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ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.)
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See also:ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.) , the See also:great See also:Greek philosopher, was See also:born at Stagira, on the Strymonic Gulf, and hence called " the Stagirite." See also:Dionysius of See also:Halicarnassus, in his See also:Epistle on See also:Demosthenes and Aristotle (See also:chap. 5), gives the following See also:sketch of his See also:life:—Aristotle ('ApturorEkns) was the son of See also:Nicomachus, who traced back his descent and his See also:art to Machaon,son of See also:Aesculapius; his See also:mother being Phaestis, a descendant of one of those who carried the See also:colony from See also:Chalcis to Stagira. He was born in the 99th See also:Olympiad in the archonship at See also:Athens of Diotrephes (384-383), three years before Demosthenes. In the archonship of Polyzelus (367-366), after the See also:death of his See also:father, in his eighteenth See also:year, he came to Athens, and having joined See also:Plato spent twenty years with him. On the death of Plato (May 347) in the archonship of See also:Theophilus (348-347) he departed to See also:Hermias, See also:tyrant of Atarneus, and, after three years' stay, during the archonship of See also:Eubulus(345-344) he moved to Mitylene, whence he went to See also: At Athens in his second See also:period for some twenty years he acquired the further See also:advantage of balancing natural science by See also:metaphysics and morals in the course of See also:reading Plato's writings and of See also:hearing Plato's unwritten dogmas (cf. v Tois Xeyoyivots aypar otc SoyµaQw, Ar. Physics, iv. 2, 209 b 15, See also:Berlin ed.). He was an See also:earnest, appreciative, See also:independent student. The See also:master is said to have called his See also:pupil the See also:intellect of the school and his See also:house a reader's. He is also said to have complained that his pupil spurned him as colts do their mothers. Aristotle, however, always revered Plato's memory (Nic. See also:Ethics, i. 6), and even in criticizing his master counted himself enough of a Platonist to cite Plato's doctrines as what " we say" (cf. cba jdv, Metaphysics, i. 9, 990 b 16). At the same time, he must have learnt much from other contemporaries at Athens, especially from astronomers such as See also:Eudoxus and Callippus, and from orators such as Isocrates and Demosthenes. He also attacked Isocrates, according to See also:Cicero, and perhaps even set up a See also:rival school of See also:rhetoric. At any See also:rate he had pupils of his own, such as Eudemus of See also:Cyprus, See also:Theodectes and Hermias, books of his own, especially dialogues, and even to some extent his own See also:philosophy, while he was still a pupil of Plato. Well grounded in his boyhood, and thoroughly educated in his manhood, Aristotle, after Plato's death, had the further advantage of travel in his third period, when he was in his See also:prime. The See also:appointment of Plato's See also:nephew, See also:Speusippus, to succeed his See also:uncle in the See also:Academy induced Aristotle and See also:Xenocrates to leave Athens together and repair to the court of Hermias. Aristotle admired Hermias, and married his friend's See also:sister or niece, Pythias, by whom he had his daughter Pythias. After the tragic death of Hermias, he retired for a time to Mitylene, and in 343-342 was summoned to Macedon by Philip to See also:teach Alexander, who was then a boy of thirteen. According to Cicero (De Oratore, iii. 41), Philip wished his son, then a boy of thirteen, to receive from Aristotle " agendi praecepta et eloquendi." Aristotle is said to have written on See also:monarchy and on colonies for Alexander; and the pupil is said to have slept with his master's edition of See also:Homer under his See also:pillow, and to have respected him, until from hatred of Aristotle's tactless relative, See also:Callisthenes, who was done to death in 328, he turned at last against Aristotle himself. Aristotle had See also:power to teach, and Alexander to learn. Still we must not exaggerate the result. Dionysius must have spoken too strongly when he says that Aristotle was tutor of Alexander for eight years; for in 340, when Philip went to See also:war with See also:Byzantium, Alexander became See also:regent at See also:home, at the See also:age of sixteen. From this date Aristotle probably spent much time at his paternal house in his native See also:city at Stagira as a patriotic See also:citizen. Philip had sacked it in 348: Aristotle induced him or his son to restore it, made for it a new constitution, and in return was celebrated in a festival after his death. All these vicissitudes made him a See also:man of the world, See also:drew him out of the philosophical circle at Athens, and gave him leisure to develop his philosophy. Besides Alexander he had other pupils: Callisthenes, See also:Cassander, See also:Marsyas, See also:Phanias, and See also:Theophrastus of Eresus, who is said to have had See also:land at Stagira. He also continued the writings begun in his second period; and the Macedonian See also:kings have the See also:glory of having assisted the Stagirite philosopher with the means of conducting his researches in the See also:History of Animals. At last, in his See also:fourth period, after the See also:accession of Alexander, Aristotle at fifty