Biography of Aristotle: life, work, politics and philosophy. Ancient Greece was the place where some of the most outstanding philosophers in history lived. One of them was definitely Aristotlethinker of which we offer you his Biography.
life of aristotle
Aristotle He was born in the Greek city of stagiraclose to the current mount Athosbelonging to the kingdom of Macedonia (modern Greek Macedonia) in 348 BC
His father, Nicomachus was the doctor King Amyntas III of Macedoniaa fact that generated a close bond between Aristotle and the royal court. Not only his father was a doctor, but also his ancestors, coming from a family with numerous medical dynasties under his belt, a fact that explains the great interest of Aristotle about biology.
Around 367 or 366 he goes to the city of Athensin order to carry out his studies, and where he becomes one of the most brilliant disciples of Plato inside of Academy.
After Plato’s death, when Aristotle was approximately 38 years old, worked as a teacher of Alexander the Great and in the year 335, Aristotle founds his own school in Athens, called the Lyceum (because it is located within an enclosure dedicated to the god Apollo Likeios. His classes covered wide subjects, and most of them tended to be held in the gardens surrounding the establishment. That’s why his students were called peripatetic (itinerant).
He died in Chalcis, Ebrea (Greece) at the age of 62 in the year 322 BC, and it is considered that long before his death he was already an extremely famous character, thanks to his philosophical and scientific thoughts.
During his life, he developed in numerous fields that transcended philosophy, including biology, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, ethics, politics, aesthetics, among others, being considered one of the most brilliant minds in the history of classical humanity. His influences weighed so much on the rest of humanity, that it is considered that AriathotlesTogether with Plato, they created the initial body of beliefs of the Western Thought of the common man (what we now call common sense).
The most important works of Aristotle
Aristotle is, along with others such as Socrates, Plato or Kant, one of the most outstanding thinkers that history has given. Throughout his life he wrote more than 200 works, of which only 31 have been recovered. Few branches escaped their fields of study. However, one of the ones that stood out the most, without a doubt, was the logicmatter of which he is considered the father and founder.
In fact, even today it is considered that the aristotelian logic It has not and cannot be improved. It could be said that his logic is of an overwhelming logic, worth the redundancy. In the field of logic he stood out, among other things, for his so-called syllogisms. A syllogism is two premises that, being as they are, cause a different conclusion.
- All men are mortal
- John is a man
- john is mortal
Aristotle distinguished in his logic between individual subjects and universal subjects. The previous example would be with an individual subject, with a universal subject it would be:
- All men are mortal
- Spaniards are men
- Spaniards are deadly
In Aristotle’s logic (both when making both affirmative and negative syllogisms) individual subjects can only be the subject of the sentence, while universals can be subject and predicate.
Another of the branches in which Aristotle was most outstanding was in the ethics. Three basic works are attributed to him in relation to ethics and his definition of “virtue”: Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics and the Magna Moralia.
According to Aristotle in his books on Ethics, human beings always tend to do good, at least for his own good. That is, all their decisions are aimed at seeking some good or benefit. In this case, the highest good would be happiness, and happiness, for Aristotle, could only be achieved through wisdom, virtue and the reason.
Politics according to Aristotle
For Aristotle, the goal of a person in life was to achieve virtue, in order to launch a totally contemplative life, which he considered the basis of happiness.
As far as the politicsAristotle considers the human being as apolitical animal” that it should and does exercise its voice within the community. For Aristotle, politics descends from ethics. In this sense, in politics only the word of the person who best knows how to impose their rhetoric is valid, since that is the way to impose the laws on the rest of the community and ensure that they are respected and reflected in the collective imagination.
Aristotle distinguished between 6 types of political organization, although he did not consider them as an abstract way of thinking, but rather a form of organization that is based on the way of acting based on practical cases. These forms of government were:
- Monarchy: Power was held by a single person, who was the most virtuous.
- Aristocracy: The government was exercised by a few leaders, those who proved to be more virtuous.
- Republic: It was considered as the mixture between the Oligarchy (government of a few rich) and Democracy (government of many and poor).
It could be said that these three were the political forms that Aristotle extended as “good”. However, he also added a “dark” reverse to each of these forms of government:
- Tyranny: It would be the degradation of the monarchy, in which a person exercises an authoritarian power without taking into account ethics, logic or virtue.
