Spencer Eckert
Ethics
November 13, 2009
Aristotle
“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.” (Aristotle), this quote has great meaning to me because this is the true reasoning behind human actions. This quote helps show that Aristotle was one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. It was Aristotle who was the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy and in this philosophy he encompassed morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle accomplished much throughout his life Aristotle was born 384 BC in Stagira in northern Greece, about 34 miles east of modern-day Thessaloniki. Aristotle father, Nicomachus and he was a court physician to the king of Macedon. Aristotle was trained and educated as a aristocracy. When Aristotle was at the young age of 18, he traveled to Athens to study under his future teacher, Plato at Plato’s academy. There is much information about Aristotle while he was working with Plato even though Aristotle stayed and studied with Plato for a full 20 years. But shortly after Plato’s death Aristotle left Athens to conduct philosophical and biological research with Xenocrates and to court of his friend Mermias of Atarneus. While in Asia, Aristotle traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island. Soon after their exhibition Aristotle married Hermias's adoptive daughter, Pythias. Pythias and Aristotle had a daughter, whom they named Pythias. After Hermia’s death Aristotle was then invited by King Philip II of Macedon to tutor his young son, Alexander the Great. Aristotle was appointed by King Philip as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. While he was heading the royal academy he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. In one of Aristotle’s most famous books, Politics, he states that there was only one thing could truly justify a monarchy. That was that if the virtue of the king and his family were greater than the virtue of the rest of the citizens put together. Aristotle of course, included the young prince and his father in that category for purposeful reasons. Through his teaching Aristotle encouraged Alexander to look toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. By 335 BC Aristotle had returned to Athens and he immediately established his own school in Athens, The Lyceum. At his school Aristotle conducted courses for the next twelve years. Unfortunately, while Aristotle was in Athens, his wife Pythias died. Not too long after he had become romantically involved with Herpyllis of Stageira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus. But there are other researchers that state according to the Suda, Aristotle had also an eromenos, Palaephatus of Abydus. It is during was during 335 to 323 BC, in Athens that Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his most famous works. During his life time Aristotle wrote countless dialogues, but unfortunately only fragments of these dialogs have survived to this day. Some of his most famous treatise that Aristotle wrote were not meant for wide spread publication. That is because they were thought of as lecture aids for Aristotle’s students. Aristotle’s most famous treatises include his works such as Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima and Poetics. Throughout Aristotle’s full life he studied nearly every subject that was available to him at the time. He studied most all of the physical sciences, education, and philosophy. It can also be stated that Aristotle was the last person to know everything there was to know at his current time. Near the end of Alexander the Great’s life he started to suspect Aristotle of conspiracy. But upon Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens once again flared. Eurymedon, the hierophant denounced Aristotle for not holding the gods in honor and so Aristotle was forced to flee to his mother’s estate in Chalcis. He stated "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy," this was a direct reference to Athen’s execution of Socrates. Aristotle died in Euboea of natural causes in the year 322 BC and he named chief executor to his school, his student Antipater. And in his will he asked to be buried next to his wife. Aristotle with the Prior Analytics is credited with the earliest study of formal logic, and his formation of the dominant form of Western logic. Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that Aristotle's theory of logic completely accounted for the core of deductive inference.