A philosopher born in Stagira in northern Greece who studied at Plato's Academy for roughly twenty years before founding his own school, the Lyceum, in Athens. Aristotle wrote systematically across nearly every field then recognized as philosophy: logic, physics, metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and biology, and his surviving works, mostly lecture notes rather than polished treatises, shaped Western and Islamic philosophy for close to two thousand years. He rejected Plato's separate realm of Forms, arguing instead that form and matter are inseparable in the particular things that exist, and his theory of the four causes, material, formal, efficient, and final, gave later philosophy its basic vocabulary for explaining why things are as they are. From 343 to 340 BCE he tutored the young Alexander the Great at the Macedonian court.
Facts
TraditionClassical Greek philosophy 3 Classification
NationalityAncient Greece (Historical) 1 Connections
Associated With
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Al-Farabi, Philosophers Al-Farabi's logical commentaries transmitted and systematized Aristotle's logic for later Islamic philosophy.
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source Natural Law Theories (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Aristotle's Poetics is the foundational Western text on the nature, structure and value of literary mimesis, the starting point of nearly every subsequent theory in the field.
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Critiqued Here
Plato, Philosophers Aristotle, Plato's own student at the Academy, rejected the theory of Forms as an unnecessary duplication of the world, arguing that the form of a thing is realized within the thing itself rather than existing separately in an abstract realm.
Source The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
In Branch
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Influenced
Source Albertus Magnus (Wikipedia)
Held Differently
Influenced By
Aristotle mentions Empedocles more often than any philosopher besides Plato, engaging closely with, and criticizing, his account of the four roots, of Love and Strife as moving causes, and of perception, before adopting and systematizing the four elements himself.
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Traditions Founded
Aristotle founded the Peripatetic school at the Lyceum in Athens.
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Works Attributed
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Political Atlas: Aristotle, the same subject.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Aristotle
WikipediaLead, opening sentenceQuote, Lead, opening sentence
Aristotle (Ancient Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, romanized: Aristotélēs; 384-322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and polymath.
2. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
Cambridge University Press, 1995Associated With: Plato, s.v. Aristotle
3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationQuote
Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence, only Plato is his peer: Aristotle’s works shaped centuries of philosophy from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance, and even today continue to be studied with keen, non-antiquarian interest.
- Associated With: Aesthetics, entry: Aesthetics
- Associated With: Ethics, entry: Aristotle's Ethics
- Associated With: Logic, entry: Aristotle's Logic
- Associated With: Metaphysics, entry: Aristotle's Metaphysics
- Associated With: Political Philosophy, entry: Aristotle's Politics
Associated With: Virtue Ethics, entry: Virtue Ethics, Introduction
Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics.
Associated With: Philosophy of Biology, entry: Philosophy of Biology, Section 3
Aristotle thought that living things exhibit self-motion along with other essential features (De Anima 412a-416b).
In Branch: Philosophy of Action, entry: Action, Section 4.1
Aristotle imposed epistemic conditions on voluntary and, a fortiori, intentional action: according to him, to act voluntarily one must know, among other things, what one is doing, to whom, and why
View the Source Natural Law Theories (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationAssociated With: Natural Law TheoryView the Source Al-Kindi (Wikipedia)
WikipediaInfluenced: Al-Kindi, Legacy section, Aristotle discussionQuote, Influenced: Al-Kindi, Legacy section, Aristotle discussion
He makes many references to Aristotle in his writings, but these are often unwittingly re-interpreted in a Neo-Platonic framework.
Albertus Magnus (Wikipedia)
WikipediaInfluenced: Albertus Magnus, Legacy section, Aristotle commentary sentenceQuote, Influenced: Albertus Magnus, Legacy section, Aristotle commentary sentence
Albert was the first to comment on virtually all of the writings of Aristotle, thus making them accessible to wider academic debate
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