Aristotle

Aristotle, who was born at Stagira, in Macedonia, and lived from 384-322 BC, is the Greek philosopher and scientist who – along with Plato and Socrates – shares the distinction of being the most famous of all classical philosophers.

At the age of 17, he commenced his studies at Plato's Academy in Athens. It was an environment in which Aristotle flourished and he remained there for about 20 years, initially as a student but later as a teacher.

When Plato died in 347 BC, Aristotle moved to Assos, where his friend Hermias was ruler. In Assos he was a court advisor to Hermias. He married Hermias’ niece and the couple adopted a daughter. After Hermias was captured and executed by the Persians in 345 BC, Aristotle went to the Macedonian capital, Pella, where he became tutor to the king's young son Alexander (the boy who later become known as Alexander the Great). In 335, when Alexander succeeded the throne, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his own school of philosophy, which he named the Lyceum. As a result of the fact that much of the discussion in Aristotle’s college took place while teachers and students paced around its grounds, the school came to be known as a Peripatetic ("walking" or "strolling") school. When Alexander died (in 323 BC), strong anti-Macedonian feeling developed in Athens, and Aristotle left for his family estate in Euboea. He died there the following year.

The principal subjects of Aristotle’s philosophy encompass the following areas: treatises on logic (called Organon or ‘instruments’ because they provide the means through which positive knowledge is attained); works on natural science including the Physics (which provides a significant amount of knowledge on astronomy, meteorology, flora, and fauna); writings on the nature, scope, and properties of being (generally given the title Metaphysics because they follow on from the Physics in their first edition); and a work on ethics (dedicated to his son and entitled the Nicomachean Ethics, after the boy’s name Nicomachus). Other essential works include his Rhetoric, Poetics and the (incomplete) Politics.

Aristotelian Psychology

Aristotelian psychology is, in essence, the study of the soul. He insisted that form (the essence, or unchanging characteristic element of an object) and matter (the common undifferentiated bedrock of things) always exist together. He defined the soul as a "kind of functioning of a body organized so that it can support vital functions" and thus considered the soul as essentially associated with the body rather than as the Pythagorean notion of a spiritual entity imprisoned within it. Aristotle's doctrine is often considered to be a synthesis of earlier ideas that the soul does not exist apart from the body and of the Platonic notion of a soul as a separate, non-physical entity.