Aristotle, more than any other thinker, determined the orientation and the content of Western intellectual history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that through the centuries became the support and vehicle for both medieval Christian and Islamic scholastic thought until the end of the 17th century, Western culture was Aristotelian. And, even after the intellectual revolutions of centuries to follow, Aristotelian concepts and ideas remained embedded in Western thinking (Sowerby 115).
A short Biography
But who was Aristotle This will be the subject of this essay. Towards this end, the writer will attempt a synopsis of Aristotles biography, a review of the times in which he lived and his achievements and historical significance.
Unfortunately, any attempted reconstruction of Aristotles biography will have to rely on virtually hagiographies (like that of Hermippus of Smyrna), legends, ancient tittle-tattle and bilious works of jaundiced critics as the major sources, for these reasons, Aristotles biographers have to grope about, in a highly subjective fashion, for anything that might fill the gaps in his life. However, experts seem to agree on the particulars of the sketch written below.
Aristotle was born in 384 at Stagira on the Chalcidic peninsula of northern Greece (Blakesley 12-13). His father, Nicomachus, belonged to the guild of the asclepiads (physician) and his mother, a native of Chalcis in Euboea, was named Phaestis. Admittedly, knowledge of Aristotles early years is virtually absent. In fact the only thing that most experts seem to agree on is that, given his fathers profession, it is highly likely that he would have accompanied his father in his travels. However, it is known that his father migrated from Chalcidice to Macedonia where he was appointed the personal physician of Amyntas III, King of Macedonia (Sowerby 137). There is no record to indicate whether Aristotle accompanied his father to Pella, the capital of Macedonia (138). However, given Aristotles friendship with Amyntass son, Philip, it is reasonable to conclude that their friendship was cultivated in Pella during his fathers tenure as the court physician.
When Aristotle was about 10 years, his father died, and since his mother also seems to have died young, Aristotle was brought up by his uncle, Proxenus of Atarneus (Hoffe 4). Under Proxenus, Aristotle learned Greek, rhetoric and poetry. At the age of 17 years (367 B.C.) he enrolled at Platos Academy in Athens. When Aristotle arrived at the academy, Plato was away on his first visit to Syracuse and the institution was being run by Eudoxus of Cnidos. Notable personalities who were teaching at the institution during this time included Speusippus, Platos nephew and Xenocrates of Chalcedon. After a brief stint as a student, Aristotle became a teacher at the academy where he was to remain until Platos death in 367 B.C. (4). According to Diogenes Laertius who wrote in the second century A.D., Aristotle taught rhetoric and dialectic (2). This claim, according to most experts, is not far fetched, given the fact that Aristotle wrote on rhetoric (issued a critique of Isocrates rhetoric titled Gryllus) during this time.
After 20 years, Aristotle left the academy. The circumstances surrounding his exit have been traced to two developments. First, it has been argued that Aristotle left Athens due to frustrated philosophical ambition. That being one of Platos star student, he expected the dying philosopher to bequeath him the leadership of the academy however, at his death in 347 B.C., Plato transferred the leadership of the academy to his nephew Speusippus a bitter disappointment to Aristotle who was generally opposed to Speusippus views (Green 53-54). Further, the death of Amyntas III in 369 B.C. precipitated a series of events which were to impact directly on Aristotles life (54). For a time, Amyntas III sons, Alexander II and Perdiccas III, reigned in a period characterized by bloody factional feuds. However, in 359 B.C., Aristotle boyhood friend Phillip sized the Macedonian throne, and after pacifying the kingdom, went on a conquering spree annexing Olynthus, Chalcidice and Stagira (Aristotles town of birth). A worried Athens, forewarned by the great orator, Demosthenes, became increasingly uncomfortable with Macedonia, and as some have suggested with individuals, such as Aristotle with known connection to the Philip recently, Chroust argued that Aristotle left Athens because of anti-Macedonian feeling and rather than through frustrated academic ambitions (Chroust 4).
