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Logic, Ethics & Natural Philosophy
Aristotle
384 BC – 322 BC
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
The Stagyrite who classified everything. Aristotle's encyclopaedic intellect ranged from biology to tragedy, establishing logic, physics, ethics, and political theory as distinct disciplines.
Biography
Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born in Stagira, Macedonia, and entered Plato's Academy at age seventeen, where he studied for twenty years. After Plato's death, he founded his own school, the Lyceum, in Athens.
He is perhaps history's most wide-ranging intellect. He wrote treatises on logic, natural science, ethics, politics, rhetoric, aesthetics, and biology. In almost every field he visited, he was the first to treat it as a systematic discipline.
In metaphysics, he rejected Plato's separate Forms, arguing instead for hylomorphism: every substance is a union of matter and form. His concept of eudaimonia — often translated as flourishing or happiness — remains one of the most influential ideas in ethical theory.
Important Works
Nicomachean Ethics
350 BCThe definitive ancient account of virtue, practical wisdom, and the good life.
Politics
350 BCMan is a political animal; the city-state is the natural context for human flourishing.
Metaphysics
340 BCAn inquiry into being qua being, substance, causation, and the Unmoved Mover.
Key Takeaways
- Form is immanent in matter, not separate from it (contra Plato).
- The four causes: material, formal, efficient, final.
- Virtue is a mean between extremes — courage lies between cowardice and recklessness.
- Man is by nature a political animal (zoon politikon).
- Eudaimonia (flourishing) is the highest human good, achieved through virtuous activity.