Biographies of prominent people often represent a terrain of especial interest for researches, as the background and life circumstances of the former can provide valuable reasoning and explanation for the peculiarities of their ideas, values, and train of thought. One of the obvious cases of such informative biography can be observed in the example of Aristotle. Although facts of his life course are scattered throughout the writings of many ancient and modern biographers, it is nevertheless possible to compile them into a coherent narrative that allows singling out the key moments and aspects of the philosopher’s life that determined his personal and ideological development. Based on Aristotle’s biography one develops an understanding of the peculiarities of the philosopher’s teaching and outlook which are characterized by dynamism and ultimate consolidation of metaphysical ideas.
The path Aristotle followed as a philosopher was by large predetermined by his family background and circumstances of early years. He was born in 384 BC at a Greek colony of Stagira,1 into a family of a prosperous and eminent physician Nicomachus. Due to his father’s high social standing and closeness to the King of Macedonia, Aristotle could enjoy the privilege of obtaining a broad education. Under the guidance of his father, he acquired a taste for physical sciences, which to a great extent determined his future interests. Following the Hippocratic tradition of medicine, Nicomachus placed special emphasis on the importance of empirical investigation and reliance on concrete evidence — a method that would dominate in Aristotle’s strategy of cognition onwards (Morrall 42). Having lost both of his parents by the age of seventeen, Aristotle did not stop on his diligent and critical learning of the world and stepped on the track of philosophy.
The concentration of philosophic thought of the time was located in Athens Academy presided over by Plato, and young Aristotle, who knew Plato’s ideas, naturally sought the company and guidance of the renowned sage. For twenty years, from 367 BC till 347 BC, he became a pupil in the city of arts and letters, involving both private preparatory investigations and publishing works on history, law, popular wisdom, and others (Blakesley 20–22). Aristotle’s inborn philosophical structure of thought, inquisitiveness, and love of analysis did not go unnoticed by the president of the Academy, and Plato often referred to his disciple as “the soul of the Academy” and “the philosopher of the truth” (Park 50).
The personal relations between Plato and Aristotle aroused heated debate of their contemporaries and successors. On the one hand, Plato, who limited his life to that of spirit rather than the body, did not approve of Aristotle’s attentiveness to the outward finery of life. Aristotle, on the contrary, preferred to acquaint himself with practical life in a practical way, drawing common sense from common knowledge. He chose actual observation rather than idle theorizing, and the attention he paid to daily life was seen by Plato as that contradicting the essence of philosophy. The frictions between Aristotle and Plato were reflected in their writings: Aristotle not infrequently opposes and even ridicules his mentor’s position, and the latter avoids mentioning his willful disciple at all (Park 54). Nevertheless, outside their philosophic systems, they remained respectful and affectionate friends and mutual well-wishers, admiring each other’s controversial characters.
A real conflict emerged, though, between Aristotle and Isocrates: the young philosopher did not approve of the celebrated rhetorician’s empirical approach and lack of comprehensive analysis in his speeches. As a reply to Isocrates’ ‘fraudulent’ course of rhetoric, Aristotle developed and practiced his lectures where he laid out the philosophic fundamentals of the discipline and suggested a system of practical exercises; subsequently, his teaching experience was reflected in a treatise on rhetoric. Isocrates’ advocates raised a storm of protest publishing volumes of charges against Aristotle, but this only reinforced the latter’s authority and contributed to his subsequent invitation by King Philip of Macedon as a tutor to Alexander the Great (Park 59).
With Plato’s death around 347 BC, Aristotle left the Academy and set out with his fellow Xenocrates for Asia Minor, accepting the invitation of his close friend Hermias, the governor of Atarneus (Park 62). Whether this departure was caused by Aristotle’s general interest in the splendor of the oriental court, or for political reasons of instability in Athens, is still debated (Barnes 4). However, the time Aristotle spent in the east proved to be a delightful retreat, fruitful for his naturalistic activities, particularly on the island of Lesbos where Aristotle fled after Hermias’ death in a riot.
By that time, Alexander the Great had reached twelve years of age and became ungovernable by his teachers, a Spartan Leonidas and a flatterer Lysimachus. Alexander needed a “sagacious disciplinarian who might save the boy from moral ruin” (Park 69). The reasons for appointing Aristotle for the position of the little rebel’s mentor were numerous, including his intimacy with King Philip during their childhood, his distinction in the competition with Isocrates, remarked by Cicero, as well as constant correspondence and the numerous errands Aristotle fulfilled for the court during his stay in Athens. The great philosopher turned out a worthwhile mentor for Alexander, refining and humanizing his pupil, educating him in rhetoric, ethics, and politics, together with introducing him to Greek poetry and music. It is hard to overestimate Aristotle’s contribution to the future triumphs of Alexander, inter alia, his shaping of Alexander’s view on treating the barbarians he conquered. Yet the philosopher himself undoubtedly achieved the position of “a conqueror in the kingdom of science” and was greatly admired by his celebrated pupil who was so generous as to remunerate Aristotle with money enough to purchase an unprecedented collection of writings on the widest range of subjects (Park 73, 80).
As Alexander matured and was involved in a warship, Aristotle moved back to Athens in 335 BC to establish his Lyceum, analogous to Plato’s Academy. There Aristotle held lectures in form of morning and evening walks for more and less advanced groups of pupils, who were taught the skill of debate, independent thought, and practice of disputation. As a reference for students, Aristotle wrote philosophical works which he divided into esoteric, embracing more fundamental parts of knowledge, and exoteric, dealing with simpler elements of politics, rhetoric, and logic (Park 78; Morrall 44). The second stay in Athens was the climax period in the philosopher’s life, as he achieved prosperity and fame among the Greek society, as well as succeeded in systematizing the knowledge he had gathered by that time. With the death of Alexander the Great in 322 BC, Aristotle retires to Chalcis, where he dies of poor health the same year (Blakesley 11).
Aristotle’s insatiable yearn for knowledge has determined the peculiarity of his teaching, which is characterized by the inseparability of philosophy from everyday life. While Warner Jaeger defines the course of Aristotle’s philosophic thought as that moving from Platonism to empiricism, the evidence against such chronological hypothesis suggests that Aristotle had envisaged nature as the ultimate source and criterion of action throughout his whole life (qt. in Barnes 16; Morrall 48). The obvious randomness of Aristotle’s archive does not allow exact estimation of his course of thought; therefore his system appears to the modern reader as an ever-developing dynamic progression.
Works Cited
Barnes, Jonathan. “Life and Work.” The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 1–26. Print.
Blakesley, Joseph W. A Life of Aristotle. Cambridge: J. and J. J. Dayton, 1839. Print.
Morrall, John B. Aristotle. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.
Park, Edwards A. “Life of Aristotle.” Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review. Eds. Edwards A. Park, and Steven H. Taylor. Vol. 1. Andover: Allen, Morrill and Wardwell, 1844. 39–84. Print.
Footnotes
- Therefrom derives Aristotle’s name ‘Stagirus’ (Park 41).