From Athens, Aristotle migrated to Assos, together with Xenocrates of Chalcedon. In Assos, they took up residence at the court of Hermeias, ruler of Atarneus. In due course, Aristotle married Pythias, Hermeias niece and had a daughter called Pythias with her - unkind whispers even had it that he had a homosexual relationship with Hermeias himself during his stay at the court (53). However, after ten years, the wife died. Apart from his philosophical activities, he also acted as a political confidant to his patron and a link man between Hermeias and Philip (Sowerby 138). In 3454 B.C. he moved to Mytilene, probably at the invitation of Theophrastus. According Green, he stayed on the island for a couple of years researching, teaching and spying on the Persians at the Troad (54). In 345 B.C. the Philosopher-Eunuch, Hermeias, was captured and executed by the by Mentor, Artaxerxes Greek henchman.
Fearing for his life, Aristotle moved, stopping at Lesbos for about one year, before reaching Macedonian in 343 B.C. where he was to remain for seven years. Tradition reports that during this time, he resided, for some time, at Mieza, a village in the foothills of the Bermius range where he tutored Phillips thirteen year old son, Alexander, the future world conqueror. In 340 B.C. he moved back to his fathers hometown, Stagira, along with his scientists and philosophers (Green 53). At Stagira, he had a relationship with Herpyllis, with whom he had a son, Nicomachus.
Meanwhile, Phillip was assassinated in a palace intrigue in 336 B.C. and Alexander assumed the reigns. In 335 B.C., at the encouragement of Alexander, Aristotle moved to Athens where he founded his own school to rival the Academy, in the Lyceum, a gymnasium in the temple of Apollo Lyceus, located in a groove outside Athens (Sowerby 138). Contrary to the Academy which had a narrow interest, Aristotles Lyceum had a broader range of subjects. According to tradition, which arose several centuries after his death
Aristotle in these same years lectured - not once, but two or three times, in almost every subject - on logic, physics, astronomy, meteorology, zoology, metaphysics, theology, psychology, politics, economics, ethics, rhetoric, poetics and that he wrote down these lectures, expanding them and amending them several times, until they reached the stage in which we read them (Grayeff 112).
With the death of Alexander the great in 323 B.C. and the subsequent revolt against Macedonian subordinates in Athens, Aristotle, fearing political persecution, fled to his mothers hometown of Chalcis arguing that he wished to spare Athens from committing a second sin against philosophy (Hollister, McGee, Stokes 94). He died the following year (322 B.C.) from a stomach complaint.
As to his personality, pretty little is known, but Green writes his personal appearance was foppish, not to say eccentric. He was balding, spindle-shanked, and had small eyes..he wore dandified clothes, cut and curled his hair in affected manner and numerous rings spangled in his fingers (Barnes b 3). Further, according to Barnes writes He was a good speaker, lucid in his lectures, persuasive in conversation and he had a mordant wit. His enemies, who were numerous, made him out to be arrogant and overbearing (Barnes 4).
Aristotle Times
Technically, Aristotles life spanned the twilight years of the Hellenic age (479 -323 B.C.) and the dawn of the Hellenistic age (323-31 B.C.). The Hellenic age has been divided by historians in four phases The Delian league wars in Greece and in Persia and the ensuing thirty years peace the Peloponnesian War and Spartan and Theban hegemony and the triumph of Macedonia (Mathews and Platt 58) - However, Aristotles lifetime, spanned the last tow phases.
Despite a century of destructive civil wars in Greece, the Hellenic age marked the high point of classical civilization. Political systems, philosophical concepts and artistic concepts evolved at a breakneck pace. Aristocracies fell, autocracies flourished and democracies (hitherto unknown) emerged in an atmosphere characterized by acute political awareness and social change (84). At the same time, the self assurance of Greeks, who was generally confident of their cultural superiority, never wavered. At its zenith, Periclean Athens and other poleis would produce some of the finest work of architecture, sculpture and drama.
Throughout this age, Athens was the leading cultural centre of the Greek world. Atop its acropolis gleamed brilliantly designed temples (Parthenon among others), at the Agora, philosophers debated the most pressing questions on the days in an atmosphere of relative freedom the sophists openly doubted the existence of the Olympian deities, questioned philosophical inquiry and the notion of absolute truth Socrates responded to there claims in his own corrosive fashion, so would Plato and Aristotle. In the words of Hollister et al., the modern academic counterpart of fourth-century Athens would be a huge state university campus (95). Elsewhere, citizens congregated outdoors to discharge their civic and political responsibilities. Here they debated and passed laws or did jury duties. In their leisure time, they cheered the athletes in the open-air gymnasium. During the drama festivals the whole city would turn out to sample the latest tragedy or comedy (96). And when the tocsin sounded, young men were paraded off to some bloody war, perhaps with a neighboring polis.
