Aristotle

Aristotle (Ancient Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotélēs ; Stagira, 384 BC-Chalcis, 322 BC) was a philosopher, polymath, and scientist born in the city of Stagira, in northern Ancient Greece. He is considered along with Plato, the father of Western philosophy. His ideas have exerted an enormous influence on the intellectual history of the West for more than two millennia .

He was a disciple of Plato and other thinkers, such as Eudoxus of Cnidus, during the twenty years he was at the Academy of Athens. Shortly after Plato's death, Aristotle left Athens to be the teacher of Alexander the Great in the Kingdom of Macedonia. for almost 5 years. In the last stage of his life, he founded the Lyceum in Athens, where he taught until a year before his death .

Aristotle wrote about 200 works, of which only 31 have been preserved (none of them intended for publication) in the Corpus Aristotelicum on a huge variety of subjects, including: logic, metaphysics, philosophy of science, ethics, philosophy politics, aesthetics, rhetoric, physics, astronomy, and biology. Aristotle transformed many, if not all, of the areas of knowledge he addressed. He is recognized as the founding father of logic and biology, because although there are reflections and previous writings on both subjects, it is in the work of Aristotle, where the first systematic investigations in this regard are found .Aristotle has also been called the father of political science, zoology, embryology, natural law, scientific method, rhetoric, psychology, realism, criticism, individualism, teleology, and meteorology .

Contrary to Platonism, Aristotle developed an empirical philosophy where experience is the source of knowledge. According to his hylomorphic theory, each sensible entity or substance is composed of matter, that which constitutes things; and form, which organizes matter, the latter being its essence. Every substance tends towards an end directed by its nature (teleologism), God being the final cause and immobile motor of movement in the universe as "self-contemplative thought" ( noeseos noesi ). According to the philosopher, the human being is a rational animal constituted by a body and soul, whose ultimate goal is intellectual activity through the exercise of reason, a virtue ( areté ) typical of the soul, thus reaching well-being ( eudaemonia ).). Ethical virtues, which are formed through habit, are the middle ground between two excesses or vices. Humans naturally live in community, thus forming states ( polis ) in order to preserve the happiness of their citizens. He also defended the value of rhetoric, art, and the superiority of the Greek male.

Among many other contributions, Aristotle formulated the theory of spontaneous generation, the principle of non-contradiction, and the notions of category, substance, act, and potency. Some of his ideas, which were novel for the philosophy of his time, today are part of the common sense of many people. He influenced Islamic thought during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian scholasticism. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.

Biography

Early years

Aristotle was born in 384 BC. C. or 383 a. C., during the first year of the XCIX Olympiad, in the city of Stagira, present-day Stavros, (which is why it was nicknamed the Stagirite ), not far from present-day Mount Athos, on the peninsula Chalcidice, then belonging to the Kingdom of Macedonia (present-day Macedonian region of Greece). His father, Nicomachus, belonged to the Asclepiadian corporation, that is, he professed medicine, and was physician to King Amyntas III of Macedonia , fact that explains his relationship with the royal court of Macedonia, which would have an important influence on his life; and his mother, Festis, was a native of Chalcis and was also associated with the Asclepiadians .

At the time of King Archelaus I of Macedonia, his father being physician to King Amyntas III of Macedonia, they both lived in Pella, and Aristotle could not stay long in that place since his parents died when he was still very young, and it was probably moved to Atarnaeus. In 367 BC. When Aristotle was 17, his father died, and he was taken in by his tutor Proxenus of Atarnaeus, who sent him to Athens, then an important intellectual center of the Greek world, to study at Plato's Academy . There he remained for twenty years .

Period in the Academy

To complete Aristotle's education, Proxenus sent him to Athens to enroll him in the Academy, his and Plato's fame having already spread throughout the Greek world .

Aristotle met Plato when he was 17 years old, and he remained at the Academy from 367 or 366 BC. C. until 347 or 346 a. C., just at the time when Plato's second trip to Sicily coincides. Because Aristotle attended the Academy during its period of maximum splendor, it was able to develop properly. Eudoxus exerted the first decisive influence on Aristotle, since I can exert his influence on the demand "to save the phenomena", which is the same, "find a principle that would explain the facts keeping intact their genuine way of presenting themselves". Plato himself called him "the reader » due to his desire to train himself through writing instead of doing it orally (as was done at the Academy) .

Because the philosophical ideas of Eudoxus differed from Platonic philosophy and ended in aporias, Aristotle ignored them, but he did relate to Speusippus, Philip of Opunt, Erastus and Corisco. Both Speusippus and Philip of Opunt were scholars of the Academy, Heracleides Ponticus ruled it when Plato made his third trip to Sicily, Philip published the Laws , and Erastus and Coriscus associated their names with Aristotle. During this period of youth he wrote several dialogues and the Protrepticus , an exhortation to the very popular philosophy aimed at the general public. None of these works have been preserved except for some in fragments.

Aristotle probably participated in the Eleusinian Mysteries, writing about them: "Experience is learning" (παθείν μαθεĩν) .

Formation of his philosophy

After the death of Plato in 347 a. C., Aristotle left Athens. Traditional history records that Aristotle was disappointed that the leadership of the Academy passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus, although this is unlikely, as a Macedonian could not inherit Athenian property. It is possible that he feared anti-Macedonian sentiments in Athens at that time and left before Plato's death .

Aristotle traveled to Atarneus and Asus in Asia Minor, where he lived for about three years under the protection of his friend and former fellow student Hermias, who was governor of the city. When Hermias was assassinated, Aristotle traveled to the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, where he stayed for two years. There he continued his research with Theophrastus, a native of Lesbos, focusing on zoology and marine biology. He also married Pythias of Asus, the niece of Hermias, with who had a daughter of the same name .

Alexander the Great and the Lyceum

In 343 BC Aristotle was summoned by King Philip II of Macedon to tutor his 13-year-old son, later to be known as Alexander the Great, in the town of Mieza. Aristotle then traveled to Pella, then the capital of the Macedonian empire, and taught Alexander for at least two years, until he began his military career. During Aristotle's time at the Macedonian court, he also taught two future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander .

In 335 BC Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum (so named because it was located within a compound dedicated to the Lycian god Apollo). Unlike the Academy, the Lyceum was not a private school and many of the classes were public and free. Throughout his life Aristotle amassed a vast library and a number of followers and scholars, known as the Peripatetics (from περιπατητικός, 'itinerants', so named because of their habit of arguing on foot). Most of Aristotle's surviving works are from this period.He wrote many dialogues, of which only fragments have survived. The works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for publication.

During this period, Aristotle's wife, Pythias, died and he developed a new relationship with Herpilis, believed to be like him, a native of Stagira. Although some suppose that she was not more than the slave of him; others deduce from Aristotle's last will that she was a free woman and probably his wife at the time of her death. In any case, they had children together, including a son, Nicomachus, who names Aristotle as his father and who dedicated his Ethics of him to Nicomachus .

Although little is known of his physical appearance, Aristotle was described as bald, short-legged, small-eyed, stammering, elegant in dress, and based on his own opinions, his lack of ascetic habits. He was a practical man and a careful observer . . High-minded and good-hearted, devoted to his loved ones and fair to his rivals, Diogenes Laertius stated that he had a penchant for ridicule and cites some expressions that testify to his easy wit .

Death

When Alexander died in 323 B.C. By 300 BC, it is likely that Athens became an uncomfortable place for Macedonians, especially those with Aristotle's connections. allusion to the condemnation of Socrates). Aristotle left Athens and settled in Chalcis, on the island of Euboea, where he strangely died the following year at the age of 61 or 62, in 322 BC. C., due to a disease of the digestive organs. His will was preserved by Diogenes Laertius .

In May 2016, during the international congress "Aristotle, 2,400 years" held at the University of Thessaloniki, Konstantinos Sismanidis, director of the excavations in the city of Stagira, announced the conclusions of his team of archaeologists about a building discovered in 1996 and now re-studied in the light of two manuscripts that allude to the subsequent transfer of the ashes of the philosopher, in a bronze urn, to his hometown. According to them, the building, found inside a later Byzantine fortress, "cannot be anything other than Aristotle's mausoleum", although they clarified that "we have no proof, but we do have very strong indications that border on certainty" .

Thought

Aristotle's thought encompasses virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry. Aristotle did philosophy in a broad sense, which he would also describe as "science". The use of the term science has a different meaning than the term "scientific method" covers. He distinguishes three types of philosophies, sciences or knowledge: practical knowledge, which includes ethics and politics; productive knowledge means the study of the arts, including poetry; and theoretical knowledge, purely contemplative as it does not intervene in the object of study, which encompasses physics, mathematics and metaphysics. Logic and rhetoric do not constitute substantive knowledge for Aristotle .

Metaphysics

The word "metaphysics" seems to have been coined in the 1st century AD by Andronicus of Rhodes, who brought together several of Aristotle's works for the treatise we know as Metaphysics . Metaphysics, according to Aristotle, is first of all a theory of the general principles ( archai ) of thought (which he addresses in more detail in his logic); and secondly, a doctrine ( logos ) of being ( on ) as such. Aristotle's metaphysics revolves around two fundamental questions: that of the beginning and that of unity .

Critique of Plato's theory

Aristotle collected and studied the thought of philosophers before him, from Thales to his teacher (initiating philosophical historiography). He built his own philosophical system and subjected Plato's theory of Ideas to criticism. Although Aristotle admits, like Socrates and his teacher, that the essence is what defines being, he conceives (unlike his predecessors) the essence as the form (μορφή) that is inseparably linked to matter, together constituting the being, or called substance. General concepts reside in particular things (in re) and are not prior to them (ante rem). For example, health does not exist by itself, but as an attribute in individual beings that are healthy.Thus universal forms are not only in the human mind, but in objects. Another criticism is the third man argument, in which if a man is a man because he has the form of a man, then a third man would be required. form to explain how man and the form of man are both men .