- Oligarchy: For Aristotle it would be something like the expression of the degradation of the aristocracy, that is, the government of a few, but not virtuous.
- Demagogy: It is still a word that today has very negative connotations. For Aristotle it would be corruption in democracy.
From this moment on, the study of politics followed the foundations of the postulates initiated by Aristotle and, in fact, the ideas of the Hellenic thinker have passed through the centuries, remaining as basic foundations for understanding political organizations.
Other facts about Aristotle
It must be said that Aristotle had fallen slightly into oblivion. It was the Arabs who rescued his ideas from ostracism and thus were included in the scholasticism.
Aristotle was not only a disciple of Plato, another of the greatest philosophers of all history, he was also a teacher of Alexander the Great in the Macedonian Kingdom.
Aristotle must also be credited with the creation of an Academy called the Lyceum. It was in the last stage of his life that he founded the Lyceum in Athens, where he continued to teach his disciples until just a year before his death.
It is really difficult to get an idea of the importance that Aristotle’s theories and thoughts have had over the centuries. Some of his ideas have remained in force until today, simply because they are impossible to refute. Plato was a step forward in terms of the thought of his teacher, Socrates, in the same way that Aristotle took over from Plato to give shape to ideas that would last over time.
For example, during the Middle Ages his ideas remained very valid and, in a certain way, his devotees slowed down the advance of science. For example, during this period there arose what was called medieval aristotelianl. But his influence does not stop there and his theories about different subjects continued to be valid for a long time afterwards.
For example, his studies on physics and astronomy remained current until the 19th century, while Aristotelian logic is still fundamental during the 20th century.
Differences between Plato and Aristotle
On the one hand, Plato is based on the idea that there are two worlds, one sensible and the other intelligible. Only through reason can you reach the intelligent world and be happy. For his part, Aristotle considers that there is only one world, the sensitive.
According to Plato, the concept of soul it is eternal and has always been there. The human being already acquires all the knowledge of him before the Birth, but this is such a traumatic moment that she forgets them, so she spends the rest of her life trying to remember and recover this knowledge lost during childbirth. For Aristotle, the human being is nothing more than a blank page, therefore his soul is not eternal and all knowledge is acquired from scratch.
Regarding the politicsFor Plato, the best political and social organization was one in which citizens occupied the place that corresponded to them according to the soul they had. He distinguished between three social classes, from lesser to greater importance and rational wisdom: firstly the workers, secondly the guardians and at the top of the ladder the philosophers and rulers, those who were closest to rational knowledge.
For his part, Aristotle never ruled on what was the best way to govern, but only defined them (and also defined their dark reverses, that is, what governments can degenerate into when they are corrupted: monarchy – tyranny , aristocracy – oligarchy and democracy – demagoguery.
Aristotle’s thought
Aristotle He was a remarkable Greek thinker of his time, having been a disciple of Plato and to whom we owe much of the current knowledge about this character, and Alexander the Great who served as his protector. Aristotle developed methods for dealing with philosophical, scientific, and logical problems that have been of great impact and influence since then and up to the present, giving rise to the so-called Aristotelian thought.
Metaphysics
In Metaphysics, Aristotle questions the causes of being and its characteristics; established that the most important category of being is the substance, investigating its characteristics and the possibility of the existence of a suprasensible substance.
In the part of metaphysics called aitiology (study of causes), Aristotle questions the causes of reality. List four: the material cause, what is a thing made of; the formal cause, the form that is the identity that the substance will acquire; the efficient cause, what sets the thing in motion, what produces it; the end Cause, the purpose for which the thing is made.
In Aristotle’s ontology, studies are found in their general characteristics. If for Parmenides being was the only existing reality (therefore, it was univocal), for Aristotle, being assumes different meanings (it is polyvolic). The first is accidental or contingent being, which indicates all the characteristics of being that are not necessary for its true essence.
Being is logical, which is being true or false. The truth is reached through reasoning (syllogism) that starts from two premises, one major and one minor.
Theology
Theology can be considered the point of arrival of Aristotle’s aitiology, ontology and usiology. In fact, God is the final cause of the world (aitiology), is a pure act (ontology) and a suprasensible substance (usology).
The proof of existence…