In 1511, the Italian painter Raphael (1483–1520) completed a giant fresco in Rome called The School of Athens. At the heart of the painting, which shows dozens of the most celebrated ancient Greek philosophers, stand two towering figures: Plato (c. 429–347 BC) and his most brilliant student, Aristotle (384–322 BC).
The famous fresco was installed at the Vatican, a symbol of the central role the two thinkers have played in the Western intellectual tradition. Along with his teacher, Aristotle is considered one of the most influential philosophers in history.
Aristotle was born in Stagira, a village in northern Greece. His father, Nichomachus, was the Macedonian royal family’s doctor, and Aristotle himself originally trained in medicine. However, he moved to Athens in 367 BC to study at Plato’s Academy, where he would remain for about twenty years.
While in Athens, Aristotle completed the first of the scores of texts he would write during his lifetime. Approximately thirty survive. Although he was highly influenced by Plato, the two men differed on some philosophical questions, and Aristotle left the city after his mentor’s death.
Returning to Macedonia, Aristotle was hired as the tutor for the king’s thirteen-year-old son, Alexander the Great (356–323 BC). When Alexander became king and later conquered Athens, Aristotle returned to the city, where he founded his own school.
Aristotle is credited with laying the foundation for Western philosophy by creating the first system of formal logic. He also pioneered the study of biology, with work that has recently been seen as a major contribution to the field. His writings on metaphysics, when they were rediscovered in Europe in the Middle Ages, would have a profound effect on Christian theologians such as Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274).
After Alexander’s death, however, Athens revolted against Macedonian rule. Because of his close links to the Macedonians, Aristotle’s life was threatened and he fled. He moved to the island of Euboea, where he died shortly afterward.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Aristotle offered a supposed proof of the existence of a supreme being. In what’s known as the theory of the Unmoved Mover, Aristotle argued that every event in the universe is set in motion by some other event. But the chain of action has to start somewhere—with the force Aristotle called the Unmoved Mover, and which later Christian writers used as logical proof of God’s existence.
- According to an ancient historian, Alexander the Great’s favorite book was The Iliad; during his military campaigns, he always carried a copy of the book that Aristotle had given him.
- Aristotle married a woman named Pythias, the adoptive daughter (or perhaps niece) of a friend and fellow student of Plato’s; the couple had one daughter, also named Pythias.