As the 4th century progressed, a slow and progressive decay of everything classic gripped Athens. The curtailment of the freedom of academic inquiry was hallmarked by the execution of Socrates in 399 B.C., gifted amateurism declined, administrative procedures became more intricate, citizen soldiers gave way to mercenaries, rampant individualism increased and patriotism waned. In Kittos words, progress broke the Polis (quoted by Hollander McGee and Stokes 96). In the end, Athens would be defeated in the Peloponnesian war (431-404 B.C.).
However, if the sort lived Athenian empire hallmarked the golden age of Classic civilization, the defeat of Athens heralded a gradual decline of classicism. The succeeding Spartan and Theban hegemony - in an age characterized by political intrigue and incessant inter-polis feuds - fell to a semi-barbarian, monarchical state of Macedonian. Phillip, the Macedonian king, then brought the Greek states under his rule - however under Philip, these poleis still enjoyed some relative autonomy (Pomeroy 379).
Like I stated earlier, Philip was succeeded by his 19 year old son Alexander, who, immediately, went on a world conquering expedition. His Greco-Macedonian army marched into Asia Minor, Egypt and Mesopotamia, thereby bringing the Persian Empire to an end, and then he looted his way through Asia to the Indus in India. At his abrupt death in 322 B.C. his empire fragmented into three successor kingdoms - Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucid Asia, and Antigonid Macedonia.
In short, Aristotles times were characterized by incessant wars, an intellectual revolution, the end of the Hellenic age and the beginning of the Hellenistic age.
Aristotles Achievements
While the argument among scholars as to whether Aristotle wrote any of the treatises assigned to him continues, his intellectual contribution to western thought is not in doubt. Interestingly, Aristotles works were first published in 60 B.C. by Andronicus of Rhodes, the last head of the Lyceum (Cornford 54). Although his extant works may represents only a fragment of his entire works if Diogenes claims is anything to go by, they include his investigation on a wide range of subjects including logic, metaphysic, ethics, physics, biology, psychology, politics, and rhetoric (Sowerby 137).
His biological studies, which were based on careful observations and classification into genus and species, were groundbreaking (Hollister, McGee and Stokes 94). In fact, he was the first philosopher to conduct a systematic study of biota, through the empirical method. His studies in metaphysic and logic were similarly revolutionary. In Nicomachean Ethics, he formulated a relatively new ethical principle the idea of the golden mean. Arguing that anger and love, eating and drinking are neither good not evil they should neither be suppressed nor carried to excess and that virtue is the avoidance of extremes (95). Further, Aristotles rhetoric has had a profound influence on the development of the art of rhetoric in the west. Not only authors writing in the peripatetic tradition, but also the famous Roman teachers of rhetoric, such as Cicero and Quintilian, frequently used elements stemming from the Aristotelian doctrine (Sowerby 138). In addition, his literary criticism is still lauded for its penetrating analysis of tragedy. For a long time in western history, his notions of how drama should be structured stood as virtual law (Hollister 95).
For 2000 years, Aristotelianism defined western physics. Although his physics had its obvious weaknesses because he defined things in terms of their qualitative differences rather than quantitative differences, it constituted a radical break from the past approaches. In fact, his system building attempt (explanation of how the world works) was a monumental intellectual achievement. The synthesis between Aristotle and the second century philosopher, Ptolemy, ideas would constitute what pundits call the Old Paradigm the so-called Aristotelian Ptolemaic synthesis dominated western science until the Copernican revolution (Mathews and Platt 70). Further, Aristotles metaphysics and physics profoundly influenced western theological thinking. Besides Christians, Muslims and Jews ranked his books just below their scriptures in the medieval ages. Today, Roman Catholic Church theology is woven warp and woof across Aristotles philosophy and his logic and ethics continues to be taught in college philosophy courses.
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