Contrary to Plato – who conceived of the "existence" of two possible or real worlds (some scholars believe that the Platonic theory is actually a realism of ideas) – Aristotle had a theory that ran between the world of notions and the real world. sensible world, although it was open to admitting the existence of separate and immobile substances (as shown in the Physics and in the Metaphysics ). For Aristotle, Plato “separated the substance from that which is the substance of it”, thereby transforming the general (the concept) into an entity; duplicating realities unnecessarily .

The first philosophy

At the beginning of Book IV of the Metaphysics , the well-known emphatic statement is formulated according to which "there is a science that studies what is , as something that is and the attributes that, by itself, belong to it". Immediately Aristotle adds that such a science "is not identified with any of the particular sciences, but has the most extensive and least understandable object of study that can exist: being."

None of the particular sciences, such as mathematics and the natural sciences (physics), deals "universally with what is", but each one of them sections or delimits a parcel of reality taking care to study the properties belonging to that previously delimited plot. Aristotle called it "first philosophy" or "first science" and theology. First philosophy, later called metaphysics , is the most general science because it is the science of being as being, and Aristotle identified it with the wisdom ( sophia ), of which he also speaks in the fifth book of the Nicomachean Ethics .[...] if there is something eternal and immobile and separate, it is evident that its knowledge corresponds to a speculative science —theoría—, but not to Physics [...] nor to Mathematics, but to another prior to both [ ...] the first Science deals with separate and immobile entities... there will be three speculative philosophies: Mathematics, Physics and Theology (because no one hides the fact that, if the divine is found somewhere, it is found everywhere). such nature [the immobile and separate]), and it is necessary that the most valuable take care of the most valuable kind. Thus, the speculative are more noble than the other sciences, and this (theology), more than the speculative.

Metaphysics . VI, 1026a.

Aristotle therefore proposes ontology as a science project with a claim to universality that seems to correspond to the study of what is, as something that is . He argues that the principles of this science will be, in a certain way, the first principles of all. Aristotle seems to follow the correspondence theory of truth, where the truth is to say that "the Entity is and that the Non-entity is not". With this, before addressing the issue of being, Aristotle begins by arguing in the Book I of the Metaphysics that the first philosophy must address the axioms of reasoning, the first principle being the principle of non-contradiction,The safest of all logical principles. As it is a first principle, it cannot be proved and others arise from it, such as the principle of identity and the excluded third. Aristotle will elaborate his logic in more detail in the Órganon .

Act and potency

Parmenides of Elea argued that change is impossible, since change is the passage from being to non-being or vice versa. This is unacceptable, since non-being does not exist and nothing can come from nothing . On the other hand, the Heracliteans held the constant change of all things. Plato proposed a kind of synthesis with a sensible world , characterized by a constant process of transformation and, on the other, an abstract and perfect world of Ideas , characterized by eternity and incorruptibility.

Aristotle gives his own answer to the problem of change. Contrary to Parmenides and Plato, Aristotle recognizes the polysemy of the verb to be in its different uses and applications, establishing that "the expression 'something that is' is said in many senses", but these different senses refer to a single thing, to a same nature, to a single principle. Although Aristotle differentiates between "change" (μεταβολή) and "motion" (κίνησις), he often refers to these terms in general as synonyms for all kinds of change .

In the Metaphysics , Aristotle emphasizes being in act ( entelecheia , Greek: ἐντελέχεια) and potentiality ( dynamis , Greek: δύναμις). The act is the substance as it presents itself and the potentiality is its capacities to be. Aristotle understands change and movement as "the actualization of what is in power" by the action of causes. Both concepts have two different nuances :

• Act as entelechy , the "realization" of a being that was in power. (eg the tree is entelechy of the seed).
• Act as energeia , the action of an active power. (eg pleasure is an energy of the body).
• Active power , the possibility of producing an action.
• Passive power , the possibility of receiving the action of an active power.

The "non-being" for Aristotle "is" because the "non-being" is not an absolute nothing, but a power, an activity, a power of the substance to become. Impotence and impossibility are the opposite of power, the deprivation of it. The act is the recognition of being in potential. The change of the cosmos is subordinated to the act and the power, the previous act being with absolute superiority to the power, since all change "is the act of that which has not reached its end". Movement itself is an eternal power, since if it is actualized there is no movement. Then the change is therefore an "imperfect act of what is in power insofar as it is in power" .

Substance and accident

Aristotle also understood being as substance, a term that has many senses in which a thing can be said to "is", but is related to a central point. He distinguished four senses of substance: essence ( ousía ), universal ( kathólou ), gender ( génos ), and subject ( hypokeímenon ). In addition , substance in Aristotelian metaphysics is divided into three classes: the sensible and perishable (four elements), the sensible and eternal (ether), and the immobile (god). ) .

The philosopher defined the essence as a being in itself, and only substances have an essence. He distinguished the first substance , that which is not predicated of a subject, nor is it in the subject, from the second substance , that which is predicated of the first substance, such as essence or gender. In a primary sense there is only the first substance , in which the essence is realized, and not the other way around (thus denying the theory of Platonic forms). Therefore Socrates as individual man is a first substance , and man is his gender, or whether it is a second substance .The changes of a substance would be those in which the substance disappears or the acquisition of another appears; There could only be two: generation and corruption .

For the philosopher, all movement is from one opposite to another opposite. For this there must be a subject that experiences and persists after the change, while the opposite stops persisting. As the substance is a kind of unity and does not have opposites, then the substantial changes are not movements, "but changes by contradiction"; then the movement is only the actualization "from a subject and towards a subject". There is change when a subject that lacks a certain perfection acquires it by itself (natural change) or by another (change artificial). In Book I of the Physics, Aristotle gives the example of the "transformation" (from one form to another) of an "illiterate man" to a "literate", being here the man, deprived of reading or with the power to read, the persistent substratum of the change between the Opposites not-being able to read to being able to read .Everything comes from being; but, without a doubt, of being in potential, that is, of non-being in act. [...] Everything that changes has a matter [...] If there really is being in potential, it is from him that beings come; not of every potential being, but such a being in act of such a potential being. [...] (I) if there had been only one matter, only that which would have been the matter in potential would have become an act. Therefore, there are three causes, three principles: two constitute contrariety, on the one hand the substantial notion and form, on the other deprivation; the third principle is matter.

Metafísica. XII, 2, 1069b 5-30.

On the other hand, there are accidents, a way of being that occurs in a substance without being one of the distinctive characters of its essence. Accidental changes, on the contrary, would be those that would occur without its substantial form becoming another. . That is to say, something (the substratum) passes into another way of being, but it is still something, and it continues to be a substratum of change. These accidents cannot exist separated from the substance, because "they are the modes of being " that exist in the substance without necessarily being such or constant. Along with substance, Aristotle associates them with his categories of being and mainly distinguishes only three types of changes: quality, quantity and place .Things - some only in act, others in potentiality and in act - are either a "this" or a quantity or a quality, and in the same way in the other categories of what is. As for those that are relative to something, they are said according to excess or deficiency, or according to activity or passivity, or, in general, according to their ability to move or be moved [...] Each of these categories is present in things in two ways: for example, with respect to a 'this', in its form or its privation; with respect to quality, in the white or the black; with respect to the quantity, in the completeness or the incompleteness; and in the same way with respect to moving up or down, heavy or light. Consequently, the species of movement and change are as many as those of being.

Physics . III, 1, 200b 25 - 201a 10.

Hylomorphism and teleology

Aristotle elaborates his hylomorphic theory, in which a subject as a "sensible substance" can be understood as a compound (sýnolon) of matter ( hilé ) and form ( morphé - eidos ). Form is what unifies certain matter into a single object . Matter is the constitutive substratum of something. This is relative, since each form corresponds to its matter (bricks correspond to the house), and what is matter, in another context is a form (clay corresponds to bricks) .

Matter differs from a formless, unknowable and eternal raw material that constitutes all reality; of a certain material that underlies the first by analogy (such as wood or bronze). Matter , as the principle of existing things, is in potential because it tends towards form, so it remains in change. The form "cannot desire itself, because it lacks nothing [...] what desires it is matter" and the form updates it, being always in act, since it shows what something is in act, that is, its essence. When matter is in act, it is because it has its form .The substantial form is what makes the entity what it is, and the accidental forms are those that, transforming into the being, do not create or destroy that being. The subject of the accident is identical to the substantial form, but not in the accident itself .

Aristotle suggested that a being can be explained by four different types of simultaneously active factors which he calls "causes" ( aition , αἴτιον). Exemplified by a statue, he distinguishes :

• The material cause , which is the material from which it is made; of which the statue is marble or bronze.
• The formal cause , which constitutes the essence as a form of the substance supported in matter; it is the idea in the sculptor's mind that brings the sculpture to life.
• The efficient cause , or agent, that produces the "motion"; is the sculptor.
• The final cause , which directs movement towards an end; it is the purpose of which the statue is made.

Aristotle's teleological conception of nature, in the sense that "nature [...] does nothing in vain" and exhibits finality ( telos ). Nature is thus an activity according to an end. Aristotle says that «what each thing is, once its development is complete, we say that it is its nature» and «that for which something exists and its end is the best, and self-sufficiency is at the same time, an end and the best ». He defines an end as "that for which, and the beginning of the definition and the concept". For example, the purpose of a saw is to saw, which must be made of iron since its purpose "is the cause of the matter and not the matter of the end."In the case of an animal's teeth, their purpose is the purpose of biting and chewing, which is good for the existence or happiness of the animal .