returned to Athens and became the See also:head of his own school in the Lyceum, a gymnasium near the See also:temple of See also:Apollo Lyceius in the suburbs. The master and his scholars were called See also:Peripatetics (ol EK rov reperarov), certainly from See also:meeting, like other philosophical See also:schools, in a walk (replraros), and perhaps also, on the authority of See also:Hermippus of See also:Smyrna, from walking and talking there, like See also:Protagoras and his followers as described in Plato's Protagoras (314 E, 315 e). Indeed, according to Ammonius, Plato too had talked as he walked in the Academy; and all his followers were called Peripatetics, until, while the pupils of Xenocrates took the name " Academics," those of Aristotle retained the See also:general name. Aristotle also formed his Peripatetic school into a See also:kind of See also:college with See also:common meals under a See also:president (apxwv) changing every ten days; while the philosopher himself delivered lectures, in which his practice, as his pupil See also:Aristoxenus tells us (Harmonics, ii. init.), was, avoiding the generalities of Plato, to prepare his See also:audience by explaining the subject of investigation and its nature. But Aristotle was an author as well as a lecturer; for the See also:hypothesis that the Aristotelian writings are notes of his lectures taken down by his pupils is contradicted by the tradition of their learning while walking, and disproved by the impossibility of taking down such complicated discourses from dictation. Moreover, it is clear that Aristotle addressed himself to readers as well as hearers, as in concluding his whole theory of syllogisms he says, " There would remain for all of you or for our hearers (7ravrcov bv i7 rwv $Kpoaµ€vcwv) a See also:duty of according to the defects of the investigation See also:consideration, to its discoveries much gratitude " (Sophistical Elenchi, 34, 184 b 6). In See also:short, Aristotle was at once a student, a reader, a lecturer, a writer and a See also:book See also:collector. He was, says See also:Strabo (6o8), the first we knew who collected books and taught the kings in See also:Egypt the arrangement of a library. In his library no doubt were books of others, but also his own. There we must figure to ourselves the philosopher, constantly referring to his autograph rolls; entering references and See also:cross-references; correcting, rewriting, See also:collecting and arranging them according to their subjects; showing as well as reading them to his pupils; with little thought of publication, but with his whole soul concentrated on being and truth. On his first visit to Athens, during which occurred the fatal See also:battle of See also:Mantineia (362 B.C.), Aristotle had seen the confusion of See also:Greece becoming the opportunity of Macedon under Philip; and on his second visit he was supported at Athens by the See also:complete domination of Macedon under Alexander. Having witnessed the unjust exactions of a See also:democracy at Athens, the dwindling See also:population of an See also:oligarchy at See also:Sparta, and the oppressive selfishness of new tyrannies throughout the Greek world, he condemned the actual constitutions of the Greek states as deviations (rapeK-#6a-as) directed merely to the See also:good of the See also:government; and he contemplated a right constitution (opOit roXcreia), which might be either a See also:commonwealth, an See also:aristocracy or a monarchy, directed to the general good; but he preferred the monarchy of one man, pre-eminent in virtue above the See also:rest, as the best of all governments (Nicomachean Ethics, viii. ro; Politics, P 14-18). Moreover, by adding (Politics, H 7, 1327 b 29-33) that the Greekrace could govern the world by obtaining one constitution (.u&.s rvyXavov 1roXimias), he indicated some leaning to a universal monarchy under such a king as Alexander. On the whole, however, he adhered to the Greek city-See also:state (roes), partly perhaps out of patriotism to his own Stagira. Averse at all events to the Athenian democracy, leaning towards Macedonian monarchy, and resting on Macedonian power, he maintained himself in his school at Athens, so See also:long as he was supported by the friendship of Antipater„ the Macedonian regent in Alexander's See also:absence. But on Alexander's sudden death in 323, when Athens in the Lamian war tried to reassert her freedom against See also:Antipater, Aristotle found himself in danger. He was accused of impiety on the absurd See also:charge of deifying the tyrant Hermias; and, remembering the See also:fate of See also:Socrates, he retired to Chalcis in See also:Euboea. There, away from his school, in 322 he died. (A See also:tomb has been found in our time inscribed with the name of Biote, daughter of Aristotle. But is this our Aristotle?) Such is our scanty knowledge of Aristotle's life, which seems to have been prosperous by See also:inheritance and position, and happy by See also:work and philosophy. His will, which was quoted by Hermippus, and, as afterwards quoted by Diogenes Laertius, has come down to us, though perhaps not complete, supplies some further details, as follows: Antipater is to be executor with others. See also:Nicanor is to marry Pythias, Aristotle's daughter, and to take charge of Nicomachus his son. Theophrastus is to be one of the executors if he will and can, and if Nicanor should See also:die to See also:act instead, if he will, in reference to Pythias. The executors