Aristotle 384 - 322BCE

Today you will learn... Who was Aristotle What was his main teaching His central Ideas.

His life Story... Born in Thrace Son of a Doctor to the Macadonian King, Amyntas II. One of Plato’s best students in the Acadamy He was the tutor of Alexander the Great HE set up his own university called The LYCEUM Died in 322BCE.

Important His teaching can be divided into 3 distinct parts The period of time spent with Plato Period of time spent at Assos His time as leader of the Lyceum in Athens.

agreement with Plato In his early life, Aristotle was very influenced by Plato - and he agreed with his ‘THEORY OF IDEAS’. He believed in the idea for ‘treeness’ ‘rockness’ ‘tableness’ etc. Plato called these ideas - Aristotle called them forms.

Aristotle advances plato’s ideas Aristotle took Plato’s ideas and advanced them further. He started to look at FORM and MATTER. The form is the ‘essence’ of something - that which makes it what it is, eg, a trees ‘treeness’ a rocks ‘rockness’ a flowers ‘flowerness’ He went on to say that form alone is not enough. Form needs something concrete to make it real - Matter.

Form and matter need eachother This was a very big development in philosophical thought. Basically, there is a part of everything that stays the same (it’s form) and there is a part of everything that changes (it’s matter) e.g. all trees share something we would call ‘treeness’ but each tree is individually different. For Aristotle, form cannot exist without matter and matter cannot exist without form.

continued... Aristotle saw form and matter as equally important. Plato saw form as being more important. Aristotle’s views move away from Plato’s dualistic understanding of being - where the physical and the spiritual are separate and where the spiritual was seen as being superior.