According to the philosopher, the changes that occur by nature are caused by their formal causes. He adds that the formal and the final cause are in essence the same thing, and "that in which the movement first comes is specifically the same as these, since man begets man". The distinction between potency and act leads to the doctrine of the hierarchical scale of beings that tends to actualize itself towards the perfection of its content (final cause). However, in his Physics and Metaphysics he also said that there are "accidents" caused by "chance (τυχή)" . Aristotle could have added chance as a fifth indeterminate cause ( apeiron ) that occurs when two causal chains come together by accident.For both Aristotle and many other ancient authors, the final cause was the most important in explaining practical philosophy.

Theology

Although Aristotle uses the term "god," he is not speaking of the God of Christianity or any other monotheistic religion. This is a god considered only as a philosophical hypothesis to complete a whole theory of change. His theology is based on his cosmological view and he was one of the first philosophers to formulate a cosmological argument for the existence of god. His reasoning would later be adopted by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians and contribute to the concept of God .

Motors and mobiles

Aristotle holds the causal principle that "everything that is in motion ( mobiles ) is moved by another ( motors )". Although Aristotle believes that the motion of the universe is eternal, there cannot be an infinite series of motors, since that these do not generate the movement but are limited to transmitting it. Nothing finite can move something eternally, since a finite magnitude cannot have an infinite power and vice versa. In addition, the initial motor power of the movement is lost due to friction.​But if there is a moving cause, or an efficient cause, but one that does not pass into action, this does not result in movement, because what has power may not act. [...] But here there is a difficulty. Every being in act has, it seems, the power, while the one who has the power does not always pass into the act. Priority must therefore belong to power. If so, nothing that exists could exist, because what has the potential to be may not yet be.

Metafísica. XII, 6, 1071b 15-30.

Therefore, it is necessary that the act be prior to the potency in terms of essence and there must be beings who are not the first in a temporal series, but who inspire eternal movement without moving "as beauty moves the soul" .

Stationary engine

In book VIII of the Physics , Aristotle speaks of a being as a pure act ( actus purus ) immaterial that does not undergo any change and that is the physical principle of the world. Because he is not material, he himself is not something physical ( Physics , II, 7, 198 to 36). Later, in book XII ( Lambda ) of the Metaphysics , Aristotle advocates the existence of a divine being and seems to identify it with the "first immobile mover", perhaps influenced by the Nous of Anaxagoras. The first mover cannot have magnitude, neither finite nor infinite, and consequently, it is indivisible and without parts. He defines it as an immobile substance incorruptible against sensible physical substances .

This, together with the fact that in the ninth chapter he speaks of God, the life of the immobile motor is noeseos noesi (νοήσεως νόησις), that is, "self-contemplative thought" or "thought of thought", because thought is the best. According to Aristotle, the gods cannot potentially be distracted from this eternal self-contemplation because, at that instant, they would cease to exist. This has led many authors to speak of Providence .If, therefore, God is always as well as we are sometimes, it is a wonderful thing; and, if he is better, still more admirable. And that's how he is. And he has life, because the act of understanding is life, and he is the act. And His act itself is the most noble and eternal life. We affirm, therefore, that God is a most noble eternal living being, so that God has continuous and eternal life and duration; because God is this.

Metafísica. XII, 7, 1072b 25.

The Aristotelian "God" is not the creator of the world, he is only the final cause of all change and eternal movement in the universe, reducing the diverse multiplicity of phenomena to an intelligible unity. Aristotle argued for the idea of ​​various motors, such as the intelligent motors of the planets and the stars. These appear to be gods, but everything suggests that they are substantially different from the "first" One, who would deserve to be identified with the one that contemporary man understands by God, one who activated the first celestial sphere and lived beyond the sphere of the fixed stars .

Logic

Aristotelian logic is the logic based on the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who is widely recognized as the founding father of logic. His major works on the subject are traditionally grouped under the name Órganon ("tool") and constitute the first systematic investigation of the principles of valid or correct reasoning. He initiated what is called the logic of terms .For Aristotle, logic was a necessary tool to enter the world of philosophy and science. His logic is in turn linked to his metaphysics, his proposals exerted an unparalleled influence for more than two millennia, to the point that in the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant even stated:

"That from the earliest times logic has trodden a sure path may be seen from the fact that since the time of Aristotle it has not taken a single step back. [...] What is even more remarkable about logic logic is that up to now it has also not been able to take a single step forward, and therefore it seems clearly finished and complete." Critique of Pure Reason , B, VIII

Aristotle's work was seen from classical times, and particularly during medieval times in Europe and the Middle East, as the very image of a fully elaborated system. However, he was not alone: ​​the Stoics proposed a system of propositional logic that was studied by medieval logicians. The problem of multiple generality was also studied. However, the problems of Aristotelian logic were not considered to need revolutionary solutions. Today, some scholars claim that Aristotle's system cannot add much more than historical value, due to the advent of mathematical logic. However, Aristotle's logic is used, among other fields of study and research,

Syllogisms and Syllogistics

According to Aristotle, every proposition ( apophansis ) is made up of two terms ( horos ), a subject ( hypokeimenon ), and a predicate ( katêgorein ); and can be true or false. Then every simple affirmative statement can be reduced to "S is P" .

The central notion of Aristotle's logical system is the syllogism (or deduction , apódeixis or sullogismos ) . , for being what they are, something else." The syllogism is an inference in which a conclusion ( sumperasm ) necessarily follows from two other propositions, the "premises" ( protasis ). A classic example of a syllogism is the following:

1. All men are mortal.
2. All Greeks are men.
3. Therefore, all Greeks are mortal.

In this example, after stating the premises (1) and (2), the conclusion (3) follows of necessity. The notion of a syllogism is similar to the modern notion of a deductively valid argument, but there are differences .

In the Earlier Analytics , Aristotle constructed the first theory of valid inference. Known as syllogistics , the theory offers criteria for evaluating the validity of certain very specific types of syllogisms: categorical syllogisms. To define what a categorical syllogism is , it is first necessary to define what a categorical proposition is. A proposition is categorical if it has any of the following four forms:

• Universal affirmative ( A ) = All S is P—for example, all humans are mammals.
• Universal negative ( E ) = No S is P—for example, no human is a reptile.
• Particular affirmative ( I ) = Some S are P—for example, some humans are male.
• Negative particular ( O ) = Some S are not P—for example, some humans are not male.

Each categorical proposition contains two terms : a subject (S) and a predicate (P). A syllogism is categorical if it is made up of exactly three categorical propositions (two premises and a conclusion), and if both premises share exactly one term (called the middle term ), which is also not present in the conclusion. For example, the syllogism mentioned above is a categorical syllogism. Given these definitions, there are three ways that the middle term can be distributed among the premises. Let A, B and C be three different terms, then:

	first figure	second figure	third figure
	Subject	Predicate	Subject	Predicate	Subject	Predicate
Premise	A	B	A	B	A	C
Premise	B	C	A	C	B	C
Conclution	A	C	B	C	A	B

Aristotle calls these three possibilities 

figures . The syllogism mentioned above is an instance of the first figure. Since each categorical syllogism consists of three categorical propositions, and since there are four types of categorical propositions, and three types of figures, there are 4 × 4 × 4 × 3 = 192 distinct categorical syllogisms. Some of these syllogisms are valid, others are not. To distinguish one from the other, Aristotle starts from two categorical syllogisms that he assumes to be valid (something analogous to the current rules of inference), and demonstrates from them (with the help of three conversion rules), the validity of all and only the valid categorical syllogisms .

Categories of being

Category	ancient greek	Latin	Ask	Example
Substance	substance	substantia	What is it?	A human, a horse...
Quantity	amount	quantity	How much / what size / what weight is it?	A meter, a kilo...
Quality	whom	quality	How is?	White, hot, sweet...
Relationship	for what	relatio	What relationship do you have with someone or something?	Double, medium, large, master...
Place	where	where	Where is?	In a market, in the Lyceum ...
Time	never	When	When is it from?	Yesterday, last year, a century...
Situation	κεῖσθαι	site	What posture is he in?	Standing, sitting, lying...
Possession	ἔχειν	attitude	How are you?	Armed, barefoot...
Action	ποιεῖν	actio	That makes?	Eat, cut, burn...
Passion	πάσχειν	passio	What is the thing subjected to?	Being eaten, being thrown...

The word category derives from the Greek word katêgoria which means predicate or attribute. In the work Categories , Aristotle the list of the ten categories is present in Topics I.9, 103b20-25 and Categories 4,1b25-2a4. The ten categories can be interpreted in three different ways: as predicate types, as sermon classifications, or as entity types.

This list of ten categories also appears in Metaphysics , V, 7, 1017 to 25; Seconds Analytics , I, 22, 83 to 21-22; and in Physics , V, 1, 225 b 6-8, but he does not mention the categories of possession ( échein ) and situation ( keîsthai ). There is a hypothesis that Aristotle considered the categories of possession and situation as sub-categories, subsumable perhaps in hexis and diathesis respectively, two sub-classes of quality. The most important category is substance or entity, there being two types, the concrete or first and abstract or second entity.In a certain way, the concrete entity is not a category because it cannot be predicated. So, even if one knows by definition what a thing is, one will not know if it is or if it exists, since being is not any gender or entity of anything . At this point, the Aristotelian ontology is better differentiated from the Platonic one .

The Aristotelian theory of categories is very dark because it is not well known when Aristotle talks about things or notions and does not justify why they are those and not others .

