Aristotle

Abstract

Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. at Stagira, a city on the northern outskirts of the Greek world, but at the age of seventeen he came to the Academy in Athens to study under Plato. For the next twenty years, from 367 to 347, when Plato died, he was a member of the Academy, and took part in its research and teaching. After a period away from Athens, during which he made some serious biological studies, and also, for a time, was tutor to the future Alexander the Great, he returned to found his own school, the Lyceum. Like Plato, he wrote a number of works for publication, but all these have perished, though the main outlines of some can be reconstructed. What we have left to us is a vast collection of ‘Aristotelian papers’, connected with the lectures which Aristotle gave to students at various periods of his life. These papers were edited in ancient times and given the form in which we now have them, and it is a matter of conjecture how much was written by Aristotle himself, and how much by editors or pupils. It is also difficult to make any chronological arrangement of them, because it is probable that passages written at very different dates are found next to each other in many works.