Arystoteles

Arystoteles, also known as Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης), was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Stagira in northern Greece around 384 BCE and who died in 322 BCE. He studied at Plato’s Academy in Athens but later founded his own school, the Lyceum, where he conducted lectures and wrote on a wide range of subjects. He also tutored Alexander the Great during the 4th century BCE.

Arystoteles produced a large and influential body of work covering logic, natural philosophy, ethics, politics, rhetoric, poetry, and metaphysics. His logical theory, the Organon, laid out a system of deductive reasoning that shaped Western thought for centuries. In metaphysics he proposed hylomorphism, the view that substances are composites of matter and form, and he articulated the four causes to explain why things exist as they do. In biology and natural philosophy he emphasized empirical observation and classification, laying groundwork for later scientific methods, even as some conclusions differ from modern science.

In ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics argues that virtue lies in a mean between excess and deficiency and that the supreme good is eudaimonia, or human flourishing. In politics he analyzes the purposes of the city-state and different forms of government. In poetics he discusses tragedy, mimesis, and the role of catharsis. His writings were transmitted through later scholars in the Islamic world and in medieval Christendom, where they shaped philosophy, theology, and science.

Arystoteles’ influence on Western thought is profound, informing logic, metaphysics, science, ethics, and political theory for many centuries and continuing to be studied as a foundational source in the history of ideas.