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The Lyceum. The Lyceum was a gymnasium near Athens and the site of a philosophical school founded by Aristotle.
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What was Aristotle’s school of thought?

Aristotelianism (/ˌærɪstəˈtiːliənɪzəm/ ARR-i-stə-TEE-lee-ə-niz-əm) is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics.
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Did Aristotle create a school called the Academy?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Akademia” redirects here. For the French early music ensemble, see Akadêmia, Coordinates : 37°59′33″N 23°42′29″E  /  37.99250°N 23.70806°E The Academy ( Ancient Greek : Ἀκαδημία) was founded by Plato in c.387 BC in Athens, Aristotle studied there for twenty years (367–347 BC) before founding his own school, the Lyceum, The Academy persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a skeptical school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC.
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What was Socrates school called?

The Lyceum – The Lyceum had been used for philosophical debate long before Aristotle. Philosophers such as Prodicus of Ceos, Protagoras, and numerous rhapsodes had spoken there. The most famous philosophers to teach there were Isocrates, Plato (of The Academy ), and the best-known Athenian teacher, Socrates,

In addition to military training and educational pursuits, the Lyceum also housed Athenian Assembly meetings before the Pnyx became the official meeting place in the fifth century BCE. Cult practices of various groups were also held at the Lyceum. The Lyceum was named for the Greek god Apollo Lyceus,

Initially a sanctuary made for worshiping Lyceus, it later became a public exercise area, with a gymnasium being constructed later on. It is unknown when this worship was introduced to Athens or when the Lyceum became the sanctuary. The Lyceum was located outside and east of Athens’s city wall.

1. The Lyceum is famous for being a center of education, but it was used for numerous other activities including Athenian assembly gatherings, cult practices, and military exercises.
2. Because the Lyceum had to serve many purposes, the building had to have specific structures developed to accommodate all the activities.

The area it was built on had many open spaces with forests. It was bound on the south by the Ilissus river and the north by the mountain Lykabettus, There were many roads that led to the Lyceum from in the city and around the city. The area had increasing numbers of buildings constructed between the sixth century BC to sixth century AD.

Overall it is thought that the Lyceum spanned north possibly to modern Kolonaki plateia, south as far as the Ilissos river. It spanned east through the modern national gardens and the city wall, close to modern Amelia’s Boulevard, was the western boundary. The Lyceum has been referenced in numerous ancient works of literature including stories by Plato, Strabo, and Xenophon,

Plato mentions the Lyceum in his book Lysis, telling of Socrates walking down a road from the academy to the Lyceum to meet his friends Hippothales and Ktesippos close to the Panops springhouse. Strabo mentions the springhouse in his story and mentions that it is near the Lyceum and the Ilissus river flows from above the Agrai and the Lyceum.

Lastly, Xenophon says that the Lyceum served as a meeting place for the Athenian troops when the Spartans raided the city from east of the city to their encampment at Dekelaia. Within the Lyceum were many areas serving different purposes. A few were the apodyterion, dromoi, peripatetic, palastra, and gymnasium.

The apodyterion was a changing room that was either part of the gymnasium or the palmistry. The dromoi and peripatoi were roads that ran from the east to the west through the modern-day Syntagma square and Parliament building. The palaistra was a wrestling school that was used as the scene for Plato’s Euthydemus,

It served three functions: a training area, an area for cult activity, and a meeting place for philosophical discussion. The gymnasium was repaired in the 330s BC, but it is thought to have been originally built by Pericles in the fifth century or Pisistratus in the sixth century. The Lyceum was used at a location for philosophical discussion before Aristotle’s school was founded there.

Socrates, Protagoras, and Prodicus of Chios travelled to the Lyceum during fifth century BC to teach, debate, and discuss their findings. Isocrates also taught rhetoric at the Lyceum during the fourth century BC. Aristotle returned to Athens in 335 BC and established a school in one of the buildings of the Lyceum, lecturing there as well as writing most of his books and collecting books for the first European library in history.

1. Aristotle had always been a book collector and the library grew with the books Alexander sent him, he also sent plant and animal species that allows for Aristotle to open a museum.
2. The library attracted many scholars to his school, and they become teachers and conducted research.
3. Students were able to study any subject available at the time.

His school was compared to a factory that made professionals of any kind.
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Why did Aristotle create a school?

Aristotle, one of the greatest philosophers of antiquity, chose this location to establish his school during the 4th century BC. His aim was to teach the greatness and breadth of scientific and philosophical knowledge derived from classical Greek thought.
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What is Aristotle best known for?

Aristotle | Biography, Works, Quotes, Philosophy, Ethics, & Facts Aristotle was one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived and the first genuine scientist in history. He made pioneering contributions to all fields of philosophy and science, he invented the field of, and he identified the various scientific disciplines and explored their relationships to each other.

Aristotle was also a teacher and founded his own school in Athens, known as the, Read more below: After his father died about 367 BCE, Aristotle journeyed to Athens, where he joined the Academy of Plato. He left the Academy upon Plato’s death about 348, traveling to the northwestern coast of present-day,

He lived there and on the island of until 343 or 342, when of Macedonia summoned him to the Macedonian capital,, to act as tutor to Philip’s young teenage son, Alexander, which he did for two or three years. Aristotle presumably lived somewhere in Macedonia until his (second) arrival in Athens in 335.

