Aristotle

Founded logic and the classification of disciplines; long regarded as an academic authority.

Life

Twenty Years at the Academy

Aristotle was born at Stagira on the edge of Thrace; his father was a physician at the Macedonian court. At 17 he entered Plato's Academy and studied there for 20 years, until his teacher's death. He inherited the Academy's training in speculative reasoning but placed greater weight on observing and classifying concrete things, gradually parting ways with the Theory of Forms.

Teaching and Writing

After leaving Athens he studied biology in Asia Minor; in 343 BCE he was engaged to tutor Alexander, prince of Macedon, and in 335 BCE he returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum. His writings cover logic, physics, biology, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetics; he created the syllogism and systematically organized the classification of disciplines.

Thought and Influence

He held that happiness lies in activity in accordance with virtue and that a state should rest on the middle class; at the same time, limited by his age, he defended slavery. His works were passed on by Syriac and Arab scholars and returned to the Latin West after the Middle Ages, where they were long revered as authoritative until they were systematically revised in the Scientific Revolution of the modern era.

Legacy

Aristotle is celebrated as the most learned scholar of antiquity, having laid the framework for many disciplines, including logic, biology, political science, and literary theory. Medieval Arab scholars called him "the First Teacher," and Thomas Aquinas fused his philosophy with Christian theology. His physics and cosmology were overturned by Galileo Galilei, Newton, and others in the Scientific Revolution, but his ethics and logic remain deeply influential today.

Major works & achievements

• Founded syllogistic logic
• Metaphysics, Politics, Poetics
• Nicomachean Ethics
• Founded the Lyceum
• Served as Alexander's tutor

Did you know? He often lectured while strolling along the walkways of the Lyceum, which is why his school came to be called the "Peripatetic school."

Key dates

• 367 BCEEnters Plato's Academy
• 347 BCEPlato died; left Athens
• 345 BCEStudies biology on Lesbos
• 343 BCEHired to tutor Alexander
• 335 BCEFounds the Lyceum in Athens
• 330 BCEWrites the Metaphysics and other works
• 323 BCELeaves Athens amid anti-Macedonian sentiment
• 322 BCEDied of illness in Chalcis