Aristote
Observe, classify, reason: happiness through virtue.
Aristote (384 – 322 av. J.-C., Macedonia · Athens) : aristotelianism. A student of Plato, Aristotle brings the Forms back into things: a being's form is in it, and we know it by observing. Everything tends toward an end; the human end is happiness, which consists in exercising what is distinctively ours, reason, in accordance with virtue. On AskPhilosophy: 8 reconstructed arguments, 3 quotes checked word for word against the original texts, and 2 common beliefs examined; every text carries an authenticity badge (written by the author, posthumous, student notes, reported, apocryphal).
Why he matters
He invented formal logic, classified living beings, founded virtue ethics and political science. For nearly two thousand years, Muslim, Jewish and Christian thinkers called him simply "the Philosopher".
His times
Twenty years at Plato's Academy, then tutor to the young Alexander the Great. He founded his own school in Athens, the Lyceum. His surviving works are mostly lecture notes, edited three centuries after his death.
His positions
click a row to see the evidenceThere is an eternal unmoved first mover, pure thought thinking itself. Not a personal god: it does not create the world or care for it.
All humans desire to know, and knowledge starts with the senses. But reason then draws the universal out of the particular.
Demonstrative science is possible from first principles; but each field has its own degree of precision (ethics less than mathematics).
The soul is the form of the living body: neither a separate thing (against Plato) nor mere matter. Whether the intellect can be separate remains debated.
We are responsible for our voluntary acts and, in part, for our character, formed by our habits.
Human good is objective, grounded in human nature, but judged with practical wisdom according to situations.
An entirely rational philosophy: even the first mover is reached by argument, not revelation.
Everything aims at an end, and the end of human life is happiness: activity of soul in accordance with virtue.
Humans are rational and political animals: they flourish only in the city.
The city is natural and prior to the individual; he favours a mixed, moderate constitution.
The founder of virtue ethics: virtue is an acquired disposition, a mean between two vices.