In 323 hostility toward Macedonians in Athens prompted Aristotle to flee to the island of Euboea, where he died the following year. Aristotle wrote as many as 200 treatises and other works covering all areas of and, Of those, none survives in finished form. The approximately 30 works through which his thought was conveyed to later centuries consist of lecture notes (by Aristotle or his students) and draft manuscripts edited by ancient scholars, notably, the last head of the, who arranged, edited, and published Aristotle’s extant works in Rome about 60 BCE.

The naturally abbreviated style of these writings makes them difficult to read, even for philosophers. Read more below: Aristotle’s thought was original, profound, wide-ranging, and systematic. It eventually became the intellectual framework of Western, the system of philosophical assumptions and problems characteristic of philosophy in western Europe during the,

• In the 13th century undertook to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy and science with Christian dogma, and through him the theology and intellectual worldview of the Roman Catholic Church became Aristotelian.
• Since the mid-20th century, Aristotle’s ethics has inspired the field of virtue theory, an approach to ethics that emphasizes human well-being and the development of character.

Aristotle’s thought also constitutes an important current in other fields of contemporary philosophy, especially metaphysics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of science. Aristotle, Greek Aristoteles, (born 384 bce, Stagira,, Greece—died 322,, Euboea), ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest figures of Western history.

1. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian and,
2. Even after the intellectual revolutions of the, the, and the, Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western,
3. Aristotle’s intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts, including,,,,,,,,,,, poetics, political theory,, and,

He was the founder of, devising for it a finished system that for centuries was regarded as the sum of the discipline; and he pioneered the study of zoology, both observational and theoretical, in which some of his work remained unsurpassed until the 19th century.

1. But he is, of course, most outstanding as a philosopher.
2. His writings in and political theory as well as in and the philosophy of science continue to be studied, and his work remains a powerful current in contemporary philosophical debate.
3. This article deals with Aristotle’s life and thought.
4. For the later development of Aristotelian, see,

For treatment of Aristotelianism in the full of Western philosophy, see, Aristotle was born on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern, His father, Nicomachus, was the physician of (reigned c.393–c.370 bce ), king of Macedonia and grandfather of (reigned 336–323 bce ).

After his father’s death in 367, Aristotle migrated to, where he joined the Academy of (c.428–c.348 bce ). He remained there for 20 years as Plato’s pupil and colleague. Many of Plato’s later date from these decades, and they may reflect Aristotle’s contributions to philosophical debate at the Academy.

Some of Aristotle’s writings also belong to this period, though mostly they survive only in fragments. Like his master, Aristotle wrote initially in form, and his early ideas show a strong influence. His dialogue, for example, reflects the Platonic view of the as imprisoned in the body and as capable of a happier life only when the body has been left behind.

According to Aristotle, the dead are more blessed and happier than the living, and to die is to return to one’s real home. Another youthful work, the Protrepticus (“Exhortation”), has been reconstructed by modern scholars from quotations in various works from late antiquity. Everyone must do philosophy, Aristotle claims, because even arguing against the practice of philosophy is itself a form of philosophizing.

The best form of philosophy is the contemplation of the universe of nature; it is for this purpose that God made human beings and gave them a godlike intellect. All else—strength, beauty, power, and honour—is worthless. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.

1. It is possible that two of Aristotle’s surviving works on logic and disputation, the and the, belong to this early period.
2. The former demonstrates how to construct arguments for a position one has already decided to adopt; the latter shows how to detect weaknesses in the arguments of others.
3. Although neither work amounts to a systematic on formal logic, Aristotle can justly say, at the end of the Sophistical Refutations, that he has invented the of logic—nothing at all existed when he started.

During Aristotle’s residence at the Academy, King of Macedonia (reigned 359–336 bce ) waged war on a number of Greek s. The Athenians defended their independence only half-heartedly, and, after a series of humiliating, they allowed Philip to become, by 338, master of the Greek world.

It cannot have been an easy time to be a Macedonian resident in Athens. Within the Academy, however, relations seem to have remained cordial. Aristotle always acknowledged a great debt to Plato; he took a large part of his philosophical agenda from Plato, and his teaching is more often a modification than a repudiation of Plato’s doctrines.

Already, however, Aristotle was beginning to distance himself from Plato’s theory of Forms, or Ideas ( eidos ; see ). (The word Form, when used to refer to Forms as Plato them, is often capitalized in the scholarly literature; when used to refer to forms as Aristotle conceived them, it is conventionally lowercased.) Plato had held that, in addition to particular things, there exists a suprasensible realm of Forms, which are immutable and everlasting.

This realm, he maintained, makes particular things intelligible by accounting for their common natures: a thing is a horse, for example, by of the fact that it shares in, or imitates, the Form of “Horse.” In a lost work, On Ideas, Aristotle maintains that the arguments of Plato’s central dialogues establish only that there are, in addition to particulars, certain common objects of the sciences.

In his surviving works as well, Aristotle often takes issue with the theory of Forms, sometimes politely and sometimes contemptuously. In his he argues that the theory fails to solve the problems it was meant to address. It does not intelligibility on particulars, because immutable and everlasting Forms cannot explain how particulars come into existence and undergo change.

All the theory does, according to Aristotle, is introduce new entities equal in number to the entities to be explained—as if one could solve a problem by doubling it. ( See below,) When Plato died about 348, his nephew became head of the Academy, and Aristotle left Athens. He migrated to, a city on the northwestern coast of Anatolia (in present-day Turkey), where, a graduate of the Academy, was ruler.

