Aristotle was born in the small Greek town of Stagirus
(now Stagira).His father,Nicomachus, spent
some time serving as personal physician to Amyntas
II, king of Macedonia, at the kingdom’s capital
of Pella.Aristotle’s mother and father died when he
was a boy, and he was reared by other family members
in the town of Atarneus in Asia Minor. In his
late teens, Aristotle moved to Athens and enrolled
in PLATO’s famed Academy to study philosophy,
mathematics, and the sciences. There he remained
until Plato’s death 20 years later. Aristotle and
some fellow scholars soon relocated to settle in
Atarneus, which was ruled by another Academy
alumnus, Hermias, whose niece, Pythias, Aristotle
married.
Around 343 B.C., Aristotle was invited by Philip
of Macedonia, son of Amyntas II, to come to Pella
and tutor his 13-year-old son, the future Alexander
the Great. The tutorship lasted only three years, for
the young man was obliged to take a more active
role in Macedonian affairs; he would become one
of the most brilliant military leaders of all time. In
335 B.C., Aristotle returned to Athens to establish
his own institution of higher learning, the Lyceum,
where he taught and wrote.His surviving works, or
treatises, were probably lecture notes or textbooks
for his classes. Upon Alexander’s death in 323 B.C.,
anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens became violent,
and Aristotle, with his ties to the erstwhile
royal family, was forced to flee for his own safety.
He and his family sought refuge at Chalcis, where
he died shortly thereafter.
Aristotle mastered every field of learning
known to the Greeks, as demonstrated by the
breadth of his treatises, which cover subjects ranging
from biology to public speaking to literary criticism.
Indeed, he assumed the task of identifying
the distinguishing characteristics of each of the
scholarly disciplines. Because humans are the only
animals that possess the faculty of reason,Aristotle
believed that to behave as a human being is to behave
rationally. Furthermore, he defined three
areas that comprise all possible human knowledge
and activity in which the power of reason is expressed:
theoretical, productive, and practical.
Theoretical is the purest form of rational knowledge,
since it seeks truth only for its own sake. The
person who pursues theoretical knowledge has no
ulterior motive beyond understanding and insight.
Examples of the theoretical branches of learning
are natural sciences such as physics (bodies at rest
and in motion), abstract mathematics, and metaphysics
(the nature of being and reality).
The productive sciences, such as the arts, use
reason for a specific purpose: to generate an end
product. Practical sciences employ rational abilities to organize life within society, such as in the
practices of ethics and politics. Living an honorable
and productive life is the goal of the practical
sciences.
Aristotle’s Physics is a logical and methodical inquiry
into such questions as how things come into
being and how they are changed, and the difference
between the fundamental nature of a thing
and its incidental characteristics.
Metaphysics begins by stating that all people, by
their very nature, desire knowledge.After all,Aristotle
argues, that is why we value our senses so highly
and our eyesight the most; they help us gather the
information we desire. The knowledge Aristotle
seeks in this treatise is the very nature of being, the
basic and eternal principles of reality itself. Because
God is depicted as the quintessential eternal and unchanging
being and the primary cause of all that is,
Metaphysics is also a theological tract.
In Nicomachean Ethics (named for Aristotle’s
son, who edited it after the philosopher’s death), he
states that “Every art of applied science and every
systematic investigation, and similarly every action
and choice, seem to aim at some good; the good,
therefore, has been well defined as that at which
all things aim.” Happiness is the “good” toward
which human activity aims, and people cannot be
happy unless they live and act in a virtuous manner.
Moral behavior is learned and becomes habitual
as it is practiced, according to Aristotle.
However, actions are considered virtuous only if
they are intentional and take place within the context
of human society. Ultimately, Aristotle conceded
that ethics was an imprecise science.
In the category of the practical sciences, Aristotle
wrote on such topics as ethics, politics, and
rhetoric. In Rhetoric he offers, after careful observation
of human behavior, a practical psychology
for teaching the art of persuasive public speaking.
The first book outlines the nature of rhetoric and
the second its means and ends and the ways rhetoric
can influence decisions, while the third book
analyzes techniques of successful rhetorical style.
The practical analysis of thought and conduct contained
in these three books influenced Latin
rhetoricians like CICERO and QUINTILIAN and thereafter
swayed thinkers in the MIDDLE AGES, Renaissance,
and beyond.