and Nicanor are to take charge of Herpyllis, " because," in the words of the testator, " she has been good to me," and to allow her to reside either in the lodging by the See also:garden at Chalcis or in the paternal house at Stagira. They are to provide for the slaves, who in some cases are to be freed. They are to see after the See also:dedication of four images by Gryllion of Nicanor, Proxenus, Nicanor's mother and Arimnestus. They are to dedicate an See also:image of Aristotle's mother, and to see that the bones of his wife Pythias are, as she ordered, taken up and buried with him. On this will we may remark that Proxenus is said to have been Aristotle's See also:guardian after the death, of his father, and to have been the father of Nicanor; that Herpyllis of Stagira was the mother of Nicomachus by Aristotle; and that Arimnestus was the See also:brother of Aristotle, who also had a sister, Arimneste. Every clause breathes the philosopher's humanity. II. DEVELOPMENT FROM See also:PLATONISM Turning now from the man to the philosopher as we know him best in his extant writings (see Aristoteles, ed. See also:Bekker, Berlin, 1831, the pages of which we use for our quotations), we find, instead of the general dialogues of Plato, See also:special didactic See also:treatises, and a fundamental difference of philosophy, so great as to have divided philosophers into opposite camps, and made See also:Coleridge say that everybody is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. Platonism is the See also:doctrine that the individuals we See also:call things only become, but a thing is always.one universal See also:form beyond many individuals, e.g. one good beyond seeming goods; and that without supernatural forms, which are See also:models of individuals, there is nothing, no being, no knowing, no good. Aristotelianism is the contrary doctrine: a thing is always a See also:separate individual, a substance (data), natural such as See also:earth or supernatural such as See also:God; and without these individual substances, which have attributes. and universals belonging to them, there is nothing, to be, to know, to be good. Philosophic See also:differences are best See also:felt by their See also:practical effects: philosophically, Platonism is a philosophy of universal forms, Aristotelianism a philosophy of individual substances: practically, Plato makes us think first of the super-natural and the, See also:kingdom of See also:heaven, Aristotle of the natural and the whole world. So diametrical a difference could not have arisen at once. For, though Aristotle was different from Plato, and brought with him from Stagira a Greek and Ionic but colonial origin, a medical descent and tendency, and a See also:matter-of-fact worldly kind of See also:character, nevertheless on coming to Athens as pupil of Plato he must have begun with his master's philosophy. What then in more detail was the philosophy which the pupil learnt from the master? When Aristotle at the age of eighteen came to Athens, Plato, at the age of sixty-two, had probably written all his dialogues except the See also:Laws; and in the course of the remaining twenty years of his life and teaching, he expounded " the so-called unwritten dogmas " in his lectures on the Good. There was therefore a written Platonism for Aristotle to read, and an unwritten Platonism which he actually heard. To begin with the written philosophy of the Dialogues. Individual so-called things neither are nor are not, but become: the real thing is always one universal form beyond the many individuals, e.g. the one beautiful beyond all beautiful individuals; and each form (t a) is a See also:model which causes individuals by participation to become like, but not the same as, itself. Above all forms stands the form of the good, which is the cause of all other forms being, and through them of all individuals becoming. The creator, or the divine intellect, with a view to the form of the good, and taking all forms as models, creates in a receptacle (varo&oxil, Plato, Timaeus, 49 A) individual impressions which are called things but really See also:change and become without attaining the permanence of being. Knowledge resides not in sense but in See also:reason, which, on the See also:suggestion of sensations of changing individuals, apprehends, or (to be precise) is reminded of, real universal forms, and, by first ascending from less to more general until it arrives at the form of good and then descending from this unconditional principle to the less general, becomes science and philosophy, using as its method the See also:dialectic which gives and receives questions and answers between man and man. Happiness in this world consists proximately in virtue as a See also:harmony between the three parts, rational, spirited and appetitive, of our souls, and ultimately in living according to the form of the good; but there is a far higher happiness, when the immortal soul, divesting itself of See also:body and passions and senses, rises from earth to heaven and contemplates pure forms by pure reason. Such in brief is the Platonism of the written dialogues; where the See also:main doctrine of forms is confessedly advanced never as a See also:dogma but always as a hypothesis, in which there are difficulties, but without which Plato can explain neither being, nor truth nor goodness, because throughout he denies the being of individual things. In the unwritten lectures of his old age, he See also:developed this formal into a mathematical