Aristotle became a close friend of Hermias and eventually married his ward Pythias. Aristotle helped Hermias to negotiate an alliance with Macedonia, which angered the Persian king, who had Hermias treacherously arrested and put to death about 341. Aristotle saluted Hermias’s in ” Ode to Virtue,” his only surviving poem.

1. While in Assus and during the subsequent few years when he lived in the city of Mytilene on the island of, Aristotle carried out extensive scientific research, particularly in zoology and,
2. This work was summarized in a book later known, misleadingly, as, to which Aristotle added two short, On the Parts of Animals and On the Generation of Animals,

Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the of zoology, his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite without precedent. He—or one of his research assistants—must have been gifted with remarkably eyesight, since some of the features of insects that he accurately reports were not again observed until the invention of the microscope in the 17th century.

The scope of Aristotle’s scientific research is astonishing. Much of it is concerned with the classification of animals into genus and species; more than 500 species figure in his treatises, many of them described in detail. The items of information about the anatomy, diet, habitat, modes of copulation, and reproductive systems of mammals, reptiles, fish, and insects are a melange of minute investigation and vestiges of superstition.

In some cases his unlikely stories about rare species of fish were proved accurate many centuries later. In other places he states clearly and fairly a biological problem that took millennia to solve, such as the nature of embryonic development. Despite an admixture of the fabulous, Aristotle’s biological works must be regarded as a stupendous achievement.

His inquiries were conducted in a genuinely scientific spirit, and he was always ready to confess where evidence was insufficient. Whenever there is a conflict between theory and observation, one must trust observation, he insisted, and theories are to be trusted only if their results conform with the observed phenomena.

In 343 or 342 Aristotle was summoned by Philip II to the Macedonian capital at Pella to act as tutor to Philip’s 13-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great. Little is known of the content of Aristotle’s instruction; although the Rhetoric to Alexander was included in the Aristotelian corpus for centuries, it is now commonly regarded as a forgery.
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What is Aristotle’s most famous theory?

1: Nicomachean Ethics. Based on notes from his lectures in the Lyceum, Aristotle posits happiness (eudaimonia) or ‘living well’ as the primary goal in human life. Named for his son, Nicomachus, the Ethics considers how man should best live and those virtues which produce happiness.
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What did Aristotle discover?

Aristotle is known for inventing the scientific method of analysis, which can be applied to multiple fields of study. He also is responsible for breaking fields of knowledge into categories and subcategories, such as psychology, biology, politics, logic, chemistry, and botany.
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What was Plato’s school called?

Academy, Greek Academeia, Latin Academia, in ancient Greece, the academy, or college, of philosophy in the northwestern outskirts of Athens where Plato acquired property about 387 bce and used to teach. At the site there had been an olive grove, a park, and a gymnasium sacred to the legendary Attic hero Academus (or Hecademus).

• The designation Academy, as a school of philosophy, is usually applied not to Plato’s immediate circle but to his successors down to the Roman Cicero ‘s time (106–43 bce ).
• Legally, the school was a corporate body organized for worship of the Muses,
• The scholarch (headmaster) was elected for life by a majority vote of the members.

Most scholars infer, mainly from Plato’s writings, that instruction originally included mathematics, dialectics, natural science, and preparation for statesmanship. The Academy continued until 529 ce, when the emperor Justinian closed it, together with the other pagan schools. More From Britannica Plato and Aristotle: How Do They Differ? The Academy philosophically underwent various phases, arbitrarily classified as follows: (1) the Old Academy, under Plato and his immediate successors as scholarchs, when the philosophic thought there was moral, speculative, and dogmatic, (2) the Middle Academy, begun by Arcesilaus (316/315– c.241 bce ), who introduced a nondogmatic skepticism, and (3) the New Academy, founded by Carneades (2nd century bce ), which ended with the scholarch Antiochus of Ascalon (died 68 bce ), who effected a return to the dogmatism of the Old Academy.
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Which Greek philosopher started a school called the Academy?

Plato’s enormous impact on later philosophy, education, and culture can be traced to three interrelated aspects of his philosophical life: his written philosophical dialogues, the teaching and writings of his student Aristotle, and the educational organization he began, “the Academy.” Plato’s Academy took its name from the place where its members congregated, the Akadēmeia, an area outside of the Athens city walls that originally held a sacred grove and later contained a religious precinct and a public gymnasium.

1. In the fifth century B.C.E., the grounds of the Academy, like those of the Lyceum and the Cynosarges, the two other large gymnasia outside the Athens city walls, became a place for intellectual discussion as well as for exercise and religious activities.
2. This addition to the gymnasia’s purpose was due to the changing currents in Athenian education, politics, and culture, as philosophers and sophists came from other cities to partake in the ferment and energy of Athens.

Gymnasia became public places where philosophers could congregate for discussion and where sophists could offer samples of their wisdom to entice students to sign up for private instruction. This fifth-century use of gymnasia by sophists and philosophers was a precursor to the “school movement” of the fourth century B.C.E., represented by Antisthenes teaching in the Cynosarges, Isocrates near the Lyceum, Plato in the Academy, Aristotle in the Lyceum, Zeno in the Stoa Poikile, and Epicurus in his private garden.

Although these organizations contributed to the development of medieval, Renaissance, and contemporary schools, colleges, and universities, it is important to remember their closer kinship to the educational activities of the sophists, Socrates, and others. Plato began leading and participating in discussions at the Academy’s grounds in the early decades of the fourth century B.C.E.

