History
Statue in
Aristotle’s Park
Stagira
became his teacher and mentor.
After Phillip conquered all Greece,
the two became quite close.
When Alexander, becoming known
as Alexander the Great, began his
military campaign to go east and
conquer Persia and the known world,
he carried Aristotle’s (by now)
considerable volume of written
works with him. For centuries,
Aristotle remained a prominent,
if not the number one, philosopher
and scientist, first in the eastern
Hellenic world legacy of Alexander,
and then in the Arab Islamic world,
centered in Baghdad and Damascus.
Crusading Christians, around 1100
A.D., discovered some of Aristotle’s
works, many of which may have been
in the form of student notes, and
returned them to Europe.
After Plato’s death, Aristotle
returned to Athens and founded his
own Academy, called Lyceum. When
word reached him that Alexander
was claiming divine status for
himself, Aristotle denounced him
for what he considered as a breach
of a reason and logic base.
No direct connection has been found
between this feud and Aristotle’s
hurried departure from Athens.
Evidently, some influential Athenians
accused Aristotle of irreverence
towards the Greek Gods. Potentially,
this could have been a capital
offense. But Aristotle said he had no
intention of becoming a philosophical
martyr like Socrates. He closed
Lyceum and returned to his native
northern Greece. Aristotle died
shortly after in 322 B.C.
Details of
Aristotle’s Work
It is estimated that only about one
should be remembered that at least
one other Greek city state, Sparta,
was a very negative military
dictatorship, with similarities to
modern totalitarian models.
Aristotle was born in northern
Greece in Stagira in 384 B.C. He was
not a Macedonian, but initially lived
not too far from Macedonian Greeks
who would later play a key role in his
life. At a young age, he moved to
Athens and entered Plato’s Academy.
At that time, Plato was considered
the preeminent philosopher in the
Athenian world. Aristotle at first
adhered to Plato’s philosophical
system, but later broke with his
mentor and developed quite
different ideas.
Both Aristotle and Plato were
the first to develop philosophical
systems. These were a hierarchy,
consisting of views on metaphysics
(“What is it,” i.e. what is reality?)
to epistemology (“How do you know
this?”) to ethics and politics (“So
what?”). At some point, the Chinese
philosopher, Confucius, evidently
published many sayings and
observations, which, in their own
context, had some value. But he
never consolidated these into a
complete philosophical system.
Alexander the Great
After Aristotle left the Academy
and returned to northern Greece,
he came into contact with Philip II,
King of Macedonian Greeks. His
oldest son, Alexander, was
considered a prodigy and