Other contributions to logic

In addition to his theory of syllogisms, Aristotle made a large number of other contributions to logic. In On interpretation there are some observations and proposals of modal logic, as well as a controversial and influential discussion about the relationship between time and necessity .According to Aristotle, of the pair of propositions "tomorrow there will be a sea battle" and "tomorrow there will be no sea battle", it seems that one must be true today and the other false. Suppose the first were true today. Then tomorrow there will be a sea battle. But then the future is already determined, and it does not depend on us. The same thing happens if we assume that the second proposition is true today. However, it seems to us that the future is not determined, and that in some important sense it does depend on us. Faced with this situation, Aristotle discusses the possibility that propositions about the future are neither true nor false, that is, a multivalent logic.Aristotle also recognized the existence and importance of inductive arguments, in which one goes "from the particular to the universal", but devoted little space to their study. As if that were not enough, Aristotle was the first to carry out a systematic study of the fallacies. In his 

Sophistical Refutations of him he identified and classified thirteen types of fallacies, among them the assertion of the consequent, the begging of the question, and the irrelevant conclusion.

Epistemology

Aristotle is properly a rationalist philosopher as he is a disciple of Plato, where a logical system that starts from truths guarantees new truths and reaches the true and intuitive knowledge of the principles and the intuition of the essences as substantial forms of things. However, Aristotle formulates a theory of knowledge from a realistic and empiricist vision, where reality is found in the sensible world and where there are substances composed of matter and form, which we can know through our senses united to our reason. . Aristotle also asserts knowledge of the universal through experience and inductive reasoning ( epagogé ) along with deduction ( apódeixis )opinion and intuition, while Plato is only based on deduction from a priori principles . The affirmation of the importance of sensible knowledge, and of the knowledge of the singular to reach the universal, opened up the possibility empirical scientific experimentation and research.The senses can only capture the individual, the sensitive forms of concrete substances. The understanding ( 

noûs ) was responsible for capturing the universal or its form, through abstraction ( 

aphairesis ) in objects, eliminating their sensitive qualities until reaching the essence that defines that entity. It is an inductive process because it goes from the particular to the universal. Induction prepares our intelligence for the intuitive grasp of the principles, the abstract forms incorporated in concrete things and the necessary interrelationships between abstract forms .

Agent and patient intellect

This process of understanding is carried out through the intellect, which Aristotle distinguishes between two through the distinction of his hylomorphic theory :

• The agent Intellect (always in act) is immortal, separable, eternal and efficient cause of knowledge. It is the active power that produces the universal concepts (form) of things (matter).
• The patient Intellect (potential to understand) is that of man, inseparable and mortal. He alone is not capable of thinking, so he needs to receive the universal concepts that update him.

Aristotle compares the patient intellect to a "tablet on which nothing is actually written" ( tabula rasa ) which stores all the concepts grasped by the agent intellect :As for the difficulty that the patient intellect must have something in common with the agent intellect, has it not already been answered by saying that the intellect is in a certain way potentially the intelligible, even though in entelechy it is nothing before intellectively knowing? ? The intelligible must be in it in the same way as in a 

tablet on which nothing is actually written : this is what happens with the intellect.»About the soul, 429b29 - 430a5To understand is then to update the power of the intellect, and it needs a means to do so. Aristotle exemplifies it with light, that in order to know the colors one needs a light that converts potential colors into actual colors, allowing sight to update its ability to see. In Book XII of the 

Metaphysics , Aristotle seems equate the active intellect with the "still mover" and/or God .

Ethic

There are three works on ethics attributed to Aristotle on ethics: the Nicomachean Ethics , the Eudemian Ethics , and the Magna moralia (whose authorship is still in doubt). Aristotle considered ethics to be a practical rather than a theoretical study, that is, one destined to be good and do good rather than knowing it for oneself, and held to what is now called a virtue ethic . considers that the end that man seeks is happiness, which consists of the intellectual and contemplative life .

Eudemonismo

According to the philosopher, all human activity tends towards some good. Thus, a teleologism is given by identifying the end with the good. Aristotle's ethics is an ethics of goods because it assumes that every time man acts he does so in search of a certain good. The highest good is happiness ( eudaimonia ), and human happiness is wisdom, because it is the most in man, and evil is a form of ignorance about what one should do. Eudaemonistic and teleological ethical theories differ from deontological theories, which emphasize duty or law, and have also been associated as consequentialist theories, where the "right action" is one that brings good consequences .However, both approaches can be made compatible with the virtues .Being this itself (the intellect) divine or the most divine part that is in us, its activity according to its own will be perfect happiness. And this activity is contemplative, as we have already said.

Ética nicomaquea, X. 7, 1177a13–18.

Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics , took two things into account: the quality of the human being and the quality of life. An exceptional human being is a successful example of humanity. A person who lives an exceptional life until death reaches the human telos . Aristotle emphasizes that the goal of learning about the good life is not knowledge, but to become good. Doing good is part of the good life, so the Ethics requires not only theory, but practice .We do not devote ourselves to these inquiries to know what virtue is, but to learn how to make ourselves virtuous and good; because otherwise this study would be completely useless.

Ética nicomaquea, VIII.2, 1103b 26–30.

The good is chosen by desire and intelligence together, since intelligence by itself without a desired end does not move. This doctrine Aristotle called "desiring intelligence or intelligent desire" .Voluntary desire is a rational appetite for good (because nobody wants something except when they believe it to be good); instead, anger or passionate desire are irrational impulses. So, finally, all the actions that men put into practice must be done for these seven reasons: by chance, by nature, by force, by habit, by rational calculation, by irascible appetite or by passionate desire.

Rhetoric (Gredos, Madrid, 1999), I.10, 1369a 5.

Aristotle was one of the first to argue for indeterminism and compatibilism. He differentiated between "voluntary" actions (when they are done with prior knowledge and without being forced) from "involuntary" actions (when they are produced by an external force or by ignorance), although there are cases which can sometimes be mixed .Many decisions are quite predictable based on habit and character. Human nature implies, for everyone, a capacity to form habits, but the habits formed by a particular individual depend on the culture and repeated personal choices of that individual. All human beings yearn for "happiness," that is, an active and committed realization of their innate capacities, although this goal can be achieved in many ways. However, Aristotle pointed out that there is an element of luck in happiness by avoiding misfortune and it is advisable to possess corporeal and external goods. As beings of changing nature, human happiness is imperfect and we can lose it .

Ethical virtues and dianoethics

Absence	Virtue	Excess
Cowardice	Courage	Reckless
Insensitivity	Temperance	Debauchery
friserie	Magnificence	Vulgarity
Inferiority complex	Self-esteem	Vanity
Lack of ambition	proper ambition	excessive ambition
lack of encouragement	Patience	Irascibility
insufficient judgment	Veracity	Joker
Rudeness	Ingenuity	Prank
Bad character	Sympathy	Flattery
Nerve	Modesty	shyness
malicious gloating	Justice	Envy
friserie	Generosity	Spendthrift

In his Eudemian Ethics , Aristotle defines virtue as excellence ( areté ) , the best mode of being of everything that has a function. In man, therefore, virtue is the excellence of the soul. The end of the soul it is to make live and the function of the virtue of the soul is a good life and therefore, happiness, and the best ends and goods are in the soul. Aristotle distinguished two types of virtues :

• Ethical or moral virtue : it is an expression of character, the product of habits that reflect repeated choices. Ethical virtues are acquired through custom or habit and consist, fundamentally, in mastering the irrational part of the soul (sensitive) and regulating relations between men. A moral virtue is always the middle ground between two less desirable extremes (for example, bravery is the middle ground between cowardice and thoughtless impetuousness) .

The parts of virtue are justice, courage, moderation, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, [calmness], reasonableness, and wisdom.

Rhetoric (Gredos, Madrid, 1999), I.9, 1366b 1

• The dianoetic or intellectual virtue : they correspond to the rational part of man, being, therefore, typical of the intellect ( nous ) or thought ( nóesis ). Their origin is not innate, but must be learned through education or teaching and start from the dianoia , the rational part of the soul. The dianoetic virtues are understanding, science, wisdom, art and prudence. Prudence is neither science nor praxis, it is a virtue and the most important .

Aristotle concludes in the Nicomachean Ethics that the practice of ethics requires good laws and education. In the Magna moralia , Aristotle maintains that ethics starts from political science. Aristotelian ethics is an elitist ethics, since excellence and Magnanimity can only be achieved by the adult male belonging to the Greek upper class, not by women, children, commoners or the "barbarians" .

Politics

For Aristotle, Politics was not a study of ideal states in the abstract, but rather an examination of how ideals, laws, customs, and properties interrelate in actual cases. it is the main work in which his political doctrines are found. The Lyceum library contained a collection of 158 constitutions, both from Greek and foreign states. Aristotle himself wrote the Constitution of Athens as part of the collection, a work that was lost until 1890, the year it was recovered. Historians have found in this text very valuable data to reconstruct some phases of Athenian history.

According to Fred Miller, Aristotle's political philosophy is based on five principles :

1. The principle of teleology: nature has an end, human beings therefore have a function (a task) to assume.
2. The principle of perfection: "the ultimate good or happiness ( eudaimonia ) of the human being consists in perfection, in the full realization of his natural function, which he sees as the movement of the soul granted to reason."
3. The principle of community: the most perfect community is the City-State. Indeed, being neither too big nor too small, it corresponds to the nature of man and allows one to achieve the good life.
4. The principle of government: "the existence and well-being of any system requires the presence of a governing element."
5. The principle of the rule of reason: like Plato, Aristotle thinks that the non-rational part of man must be governed by the rational part.