Intellectuals with a variety of interests came to meet with Plato—who gave at least one public lecture—as well as conduct their own research and participate in dicussions on the public grounds of the Academy and in the garden of the property Plato owned nearby.

1. By the mid-370s B.C.E., the Academy was able to attract Xenocrates from Chalcedon (Dillon 2003: 89), and in 367 Aristotle arrived at the Platonic Academy from relatively far-off Stagira.
2. While the Academy in Plato’s time was unified around Plato’s personality and a specific geographical location, it was different from other schools in that Plato encouraged doctrinal diversity and multiple perspectives within it.

A scholarch, or ruler of the school, headed the Academy for several generations after Plato’s death in 347 B.C.E. and often powerfully influenced its character and direction. Though the Roman general Sulla’s destruction of the Academy’s grove and gymnasium in 86 B.C.E.

• Marks the end of the particular institution begun by Plato, philosophers who identified as Platonists and Academics persisted in Athens until at least the sixth century C.E.
• This event also represents a transition point for the Academy from an educational institution tied to a particular place to an Academic school of thought stretching from Plato to fifth-century C.E.

neo-Platonists.
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Why was Plato school called?

Plato’s Academy, or simply, ‘The Academy,’ was a famous school in ancient Athens founded by Plato in 387 BC, located on the northwestern outskirts of Athens, outside the city walls. The site acquired its name from the legendary hero Academos.
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What are the five schools of philosophy?

Ancient Greek philosophy extends from as far as the seventh century B.C. up until the beginning of the Roman Empire, in the first century A.D. During this period five great philosophical traditions originated: the Platonist, the Aristotelian, the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Skeptic.
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When did Aristotle make school?

Life – In general, the details of Aristotle’s life are not well-established. The biographies written in ancient times are often speculative and historians only agree on a few salient points. Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Stagira, Chalcidice, about 55 km (34 miles) east of modern-day Thessaloniki, At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Plato’s Academy, He probably experienced the Eleusinian Mysteries as he wrote when describing the sights one viewed at the Eleusinian Mysteries, “to experience is to learn”,

• Aristotle remained in Athens for nearly twenty years before leaving in 348/47 BC.
• The traditional story about his departure records that he was disappointed with the Academy’s direction after control passed to Plato’s nephew Speusippus, although it is possible that he feared the anti-Macedonian sentiments in Athens at that time and left before Plato died.

Aristotle then accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor, After the death of Hermias, Aristotle travelled with his pupil Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island and its sheltered lagoon.

While in Lesbos, Aristotle married Pythias, either Hermias’s adoptive daughter or niece. She bore him a daughter, whom they also named Pythias. In 343 BC, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander, Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon,

During Aristotle’s time in the Macedonian court, he gave lessons not only to Alexander but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander, Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and Aristotle’s own attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric,

In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be “a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants”. By 335 BC, Aristotle had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as the Lyceum,

Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus, If the Suda – an uncritical compilation from the Middle Ages – is accurate, he may also have had an erômenos, Palaephatus of Abydus, This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BC, is when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works. He wrote many dialogues, of which only fragments have survived. Those works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for widespread publication; they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students.

His most important treatises include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul and Poetics, Aristotle studied and made significant contributions to “logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance, and theatre.” Near the end of his life, Alexander and Aristotle became estranged over Alexander’s relationship with Persia and Persians.

A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander’s death, but the only evidence of this is an unlikely claim made some six years after the death. Following Alexander’s death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens was rekindled.

In 322 BC, Demophilus and Eurymedon the Hierophant reportedly denounced Aristotle for impiety, prompting him to flee to his mother’s family estate in Chalcis, on Euboea, at which occasion he was said to have stated: “I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy” – a reference to Athens’s trial and execution of Socrates,

He died in Chalcis, Euboea of natural causes later that same year, having named his student Antipater as his chief executor and leaving a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.
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Did Socrates create a school?

432 B.C. Socrates and the Academy. Socrates created a school with one of his students known as Plato. This institution is called the Academy where they taught anyone who wanted to expand their mind. He used this school to test out his Socratic method of thinking.
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What are some facts about Aristotle’s school?

Biography of Aristotle – Biography >> Ancient Greece

Occupation: Philosopher and Scientist Born: 384 BC in Stagira, Greece Died: 322 BC in Euboea, Greece Best known for: Student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great

Aristotle by Jastrow Biography: Where did Aristotle grow up? Aristotle was born in northern Greece in the city of Stagira around the year 384 BC. He grew up as part of the aristocracy as his father, Nicomachus, was the doctor to King Amyntas of Macedonia.

1. It was at the king’s court that he met his son, Philip, who would later become king.
2. Growing up the son of a doctor, Aristotle became interested in nature and anatomy.
3. He grew up putting a premium on education and the arts.
4. Did Aristotle go to school? As a youth, Aristotle likely had tutors who taught him about all sorts of subjects.

He learned to read and write Greek. He also learned about the Greek gods, philosophy, and mathematics. When Aristotle turned seventeen he traveled to Athens to join Plato’s Academy. There he learned about philosophy and logical thinking from Plato. He stayed at the Academy for nearly 20 years, at first as a student and later as a teacher.

What was the Academy like? Plato’s Academy was not a school or college like we have today. They didn’t have classes on specific subjects taught by teachers. What they did was challenge each other with questions and debate. One method of doing this was to have dialogues where one person would ask a question and the other person would attempt to answer it.

