Aristotle

Aristotle (384 to 322 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist who studied under Plato, tutored Alexander the Great and founded his own school, the Lyceum, in Athens. He wrote on logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, poetry and biology. Only about thirty-one of his works survive, but they shaped philosophy in Europe, the Middle East and beyond for more than two thousand years.

Early life

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE in Stagira, a small city in the Macedonian region of northeastern Greece. This is why he is sometimes called “the Stagirite.” The ancient writer Diogenes Laertius, whose reliability is questionable, says that Aristotle’s father, Nicomachus, was physician to the Macedonian king Amyntas. The outline of the story is considered credible, though many details are not certain.

At about age seventeen, Aristotle went to Athens and joined the Academy, the school founded by Plato. He stayed for roughly twenty years, until Plato died in 348 or 347 BCE. There he absorbed the earlier philosophical tradition that he later quoted and criticized in his own books. Scholars suggest several reasons he left. One is that, as a foreigner without Athenian citizenship, he could not lead the school. Another is that anti-Macedonian feeling was growing in Athens.

Travels, Alexander and the Lyceum

Aristotle moved to Asia Minor, on the coast of present-day Turkey, and then to the island of Lesbos. He married Pythias, a relative of his host Hermeias, and they had a daughter. On Lesbos he worked with Theophrastus, who would later lead his school, and began serious research in marine biology.

In 343 BCE King Philip of Macedon asked him to teach his thirteen-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great, at the capital, Pella. Historians know little about what Aristotle taught the boy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy concludes that the lessons probably lasted two or three years.

Aristotle returned to Athens in 335 BCE and set up his school in a public exercise ground devoted to Apollo Lykeios, from which the name Lyceum comes. His followers became known as Peripatetics, probably after a covered walkway, the peripatos, on the grounds. The school studied everything from botany and astronomy to political history, and collected manuscripts for what some ancient accounts call the first great library.

After Alexander died in 323 BCE, resentment of Macedon flared in Athens. Aristotle left for Chalcis on the island of Euboea, reportedly remarking that he would not let Athens sin twice against philosophy, a reference to the execution of Socrates. He died there of natural causes in 322 BCE.

Major contributions

Aristotle probably wrote as many as two hundred treatises. The thirty-one that survive read like lecture notes and working drafts rather than polished books. He also wrote dialogues for a wider audience, which Cicero praised, but only fragments remain.

Logic

Aristotle created the first systematic study of valid reasoning. His central tool was the syllogism, an argument in which a conclusion follows from two premises. If every B is an A, and every C is a B, then every C is an A. His logical works were later grouped as the Organon, and they served as the standard textbooks of logic for centuries.

Science and metaphysics

Aristotle observed plants and animals closely and wrote detailed descriptions, which makes him an early figure in empirical biology. He argued that a full explanation of anything requires four kinds of cause: what it is made of, its form, what brought it about and what it is for. His work on being and substance, collected in the Metaphysics, helped define the field of metaphysics.

Ethics and politics

In the Nicomachean Ethics, probably named for his father or his son, Aristotle argued that the goal of human life is happiness, understood as living well through the use of reason and good character. This approach to ethics centers on the virtues rather than rules. In the Politics he held that the purpose of the state is the good of all its citizens, and that a community does best when laws rule rather than a single person.

Rhetoric and poetry

The Rhetoric studies how to persuade an audience. The Poetics analyzes how poems and plays work, and it remains a starting point for the theory of tragedy.

Legacy

After his death the Lyceum carried on for a time, but his writings seem to have dropped out of circulation for about a century. They resurfaced in the first century BCE and became the basis of a long tradition of commentary. Between the sixth and twelfth centuries most of his works were lost to Western Europe, yet scholars in the Byzantine and Arabic-speaking worlds studied them closely. In Arabic philosophy he was called simply “The First Teacher,” and commentators such as Avicenna and Averroes developed his ideas.

When these commentaries reached Latin Europe in the twelfth century, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas worked to reconcile Aristotle with Christian thought. His framework dominated university philosophy through the late Middle Ages and survived into the Renaissance. In the twentieth century his influence returned in virtue ethics, a revival that continues today.

FAQs

Was Aristotle Plato’s student?

Yes. He studied in Plato’s Academy for about twenty years, although he disagreed with Plato on several major points.

Did Aristotle teach Alexander the Great?

Yes, at the request of Philip of Macedon, but little is known about the lessons. Scholars think they lasted only two or three years.

How many of Aristotle’s works survive?

About thirty-one treatises survive out of a body of work that may have numbered two hundred.

Why is Aristotle called the Stagirite?

He was born in Stagira, so scholars sometimes use the nickname.

Editorially reviewed by Specialty Digest Editorial TeamLast reviewed November 4, 2026Researched and drafted with AI assistanceReport an issue