La Aventura del Pensamiento - Aristotle (Summary)

Key Points

o  Aristotle was born in 384 BC, in Stagira.
o   He was student of Plato (for 20 year) and teacher of Alexander the Great, after his  father, Philip II of Macedon, hired him to teach his son.
o   He understood man as a rational (reasoning, we are capable of thinking what we do, we are able to amaze, which is the basic principle of philosophy) and political (we need to live in the "polis", as a community) animal. Moreover, he firmly believed that only the individual, the particular, is real.
o   Supposedly Aristotle said: "I'm friend of Plato but more friend of truth."
o   Aristotle's Ideas (Realistic). He didn't believe in an ideal world, like Plato, instead he believed that the concepts (individuals, objects, things, etc.) are here in our world. In addition, our mind is the one who creates those concepts, and they are not in other ideal world. Instead, they are in the ability to think about the diversity of the world.    
o   Founded a school in Athens, called Aristotelian School.
o   Sciences Division:
ü  Productive = Production of useful objects.
ü  Practical = Human Action (here we find Ethics and Politics)
ü  Theoretical = Knowledge for knowledge's sake (here we find Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics ).
o   For Aristotle, ideas are fictitious entities, there are only individuals.
ü  Individuals are substances that support all the attributes that we preach from them.
o   Plato and Aristotle believed in the "Essence of Thing", the first one called it idea or eidos (in Greek) and the second one called it sometimes form, others gender, essence or ousia (in Greek).
o   He gave birth (created) to a new science = Ethics
ü  What is the purpose of the human being in the world?
ü  What does the human being aspires to find?
·        According to Aristotle: Happiness.
ü  For Aristotle, Ethics is a reflection on human actions in pursuit of Freedom.  
o   He died in 322 BC, in Chalcis.

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