They would then continue to discuss the question in a debate format, asking new questions as they came up in the debate. Plato (left) and Aristotle (right) from The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio Aristotle’s Travels After leaving the Academy in 347 BC, Aristotle traveled throughout Greece and Turkey, He got married and wrote several works including The Natural History of Animals, the Reproduction of Animals, and The Parts of Animals,

1. New Ideas Aristotle had new ideas on how the world should be studied.
2. He liked to make detailed observations of the world, taking notes and records of what he saw.
3. He went so far as to dissect animals to learn more about their anatomy.
4. This was very different from the other Greek philosophers and educators of the day.

They did all their work in their mind, thinking about the world, but not observing it. In this way Aristotle laid the foundation of science today. Aristotle spent a lot of time learning about biology. He was the first to try and classify different types of animals into different groups.

• He made drawings of different animal parts and tried to determine the function of different organs.
• Aristotle made many discoveries and interesting observations.
• Tutoring Alexander the Great In 343 BC, Philip II of Macedonia asked Aristotle to tutor his son Alexander.
• Aristotle spent the next several years teaching Alexander a wide range of subjects including philosophy, logic, and mathematics.

Alexander went on to conquer much of the civilized world and became known as Alexander the Great. Aristotle’s School After tutoring Alexander, Aristotle returned to Athens and opened his own school. It was called the Peripatetic School. He taught his students subjects such as logic, physics, public speaking, politics, and philosophy.

Syllogism – Syllogism is a type of reasoning. Assuming you had three categories of things: A, B, and C. If all of the As are Bs and all of the Bs are Cs, then all of the As are Cs. Five elements – At the time of Aristotle, people believed that everything was made of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. Aristotle proposed that there was a fifth element called aether. He thought that aether is what heavenly bodies such as the stars and planets are made of. Four causes – Aristotle felt that everything that happened could be explained by one of four causes: material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and final cause. Astronomy – Aristotle rightly determined that the Earth was round. However, he also thought that the Earth was stationary and the center of the universe. The “mean” – He believed that the best way for people to behave was to avoid any extremes. Today we call this “doing everything in moderation”.

Interesting Facts about Aristotle

The name Aristotle means “the best purpose”. King Philip II of Macedon rebuilt Aristotle’s hometown of Stagira and freed the inhabitants from slavery as a reward for his tutoring Alexander. It is thought that Aristotle left Plato’s Academy after Plato died and his son Speusippus took over. Not all of Aristotle’s observations were accurate. He thought the heart was the center of intelligence (not the brain). He also thought that goats could be male or female depending on which way the wind was blowing. Plato referred to Aristotle as “the Mind”.

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Did Aristotle know Socrates?

Socrates | Biography, Philosophy, Method, Death, & Facts Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher, one of the three greatest figures of the ancient period of (the others were and ), who lived in Athens in the 5th century BCE. A legendary figure even in his own time, he was admired by his followers for his integrity, his self-mastery, his profound philosophical insight, and his great argumentative skill.

1. He was the first Greek philosopher to seriously explore questions of,
2. His influence on the subsequent course of ancient philosophy was so great that the cosmologically oriented philosophers who generally preceded him are conventionally referred to as the “.” Read more below: Socrates professed not to teach anything (and indeed not to know anything important) but only to seek answers to urgent human questions (e.g., “What is virtue?” and “What is justice?”) and to help others do the same.

His style of philosophizing was to engage in public conversations about some human excellence and, through skillful questioning, to show that his interlocutors did not know what they were talking about. Despite the negative results of these encounters, Socrates did hold some broad positive views, including that virtue is a form of knowledge and that “care of the soul” (the cultivation of virtue) is the most important human obligation.

1. Socrates wrote nothing.
2. All that is known about him has been inferred from accounts by members of his circle—primarily and —as well as by Plato’s student, who acquired his knowledge of Socrates through his teacher.
3. The most vivid portraits of Socrates exist in Plato’s dialogues, in most of which the principal speaker is “Socrates.” However, the views expressed by the character are not consistent across the dialogues, and in some dialogues the character expresses views that are clearly Plato’s own.

Scholars continue to disagree about which of the dialogues convey the views of the historical Socrates and which use the character simply as a mouthpiece for Plato’s philosophy. Read more below: Socrates was widely hated in Athens, mainly because he regularly embarrassed people by making them appear ignorant and foolish.

He was also an outspoken critic of, which Athenians cherished, and he was associated with some members of the, who briefly overthrew Athens’s democratic government in 404–403 BCE. He was arguably guilty of the crimes with which he was charged, impiety and corrupting the youth, because he did reject the city’s gods and he did inspire disrespect for authority among his youthful followers (though that was not his intention).

He was accordingly convicted and sentenced to death by poison. Read more below: Read more below: Socrates could have saved himself. He chose to go to trial rather than enter voluntary exile. In his defense speech, he rebutted some but not all elements of the charges and famously declared that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” After being convicted, he could have proposed a reasonable penalty short of death but initially refused.

1. He finally rejected an offer of escape as inconsistent with his commitment never to do wrong (escaping would show disrespect for the laws and harm the reputations of his family and friends).
2. Socrates, (born c.470 bce, —died 399 bce, Athens), ancient Greek philosopher whose way of life, character, and thought exerted a profound influence on,

Socrates was a widely recognized and controversial figure in his native Athens, so much so that he was frequently mocked in the plays of comic dramatists. (The of, produced in 423, is the best-known example.) Although Socrates himself wrote nothing, he is depicted in conversation in by a small circle of his admirers— and first among them.