metaphysics. In See also:order to explain the unity and variety of the world, the one universal form and the many individuals, and how the one good is the main cause of everything, he placed as it were at the back of his own doctrine of forms a See also:Pythagorean mathematical philosophy. He supposed that the one and the two, which is indeterminate, and is the great and little, are opposite principles or causes. Identifying the form of the good with the one, he supposed that the one, by combining with the indeterminate two, causes a See also:plurality of forms, which like every See also:combination of one and two are See also:numbers but See also:peculiar in being incommensurate with one another, so that each form is not a mathematical number (paBnparn,ds apLBpds), but a formal number (el5natxds It ptOpos). Further he sup-posed that in its turn each form, or formal number, is a limited one which, by combining again with the indeterminate two, causes a plurality of individuals. Hence finally he concluded that the good as the one combining with the indeterminate two is directly the cause of all forms as formal numbers, and indirectly through them all of the multitude of individuals in the world. Aristotle knew Plato, was See also:present at his lectures on the Good, wrote a See also:report of them (arepi rayaBo"v), and described this latter philosophy of Plato in his Metaphysics. See also:Modern critics, who were not present and knew neither, often accuse Aristotle of misrepresenting Plato. But Heracleides and Hestiacus, Speusippus and Xenocrates were also present and wrote similar reports. What is more, both Speusippus and Xenocrates founded their own philosophies on this very Pythagoreanism of Plato. Speusippus as president of the Academy from 347 to 339 taught that the one and the many are principles, while abolishing forms and reducing the good from cause to effect. Xenocrates as president from 339 onwards taught that the one and many are principles,503 only without distinguishing mathematical from formal numbers. Aristotle's critics hardly realize that for the rest of his life he had to live and to struggle with a formal and a mathematical Platonism, which exaggerated first universals and attributes and afterwards the quantitative attributes, one and many, into substantial things and real causes. Aristotle had no sympathy with the unwritten dogmas of Plato. But with the written dialogues of Plato he always continued to agree almost as much as he disagreed. Like Plato, he believed in real universals, real essences, real causes; he believed in the unity of the universal, and in the immateriality of essences; he believed in the good, and that there is a good of the universe; he believed that God is a living being, eternal and best, who is a supernatural cause of the motions and changes of the natural world, and that essences and matter are also necessary causes; he believed in the divine intelligence and in the See also:immortality of our intelligent souls; he believed in knowledge going from sense to reason, that science requires ascent to principles and is descent from principles, and that dialectic is useful to science; he believed in happiness involving virtue, and in moral virtue being a See also:control of passions by reason, while the highest happiness is speculative See also:wisdom. All these inspiring See also:meta-See also:physical and moral doctrines the pupil accepted from his master's dialogues, and throughout his life adhered to the general spirit of See also:realism without See also:materialism pervading the Platonic philosophy. But what he refused to believe with Plato was that reality is not here, but only above; and what he maintained against Plato was that it is both, and that universals and forms, one and many, the good, are real but not separate realities. This deep metaphysical divergence was the prime cause of the transition from Platonism to Aristotelianism. Fragmenta Aristotelis.—Aristotle's originality soon asserted itself in See also:early writings, of which fragments have come down to us, and have been collected by See also:Rose (see the Berlin edition of Aristotle's See also:works, or more readily in the Teubner See also:series, which we shall use for our quotations). Many, no doubt, are See also:spurious; but some are genuine, and a few perhaps cited in Aristotle's extant works. Some are dialogues, others didactic works. A special See also:interest attaches to the dialogues written after the manner of Plato but with Aristotle as See also:principal interlocutor; and some of these, e.g. the crept arocalr&v and the Eudemus, seem to have been published. It is not always certain which were dialogues, which didactic like Aristotle's later works; but by comparing those which were certainly dialogues with their companions in the See also:list of Aristotle's books as given by Diogenes Laertius, we may conclude with See also:Bernays that the books occurring first in that list were dialogues. Hence we may perhaps accept as genuine the following: r. Dialogues: arepi S&KacoQVvals : On See also:justice. crept arotnr&'v: On poets (perhaps cited in Poetics, 15, 1454 b 18, Ev TOES EKSeSopEVOCS )^dyOLS). crept dat Aovo4.ias: On philosophy (perhaps cited in Physics, ii. 2, 194 a 35-36). arepi aroALTIKOU: A politician. 'See also:rep' p~lrOpcKrls Fp(AAos: On rhetoric. arporpearrucds: An exhortation to philosophy (probably in See also:dialogue, because it is the model of Cicero's dialogue Hortensisys). Ev6npos i) arepi NYuxiIs: On soul (perhaps cited in De Anima, i. 4, 407 b 29, Kai Tocs Ev Kocvui yevopEvocs Adyois). 