Aristotle
384–322 BC 9 entries
Biography
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the most influential thinkers in history. Born in Stagira in northern Greece, the son of a court physician of Macedon, he came to Athens at seventeen and studied in Plato’s Academy for some twenty years. He later became tutor to the young Alexander the Great, and in 335 BC he founded his own school in Athens, the Lyceum. His followers were called Peripatetics, perhaps after the covered walk where he taught.
He wrote on logic, physics, biology, ethics, politics, poetry and rhetoric, and in many of these fields he was the first to set out a system. His Nicomachean Ethics, Politics and Poetics are still read and taught today. After Alexander’s death he left Athens, saying that he would not let the city sin twice against philosophy, and he died a year later in Chalcis. For the scholars of the Middle Ages, Christian and Muslim alike, he was simply the Philosopher.
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