He is portrayed in these works as a man of great insight,, self-mastery, and argumentative skill. The impact of his life was all the greater because of the way in which it ended: at age 70, he was brought to on a charge of impiety and sentenced to death by poisoning (the poison probably being ) by a jury of his fellow citizens.

Plato’s purports to be the speech Socrates gave at his trial in response to the accusations made against him (Greek apologia means “defense”). Its powerful of the examined life and its condemnation of Athenian have made it one of the central documents of Western thought and,

While Socrates was alive, he was, as noted, the object of comic ridicule, but most of the plays that make reference to him are entirely lost or exist only in fragmentary form— Clouds being the chief exception. Although Socrates is the central figure of this play, it was not Aristophanes’ purpose to give a balanced and accurate portrait of him (comedy never aspires to this) but rather to use him to represent certain trends in contemporary Athens—the study of and nature and, as Aristophanes implies, the amoralism and that accompany these pursuits.

The value of the play as a reliable source of knowledge about Socrates is thrown further into doubt by the fact that, in Plato’s Apology, Socrates himself rejects it as a fabrication. This aspect of the trial will be discussed more fully below. Soon after Socrates’ death, several members of his circle preserved and praised his memory by works that represent him in his most characteristic activity—conversation.

His in these (typically adversarial) exchanges included people he happened to meet, devoted followers, prominent political figures, and leading thinkers of the day. Many of these “Socratic discourses,” as calls them in his Poetics, are no longer extant; there are only brief remnants of the conversations written by,,, and Eucleides.

But those composed by Plato and Xenophon survive in their entirety. What knowledge we have of Socrates must therefore depend primarily on one or the other (or both, when their portraits coincide) of these sources. (Plato and Xenophon also wrote separate accounts, each entitled Apology of Socrates, of Socrates’ trial.) Most scholars, however, do not believe that every Socratic discourse of Xenophon and Plato was intended as a historical report of what the real Socrates said, word-for-word, on some occasion.

• What can reasonably be claimed about at least some of these is that they convey the gist of the questions Socrates asked, the ways in which he typically responded to the answers he received, and the general philosophical orientation that emerged from these conversations.
• Among the compositions of, the one that gives the fullest portrait of Socrates is,

The first two chapters of Book I of this work are especially important, because they explicitly undertake a refutation of the charges made against Socrates at his trial; they are therefore a valuable supplement to Xenophon’s Apology, which is devoted entirely to the same purpose.

1. The portrait of Socrates that Xenophon gives in Books III and IV of Memorabilia seems, in certain passages, to be heavily influenced by his reading of some of Plato’s dialogues, and so the evidentiary of at least this portion of the work is diminished.
2. Xenophon’s is a depiction of Socrates in conversation with his friends at a drinking party (it is perhaps inspired by a work of Plato of the same name and character) and is regarded by some scholars as a valuable re-creation of Socrates’ thought and way of life.

Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (literally: “estate manager”), a Socratic conversation concerning household organization and the skills needed by the independent farmer, is Xenophon’s attempt to bring the qualities he admired in Socrates to bear upon the subject of overseeing one’s property.
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What are 4 things Aristotle believed in?

Elements and spheres – Aristotle divided his universe into “terrestrial spheres” which were “corruptible” and where humans lived, and moving but otherwise unchanging celestial spheres, Aristotle believed that four classical elements make up everything in the terrestrial spheres: earth, air, fire and water,

1. He also held that the heavens are made of a special weightless and incorruptible (i.e.
2. Unchangeable) fifth element called ” aether “.
3. Aether also has the name “quintessence”, meaning, literally, “fifth being”.
4. Aristotle considered heavy matter such as iron and other metals to consist primarily of the element earth, with a smaller amount of the other three terrestrial elements.

Other, lighter objects, he believed, have less earth, relative to the other three elements in their composition. The four classical elements were not invented by Aristotle; they were originated by Empedocles, During the Scientific Revolution, the ancient theory of classical elements was found to be incorrect, and was replaced by the empirically tested concept of chemical elements,
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What is the first philosophy Aristotle?

Aristotle talks about ‘the first philosophy’ throughout Metaphysics — and it is metaphysics that Aristotle considers to be the first philosophy — but he never makes it entirely clear what first philosophy consists of.
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What is Aristotle’s philosophy called?

2. The Aristotelian Corpus: Character and Primary Divisions – Aristotle’s writings tend to present formidable difficulties to his novice readers. To begin, he makes heavy use of unexplained technical terminology, and his sentence structure can at times prove frustrating.

Further, on occasion a chapter or even a full treatise coming down to us under his name appears haphazardly organized, if organized at all; indeed, in several cases, scholars dispute whether a continuous treatise currently arranged under a single title was ever intended by Aristotle to be published in its present form or was rather stitched together by some later editor employing whatever principles of organization he deemed suitable.

This helps explain why students who turn to Aristotle after first being introduced to the supple and mellifluous prose on display in Plato’s dialogues often find the experience frustrating. Aristotle’s prose requires some acclimatization. All the more puzzling, then, is Cicero’s observation that if Plato’s prose was silver, Aristotle’s was a flowing river of gold ( Ac.

• Pr.38.119, cf.
• Top,1.3, De or.1.2.49).
• Cicero was arguably the greatest prose stylist of Latin and was also without question an accomplished and fair-minded critic of the prose styles of others writing in both Latin and Greek.
• We must assume, then, that Cicero had before him works of Aristotle other than those we possess.

