Aristotle

Aristotle

385 BC, Stagira, Greece.
322 BC, Chalcis, Greece.
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Aristotle (Aristotle; 384–322 BC)was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece.

His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, whereafter Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. At seventeen or eighteen years of age, he joined Plato’s Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven. His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government – and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy.

He was the creator of a philosophical and logical framework that turned into the structure and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic way of thinking. Significantly after the scholarly upheavals of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, Aristotelian ideas stayed inserted in Western reasoning.

Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip of Macedon, tutored Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC.