Aristotle [4:33]
It's in Aristotle that we find the work in the beginnings of so many fields—physics, biology, logic, metaphysics, political science, and on from there. We'll try to understand just some basic ideas of things he talked about and then maybe a couple of bigger things. Especially as we understand Plato, we might understand Aristotle in comparison, although Aristotle was Plato's student. Aristotle was there at the beginnings of the academy, as Plato put it together. Aristotle would start his own school called the Lyceum—that word carries forward, the French certainly use it. Aristotle, sitting perhaps in the back of Plato's class, found himself in disagreement with much of his teacher's work.
Remember for Plato, there is the ideal. Instead for Aristotle, we get—I think we would find as more appealing perhaps—which is looking at things and trying to classify them. Perhaps this is best represented in biology or botany, is that looking a leaf, we start to look for more and more examples—we try to understand them. Even though he reads the evidence in, it's still the idea that you would go and look at the physical world rather than just think about the physical world. Aristotle is perhaps more influential though in things like logic. He brings about the syllogism—the idea that if something is something, we can understand it. Made ever more so the use of logic.
In accumulating ideas, he starts to look at political systems. As he starts to look at political systems, he realizes that even in any form of political system, whether it be—and he creates the three categories—the idea of a monarchy; an oligarchy, ruled by a few; or—we can't say democracy because that for the Greeks means everybody—but what he would have taught us that a democracy was just a body of citizens. So he creates these three categories. We have categories; how do we understand them then? He would look further down and he would say, "Ah, what would make a good state?" In other words, what would be good politics?
He started to pioneer the idea of categorizing ethics—which is how we should behave that we might be a virtuous individual, to some degree in private, but certainly in public. We get the Nicomachean Ethics—named after, perhaps, his father-in-law—and the idea being what do we want to achieve in life? And so, for Aristotle, there is no perfect, there is no ideal, he rejects this from Plato—but rather, there is a best. Not a perfect—but a best. And this is often referred to as the mean. This best that we look to achieve in life—while we achieve arete for ourselves or excellence in what we do as a profession—we then go through life, and if we do well and if we are virtuous, we can become happy, or perhaps maybe contented is a better word.
Good people need to live in a good state, and a good state has a good constitution—not perfect but best, or as best as possible. Then this good state would allow good citizens to live good lives, and that would really bring about justice. That would be the best possible outcome. Ethical people living good lives, writing good constitutions in a good political system—and that would allow for the freedom, and certainly the education, to engage in things that he's interested in more so, which is science. Not so much mathematics—but science, the idea of physics, how you understand elemental bits of things. And then again, like I mentioned in biology, with the physical realities around us and making use of logic to try to understand what you see. So, he wrote and worked in a tremendous number of things.
His legacy is profound; he may have been the tutor of Alexander the Great. Far more important though, the science and the effort to understand the world transfers into the Romans, and then from the Romans it transfers into the Middle Ages. And Aristotle's notion of science and notion of the world remains intact all the way up into the early modern period in the West, when scientist like Descartes would finally dispel it in the 16th and 17th centuries. But essentially, his impact has over 2000 years of importance in science, even though it's eventually disproved. But his work in things like politics and ethics, philosophy and that go on permanently—and people still read and make use of these things for their impact.
https://betaancienthistory.abc-clio.com/Topics/Display/1919156?cid=140&sid=1939383