In fact, we know that Aristotle wrote dialogues, presumably while still in the Academy, and in their few surviving remnants we are afforded a glimpse of the style Cicero describes. In most of what we possess, unfortunately, we find work of a much less polished character.

Rather, Aristotle’s extant works read like what they very probably are: lecture notes, drafts first written and then reworked, ongoing records of continuing investigations, and, generally speaking, in-house compilations intended not for a general audience but for an inner circle of auditors. These are to be contrasted with the “exoteric” writings Aristotle sometimes mentions, his more graceful compositions intended for a wider audience ( Pol.1278b30; EE 1217b22, 1218b34).

Unfortunately, then, we are left for the most part, though certainly not entirely, with unfinished works in progress rather than with finished and polished productions. Still, many of those who persist with Aristotle come to appreciate the unembellished directness of his style.

1. More importantly, the unvarnished condition of Aristotle’s surviving treatises does not hamper our ability to come to grips with their philosophical content.
2. His thirty-one surviving works (that is, those contained in the “Corpus Aristotelicum” of our medieval manuscripts that are judged to be authentic) all contain recognizably Aristotelian doctrine; and most of these contain theses whose basic purport is clear, even where matters of detail and nuance are subject to exegetical controversy.

These works may be categorized in terms of the intuitive organizational principles preferred by Aristotle. He refers to the branches of learning as “sciences” ( epistêmai ), best regarded as organized bodies of learning completed for presentation rather than as ongoing records of empirical researches.

Moreover, again in his terminology, natural sciences such as physics are but one branch of theoretical science, which comprises both empirical and non-empirical pursuits. He distinguishes theoretical science from more practically oriented studies, some of which concern human conduct and others of which focus on the productive crafts.

Thus, the Aristotelian sciences divide into three: (i) theoretical, (ii) practical, and (iii) productive. The principles of division are straightforward: theoretical science seeks knowledge for its own sake; practical science concerns conduct and goodness in action, both individual and societal; and productive science aims at the creation of beautiful or useful objects ( Top,145a15–16; Phys,192b8–12; DC 298a27–32, DA 403a27–b2; Met.1025b25, 1026a18–19, 1064a16–19, b1–3; EN 1139a26–28, 1141b29–32).

• I) The theoretical sciences include prominently what Aristotle calls first philosophy, or metaphysics as we now call it, but also mathematics, and physics, or natural philosophy.
• Physics studies the natural universe as a whole, and tends in Aristotle’s hands to concentrate on conceptual puzzles pertaining to nature rather than on empirical research; but it reaches further, so that it includes also a theory of causal explanation and finally even a proof of an unmoved mover thought to be the first and final cause of all motion.

Many of the puzzles of primary concern to Aristotle have proven perennially attractive to philosophers, mathematicians, and theoretically inclined natural scientists. They include, as a small sample, Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, puzzles about time, the nature of place, and difficulties encountered in thought about the infinite.

Natural philosophy also incorporates the special sciences, including biology, botany, and astronomical theory. Most contemporary critics think that Aristotle treats psychology as a sub-branch of natural philosophy, because he regards the soul ( psuchê ) as the basic principle of life, including all animal and plant life.

In fact, however, the evidence for this conclusion is inconclusive at best. It is instructive to note that earlier periods of Aristotelian scholarship thought this controversial, so that, for instance, even something as innocuous-sounding as the question of the proper home of psychology in Aristotle’s division of the sciences ignited a multi-decade debate in the Renaissance.

• Ii) Practical sciences are less contentious, at least as regards their range.
• These deal with conduct and action, both individual and societal.
• Practical science thus contrasts with theoretical science, which seeks knowledge for its own sake, and, less obviously, with the productive sciences, which deal with the creation of products external to sciences themselves.

Both politics and ethics fall under this branch. (iii) Finally, then, the productive sciences are mainly crafts aimed at the production of artefacts, or of human productions more broadly construed. The productive sciences include, among others, ship-building, agriculture, and medicine, but also the arts of music, theatre, and dance.

1. Another form of productive science is rhetoric, which treats the principles of speech-making appropriate to various forensic and persuasive settings, including centrally political assemblies.
2. Significantly, Aristotle’s tri-fold division of the sciences makes no mention of logic.
3. Although he did not use the word ‘logic’ in our sense of the term, Aristotle in fact developed the first formalized system of logic and valid inference.

In Aristotle’s framework—although he is nowhere explicit about this—logic belongs to no one science, but rather formulates the principles of correct argumentation suitable to all areas of inquiry in common. It systematizes the principles licensing acceptable inference, and helps to highlight at an abstract level seductive patterns of incorrect inference to be avoided by anyone with a primary interest in truth.

1. So, alongside his more technical work in logic and logical theory, Aristotle investigates informal styles of argumentation and seeks to expose common patterns of fallacious reasoning.
2. Aristotle’s investigations into logic and the forms of argumentation make up part of the group of works coming down to us from the Middle Ages under the heading the Organon ( organon = tool in Greek).

Although not so characterized in these terms by Aristotle, the name is apt, so long as it is borne in mind that intellectual inquiry requires a broad range of tools. Thus, in addition to logic and argumentation (treated primarily in the Prior Analytics and Topics ), the works included in the Organon deal with category theory, the doctrine of propositions and terms, the structure of scientific theory, and to some extent the basic principles of epistemology.

