1. Aristotle

2. Aristotle’s

3. ARISTOTLE’S LIFE
• Aristotle was born in
384 BCE at Stagirus, a
now extinct Greek
colony and seaport on
the coast of Thrace. His
father Nichomachus
was court physician to
King Amyntas of
Macedonia, and from
this began Aristotle’s
long association with the
Macedonian Court,
which considerably
influenced his life.

4. ARISTOTLE’S LIFE
• While he was still a boy his father died. At age 17 his
guardian, Proxenus, sent him to Athens, the
intellectual center of the world, to complete his
education. He joined the Academy and studied under
Plato, attending his lectures for a period of twenty
years.

5. ARISTOTLE
• Aristotle: A long walk
to the Golden Mean
• Aristotle is a towering
figure in ancient Greek
philosopher, making
contribution to logic,
metaphysics,
mathematics, biology,
botany, ethics, politics,
agriculture, medicine,
dance and theater.

6. • He was a student of Plato who in turn studied
under Socrates. He was more empiricallyminded than Plato or Socrates and is famous for
rejecting Plato’s theory of forms.

7. • As a prolific writer
and polymath,
Aristotle radically
transformed most, if
not all, areas of
knowledge he
touched. It is no
wonder that Aquinas
referred to him
simply as “The
Philosopher.” In his
lifetime, Aristotle
wrote as many as
200 treatises, of
which only 31
survive.
Saint Thomas
Aquinas
“The Philosopher”

8. • Aristotle was the first to classify areas of human
knowledge into distinct disciplines such as
mathematics, biology, and ethics. Some of these
classifications are still used today.
• As the father of the field of logic, he was the first to
develop a formalized system for reasoning. Aristotle
observed that the validity of any argument can be
determined by its structure rather than its content. A
classic example of a valid argument is his syllogism:
All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore,
Socrates is mortal.

9. • Aristotle did not take over Plato’s
Academy, but he started his own
school, the Lyceum.
• His teaching method, peripatetics,
involved walking about and talking.
• Aristotle became Alexander the
Great’s tutor though his philosophy
focused on the polis and Alexander
embraced the vision of a cosmopolis.

10. • With Alexander’s death, antiMacedonian riots broke out in
Athens, and Aristotle fled lest ―Athens
commit the same crime twice.‖
• We have over 2,000 pages of writings
attributed to Aristotle including his
great book, Politics.

11. Aristotle’s

12. ARISTOTLE’S WRITINGS
• It is reported that Aristotle’s writings were
held by his student Theophrastus, who
had succeeded Aristotle in leadership of
the Peripatetic School.
The works of Aristotle fall
under three headings:
Collections of
Dialogues and
facts and material
other works of a
Systematic works
from scientific
popular character
treatment
• Among his writings of a popular nature the
only one which we possess of any
consequence is the interesting tract On the
Polity of the Athenians.

13. Aristotle’s

14. ARISTOTLE’S LOGIC
“Organon”
Peripatetics
• Aristotle’s writings on the general subject of logic were
grouped by the later Peripatetics under the name
Organon, or instrument. From their perspective, logic
and reasoning was the chief preparatory instrument of
scientific investigation. Aristotle himself, however, uses
the term “logic” as equivalent to verbal reasoning.

15. Aristotle’s

16. ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
• Aristotle’s editors gave the
name “Metaphysics” to his
works on first philosophy,
either because they went
beyond or followed after his
physical investigations.
Aristotle begins by sketching
the history of philosophy. For
Aristotle, philosophy arose
historically after basic
necessities were secured. It
grew out of a feeling of
curiosity and wonder, to
which religious myth gave
only provisional satisfaction.

17. Aristotle’s

18. ARISTOTLE’S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE
• Aristotle sees the universe as a scale lying
between the two extremes: form without
matter is on one end, and matter without
form is on the other end. The passage of
matter into form must be shown in its various
stages in the world of nature. To do this is the
object of Aristotle’s physics, or philosophy of
nature. It is important to keep in mind that the
passage from form to matter
within nature is a movement
towards ends or purposes.
Everything in nature has its
end and function, and nothing
is without its purpose. Everywhere
we find evidences of design and rational plan.

19. Aristotle’s

20. ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS
• Ethics, as viewed by
Aristotle, is an attempt to
find out our chief end or
highest good: an end which
he maintains is really final.
Though many ends of life are
only means to further
ends, our aspirations and
desires must have some final
object or pursuit. Such a chief
end is universally called
happiness. But people mean
such different things by the
expression that he finds it
necessary to discuss the

21. Aristotle’s

22. ARISTOTLE’S ART AND POETICS
• Art is defined by Aristotle as
the realization in external form
of a true idea, and is traced
back to that natural love of
imitation which characterizes
humans, and to the pleasure
which we feel in recognizing
likenesses. Art however is not
limited to mere copying. It
idealizes nature and completes
its deficiencies: it seeks to
grasp the universal type in
the individual phenomenon.

23. Aristotle’s

24. ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
• Aristotle does not regard
politics as a separate
science from ethics, but as
the completion, and almost a
verification of it. The moral
ideal in political
administration is only a
different aspect of that which
also applies to individual
happiness. Humans are by
nature social beings, and
the possession of rational
speech (logos) in itself
leads us to social union.

25. The Six Forms of Regimes
Number of
Rulers
Rule Serving
the Common
Good
One
Kingship or
monarchy
Aristocracy
Polity
Few
Many
Rule Serving
Private
Interest or
Those Who
Rule
Tyranny
Oligarchy
Democracy

26. • Politics is not the highest thing to be
pursued, but it lays the foundation for
the pursuit of the highest including the
theoretical virtues of wisdom, first
principles, and science.
– Political happiness consist of the activities of
all the moral virtues in a full life.
– Theoretical happiness is grounded in the
contemplative life.
– The philosopher must find a protected place
in the polity to pursue this happiness though
some regimes do not permit the division
between the political and the theoretical.

27. For Aristotle….
• Knowledge comes from the senses and can
be true in itself.
• Reality consists of matter and form, and
matter is a continuous process of developing
or becoming.
• There is First Cause, source of all
change, but is unchangeable itself. This, for
him, is God.
• The goal of human life is happiness, to
reach this is moderation or avoidance of
extremes.
• Logic would enable man to perceive that the
ideal state is one governed by a rule of
law, a state ruled by the middle class.

28. Happiness
• Greeks debated: what is good life, or
what is happiness?
• Man on the street’s answer: wealth,
fame, beauty.
• But what is man? What is his function
(goal/telos), I.e. what is natural for him?
• Key premise: man has reason, and his
telos (final end) is to use that reason;
“Every
• Happiness is an activity of the soul (the
action of
reasoning part of our being) in
man is
accordance with virtue (Nicomachean
geared
Ethics).
towards
happiness.” • Even contemplation, the highest life for
man, is an activity (Pol. 7.3).
- Aristotle

29. Virtue
• Everything has a virtue
• Virtue means acting well, in
accordance with one’s nature;
• Slaves, plants, animals, humans all
have virtues, just as they have goods;
• Man’s particular virtue to act from
reason, and unless he is a
philosopher, to act for his community.

30. Aristotle….
• The founder of logical theory, Aristotle
believed that the greatest human
endeavour is the use of reason in
theoretical activity.
• One of his best known ideas was his
conception of "The Golden Mean" —
"avoid extremes," the counsel of
moderation in all things.