2. Didactic writings: (.) Metaphysical: are pt T&yaBoE': On the good (probably not a dialogue but a report of Plato's lectures), arepl lleiav: On forms. (2) See also:Political: crept /3auiXeias: On monarchy. 'AAE avapos it iarip a7oi/wv: On colonies. 504 (3) Rhetorical: sixvgs T7ls eeo5 ,<rou ovvaywy, : The Theodectea (cited in the See also:Preface to the Rhetoric to Alexander (chap. i.), and as Ta OeobEKTEIa in the Rhetoric (iii. 9, 1410 b 2), rexpo.,v avva'ywyit: A See also:historical collection of arts of rhetoric. Difficult as it is to determine when Aristotle wrote all these various works, some of them indicate their See also:dates. Gryllus, celebrated in the dialogue on rhetoric, was See also:Xenophon's son who See also:fell at Mantineia in 362; and Eudemus of Cyprus, lamented in the dialogue on soul, died in See also:Sicily in 352. These then 'were probably written before Plato died in 347; and so probably were most of the dialogues, precisely because they were imitations of the dialogues of Plato. Among the didactic writings, the we pi Taya8ou would probably belong to the same time, because it was Aristotle's report of Plato's lectures. On the other See also:hand, the two political works, if written for Alexander, would be after 343-342 when Philip made Aristotle his tutor. So probably were the rhetorical works, especially the Theodectea; since both politics and See also:oratory were the subjects which the father wanted the tutor to teach his son, and, when Alexander came to Phaselis, he is said by See also:Plutarch (Alexander, 17) to have decorated the statue of Theodectes in See also:honour of his association with the man through Aristotle and philosophy. On the whole, then, it seems as if Aristotle began with dialogues during his second period under Plato, but gradually came to prefer See also:writing didactic works, especially in the third period after Plato's death, and in connexion with Alexander. These early writings show clearly how Aristotle came to depart from Plato. In the first See also:place as regards See also:style, though the Stagirite pupil Aristotle could never rival his See also:Attic master in See also:literary form, yet he did a See also:signal service to philosophy in gradually passing from the vague generalities of the dialogue to the scientific precision of the didactic See also:treatise. The philosophy of Plato is dialogue trying to become science; that of Aristotle science retaining traces of dialectic. Secondly as regards subject-matter, even in his early writings Aristotle tends to widen the See also:scope of philosophic inquiry, so as not only to embrace meta-physics and politics, but also to encourage rhetoric and poetics, which Plato tended to discourage or limit. Thirdly as regards doctrines, the surpassing interest of these early writings is that they show the pupil partly agreeing, partly disagreeing, with his master. The Eudemus and Protrepticus are with Plato; the dialogues on Philosophy and the treatise on Forms are against Plato. The Eudemus, on the soul (Fragmenta, 37 seq.), must have been in style and thought the most Platonic of all the Aristotelian writings. Plato's theory of the soul and 'its immortality was not the See also:ordinary Greek view derived from Homer, who regarded the body as the self, the soul as a shade having a future state but an obscure existence, and stamped that view on the See also:hearts of his countrymen, and affected Aristotle himself. After Homer there had come to Greece the new view that the soul is more real than the body, that it is imprisoned in the carcase as a See also:prison-house, that it is capable of enjoying a happier life freed from the body, and that it can transmigrate from body to body. This See also:strange, See also:exotic, ascetic view was adopted by some philosophers, and especially by the Pythagoreans, and so transmitted to Plato. Aristotle in the Eudemus, written about 352, when he was thirty-two, also believed in it. Accordingly, the soul of Eudemus, when it See also:left his body, is said to be returning home: the soul is made subject to the casting of lots, and in coming from the other world to this it is supposed to forget its former visions: but its disembodied life is regarded as its natural life in a better world. The Eudemus also contained a celebrated passage, preserved by Plutarch (Consolat. ad A See also:poll. 27; Fragm. 44). Here we can read the See also:young Aristotle, writing in the form of the dialogue like Plato, avoiding See also:hiatus like Isocrates, and justifying the praises accorded to his style by Cicero, See also:Quintilian and Dionysius. It shows how nearly the pupil could imitate his master's dialogues, and still more how exactly he at first embraced his master's doctrines. It makes See also:Silenus, captured by See also:Midas, say that the best of all things is not to have been born, and the next best, having been born, to die as soon as possible. Nothing could be more like Plato's See also:Phaedo, or more unlike Aristotle's later work on the Soul, which entirely rejects transmigration and allows the next life to sink into the background. Hardly less Platonic is the Protrepticus (Fragm. 