Aristotle

Aristotle was born around 384 B.C.E. in Stagira, a village in Central Macedonia in Northern Greece. Not much is known about Aristotle’s mother, Phaestis; however, Aristotle’s father, Nicomachus, was a court physician for the Macedonian King Amyntas II. Both Phaestis and Nicomachus died when Aristotle was an adolescent, and he spent the rest of his childhood under the care of a guardian. When Aristotle was 17 years old, he went to Athens and enrolled in Plato’s Academy, where he lived and studied for nearly 20 years. Aristotle was taught by Plato, who was taught by Socrates before him. Aristotle left the academy around the time Plato died, and he traveled to the island Lesbos to study botany. Here, Aristotle met and married his wife, Pythias, and had a daughter by the same name. Aristotle returned to the Macedonian court around the year 338 B.C.E. and served as personal tutor to Alexander the Great, the future king of Macedonia. During this time, Aristotle taught at the Lyceum, a temple in Athens, where he founded the Peripatetic school of philosophy, which was based on science and inductive reasoning. Aristotle had several prominent students, including Ptolemy, a general under Alexander the Great and the future pharaoh of Egypt. Around 335 B.C.E., Aristotle’s wife, Pythias, died, and he went on to marry his second wife, Herpyllis and have additional children—including a son, Nicomachus, named after Aristotle’s father. 335 to 323 B.C.E. are thought to have been the most productive years of Aristotle’s life. He extensively studied subjects like philosophy, politics, physics, poetry, and biology, and he published over 200 books, likely in manuscript form on papyrus. Thirty-one of Aristotle’s works have survived antiquity, including Poetics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Rhetoric. In 322 B.C.E, Aristotle died at age 62 of natural causes on the Greek island of Euboea. Aristotle had a profound impact on early thought and philosophy and is often referred to as the “Father of Western Philosophy.” Along with Plato and Socrates, Aristotle pioneered many of the theories and ideas that inform modern economics, politics, ethics, and science.