, softened his tyrannical rule and introduced new laws and reforms that followed the precepts of the Academy.

Hermias expressed his admiration and friendship for Aristotle by offering him his niece and adopted daughter, Pythias, as a wife. Aristotle and Pythias had one daughter who was also named Pythias. Hermias also gave Aristotle money to start a new school at Assos in the Troad. It is doubtful that Aristotle wrote anything during this period, but he continued his scientific studies on marine life there. Aristotle left Assos after a year or so and founded another school on the island of Lesbos. He was only on Lesbos a few years when, in 343/342 BCE, Philip II invited Aristotle to Pella to tutor his thirteen-year-old son Alexander.

Aristotle tutored Alexander for three years and then moved back to Stagira. Philip II had totally destroyed Stagira eight years earlier, but he had the [Page 44]town rebuilt and repopulated in Aristotle's honor. Aristotle lived there until 335/334 BCE and then returned to Athens. In Athens Aristotle leased a house with an adjoining covered walk (peripatos) attached, and established a school called the Lyceum. Aristotle used to teach while walking with students under the peripatos and, hence, his followers came to be called the peripatetics.

After Alexander died in 323 BCE, some Athenians became suspicious of Aristotle because he was Alexander's friend. Resentful factions in Athens accused Aristotle of impiety—the same charge leveled against Socrates. Aristotle retired to Chalcis, his mother's birthplace, where he died in 322 BCE at the age of sixty-two. One tradition says that Aristotle left Athens because he did not want Athenians to sin against philosophy twice.

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