50 seq.), an exhortation to philosophy which, according to See also:Zeno the Stoic, was studied by his master See also:Crates. It is an exhortation, whose point is that the See also:chief good is philosophy, the contemplation of the universe by divine and immortal intellect. This is indeed a doctrine of Platonic ethics from which Aristotle in his later days never swerved. But in the Protrepticus he goes on to say that seeming goods, such as strength, See also:size; beauty, honours, opinions, are See also:mere illusion (estaypa4ta), worthless and ridiculous, as we should know if we had Lyncean eyes to compare them with the See also:vision of the eternal. This indifference to goods of body and See also:estate is quite Platonic, but is very different from Aristotle's later ethical doctrine that such goods, though not the essence, are nevertheless necessary conditions of happiness. Finally, in the spirit of Plato's Phaedo and the dialogue Eudemus, the Protrepticus holds that the soul is See also:bound to the sentient members of the body as prisoners in See also:Etruria are bound See also:face to face with corpses ; whereas the later view of the De Anima is that the soul is the vital principle of the body and the body the necessary See also:organ of the soul. Thus we find that at first, under the influence of his master, Aristotle held somewhat ascetic views on soul and body and on goods of body and estate, entirely opposed both in See also:psychology and in ethics to the moderate doctrines of his later writings. This perhaps is one reason why Cicero, who had Aristotle's early writings, saw no difference between the Academy and the Peripatetics (Acad. See also:Post, i. 4, 17-18). On the other hand, the dialogue on Philosophy (irep2 ¢LX000lptas, Fragm. I seq.) strikingly exhibits the origin of Aristotle's divergence from Platonism, and that too in Plato's lifetime. The young son of a See also:doctor from the colonies proved too fond of this world to See also:stomach his Athenian master's philosophy of the supernatural. Accordingly in this dialogue he attacked Plato's fundamental position, both in its written and in its unwritten presentment, as a hypothesis both of forms and of formal numbers. First, he attacked the hypothesis of forms (gip rwv t&ewv irg6esots, Fragm. 8), exclaiming in his dialogues, according to See also:Proclus, that he could not sympathize with the dogma even if it should be thought that he was opposing it out of contentiousness; while Plutarch says that his attacks on the forms by means of his exoteric dialogues were thought by some persons more contentious than philosophical, as presuming to disdain Plato's philosophy: so far was he, says Plutarch, from following it. Secondly, in the same dialogue (Fragm. 9), according to See also:Syrianus, he disagreed with the hypothesis of formal numbers (TOis EE39ITLKOLS aptBuois). If, wrote Aristotle, the forms are another sort of number, not mathematical, there would be no understanding of it. Lastly, in the same dialogue (Fragm. 18 seq.} he revealed his emphasis on nature by contending that the universe is uncreate and indestructible. According to Plato, God caused the natural world to become : according to Aristotle it is eternal. This eternity of the world became one of his characteristic doctrines, and subsequently enabled him to explain how essences can be eternal without being separate from this world which is also eternal (cf. Metaph. Z 8). Thus early did Aristotle begin, even in Plato's lifetime, to oppose Plato's hypothesis of supernatural forms, and advance his own hypothesis of the eternity of the world. He made another attack on Platonism in the didactic work arepl iSEwv; (Fragm. 185 seq.), contending that the Platonic arguments prove not forms (tSEQL) but only things common (set MP a). Here, according to Alexander the commentator, he first brought against Plato the See also:argument of " the third man " (1 rptros & v6pCe7ros) ; that, if there is the form, one man beyond many men, there will be a third man predicated of both man and men, and a fourth predicated of all three, and so on to infinity (Fragm. 188). Here, too, he examined the hypothesis of Eudoxus that things are caused by mixture of forms, a hypothesis which formed a kind of transition to his own later views, but failed to satisfy him on account of its difficulties. Lastly, in the didactic work lrspirayaOoi (Fragm. 27 seq.), containing his report of Plato's lectures on the Good, he was dealing with the same mathematical metaphysics which in his dialogue on Philosophy he criticized for converting forms into formal numbers. Aristoxenus, at the beginning of the second book of the Harmonics, gives a graphic account of the astonishment caused by these lectures of Plato, and of their effect on the lectures of Aristotle. In contending, as Aristotle's pupil, that a teacher should begin by proposing his subject, he tells us how Aristotle used to relate that most of Plato's hearers came expecting to get something about human goods and happiness, but that when the discourses turned out to be all about See also:mathematics, with the conclusion that good is one, it appeared to them a See also:paradox, which some despised and others condemned. The reason, he adds, was that they were not informed by Plato before-hand; and for this very reason, Aristotle, as he told Aristoxenus himself, used to prepare his hearers by informing them of the nature of the subject. From this rare See also:personal See also:reminiscence we see at a glance that the mind of Plato and the mind of Aristotle were so different, that their philosophies must diverge; the one towards the supernatural, the abstract, the discursive, and the other towards the natural, the substantial, the scientific. Aristotle then even in the second