Political naturalism

Aristotle conceives of the State as a community of equals that aspires to the best possible life; a kind of natural being that does not arise as the result of a social pact, but has its roots in nature .From all this it is evident that the city is one of the natural things, and that man is by nature a social animal, and that the unsocial by nature and not by chance is either a being inferior or a being superior to man.

Politics , I. 1253a 9-10

Aristotle combined his naturalistic observations with his political thought, preceding ethology and sociobiology. For Aristotle, man is a social animal (" zoon politikon "), that is, a being who lives in a city (from the Greek polis ). He sees evidence that nature, which does nothing in vain, has endowed us with the ability to speak, making us capable of sharing moral concepts such as justice. Man is a social animal who develops his ends within a community. The politics of man is explained by his capacity for language, the only instrument capable of creating a collective memory and a set of laws that differentiate what is permitted from what is prohibited.

In the Politics , Aristotle argues that human beings came together to reproduce, then created villages, and finally several villages came together to form a city-state. For Aristotle, the State must have eugenic control in families and also in the education of their children, since these belong to them, being the very essence of the city. The philosopher had a natural hierarchical vision of society, in which that the Greek adult male is above other human beings such as women, children and barbarians. He explicitly recognized He also excluded artisans from citizenship, farmers and merchants .

State Forms

The goal of the state is not only to prevent injustice or economic stability, but to allow at least some citizens the possibility of living a good contemplative life. Aristotle expounded in the Politics the classical theory of forms of government, the same as without great changes was taken up by various authors in the following centuries. The famous theory of the six forms of government is based on the end of the political regime (common good or private good). The political regimes that seek the common good (pure) are :

Regimes that seek the common good	corrupt regimes
If one person rules: monarchy.If few people govern: aristocracy.If many people govern: republic.	The degradation of the monarchy is tyranny.The degradation of the aristocracy is the oligarchy.The corruption of the republic is democracy.

The most "divine" because of what is just, but also infrequent, is the monarchy. They are followed by the aristocracy and the republic. The deviation from the first regime is the worst form of government: tyranny, followed by oligarchy and democracy. Aristotle also refers to a mixed “ democratic-aristocratic” form of government called politeia . Aristotle opts for a "middle class ", allowing citizens to live in leisure fulfilling their professions (judges, merchants, priests).It is evident that the medium rate regime is the best, since it is the only one free from sedition. Where the middle class is numerous is where sedition and discord among citizens occur least. And the big cities are freer from sedition for the same reason, because the middle class is numerous; On the other hand, in the small ones it is easier for all the citizens to be divided into two classes, so that there is nothing left in the middle of them, and almost all of them are either poor or rich.

Politics . 1296a 13-14

Economy

Aristotle used the word economics to refer to the management of the house and home. To refer to problems that we think of as economic, he used the Greek word chrematistics . Although he did not discuss economic problems in detail, he did make substantial contributions to economic thought . economic, especially to thought in the Middle Ages .

In the Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle differentiates distributive justice (διανεμητικός / dianemetikos ) which deals with the way honors, goods and others are distributed, and corrective justice (διορθωτικός / diorthotikos ). In the first case, justice does not consist in an equitable distribution between unequal people, but in a balance perceived as fair. In the second case, that of corrective justice, the Stagirite distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary exchanges. In the case of an involuntary exchange, justice only intervenes if there has been fraud and does not have to look for a fair price .

In his Politics , Aristotle addresses the city, private property, trade, and offers one of the earliest explanations of the origin of money. Money came into use because people became dependent on one another, importing what they needed and exporting what they needed. the surplus. For convenience, people agreed to trade something useful and easily applicable, such as iron or silver. Aristotle wrote that the value of every good arises because of the need for a single universal standard of measurement. Thus, money allows the association of different products and makes them "commensurable". In value theory, Aristotle differentiated between use value and exchange value ( concepts present in the labor theory of value).He had an unfavorable view of retail commerce, as he believed that the use of money to earn profit through interest was unnatural by making a profit from money itself and not from its use .

His response to criticisms of private property, in the view of Lionel Robbins, anticipated later advocates of private property among philosophers and economists, regarding the general usefulness of social arrangements.

Natural philosophy

Aristotle's "natural philosophy" deals with the search for "causes" in the world. It encompasses a wide range of natural phenomena, including those now covered by physics, biology, and other natural sciences. Born into a family of physicians, initiators of the scientific method in Greece, Aristotle underlines the proximity of medicine to philosophy of nature. He justified his study of nature by stating that it is pleasant to contemplate studying it, because even the inferior ones have something admirable .

Aristotle did not do science in the modern sense. For the philosopher, science is demonstration from unprovable principles that we arrive at by intellectual intuition ( noûs ) that requires induction ( epagogé ). He used the ancient Greek term pepeiramenoi to refer to observations, or at most to investigative procedures such as dissection. Instead, he practiced a different style of science: systematically collecting data, discovering patterns common to entire groups of animals, and inferring possible causal explanations from these .

Physics

[ edit ]Aristotelian physics is the set of philosophical and cosmological theses and physical and astronomical hypotheses developed by Aristotle and his followers. These theories included the four elements, the ether, movement, the four causes, the celestial spheres, geocentrism, etc. The main works of Aristotle in which he develops his physical ideas are: 

Physics, On Heaven and On 

Generation and Corruption . The fundamental principles of physics of it are:

1. Natural places: each element would like to be in a different position relative to the center of the Earth, which is also the center of the universe.
2. Relationship between speed and density: speed is inversely proportional to the density of the medium.
3. Gravity/levity: To achieve this position, objects feel an upward or downward force.
4. Rectilinear motion: A motion in response to this force is in a straight line at a constant speed.
5. Circular Motion: The planets move in a perfect circular motion.
6. Time: now, before and after related to movement and space.
7. Void Negation: Movement in a void is infinitely fast.
8. The ether: all points in space are filled with matter.
9. Continuum theory: if spherical atoms existed, there would be a vacuum between them, so matter cannot be atomic.
10. Quintessence: Objects above the sublunary world are not made of earthly matter.
11. Incorruptible and eternal cosmos: the Sun and the planets are perfect spheres, and do not change.
12. Immobile engine: first cause of the movement of the first celestial sphere and the entire universe.

The reign of Aristotelian physics, the oldest known speculative theory of physics, lasted almost two millennia. However, there were very few explicit references to experiments in Aristotelian physics, and Aristotle reached various conclusions not through experiments and observations, but through logical arguments. After the work of many pioneers such as Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, it was generally accepted that Aristotelian physics was neither correct nor feasible. A contrary opinion is given by Carlo Rovelli, who holds that Aristotelian physics is correct within its domain of validity, that of submerged objects in the Earth's gravitational field. in a fluid such as air .

Elements

In his work On Generation and Corruption , Aristotle proposed that the universe was made up of the combination of basic elements or compounds based on the four pre-Socratic elements of Empedocles' pluralistic theory. According to his theory, everything is made up of: earth, water, air, fire and ether. In On Heaven , each element has a place and natural movement, determined by its "gravity" and "lightness" of its weight.​As for the fifth element, Aristotle held that all the heavens, and every particle of matter in the universe, were made from another element, which he called "ether" (from the Greek 

Αἰθήρ ). This element was supposed to have no weight and was "incorruptible". The ether was also called "quintessence"—that is, the "fifth substance" .

Mechanics

Each element on Earth moves, naturally, in a straight line towards its corresponding place, where it will stop once reached, which means that the movement of the earth is always linear and always ends up stopping. Water and earth naturally move toward the center of the universe, air and fire move away from the center, and the ether revolves around the center. These principles were used to explain phenomena such as rocks falling and smoke rising. They also explained the roundness of the planet, and the orbits of the celestial bodies. The heavens move naturally and infinitely following a complex circular movement, so they must, according to logic, be composed of a fifth element, which he called ether,Aristotle's laws of motion state that objects fall at a rate proportional to their weight and inversely proportional to the density of the fluid in which they are immersed. This is a correct approximation for objects in the Earth's gravitational field moving in air or water, although his physical theories are known to be wrong. Aristotle stated that heavy objects (earth, for example) require more force to make them move; and objects pushed with greater force move faster. That is to say :

• 

This formula is incorrect in modern physics. Also Aristotle clarifies that:

"We see that the same weight and body moves faster than another for two reasons: either because what it passes through is different (such as passing through water or land or air), or because the body that one moves differs from another by excess weight or lightness, even though the other factors are the same. "

The thesis could form the following equation: the speed of a body is proportional to the force applied to move it and inversely proportional to its mass and its resistance. That is to say :

• 

Aristotle's theory that linear motion always takes place through a resisting medium is actually valid for all observable earth motions. Aristotle's primitive gravitational theory of falling objects, based on the inherent tendencies of "lightness" and "gravity". In this system, Aristotle also held that heavier bodies of specific matter fall faster than those that are lighter when their shapes are the same. Thus, according to Aristotle, a 100-kg cannonball should fall 100 times faster toward Earth than a 1-kg cannonball.

About the movement .

"If someone drops a stone, or other weighty thing, by holding it one finger above the ground, it certainly won't make a visible impact on the ground, but if one drops it by holding it a hundred feet high or more, it will have a strong impact." . And there is no other reason for that impact. Because it is not heavier, nor is it propelled by a greater force, but it moves faster. "

John Philoponus (in the Middle Ages) and Galileo are said to have shown by experiment that Aristotle's statement that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect .

Astronomy

Aristotle supported the sphericity of the Earth using logical and mathematical proofs, as well as empirical data, such as the variation of the position of the stars in different places and the round shadow of the Earth projected in lunar eclipses. The philosopher also held that the Earth was the size of about forty myriad furlongs (approximately 80,468 km) .

