Aristotle

Aristotle (384–322 BC), philosopher. He was a member of the group which gathered round Plato in Athens. He was later tutor to the future Alexander the Great. On his return to Athens, though he did not sever his connection with the Academy, he opened a rival school at the Lyceum in 335.

Though he was a disciple of Plato, his philosophical position was very different. Whereas Plato set out from a world of ‘ideas’, Aristotle asserted that an idea exists only as expressed in the individual object. Thus he held that, so far from there being an idea ‘tree’ possessing existence in its own right, it is the union of the ‘form’ tree with ‘matter’ which makes the real individual tree. This view required a theory of causation to account for the conjunction of form and matter, and Aristotle was thus led to postulate a ‘First Cause’, though he did not hold this supreme cause to be personal in the Christian sense.

Aristotle's philosophy was regarded with suspicion in the early Church, largely because it was thought to lead to a materialistic view of the world. Aristotle was conceived as diametrically opposed to Plato, who was held in high esteem. In the W. knowledge of his works was gradually recovered between the 9th and 13th centuries. Some of his scientific works were transmitted indirectly through Arabic translations and were therefore theologically suspect. Even though such great Christian philosophers as St Albertus Magnus and St Thomas Aquinas built their systems on an avowedly Aristotelian basis, it was only in 1879 with the commendation of Thomistic Aristotelianism in the encyclical ‘Aeterni Patris’ that the suspicion was entirely dissipated.