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111 Chapter 3 Aristotle Aristotle occupies a paramount place in the history of political ideas, not only for the range and robustness of his theories of society and state, formulated in his immense masterpiece Politics, but also for the relevance of his theories to thirteenth century thinkers in their efforts to restore the state on a natural basis against the tenets of “political Augustinism.” Life Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born in Stageira, an ancient Ionian colony on the east coast of Chalcidice.1 His father, Nicomachus (not to be confused with the addressee of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s son), was the personal physician to King Amyntas II of Macedon, father of Philip. Young Aristotle went to Athens in 366, at the age of 18, and entered the Academy as a pupil. He rubbed shoulders with the great orators of the age, among them Isocrates. Though Aristotle soon became Plato’s favorite, it was Speusippus who followed the master as scolarch of the Academy upon his death in 348. Aristotle then left the Academy and Athens to teach at the court of the tyrant Hermias of Atarneus (also a former pupil of the Academy) in Assos, Asia Minor. There he pursued his studies in natural history and “sociology.” Next he traveled to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. In 343 he became tutor to the 13-year-old son of Philip of Macedon, the future Alexander the Great, a position he held for three years. At the age of 50, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his own school, the Lyceum, named for its proximity to the temple of Lycian Apollo. The school grounds had colonnades through which Aristotle strolled as he lectured. This led to the name “the Peripatetics,” used in later years to designate the pupils of the Lyceum. Before long the school rivaled the Academy, which continued to function under Speusippus, and then Xenocrates. Moreover, the Lyceum did not have permanent facilities like the Academy, and Aristotle resorted to subsidies from 1 This section is drawn from Joseph Moreau, Aristote et son école [Aristotle and his school] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962). Part One: Ancient Greece 112 Alexander, who at the time ruled over Greece after the Macedonian victory at Cheronaea in 338 BC. But Alexander died in 323, and the national party raised its head again. Aristotle, a friend of the Macedons, took himself into exile in Euboea with his son, Nicomachus, to avoid the fate imposed on Socrates, adding, “I will not allow Athenians to wrong philosophy twice.” Aristotle died in 322 at the age of 62. Work Aristotle left an enormous body of work, though only a fraction of his thinking and writing actually survive. His work can be divided into exoteric writings (intended for the general public) and esoteric or acroamatic writings (texts for a restricted audience). In the first century BC, his works were collected into a vast Corpus Aristotelicum by Andronicus of Rhodes, the tenth successor of Aristotle as the head of the Lyceum. Texts were collected from different places throughout the Mediterranean. The corpus is structured into five categories: 1. Organon, his writings on logic. 2. Physics, his writings on the study of nature: Physics (a total of eight books), On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, Meteorology (on weather phenomena); On the Soul (introduction to the study of life), Parva naturalia (Little physical treatises), History of Animals, Parts of Animals , Movement of Animals, Generation of Animals (five books, a treatise on embryology). 3. Metaphysical writings (the term is not from Aristotle but from the expression meta ta physica, proposed by the authors of the corpus to refer to writings that came “after” the writings on physics): Metaphysics. 4. Ethics and politics: Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Magna Moralia (Great ethics); Politics, the Athenian Constitution (a modern addition to the Corpus Aristotelicum). 5. Works of applied philosophy: rhetoric and poetics: Rhetoric (dialectics, the art of persuasion ), Poetics (on education). I. Aristotle’s Conception of Nature We will see that, for Aristotle, the city is not a human creation, but a “natural” organism. The meaning of this term is very precise in Aristotle’s philosophy; it is, therefore, necessary to clarify his idea of nature before we turn to his Politics. A. Criticism of Plato’s Theory of Ideas Aristotle was opposed to the idealism and pan-mathematicism of the Platonists. His own starting point is medicine, not mathematics. He is, first and foremost, a naturalist and a biologist. As...

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