Aristotle

Aristotle (384–322 bc), was born at Stagira, in Macedon. He studied under Plato for 20 years. Then after a period of travel he was appointed by Philip of Macedon to be tutor to the future Alexander the Great in 342 and seven years later returned to Athens where he opened a school in the Lyceum, a grove outside the city. His extant works are believed to have been the notes he used for his lectures. They cover logic, ethics, metaphysics, physics, zoology, politics, rhetoric, and poetics. Transmitted through translations, they shaped the development of medieval thought first in the Arab world, then in the Latin West, where Aristotle came to be regarded as the source of all knowledge. His logical treatises won a central place in the curriculum during the 12th cent. Then after a brief struggle his ethical, metaphysical, and scientific works were harmonized with Christianity and constituted the subject-matter of higher education from the 13th to the 17th cent. They shaped the thinking of Englishmen writing in Latin from Grosseteste to Herbert of Cherbury, and their influence can be traced in Spenser, Donne, and occasionally in Sir T. Browne. By the end of the 17th cent., however, the Aristotelian world-view had fallen out of favour except for the Poetics, which came into prominence in the middle of the 16th cent. and contributed to the rise of neo-classicism. It has left its mark on the critical writings of Sidney, Dryden, and even Dr Johnson.