period of his life, while Plato was still alive, began to differ from him in metaphysics. He rejected the Platonic hypothesis of forms, and affirmed that they are not separate but common, without however as yet having advanced to a constructive metaphysics of his own; while at the same time, after having at first adopted his master's dialectical treatment of meta-physical problems, he soon passed from dialogues to didactic works, which had the result of separating metaphysics from dialectic. The all-important consequence of this first departure from Platonism was that Aristotle became and remained primarily a metaphysician. After Plato's death, coming to his third period he made a further departure from Platonism in his didactic works on politics and rhetoric, written in connexion with Alexander and Theodectes. Those on politics (Fragm. 646-648) were designed to instruct Alexander on monarchy and on colonization; and in them Aristotle agreed with Plato in assigning a moral See also:object to the state, but departed from him by saying that a king need not be a philosopher, as Plato had said in the See also:Republic, but does need to listen to philosophers. Still more marked was his departure from Plato as regards rhetoric. Plato in the See also:Gorgias, (501 A) had contended that rhetoric is not an art but an empirical practice (TpL%i) Kai ipretpia); Aristotle in the Gryllus (Fragm. 68-69), written in his second period, took according to Quintilian a similar view. But in his third period, in the Theodectea (Fragm. 125 seq.), rhetoric is treated as an art, and is laid out somewhat in the manner of his later Art of Rhetoric; while he also showed his interest in the subject by writing a history of other arts of rhetoric called rexv&v ouvaywyit (Fragm. 136 seq.). Further, in treating rhetoric as an art in the Theodectea he was forced into a conclusion, which carried him far beyond Plato's rigid notions of See also:proof and of See also:passion: he concluded that it is the work of an orator to use persuasion, and to arouse the passions (r6 rd rO.Bn staysipat), e.g. anger and pity (ib. 133-134). Nor could he treat See also:poetry as he is said to have done without the same result. On the whole then, in his early dialectical and didactic writings, of which mere fragments remain, Aristotle had already diverged from Plato, and first of all in metaphysics. During his master's life, in the second period of his own life, he protested against the Platonic hypothesis of forms, formal numbers and the one as the good, and tended to separate metaphysics from dialectic by beginning to pass from dialogues to didactic works. After his master's death, in the third period of his own life, and during his connexion with Alexander, but before the final construction of his philosophy into a See also:system, he was tending to write more and more in the didactic style; to separate from dialectic, not only metaphysics, but also politics, rhetoric and poetry; to admit by the See also:side of philosophy the arts of persuasive See also:language; to think it See also:part of their legitimate work to rouse the passions; and in all these ways to depart from the ascetic rigidity of the philosophy of Plato, so as to prepare for the tolerant spirit of his own, and especially for his ethical doctrine that virtue consists not in suppressing but in moderating almost all human passions. In both periods, too, as we shall find in the sequel, he was already occupied in composing some of the extant writings which were afterwards to form parts of his final philosophical system. But as yet he had given no sign of system, and—what is surprising—no trace of See also:logic. Aristotle was primarily a metaphysician' against Plato; a metaphysician before he was a logician; a metaphysician who made what he called See also:primary philosophy (rpc,rf cbIX0004(a) the starting-point of his philosophical development, and ultimately of his philosophical system. The system which was taught by Aristotle at Athens in the fourth period of his life, and which is now known as the Aristotelian philosophy, is contained not in fragments but in extant books. It will be best then to give at once a list of these extant works, following the traditional order in which they have long been arranged, and marking with a See also:dagger (t) those which are now usually considered not to be genuine, though not always with sufficient reason. A. LOGICAL t. KarriyopiaL: Categoriae: On See also:simple expressions signifying different kinds of things and capable of See also:predication [probably an early work of Aristotle, accepting See also:species and genera as "secondary substances " in deference to Plato's teaching]. 2. wept 'Epµnvetas: De interpretatione: On language as expression of mind, and especially on the enunciation or assertion (awb¢avets, aro¢avrteOs Xbyos) [rejected by Andronicus according to Alexander; but probably an early work of Aristotle, based on Plato's See also:analysis of the See also:sentence into noun and verb]. 3. 'AvawTLKa rpbrepa : Analytica Priora: On See also:syllogism, with a view.to demonstration. 4. 'AvaAurMKa UeTepa: Analytica Posteriora: On demonstration, or See also:demonstrative or scientific syllogism (ar68etEte, arobemcTLKOS irtaTi]poVLKtS euXXoyLe.ws). 5. TortK : To See also:pica: On dialectical syllogism (SLaXEKTLRhS wAAoyuOµbs), so called from consisting mainly of commonplaces (rbrot, loci), or general See also:sources of argument. 