(384-322 b.c.) philosopher, scholar, teacher, treatise writer
Aristotle was born in the small Greek town of Sta-girus (now Stagira). His father, Nicomachus, spent some time serving as personal physician to Amyn-tas 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.
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 mis-judgment.
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 ofChristendom. 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. Hing-ham, Mass.: Kluwer AcademicPublishers , 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.