• Organon
  • Categories ( Cat,)
  • De Interpretatione ( DI )
  • Prior Analytics ( APr )
  • Posterior Analytics ( APo )
  • Topics ( Top,)
  • Sophistical Refutations ( SE )
• Theoretical Sciences
  • Physics ( Phys,)
  • Generation and Corruption ( Gen. et Corr,)
  • De Caelo ( DC )
  • Metaphysics ( Met,)
  • De Anima ( DA )
  • Parva Naturalia ( PN )
  • History of Animals ( HA )
  • Parts of Animals ( PA )
  • Movement of Animals ( MA )
  • Meteorology ( Meteor,)
  • Progression of Animals ( IA )
  • Generation of Animals ( GA )
• Practical Sciences
  • Nicomachean Ethics ( EN )
  • Eudemian Ethics ( EE )
  • Magna Moralia ( MM )
  • Politics ( Pol,)
• Productive Science
  • Rhetoric ( Rhet,)
  • Poetics ( Poet,)

The titles in this list are those in most common use today in English-language scholarship, followed by standard abbreviations in parentheses. For no discernible reason, Latin titles are customarily employed in some cases, English in others. Where Latin titles are in general use, English equivalents are given in square brackets.
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What are the three main ideas of Aristotle?

Aristotle proposed there were three principles used in making an argument: ethos, pathos, and logos. His proposal was based on three types of appeal: an ethical appeal or ethos, an emotional appeal, or pathos, and a logical appeal or logos. For Aristotle, a good argument would contain all three.
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What was Aristotle’s approach?

3.2 Differences from and Affinities to Plato – Read in this way, Aristotle is engaged in a project similar in some respects to the one Plato carried out in the Republic, One of Plato’s central points is that it is a great advantage to establish a hierarchical ordering of the elements in one’s soul; and he shows how the traditional virtues can be interpreted to foster or express the proper relation between reason and less rational elements of the psyche.

Aristotle’s approach is similar: his “function argument” shows in a general way that our good lies in the dominance of reason, and the detailed studies of the particular virtues reveal how each of them involves the right kind of ordering of the soul. Aristotle’s goal is to arrive at conclusions like Plato’s, but without relying on the Platonic metaphysics that plays a central role in the argument of the Republic,

He rejects the existence of Plato’s forms in general and the form of the good in particular; and he rejects the idea that in order to become fully virtuous one must study mathematics and the sciences, and see all branches of knowledge as a unified whole.

1. Even though Aristotle’s ethical theory sometimes relies on philosophical distinctions that are more fully developed in his other works, he never proposes that students of ethics need to engage in a specialized study of the natural world, or mathematics, or eternal and changing objects.
2. His project is to make ethics an autonomous field, and to show why a full understanding of what is good does not require expertise in any other field.

There is another contrast with Plato that should be emphasized: In Book II of the Republic, we are told that the best type of good is one that is desirable both in itself and for the sake of its results (357d–358a). Plato argues that justice should be placed in this category, but since it is generally agreed that it is desirable for its consequences, he devotes most of his time to establishing his more controversial point—that justice is to be sought for its own sake.

1. By contrast, Aristotle assumes that if A is desirable for the sake of B, then B is better than A (1094a14–16); therefore, the highest kind of good must be one that is not desirable for the sake of anything else.
2. To show that A deserves to be our ultimate end, one must show that all other goods are best thought of as instruments that promote A in some way or other.

Accordingly, it would not serve Aristotle’s purpose to consider virtuous activity in isolation from all other goods. He needs to discuss honor, wealth, pleasure, and friendship in order to show how these goods, properly understood, can be seen as resources that serve the higher goal of virtuous activity.

He vindicates the centrality of virtue in a well-lived life by showing that in the normal course of things a virtuous person will not live a life devoid of friends, honor, wealth, pleasure, and the like. Virtuous activity makes a life happy not by guaranteeing happiness in all circumstances, but by serving as the goal for the sake of which lesser goods are to be pursued.

Aristotle’s methodology in ethics therefore pays more attention than does Plato’s to the connections that normally obtain between virtue and other goods. That is why he stresses that in this sort of study one must be satisfied with conclusions that hold only for the most part (1094b11–22).
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What was Aristotle’s main focus?

Philosophy – Aristotle’s work on philosophy influenced ideas from late antiquity all the way through the Renaissance. One of the main focuses of Aristotle’s philosophy was his systematic concept of logic. Aristotle’s objective was to come up with a universal process of reasoning that would allow man to learn every conceivable thing about reality.
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What are 4 things Aristotle believed in?

Elements and spheres – Aristotle divided his universe into “terrestrial spheres” which were “corruptible” and where humans lived, and moving but otherwise unchanging celestial spheres, Aristotle believed that four classical elements make up everything in the terrestrial spheres: earth, air, fire and water,

• He also held that the heavens are made of a special weightless and incorruptible (i.e.
• Unchangeable) fifth element called ” aether “.
• Aether also has the name “quintessence”, meaning, literally, “fifth being”.
• Aristotle considered heavy matter such as iron and other metals to consist primarily of the element earth, with a smaller amount of the other three terrestrial elements.

Other, lighter objects, he believed, have less earth, relative to the other three elements in their composition. The four classical elements were not invented by Aristotle; they were originated by Empedocles, During the Scientific Revolution, the ancient theory of classical elements was found to be incorrect, and was replaced by the empirically tested concept of chemical elements,
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