In astronomy, Aristotle proposed the existence of a spherical and finite Cosmos. According to his position, the Earth was stationary in a geocentric system, while the Sun revolved around it with other planets. Aristotle spoke of the sublunary world, the central part of the cosmos in which generation and corruption exist and would be composed of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water; and the supralunar world, perfect and incorruptible, composed of the stars and celestial objects were embedded in concentric celestial spheres of ether that revolved around the Earth.

Aristotle argues that the continuous motion of the universe must be caused by a simple motor that is stationary, otherwise it would regress to infinity. The stationary motor must occupy the outer circumference of the sphere, since the things closest to the stationary motor are the ones that move with the greatest speed, being the stars. The motionless motor drives the first celestial sphere and the movement of the "wandering stars" (this is what the Greek word "planets" means), requires other spheres and, therefore, other motors. Each sphere is inhabited by an immaterial being that Aristotle called "Intelligence".Following the cosmology of Eudoxus of Cnidus and his disciple Calipus, who would take into account 33 spheres to explain the observable celestial movements, Aristotle introduces more spheres to explain the movement of the five planets or "wandering bodies" (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), the sun and the stars. He suggested that the number of these spheres was "55 or 47" .

Aristotle was the first to criticize the Pythagorean notion of the harmony of the spheres. The Pythagoreans believed that the movement of the planets must produce a noise, but they explain that it is not perfectible because that noise dates to our ears from the very moment of our birth. He considered that idea as ingenious and very poetic, but impossible .This theory of the Earth as the center of the universe lasted for several centuries until Copernicus in the 16th century changed the concept and introduced a new series of paradigms, conceiving the Sun as the center of the universe.

Math

Although he did not make specific mathematical discoveries, Aristotle contributed significantly to the development of mathematics by laying the foundations of logic. In the philosophy of mathematics, Aristotle considers that mathematical objects are, unlike Plato, abstractions of material objects and realities dependent on the physical world and could not have reality apart from empirical things. Mathematics can be seen as universal. Aristotle also wrote about the concept of infinity, which he differentiated between potential infinity and actual infinity. He was also credited with the paradox of the wheels.

Geology

Aristotle was one of the first people to record geological observations in his Meteorological work . He analyzed the nature of the earth, the oceans, the hydrologic cycle, and other atmospheric phenomena. He claimed that geological change was too slow to be observed in a person's lifetime. Geologist Charles Lyell noted that Aristotle described such change, including "lakes that had dried up" and "deserts that had been watered by rivers", giving as examples the growth of the Nile delta from the time of Homer, and "the uplift of one of the Aeolian islands, before an eruption volcanic". It was also the first to talk about an "Antarctic region" .

Optics

This section is an excerpt from Aristotle's Biology § Theory of Vision. 

[ edit ]

The first theories of light come from the ancient Greeks. Aristotle believed that light was a kind of disturbance in the air. However, according to Aristotle, light does not travel or move, but is a presence that fills space. According to the Aristotelian theory of vision, sensations are realized through a medium, such as air or water. . These are transparent, as a possibility or power. Transparency update is light; this is, therefore, a state of the transparent as such instead of a movement, and its appearance is instantaneous .

The color acts on the transparent in act which, in turn, acts on the corresponding organ. Aristotle proposed a theory of seven colors that finds its support in the seven musical notes: White, yellow, red, violet, green, blue and black. According to its degree of transparency, white is the maximum transparency and black is the opposite. The rest of the colors occur in a variety of proportions of these two .

According to Aristotle, there is a causal procedure from the object to the organ. This process transmits the quality of the object of each sense according to its medium, and finally to the soul. When the color reaches the eyes, they send the information through the blood vessels to the heart, which has the mission of distinguishing between all the signals that reach it .Aristotle described optical experiments using a camera obscura in his work 

Problems . It consisted of a chamber with a small opening that let in light. With it, he saw that no matter how he made the hole, the image of the sun always remained circular. He also pointed out that as the distance between the aperture and the image surface increased, the image increased.He also mentioned in his writings the typical defects of vision, due to lens defects, myopia and hyperopia.

Biology

Aristotle is considered to be the father of biology. He was a great observer and scholar, describing more than 500 "living". The same biologist Charles Darwin remarked that his "two gods", Linnaeus and Cuvier, were "mere children" compared to the old Aristotle. Aristotle justified his study of the animal kingdom by pointing out that even the inferior beings have something admirable and divine. The philosopher compiled this material thanks to his observations, Hippocratic treatises and information from fishermen, shepherds, hunters, beekeepers .

He approached the subject of the soul as a biologist, because he considered the soul the vital principle. What is alive is thanks to the soul, not matter. The soul is the final form and cause of the body, and there are three types of soul :

• The vegetative soul (typical of vegetables): nutrition and reproduction.
• The sensitive soul (typical of animals): perception, movement and desire.
• The rational soul (typical of humans): reasoning.

Aristotle made in his History of Animals a natural hierarchical scale of beings according to their characteristics and elements ( Great chain of being ): Form without matter is at one end, and matter without form is at the other end. The passage from matter to form must be shown in its various stages in the world of nature. What is higher on the scale has more value, because the form principle is further along. Species on this scale are fixed. However Ludwig Edelstein argues that Aristotle did not say that species cannot evolve, change or become extinct over time .

Taxonomy

The beginnings of zoology must be sought specifically in the studies on the generation and anatomy of animals in the Aristotelian work. Aristotle believed that intended final causes guided all natural processes; this teleological view justified his observed data as an expression of cause and formal design. Each group of animals was divided into " genos ", which were further divided into species " eidos ". Aristotle differentiated two groups of "maximum genera" :

• Enaima (animals with blood), which is close to vertebrates. They are divided into viviparous (humans and mammals), and perfect egg oviparous (birds, fish and reptiles).
• Anaima (animals without blood), which is close to invertebrates. Includes insects, worms, crustaceans and molluscs with or without shell.

This taxonomic classification remained in force during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, until Charles Linnaeus in the 18th century. However, Aristotle noted several exceptions to his classification such as sharks that had a placenta ( Mustelus ). For a modern biologist, the explanation is convergent evolution.

Embryology

Aristotle's model of embryogenesis sought to explain how hereditary characteristics from parents cause the formation and development of an embryo. He explains the development of the embryo based in part on observations of chicken eggs: the pneuma first makes the heart appear; this is vital, as the heart nourishes all the other organs. The pneuma then causes the other organs to develop, first the internal parts and finally the external parts, which are formed from the internal parts. He theorized that first the vegetative soul enters the fetus, then the animal soul, and finally the human soul .The sex of the child depends on factors such as temperature, diet and age of the father and whether the semen exceeds menstruation. Aristotle believed that the heart is the main organ that produces blood with food products, releasing fire in the form of of heat, in addition to sensations such as pain and pleasure, because all animals with blood and heart have these capabilities, instead of the brain, which considered it as a cooling organ .

On the other hand, Aristotle wrote about the spontaneous generation of plants, fish, and insects by combining decomposed matter with ambient heat. However, Aristotle believed that spontaneous generation was guided by "the influence of the heavenly bodies which they believed be of a superior nature" .

Psychology

Among ancient Greek philosophers, Aristotle believed that the heart is the main organ that produces sensations, such as pain and pleasure, rather than the brain. This is because all animals with blood and hearts have these capabilities. The brain had the function of cooling the heat produced by the heart by releasing fire during metabolism .

In On the Soul , Aristotle describes memory as the ability to hold a perceived experience in mind and to distinguish between the internal "appearance" and an occurrence in the past. In other words, a memory is a mental image that can be retrieved. Aristotle believed that an impression is left on a bodily organ that undergoes various changes to create a memory. A memory occurs when stimuli such as images or sounds are so complex that the nervous system cannot receive all the impressions at once. These changes are the same as those involved in the operations of sensation, Aristotelian "common sense", and thought .

Aristotle also about dreams in On Sleep and Waking as a result of excessive use of the senses or digestion while a person is asleep. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud commented on and drew inspiration from passages from Aristotle for his work The Interpretation of dreams .

Esthetic

Aristotle thought at length about the arts, whose philosophical study is part of aesthetics; In this sense, his most important text, especially due to its future relevance, is the Poetics , which was interpreted as a dogma in the 16th century. He is also considered the first author to write systematically about aesthetics, although this, as a discipline, appeared in current Germany already in the Modern Age. His thought focuses on the arts, material and concrete, and not so much on the abstract concept of beauty as Plato had proposed, who condemned art in his Republic as "a vile thing" .However, when discussing art, Aristotle appears to reject that the art form exists in objects. Instead, he advocated an idealized universal form, similarly to Plato, he defines as art any human activity of conscious production based on knowledge and makes the following classification :

• Imitative : Imitation as a means and an end. This is something natural in the human being and produces pleasure. The term imitation ( mimesis ) was for him different from the current one; Thus, he wrote that art should represent the universal as opposed to the particular, and that the harmony of what was represented was more important than its fidelity to the real model. The various artistic techniques produce imitations of him with different media: painting through colors, sculpture through figures, and literature through language .
• Non-imitative : Those that did not express emotions. An example of this is a scientific treatise. Note that although a treatise would not be considered art today, it did fit the Aristotelian definition and ancient Greek consciousness in general.

Despite his fixation on concrete art, he devoted some writings to the more general concept of beauty. Thus, for Aristotle , knowledge is pleasurable, then it entails an aesthetic enjoyment , and what is liked through sight and hearing is beautiful . He divided these senses according to the enjoyment they generated when capturing something beautiful: sight intellectual pleasure, hearing moral pleasure. For him, beauty was a unit of parts that had the following formal conditions :

• Táxis : Distribution in space of the component parts of the beautiful object.
• Symmetry : The correct proportion of those parts.
• To horisménon : The extension or size of the beautiful. It must not be exceeded or fatally diminished in its dimensions.

Poetics

Aristotle distinguishes that animals have a voice (that is, they can communicate), but only men have a word ( logos ) to discern between what is just and what is good. The philosopher worked on the use of language, both in his Rhetoric and the art of communicating convincingly, and in his Poetics , or art of literary creation. In chapter 20 of the Poetics he considers utterance ( lexis ) as a linguistic expression of thought, and in this he describes its grammatical parts:The diction, considered as a whole, is made up of the following parts: the letters (or last elements), the syllable, the conjunction, the article, the noun, the verb, the case and the speech. The letter is an indivisible sound of a particular kind, which can be factored into an intelligible sound. The indivisible sounds are also emitted by animals, but none of these is a letter in our sense of the term.

Poetics . XX, 1456b 20

Unlike Plato, who emphasized divine inspiration lacking technique in poetry, for Aristotle poetry is a production ( poiesis ) that requires knowledge and technique. Aristotle was a keen systematic collector of riddles, folklore, and proverbs; he and his school had a special interest in the riddles of the oracle at Delphi and studied Aesop's fables. Although the philosopher considered poetry, painting, sculpture, music and dance to be arts, in his Poetics book, deals mainly with tragedy, epic and very anecdotally music. The influence of that work is still imprinted in the tradition of modern literary theory, such as the concepts of "mimesis", "catharsis", "diction", "peripetia", "anagnorisis", "knot", "denouement". He distinguished between two types of "literary genres" :

• Serious genre : Formed by the epic (narrative) and tragedy (dramatic).
• Humorous genre : Formed by satire (narrative) and comedy (dramatic).

Serious literature is superior to humorous literature, and tragedy is superior to epic, whose force "also exists without representation and without actors" .

The object of imitation of literature is large and clear human actions, the result of a conscious decision. The role of the poet, in the Aristotelian sense, is not so much to write verses as to represent a reality, actions; this is the issue of mimesis . Music imitates with the means of rhythm and harmony, while dance imitates only with rhythm and poetry with language. Tragedy is the imitation of an action that arouses compassion and fear, and is intended to effect catharsis for those same emotions. The forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for example, is a worse-than-average dramatic imitation of men; while tragedy imitates men slightly better than average.He taught that tragedy is made up of six elements: the spectacle, the protagonist, the fable, the diction, the melody, and the thought. Another important rule is respect for plausibility. The story should only present necessary and plausible events; it must not contain the irrational or the illogical, as this would break the public's attachment. However, the poet is not a historian-chronicler. For Aristotle, the poet does not aim at truth, but rather to produce appropriate emotions in listeners. Aristotle affirms that poetics is philosophical than history because it expresses the universal and history only the particular. For Aristotle, Homer is the best poet for saying false things properly .

While Aristotle's Poetics is believed to have originally consisted of two books, one on comedy and one on tragedy, only the part focusing on tragedy has survived. The text of the Poetics , rediscovered in Europe from 1453, has been widely commented on and cited as an authority. From this work the three Aristotelian units designed especially for the theater were derived: action, place and time.

Rhetoric

Aristotle has more consideration for rhetoric unlike Plato, who condemned it for the sophists. A difference between man and animals is language, the transmission of knowledge, based on logical factors and a series of effective subjective factors for communication. Rhetoric is like literature, it is a technique but it is not an art since it does not produce imitations but persuasions to an audience. Aristotle says:Well, (he is persuaded) by mood, when the speech is delivered in such a way as to make the speaker credible. Because we believe honest people more and more quickly, in general in all things, but, of course, completely in those in which there is no room for accuracy, but rather lend themselves to doubt; although it is necessary that this also happen by the work of the discourse and not by having prejudged what the speaker is like. Therefore, it is not (it is true that), in art, as some writers affirm, the honesty of the one who speaks does not incorporate anything in order, what is convincing, but, so to speak, it is almost the personal mood that constitutes the most firm (means of) persuasion.

rhetoric . I, 2, 1356 a5-13

Philodemus and Cicero state that Aristotle began his rhetorical studies as a reaction to the teachings of Isocrates. Although at first in his dialogue Grilo , subtitled On Rhetoric , he adopted a position analogous to the Gorgias dialogue , where he defends that Rhetoric is not an art but a skill, empeiría , Aristotle changed his mind in the Rhetoric , where he considers it an “art”, a tékhne , that is, a theoretical-practical treatise on a specific object, in this case the persuasive word, the rhetorical discourse .Rhetoric is the faculty of considering in each case what serves to persuade, this object is not shared with any other «art», since each of the other disciplines covers only the teaching and persuasion on a specific object, such as the medicine dealing with health and disease, and geometry with the properties of magnitudes, and arithmetic with number, and, in a similar way, the other arts and sciences; Rhetoric deals, on the contrary, with any given thing, so to speak, it seems that it is capable of considering persuasive means in general, that is why we say that it does not limit its study to any specific genre.

rhetoric . I, 2, 1355 b23‑35

The technical means of persuasion are divided into three groups :

• Pathos : it is about the speaker's ability to convey emotions and feelings to the audience, seeking their empathy when the arguments to be presented are controversial.
• Ethos : it is therefore the attitude of the speaker, his mood, a decisive factor when it comes to achieving the listener's settlement .
• Logos : means word, speech or reason. It is the logical reasoning behind any attempt to appeal to the intellect, to logical arguments.

Aristotle divides all speech into oratory genres :

• Political or deliberative oratory ( sumbouleutikon ): speeches addressed to an assembly that deal with "the possible and the "future" so that they make a decision about a proposal.
• Forensic or judicial oratory ( dikanikon ): court speeches dealing with "the past" to prove a person's guilt or innocence.
• Epideictic or demonstrative oratory ( epideiktikon ): ceremonial speeches dealing with "magnitude" to praise or vilify something.

Aristotle also describes two types of rhetorical proof: enthymeme (proof by syllogism) and paradeigma (proof by example). Aristotle's form of persuasion occurs by virtue of evidence of the truth of what is said. He relies on the persuasive power of the irrational elements of discourse, recognizing the importance of the cognitive value of emotions. Faced with the Platonic contempt for rhetoric, Aristotle rehabilitates it. This discipline became integrated into the traditional knowledge block of the trivium .

Influence

The influence that Aristotle has had on the world is extraordinary. All antiquity takes over or owns its enormous encyclopedia. His Metaphysics will be the philosophical foundation of posterity.

Antiquity

Aristotle's disciple and successor, Theophrastus, wrote A History of Plants , a pioneering work on botany. Some of the technical terms for it are still in use, such as carpel or pericarp. Theophrastus was less concerned with formal causes rather than describing how plants worked. Straton of Lampsacus, who succeeded Theophrastus, departed from many aspects of his founder's teaching, including his political formation. He studied and increased the naturalistic elements in Aristotle's thought to the point of denying the need for an active god to build the universe. The library of the Lyceum was given by Theophrastus to his friend named Neleus of Scepsis .

The immediate influence of Aristotle's work was felt when the Lyceum became the Peripatetic school. Notable students of Aristotle included Aristoxenus, Dicearchus of Messina, Demetrius of Phalereus, Eudemus of Rhodes, Harpalus, Hephaestion, and Nicomachus. Aristotle's influence on Alexander the Great is seen in the fact that the latter brought with him on his expedition a large number of zoologists, botanists, and researchers. He had also learned a lot about Persian customs and traditions from his teacher. Although his respect for Aristotle waned, as his travels made it clear that much of Aristotle's geography was plainly wrong, when the old philosopher made his works known to the public, Alexander complained, "You have not done well to publish your works." achromatic doctrines;In the 1st century BC C., the director of the Lyceum Andronicus of Rhodes ordered the conservation of Aristotle's writings, transmitted to the present day in the Corpus aristotelicum .

In Roman times, Aristotelianism was not as popular as Epicureanism or Stoicism. However, Cicero and Plutarch mention Crassus, Staseas, and Pupio Piso as Roman followers of Aristotle's doctrines. Among other representatives of Roman peripateticism are Themistios and Alexander of Aphrodisias. Aristotle is also commented on by the Neoplatonic tradition and integrated into this philosophy, which attempts a synthesis between Plato and Aristotle to the spiritual currents of the East. It is through the Neoplatonists, especially Plotinus, Porphyry and Simplicius, that early Aristotelian Christianity penetrates .

Middle Ages

With the loss of the study of the ancient Greeks in the ancient Latin-medieval West, Aristotle was virtually unknown there since except through the Latin translation of Boethius' Organon . The Western High Middle Ages will be mainly the access to Aristotle's thought through this work. For the Latin Christian writers of the 4th century, Aristotle was above all a dialectician and naturalist. They did not know his metaphysics and sometimes had an attitude contrary to his pagan thought. It was the Arabs who rediscovered Aristotle and through them passed on to scholastic philosophy.

Aristotle was one of the most revered Western thinkers in early Islamic theology. Most of Aristotle's extant works, as well as some of the original Greek commentaries, were translated into Arabic and studied by Muslim philosophers, scientists, and scholars. Averroes, Avicenna, and Al-Farabi, who wrote about Aristotle in great depth, also influenced Thomas Aquinas and other Western Christian scholastic philosophers. Medieval Muslim scholars regularly described Aristotle as the "First Teacher". The obscurity of some of the texts in which he presents these ideas favored the appearance of various interpretations, in particular with the agent intellect with the soul.

Scholastic Christians strove to try to unite the Aristotelian view of persons with the teachings of the immortality of the soul and resurrection of the body.Medieval theologians applied hylomorphism to Christian doctrines, such as the transubstantiation of the bread and wine of the Eucharist. The interpretations of Thomas Aquinas stand out, for whom all human souls have such understanding and therefore are immortal, and that of Averroes, according to which the agent intellect is not a part of our soul, but of God. In the 13th century, Aristotelian philosophy, revised by Thomas Aquinas, became the official doctrine of the Latin Church, despite the condemnation in 1277 of a set of Aristotelian proposals by Bishop Étienne Tempier. It also becomes the philosophical and scientific reference for all serious reflection, giving rise to scholasticism and Thomism .

The Italian poet Dante says of Aristotle in The Divine Comedy :I saw the master of those who know

seder tra filosófica family.

All miran, all honor do them:

there I saw Socrates and Platothat 'in front of the others more near them stand.I saw the teacher, that knowledge spills,

sitting, in philosophical family:

everyone admires him, honors him, acclaims him,

of Plato and Socrates surrounded,and of Zeno, and others of lofty fame.The Divine Comedy, Hell, Canto IV. 131-135

A medieval tale held that Aristotle advised his student Alexander the Great to avoid the king's seductive mistress, Philis, but that he himself was captivated by her, and she managed to ride him. Philis secretly told Alexander, and he witnessed how a woman's charms could overcome even the greatest philosopher's intellect .

Modern age

Some medieval scientific discoveries were criticized for simply not being found in Aristotle, impeding observational science. However, in the Renaissance his authority is overshadowed by a momentary historical eclipse. Martin Luther saw the Catholic Church as an Aristotelian Church and opposed the Stagerite because it opposes divine grace. New scientific concepts take it to the background. William Harvey and Galileo Galilei reacted against the theories of Aristotle and other thinkers of the classical era such as Galen. But his influence, although no longer in physics, will continue to be valid in philosophical thought in the strict sense in all the great thinkers such as Leibniz despite Luther's opposition. Francis Bacon stated that:

"Aristotle made natural philosophy a slave to his logic. "

Empiricists such as Thomas Hobbes criticized the Aristotelian theory of perception, and David Hume the conception of causality and substance. Immanuel Kant also transformed several Aristotelian concepts. In Aristotle, the notion of concept is a true universal in various substances of which remain external to us, but can be grasped. In contrast, a concept for Kant exists only in the minds of individuals. Kantian and utilitarian ethics argued that duties towards humanity are the proper moral standards for ethics rather than happiness. However, Benito Jerónimo Feijoo wrote in his Erudite and Curious Lettersthat among the ancient philosophers "certainly the greatest of them all may be counted; that is, the great Stagirite." Voltaire said of him:

"Aristotle was a great man, because he established the rules of tragedy after having established those of dialectics, morality and politics, uncovering as much as possible the great veil that covered Nature. "

Contemporary age

In the nineteenth century there is a return to Aristotelian metaphysics, beginning with Schelling and continuing with Ravaisson, Trendelenburg, and Brentano. Georg Wilhelm Hegel praised Aristotle for "decisively elaborating and knowing" the concept of end already present in Socrates and Plato. Following Wolff and Kant, Hegel extends the field of teleology, which no longer pertains only to beings humans, but also to the system. In addition, it goes from a universal process to temporal and historical processes, a change that strongly marks modern teleologies. Hegel also has a conception of the individual different from that of Aristotle. According to Hegel, humans are parts of a universal whole that gives them identity, role, and functions; Aristotle, on the other hand, is more individualistic, he gives more emphasis to the centrality of the human being.​

Karl Marx is sometimes seen as influenced by Aristotle because in him is found the idea of ​​free action to realize the "potential" of human beings that capitalism prevents. Marx called him "the greatest thinker of antiquity" in Capital . Friedrich Nietzsche is said to have borrowed almost all of his political philosophy from Aristotle. Implausible as it may be, it is true that Aristotle's rigid separation of action from production, and his justification of the subordination of slaves and others to virtue .

Currently the Aristotelian biological essentialism in species is out of use, being the evolutionary theory proposed by Darwin capable of explaining the variation within a species without positing an essence in the species. However, the emphasis that Aristotle places on orderly development of the parts of the embryo is a precursor to the processes proposed by two later scientists: The laws of embryology proposed by Karl Ernst von Baer and Ernst Haeckel 's Theory of Recapitulation .

In the 20th century, Heidegger also returns to Aristotle's metaphysics, elaborating a new interpretation with the intention of justifying his deconstruction of the scholastic and philosophical tradition. Political thinkers such as Hannah Arendt and Ayn Rand took up his practical philosophy in their ethical theories and policies. Ayn Rand stated that she regarded Aristotle as the world's greatest philosopher and particularly appreciated his Órganon ('Logic'). The English mathematician George Boole fully accepted Aristotle's logic, but decided to "go under, over and beyond". with his system of algebraic logic in his book The Laws of Thoughtfrom 1854. However, Gottlob Frege developed notions of quantification and predication into his logic, rendering his syllogism obsolete .

On the other hand, philosophers of science such as John Tyndall and Karl Popper complained about Aristotle's excessive influence on science. Popper accused Aristotle of having retarded the development of thought itself:

«I believe that the development of thought since Aristotle could be summed up by saying that every discipline, as long as it used the Aristotelian method of definition, has remained stuck in a state of empty verbiage and sterile scholasticism, and that the degree to which the various sciences have been able to do some progress depends on the degree to which they have been able to get rid of this essentialist method. (This is why much of our "social science" still belongs to the Middle Ages). "

Bertrand Russell in his book History of Western Philosophy was very critical of his logic and even said of him in The Scientific Perspective that:

"[Aristotle] has been one of the great misfortunes of the human race. "

Yet more than 2,300 years after his death, Aristotle remains one of the most influential men in the world. A number of philosophers hold that Aristotelian ideas offer fruitful solutions to contemporary philosophical problems. His ethics, while always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics, as in the thought of Philippa Foot and Alasdair MacIntyre, who has attempted to reform what he calls the Aristotelian tradition in a way that is anti-elitist and capable of challenging the claims of liberals and Nietzscheans. This rediscovery of Aristotle's ethical thought formed the current of "neo-Aristotelian naturalism" . Edward Feser defended Aristotle's thinking on scientific progress.In the philosophy of mathematics, the "Sydney School" adopted a neo-Aristotelian realist notion of mathematics in the face of Platonism and nominalism .

Umberto Eco 's novel The Name of the Rose focuses on the disappearance of the second part of Aristotle's Poetics . More recently, Christopher Plummer played the philosopher in the film Alexander . Cartoonist Sam Kieth made him one of the characters (with Plato and Epicurus) in his comic Epicurus the Wise .

Plays

The Lyceum, under the direction of Theophrastus, did not have the stability of Plato's Academy and transferred the bulk of its activity to Alexandria under the protection of the Hellenistic kingdom of the Ptolemies. This dispersion caused the dispersion of Aristotle's work. Being mostly unedited, interpolations by disciples and commentators were the source of apocryphal contributions .

Aristotle's writings are classified into two groups: the exoteric or external ones , (generally intended for a large audience, such as Platonic dialogues); and the esoteric or acroamatic (not intended for a large audience, aimed at his students or a public with philosophical knowledge). The works of Aristotle that have come down to us through the transmission of medieval manuscripts are part of this second group . Only a few more works of the first group have been found in fragments.

Corpus Aristotelicum

The works of Aristotle are collected in the "Corpus Aristotelicum" ordered as we know today by Andronicus of Rhodes. They are edited according to the Prussian edition of Immanuel Bekker of 1831-1836, indicating the page, the column (a or b) and possibly the line of the text in that edition. The Corpus is divided into five groups: Logic (Órganon), Natural Philosophy, Metaphysics, Ethics and politics; and Rhetoric and Poetics.

Representations

Paintings

Aristotle has been represented by important artists such as Lucas Cranach the Elder, Justus van Gent, Raphael, Paolo Veronese, Jusepe de Ribera, Rembrandt, and Francesco Hayez throughout the centuries. Among the best known is Raphael's fresco, The School of Athens , in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, where the figures of Plato and Aristotle are central to the image, at the architectural vanishing point, reflecting their importance. Also Rembrandt's work, Aristotle with a bust of Homer is a famous work.

• The Nuremberg Chronicle anachronistically shows Aristotle in the clothes of a medieval scholar. Ink and watercolor on paper, 1493.
• Aristotle of Justus of Ghent. Oil on panel, c. 1476.
• Philis and Aristotle by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Oil on panel, 1530
• Aristotle by Paolo Veronese. Oil on canvas, from the 1560s.
• Aristotle and Campaspe, Alessandro Turchi (attrib.) Oil on canvas, 1713.
• Aristotle by Jusepe de Ribera. Oil on canvas, 1637.
• Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer by Rembrandt. Oil on canvas, 1653.
• Aristotle by Johann Jakob Dorner the Elder. Oil on canvas, around 1813.

Sculptures

• statues
• Relief of Aristotle in Chartres Cathedral
• Aristotle figure at the Schöner Brunnen fountain in Nuremberg
• Aristotle sculpture near the entrance of The Aristotle School (The Lyceum) in Mieza, Macedonia
• Aristotle statue at Joachimsthal Secondary School by Max Klein.
• Aristotle sculpture at the Natural History Museum in Vienna
• Aristotle sculpture from St. Daniel's Library, Bangor, Flintshire, Wales
• Bronze statue of Aristotle at the university in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
• Bronze statue of the philosopher Aristotle in Aristotelous Square, Thessaloniki, Greece