Politics contains a discussion of the role of the
individual in the government of the city-state.
Aristotle describes humans as political and social
beings; some individuals are meant to lead, and
others must be led. He condoned slavery as a natural
state of affairs because he believed that those
who became slaves were not capable of rational
thought; otherwise, they would be rulers instead of
servants. This, of course, is a circular argument; the
fact that a phenomenon can be observed does not,
by necessity, make it appropriate.
Aristotle was one of the great philosophers, but
not all of his ideas have borne the tests of time and
scrutiny. Poetics is the outstanding exception.
Critical Analysis
Poetics is a pioneering work that identifies the criteria
and establishes the standards for excellence
in literature, particularly tragic drama. Aristotle
introduces such enduring concepts as unity of
plot and action; catharsis, or a cleansing of the audience’s
emotions; and HUBRIS, arrogance that
leads to a hero’s downfall, which is itself an example
of hamartia, a tragic flaw or catastrophic misjudgment.
Human beings are possessed of a natural ability
to imitate, Aristotle says, and enjoy both viewing
and producing imitative works of art. The
basic ingredients of tragedy are, in order of importance,
plot, character, thought, diction, song,
and spectacle; and each element plays a part in
artistic imitation.
According to Aristotle, drama is superior to EPIC
poetry because it is enhanced by song and spectacle,
the plot is more unified, and it achieves its
artistic goal in a shorter period of time because the
episodes are short. In an epic poem, the episodes
are longer, even if there is not much to the story.As
an example, he says, HOMER’s epic poem the
Odyssey, which is composed of over 12,000 lines,
can be summed up as follows:
A certain man has been away from home for
many years, kept that way by [sea god] Poseidon,
and he ends up being alone. Meanwhile,
his affairs at home are in such a state that his
wife’s suitors are squandering his property and
are plotting against his son. Tempest-tossed, he
arrives home; he reveals himself to some; he attacks
and destroys his enemies and is saved.
That is the essence of the Odyssey; the rest is
made up of episodes.
Poetics instructs its readers that the best
tragedies feature a protagonist who possesses
virtue and is prosperous. The transformation of
his good fortune to misfortune is caused not by his
wickedness or indulgence in some vile practice, but
by hamartia: “an error from ignorance or bad
judgment or some other such cause.”
The finest plots present events that follow one
another of necessity as a matter of cause and effect.
The fear and pity aroused in the audience should
not be achieved by spectacle, Aristotle says, but
rather by the structure of the events themselves, as
was practiced by the better tragedians such as
SOPHOCLES.
Aristotle criticizes the use of artificial dramatic
devices. For instance, scenes of recognition between
long-lost loved ones should occur as a consequence
of events, he says, not through contrivances such
as signs from the heavens, the detection of physical
scars, or the recollection of keepsakes. He particularly
disliked the practice of DEUS EX MACHINA (“god
from the machine”), a device used frequently in the
plays of EURIPIDES.
Only a fragment of Poetics remains for contemporary
readers to enjoy.Nevertheless, scholar Sheldon
P. Zitner rightly calls it “the most influential
work of literary criticism in Western culture.” Says
he, “from the Renaissance on, the Poetics has been
the foundation of both literary theory and ‘practical’
criticism, and it has been translated and retranslated,
interpreted, applied, and cited in
polemics as the final authority.”
English Versions of Works by Aristotle
Aristotle’s Poetics. Translated by Hippocrates G.Apostle,
Elizabeth A. Dobbs, and Morris A. Parslow.
Grinnell, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press, 1990.
Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Martin Ostwald.
New York:Macmillan Publishing Company, 1962.
Works about Aristotle
Bradshaw, David. Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics
and the Division of Christendom. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2004.
Creed, J. L. and A. E.Wardman, translators. The Philosophy
of Aristotle. Commentaries by Renford
Bambrough. New York: Signet Classics, 2003.
Granger, Herbert. Aristotle’s Idea of the Soul. Hingham,
Mass.: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.
Hintikka, Jaakko. Analyses of Aristotle. Hingham,
Mass.: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.
Rubenstein, Richard E. Aristotle’s Children: How
Christians,Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient
Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages. New York:
Harcourt, 2003.