Aristotle

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and polymath of the Classical period, born in 384 BC in Stagira in Chalkidiki, northern Greece, and dying in 322 BC. His work ranged widely across the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. Later writers have called him the first scientist, and his works contain the earliest known systematic study of logic. Yet the details of his life are not all secure. Ancient biographies are often speculative, and historians agree on only a limited set of points.

He was the son of Nicomachus, the personal physician of King Amyntas of Macedon, and Phaestis, who had origins in Chalcis, Euboea. Both parents died while Aristotle was young, and Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. Nicomachus was likely responsible for Aristotle’s early interest in biology and medicine, a thread that would later show in his research. Aristotle probably spent some time in Pella, the Macedonian capital, where he made early connections with the Macedonian monarchy.

At seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle went to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy. He remained there for nearly twenty years, becoming known as a researcher and lecturer and earning the nickname “mind of the school” from Plato. After Plato’s death, Aristotle left Athens in 348/47 BC. The traditional account says he was disappointed with the Academy’s new direction, though anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens may also have played a part. He went with Xenocrates to Assos in Asia Minor, where he was invited by Hermias of Atarneus. There, and later on Lesbos, Aristotle and Theophrastus carried out extensive research in botany and marine biology. During this period he married Pythias, Hermias’s adoptive daughter and niece, and they had a daughter also named Pythias.

In 343/42 BC, Philip II of Macedon invited Aristotle to Pella to tutor his thirteen-year-old son Alexander, later called Alexander the Great. Aristotle taught him at Mieza, in the gardens of the Nymphs, and Alexander’s education probably included ethics, politics, and literary texts such as Euripides and Homer. Aristotle later returned to Athens after Philip’s assassination in 336 BC. Because he was a metic and could not own property there, he rented a building called the Lyceum, named after the sacred grove of Apollo Lykeios, and founded his own school. Its colonnade, or peripatos, gave the Peripatetic school its name.

At the Lyceum, Aristotle conducted courses and research for twelve years, often lecturing to small groups of distinguished students. With figures such as Theophrastus, Eudemus, and Aristoxenus, he built a large library of manuscripts, maps, and museum objects, helping him produce many books on papyrus scrolls. Only about a third of his original output survives, and none of it was intended for publication. Even so, his teachings and methods of inquiry shaped medieval scholarship, Judeo-Islamic philosophies, Christian theology, scholastic thought, logic into the nineteenth century, and renewed modern interest in virtue ethics. It is easy to see why a saying like “Happiness depends upon ourselves” still feels at home beside his name: Aristotle kept asking how thought, conduct, nature, and human life fit together.