6. Fio4,urTLKOi €XEyXoL : Sophistici Elenchi : On sophistic (eo4,LOrmKOS) or eristic syllogism (ipurrubOs cuXXoyloµos), so called from the fallacies used by See also:sophists in refutation (FAeaxos) of their opponents. [Numbers 1-6 were afterwards grouped together as the See also:Organon.] B. PHYSICAL I. 4)vcnmi/ &Kpbarmt: Physica Ausculiatio: On Nature as cause of change, and the general principles of natural science. 2. repi obpavoi : De coelo: On See also:astronomy, &c. 3. rep; yEVEoews Kai 4Oopas: De See also:generation et corruptione: On generation and destruction in general. 4. MerewpoaoyuKa: Meteorologica: On sublunary changes. 5.t rem! KOaaov: De mundo: On the universe. [Supposed by See also:Zeller to belong to the latter See also:half of the 1st century B.C.] 6. repi t'v j : De anima: On soul, conjoined with organic body. 7. wept al i]oews eat ato-Ona6,v: De sensu et sensili: On sense and See also:objects of sense. 8. repi aYfiaiS Kai auaµvtiieews: De memoria et reminiscentia: On memory and recollection. 9. rem; urvov Kai iypriybpuesa: De somno et vigilia: On See also:sleep and waking. to. repi Evurviwv: De insomniis: On dreams. I I. rep' T7jr Kae' UrpOV /LavTLKTiS, Or rEpi p.avruc4 S T1iS - EP TOiS Irvots: De See also:divination per somnum: On prophecy in sleep. 12. repi paKpof3t6Tnros Kai (3paxv$s6Tnros: De longitudine et brevitate vitae: On length and shortness of life. 13. repi VE6TIITOS Kai yiipws Kai rep' ffwiis Kai Oavarov: De juventute et senectute et de vita et morte: On youth and age, and on life and death. 14. repi hvarvofjs: De respiration: On respiration. [Numbers 7-14 are grouped together as Parva naturalia.] 15.trepi rvebparos: De spiritu: On innate spirit (spiritus vitalis). 16. repi ra l4a ieroptat: Historia animalium: Description of facts about animals, i.e. their See also:organs, &c. 17. wept i"Liwv popiwv: De partibus animalium: Philosophy of the causes of the facts about animals, i.e. their functions. 18. t rEpi itiwv KLViiemwas: De animalium See also:motion: On the motion of animals. (Ascribed to the school of Theophrastus and Strato by Zeller.] 19. repi iLtiwv ropeias: De animalium incessu: On the going of animals. 20. rcpt. Nam yevioews: De animalium generation: On the generation of animals. 21.t repi xpwµarwv: De coloribus: On See also:colours. [Ascribed to the school of Theophrastus and Strato by Zeller.] 22.t repi &couer&v: De audibilibus. [Ascribed to the school of Theophrastus and Strato by Zeller.] 23.t cDvotoyvwpovLKa: Physiognomonica: On See also:physiognomy, and the sympathy of body and soul. 24.t wept 4vr41v: De plantis: On See also:plants. [Not Aristotle's work on this subject.] 25.t repi Oaaeaeiwv aKOVOµaTwv: De mirabilibus auscultationibus: On phenomena chiefly connected with natural history. 26.t Mexameth: Quaestiones mechanicae: See also:Mechanical questions. C. See also:MISCELLANEOUS 1.t IIpofDaLuara: Problemata: Problems on various subjects [gradually collected by the Peripatetics from partly Aristotelian materials, according to Zeller]. 2.t rep; tiroµ&v ypaisµ&v: De insecabilibus lineis: On indivisible lines. [Ascribed to Theophrastus, or his time, by Zeller.] 3.t aV&/Lwe See also:Keats Kal rpocrayopiam: Ventorum situs et appella- tiones: A fragment on the winds. 4.t repi 2-EevocPb.See also:vous, repi Ziivwvos, repi Topytee: De Xenophane, Zenone et Gorgia: On See also:Xenophanes, Zeno and Gorgias. D. PRIMARY PHILOSOPHY OR See also:THEOLOGY OR WISDOM Ta µera Ta ¢voLKa: Metaphysica: On being as being and its properties, its causes and principles, and on God as the See also:motive motor of the world. E. PRACTICAL I. 'Meet NLKoµ4Xeta: Ethica Nicomachea: On the good of the individual. 2.t 'HOu.a µeyaaa: Magna Moralia: On the same subject. [According to Zeller, an abstract of the Nicomachean and the Eudemian Ethics, tending to follow the latter, but possibly an early draft of the Nicomachean Ethics.] 3.t 'HOLKa Ebbiµta or rpOs EbInµoe: Ethica ad Eudemum: On the same subject. [Usually supposed to be written by Eudemus, but possibly an early draft of the Nicomachean Ethics.] 4.t rEpi apETWV cal KQKL&V: De virtutibus et viti s: On virtues and vices. [An eclectic work of the 1st century B.C., half See also:Academic and half Peripatetic, according to Zeller.] 5. IIoXtrsca: De re publica: Politics, on the good of the state. 6.t O[KOVOaCKa: De cura rei familiaris: See also:Economics, on the good of the See also:family. [The first book a work of the school of Theophrastus or Eudemus, the second later Peripatetic, according to Zeller.] F. ART 1. rEXvn 'Pnropuc[: Ars rhetorica: On the art of oratory. 2. t'Pnropiin irpds: 'AM avSpov: Rhetorica ad Alexandrum: On the same subject. [Ascribed to Anaximenes of See also:Lampsacus (fl. 365, Diodorus xv. 76) by Petrus Victorius, and Spengel, but possibly an earlier rhetoric by Aristotle.] 3. T.epl llocnruins: De poetica: On the art of poetry [fragmentary]. G. HISTORICAL 'ABnvatwv aoXereta: De republica Atheniensium: On the Constitution of Athens. [One of the HoXtrela[, said to have been 158 at least, the genuineness of which is attested by the See also:defence which See also:Polybius (xii.) makes of Aristotle's history of the Epizephyrian Locrians against Timaeus, Aristotle's contemporary and critic. Hitherto, only fragments have come down to us (cf. Fragm. 381-603). The present treatise, without however its beginning and end, written on a See also:papyrus discovered in Egypt and now in the See also:British Museum, was first edited by F. G. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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