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Aristotle, great Greek philosopher, researcher, reasoner, and writer, born at Stagirus in 384 BCE, was the son of Nicomachus, a physician, and Phaestis. He studied under Plato at Athens and taught there (367–347); subsequently he spent three years at the court of a former pupil, Hermeias, in Asia Minor and at this time married Pythias, one of Hermeias's relations. After some time at Mitylene, in 343–2 he was appointed by King Philip of Macedon to be tutor of his teen-aged son Alexander. After Philip's death in 336, Aristotle became head of his own school (of 'Peripatetics'), the Lyceum at Athens. Because of anti-Macedonian feeling there after Alexander's death in 323, he withdrew to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322. Nearly all the works Aristotle prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda (some are spurious). They can be categorized as I Practical : Nicomachean Ethics; Great Ethics (Magna Moralia); Eudemian Ethics; Politics; Economics (on the good of the family); On Virtues and Vices. II Logical : Categories; Analytics (Prior and Posterior); Interpretation; Refutations used by Sophists; Topica. III Physical : Twenty-six works (some suspect) including astronomy, generation and destruction, the senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, facts about animals, etc. IV Metaphysics : on being as being. V Art : Rhetoric and Poetics. VI Other works including the Constitution of Athens; more works also of doubtful authorship. VII Fragments of various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature; and of treatises on rhetoric, politics and metaphysics. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle is in twenty-three volumes.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
480 pages, Hardcover
First published December 31, 1927
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About the author
Aristotle
4,281 books5,522 followersAristotle (Greek: Αριστοτέλης; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At 17 or 18, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of 37 (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante Alighieri called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Pierre Abélard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At 17 or 18, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of 37 (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante Alighieri called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Pierre Abélard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 6, 2018
Some people begin asking questions the moment they learn to speak. These, I suppose, are the naturally curious. Others never seem to ask questions at all but take the world as it is. These are the least philosophical among us, or perhaps the most, but who can say? It’s hard to know what to make of a person that asks no questions.
If there is a time of day best suited for questions, I think it must be after dark, just before you put out the light. Questions posed then must not be of the pressing or practical sort or else they will keep you up, but questions leading to amusement or aimless pondering will usher you nicely to dreamland.
With this in mind, I keep a Loeb edition of Aristotle’s Problems on my nightstand. It is a debated point how much of this book is the work of Aristotle himself. It seems to have been a community effort of the Peripatetic school, a scroll to jot down puzzlers for future consideration. It contains about 900 questions, arranged by category.
The questions asked, and the tentative answers offered, make an interesting snapshot of the mental furniture of the Greeks who scribbled these down two-and-a-half-ish millennia ago. Consider, for example:
“Why are those in contact infected by some diseases, whereas no one becomes healthy by contact with health? Is it because disease implies motion, while health is a state of rest? The former, then, moves, but the latter does not.”
From some questions we learn things we might not have known about antique diseases (e.g. leprosy) and the Greek habit of wanting similar explanations from similar appearances:
“Why is it that in leprosy the hair turns grey, but that there is not always leprosy where there is grey hair? Is it because hair grows from the skin, but grey hair is a kind of decay of the hair?”
In other examples we discover hints to improve our mornings after boisterous symposia:
“Why does cabbage prevent headache after drinking? Is it because it has a sweet and purgative sap (and so physicians wash out the abdomen with it) and it is naturally cold?”
Then there are bizarre questions that make us wonder at the observations that must have inspired them in the first place:
“Why are those lustful whose eyelashes fall out? Is it for the same reason as that for which the bald are also lustful?”
This is not a book to read cover to cover, of course. It is a book for small bites, a question or two in aid of mental digestion before bed. In fact, I find it so successfully tranquilizing that I wonder if the Problems wasn’t intended as a soporific in the first place. Some problems are never solved by working on them directly, but only from an oblique angle. Insomnia, for example.
If there is a time of day best suited for questions, I think it must be after dark, just before you put out the light. Questions posed then must not be of the pressing or practical sort or else they will keep you up, but questions leading to amusement or aimless pondering will usher you nicely to dreamland.
With this in mind, I keep a Loeb edition of Aristotle’s Problems on my nightstand. It is a debated point how much of this book is the work of Aristotle himself. It seems to have been a community effort of the Peripatetic school, a scroll to jot down puzzlers for future consideration. It contains about 900 questions, arranged by category.
The questions asked, and the tentative answers offered, make an interesting snapshot of the mental furniture of the Greeks who scribbled these down two-and-a-half-ish millennia ago. Consider, for example:
“Why are those in contact infected by some diseases, whereas no one becomes healthy by contact with health? Is it because disease implies motion, while health is a state of rest? The former, then, moves, but the latter does not.”
From some questions we learn things we might not have known about antique diseases (e.g. leprosy) and the Greek habit of wanting similar explanations from similar appearances:
“Why is it that in leprosy the hair turns grey, but that there is not always leprosy where there is grey hair? Is it because hair grows from the skin, but grey hair is a kind of decay of the hair?”
In other examples we discover hints to improve our mornings after boisterous symposia:
“Why does cabbage prevent headache after drinking? Is it because it has a sweet and purgative sap (and so physicians wash out the abdomen with it) and it is naturally cold?”
Then there are bizarre questions that make us wonder at the observations that must have inspired them in the first place:
“Why are those lustful whose eyelashes fall out? Is it for the same reason as that for which the bald are also lustful?”
This is not a book to read cover to cover, of course. It is a book for small bites, a question or two in aid of mental digestion before bed. In fact, I find it so successfully tranquilizing that I wonder if the Problems wasn’t intended as a soporific in the first place. Some problems are never solved by working on them directly, but only from an oblique angle. Insomnia, for example.
January 9, 2008
This is one of the only works of Aristotle that made me laugh. It really makes him seem human. He just questions things frankly, as if he were walking down to the agora and observing drunks, sheep and rain. Maybe not the most philosophical, but it does all being in wonder, right?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews