Aristotle

First published Thu Sep 25, 2008; substantive revision Wed Jul 29, 2015
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) numbers among the greatest philosophers of all time. Judged solely
in terms of his philosophical influence, only Plato is his peer: Aristotle’s works shaped
centuries of philosophy from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance, and even today continue
to be studied with keen, non-antiquarian interest. A prodigious researcher and writer, Aristotle
left a great body of work, perhaps numbering as many as two-hundred treatises, from which
approximately thirty-one survive. His extant writings span a wide range of disciplines, from
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logic, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, through ethics, political theory, aesthetics and
rhetoric, and into such primarily non-philosophical fields as empirical biology, where he
excelled at detailed plant and animal observation and description. In all these areas, Aristotle’s
theories have provided illumination, met with resistance, sparked debate, and generally
stimulated the sustained interest of an abiding readership.
Because of its wide range and its remoteness in time, Aristotle’s philosophy defies easy
encapsulation. The long history of interpretation and appropriation of Aristotelian texts and
themes—spanning over two millennia and comprising philosophers working within a variety of
religious and secular traditions—has rendered even basic points of interpretation controversial.
The set of entries on Aristotle in this site addresses this situation by proceeding in three tiers.
First, the present, general entry offers a brief account of Aristotle’s life and characterizes his
central philosophical commitments, highlighting his most distinctive methods and most
influential achievements. Second are General Topics, which offer detailed introductions to the
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main areas of Aristotle’s philosophical activity. Finally, there follow Special Topics, which
investigate in greater detail more narrowly focused issues, especially those of central concern in
recent Aristotelian scholarship.

• 1. Aristotle’s Life
• 2. The Aristotelian Corpus: Character and Primary Divisions
• 3. Phainomena and the Endoxic Method
• 4. Logic, Science, and Dialectic
o 4.1 Logic
o 4.2 Science
o 4.3 Dialectic
• 5. Essentialism and Homonymy
• 6. Category Theory
• 7. The Four Causal Account of Explanatory Adequacy
• 8. Hylomorphism
• 9. Aristotelian Teleology
• 10. Substance
• 11. Living Beings
• 12. Happiness and Political Association
 • 13. Rhetoric and the Arts
• 14. Aristotle’s Legacy
• Bibliography
o A. Translations
o B. Translations with Commentaries
o C. General Works
o D. Bibliography of Works Cited
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Aristotle’s Life
Born in 384 B.C.E. in the Macedonian region of northeastern Greece in the small city of Stagira
(whence the moniker ‘the Stagirite’), Aristotle was sent to Athens at about the age of seventeen
to study in Plato’s Academy, then a pre-eminent place of learning in the Greek world. Once in
Athens, Aristotle remained associated with the Academy until Plato’s death in 347, at which
time he left for Assos, in Asia Minor, on the northwest coast of present-day Turkey. There he
continued the philosophical activity he had begun in the Academy, but in all likelihood also
began to expand his researches into marine biology. He remained at Assos for approximately
three years, when, evidently upon the death of his host Hermeias, a friend and former Academic
who had been the ruler of Assos, Aristotle moved to the nearby coastal island of Lesbos. There
he continued his philosophical and empirical researches for an additional two years, working in
conjunction with Theophrastus, a native of Lesbos who was also reported in antiquity to have
been associated with Plato’s Academy. While in Lesbos, Aristotle married Pythias, the niece of
Hermeias, with whom he had a daughter, also named Pythias.
In 343, upon the request of Philip, the king of Macedon, Aristotle left Lesbos for Pella, the
Macedonian capital, in order to tutor the king’s thirteen-year-old son, Alexander—the boy who
was eventually to become Alexander the Great. Although speculation concerning Aristotle’s
influence upon the developing Alexander has proven irresistible to historians, in fact little
concrete is known about their interaction. On the balance, it seems reasonable to conclude that
some tuition took place, but that it lasted only two or three years, when Alexander was aged
from thirteen to fifteen. By fifteen, Alexander was apparently already serving as a deputy
military commander for his father, a circumstance undermining, if inconclusively, the judgment
of those historians who conjecture a longer period of tuition. Be that as it may, some suppose
that their association lasted as long as eight years.
It is difficult to rule out that possibility decisively, since little is known about the period of
Aristotle’s life from 341–335. He evidently remained a further five years in Stagira or Macedon
before returning to Athens for the second and final time, in 335. In Athens, Aristotle set up his
own school in a public exercise area dedicated to the god Apollo Lykeios, whence its name,
the Lyceum. Those affiliated with Aristotle’s school later came to be called Peripatetics,
probably because of the existence of an ambulatory (peripatos) on the school’s property
adjacent to the exercise ground. Members of the Lyceum conducted research into a wide range
of subjects, all of which were of interest to Aristotle himself: botany, biology, logic, music,
mathematics, astronomy, medicine, cosmology, physics, the history of philosophy,
metaphysics, psychology, ethics, theology, rhetoric, political history, government and political
theory, rhetoric, and the arts. In all these areas, the Lyceum collected manuscripts, thereby,
according to some ancient accounts, assembling the first great library of antiquity.
During this period, Aristotle’s wife, Pythias, died and he developed a new relationship with
Herpyllis, perhaps like him a native of Stagira, though her origins are disputed, as is the
question of her exact relationship to Aristotle. Some suppose that she was merely his slave;
others infer from the provisions of Aristotle’s will that she was a freed woman and likely his
wife at the time of his death. In any event, they had children together, including a son,
Nicomachus, named for Aristotle’s father and after whom his Nicomachean Ethics is
presumably named.
After thirteen years in Athens, Aristotle once again found cause to retire from the city, in 323.
Probably his departure was occasioned by a resurgence of the always-simmering anti-
Macedonian sentiment in Athens, which was free to come to the boil after Alexander
succumbed to disease in Babylon during that same year. Because of his connections to
Macedon, Aristotle reasonably feared for his safety and left Athens, remarking, as an oft-
repeated ancient tale would tell it, that he saw no reason to permit Athens to sin twice against
philosophy. He withdrew directly to Chalcis, on Euboea, an island off the Attic coast, and died
there of natural causes the following year, in 322.
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2. The Aristotelian Corpus: Character and Primary

Divisions
Aristotle’s writings tend to present formidable difficulties to his novice readers. To begin, he
makes heavy use of unexplained technical terminology, and his sentence structure can at times
prove frustrating. Further, on occasion a chapter or even a full treatise coming down to us under
his name appears haphazardly organized, if organized at all; indeed, in several cases, scholars
dispute whether a continuous treatise currently arranged under a single title was ever intended
by Aristotle to be published in its present form or was rather stitched together by some later
editor employing whatever principles of organization he deemed suitable. This helps explain
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why students who turn to Aristotle after first being introduced to the supple and mellifluous
prose on display in Plato’s dialogues often find the experience frustrating. Aristotle’s prose
requires some acclimatization.
All the more puzzling, then, is Cicero’s observation that if Plato’s prose was silver, Aristotle’s
was a flowing river of gold (Ac. Pr. 38.119, cf. Top. 1.3, De or. 1.2.49). Cicero was arguably
the greatest prose stylist of Latin and was also without question an accomplished and fair-
minded critic of the prose styles of others writing in both Latin and Greek. We must assume,
then, that Cicero had before him works of Aristotle other than those we possess. In fact, we
know that Aristotle wrote dialogues, presumably while still in the Academy, and in their few
surviving remnants we are afforded a glimpse of the style Cicero describes. In most of what we
possess, unfortunately, we find work of a much less polished character. Rather, Aristotle’s
extant works read like what they very probably are: lecture notes, drafts first written and then
reworked, ongoing records of continuing investigations, and, generally speaking, in-house
compilations intended not for a general audience but for an inner circle of auditors. These are to
be contrasted with the “exoteric” writings Aristotle sometimes mentions, his more graceful
compositions intended for a wider audience (Pol. 1278b30; EE 1217b22, 1218b34).
Unfortunately, then, we are left for the most part, though certainly not entirely, with unfinished
works in progress rather than with finished and polished productions. Still, many of those who
persist with Aristotle come to appreciate the unembellished directness of his style.
More importantly, the unvarnished condition of Aristotle’s surviving treatises does not hamper
our ability to glean their philosophical content. His thirty-one surviving works (that is, those
contained in the “Corpus Aristotelicum” of our medieval manuscripts that are judged to be
authentic) all contain recognizably Aristotelian doctrine; and most of these contain theses
whose basic purport is clear, even where matters of detail and nuance are subject to exegetical
controversy.
These works may be categorized in terms of the intuitive organizational principles preferred by
Aristotle. He refers to the branches of learning as “sciences” (epistêmai), best regarded as
organized bodies of learning completed for presentation rather than as ongoing records of
empirical researches. Moreover, again in his terminology, natural sciences such as physics are
but one branch of theoretical science, which comprises both empirical and non-empirical
pursuits. He distinguishes theoretical science from more practically oriented studies, some of
which concern human conduct and others of which focus on the productive crafts. Thus, the
Aristotelian sciences divide into three: (i) theoretical, (ii) practical, and (iii) productive. The
principles of division are straightforward: theoretical science seeks knowledge for its own sake;
practical science concerns conduct and goodness in action, both individual and societal; and
productive science aims at the creation of beautiful or useful objects (Top. 145a15–16; Phys.
192b8–12; DC 298a27–32, DA 403a27–b2; Met. 1025b25, 1026a18–19, 1064a16–19, b1–
3; EN 1139a26–28, 1141b29–32).
(i) The theoretical sciences include prominently what Aristotle calls first philosophy, or
metaphysics as we now call it, but also mathematics, and physics, or natural philosophy.
Physics studies the natural universe as a whole, and tends in Aristotle’s hands to concentrate on
conceptual puzzles pertaining to nature rather than on empirical research; but it reaches further,
so that it includes also a theory of causal explanation and finally even a proof of an unmoved
mover thought to be the first and final cause of all motion. Many of the puzzles of primary
concern to Aristotle have proven perennially attractive to philosophers, mathematicians, and
theoretically inclined natural scientists. They include, as a small sample, Zeno’s paradoxes of
motion, puzzles about time, the nature of place, and difficulties encountered in thought about
the infinite.
Natural philosophy also incorporates the special sciences, including biology, botany, and
astronomical theory. Most contemporary critics think that Aristotle treats psychology as a sub-
branch of natural philosophy, because he regards the soul (psuchê) as the basic principle of life,
including all animal and plant life. In fact, however, the evidence for this conclusion is scanty.
It is instructive to note that earlier periods of Aristotelian scholarship thought this controversial,
so that, for instance, even something as innocuous-sounding as the question of the proper home
of psychology in Aristotle’s division of the sciences ignited a multi-decade debate in the
Renaissance. [5]

(ii) Practical sciences are less contentious, at least as regards their range. These deal with
conduct and action, both individual and societal. Practical science thus contrasts with
theoretical science, which seeks knowledge for its own sake, and, less obviously, with the
productive sciences, which deal with the creation of products external to sciences themselves.
Both politics and ethics fall under this branch.
(iii) Finally, then, the productive sciences are mainly crafts aimed at the production of artefacts,
or of human productions more broadly construed. The productive sciences include, among
others, ship-building, agriculture, and medicine, but also the arts of music, theatre, and dance.
Another form of productive science is rhetoric, which treats the principles of speech-making
appropriate to various forensic and persuasive settings, including centrally political assemblies.
Significantly, Aristotle’s tri-fold division of the sciences makes no mention of logic. Although
he did not use the word ‘logic’ in our sense of the term, Aristotle in fact developed the first
formalized system of logic and valid inference. In Aristotle’s framework—although he is
nowhere explicit about this—logic belongs to no one science, but rather formulates the
principles of correct argumentation suitable to all areas of inquiry in common. It systematizes
the principles licensing acceptable inference, and helps to highlight at an abstract level
seductive patterns of incorrect inference to be avoided by anyone with a primary interest in
truth. So, alongside his more technical work in logic and logical theory, Aristotle investigates
informal styles of argumentation and seeks to expose common patterns of fallacious reasoning.
Aristotle’s investigations into logic and the forms of argumentation make up part of the group
of works coming down to us from the Middle Ages under the heading
the Organon (organon = tool in Greek). Although not so characterized in these terms by
Aristotle, the name is apt, so long as it is borne in mind that intellectual inquiry requires a broad
range of tools. Thus, in addition to logic and argumentation (treated primarily in the Prior
Analytics and Topics), the works included in the Organon deal with category theory, the
doctrine of propositions and terms, the structure of scientific theory, and to some extent the
basic principles of epistemology.
When we slot Aristotle’s most important surviving authentic works into this scheme, we end up
with the following basic divisions of his major writings:

• Organon
o Categories (Cat.)
o De Interpretatione (DI) [On Interpretation]
o Prior Analytics (APr)
o Posterior Analytics (APo)
o Topics (Top.)
o Sophistical Refutations (SE)
• Theoretical Sciences
o Physics (Phys.)
o Generation and Corruption (Gen. et Corr.)
o De Caelo (DC) [On the Heavens]
o Metaphysics (Met.)
o De Anima (DA) [On the Soul]
o Parva Naturalia (PN) [Brief Natural Treatises]
o History of Animals (HA)
o Parts of Animals (PA)
 o Movement of Animals (MA)
o Meteorology (Meteor.)
o Progression of Animals (IA)
o Generation of Animals (GA)
• Practical Sciences
o Nicomachean Ethics (EN)
o Eudemian Ethics (EE)
o Magna Moralia (MM) [Great Ethics]
o Politics (Pol.)
• Productive Science
o Rhetoric (Rhet.)
o Poetics (Poet.)
The titles in this list are those in most common use today in English-language scholarship,
followed by standard abbreviations in parentheses. For no discernible reason, Latin titles are
customarily employed in some cases, English in others. Where Latin titles are in general use,
English equivalents are given in square brackets.