Aristotle, great Greek philosopher, researcher, reasoner, and
writer, born at Stagirus in 384 BC, was the son of Nicomachus, a
physician, and Phaestis. He studied under Plato at Athens and
taught there (367- 347); subsequently he spent three years at the
court of a former pupil, Hermeias, in Asia Minor and at this time
married Pythias, one of Hermeias' relations. After some time at
Mitylene, in 343- 2 he was appointed by King Philip of Macedon to
be tutor of his teen-aged son Alexander. After Philip's death
in 336, Aristotle became head of his own school (of
'Peripatetics'), the Lyceum at Athens. Because of
anti-Macedonian feeling there after Alexander's death in 323,
he withdrew to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322. Nearly all
the works Aristotle prepared for publication are lost; the
priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda
(some are spurious). They can be categorized as follows: I
"Practical": Nicomachean Ethics; Great Ethics (Magna
Moralia); Eudemian Ethics; Politics; Economics (on the good of the
family); On Virtues and Vices. II "Logical": Categories;
Analytics (Prior and Posterior); Interpretation; Refutations used
by Sophists; Topica. III "Physical": Twenty-six works
(some suspect) including astronomy, generation and destruction, the
senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, facts about animals, etc. IV
"Metaphysics": on being as being. V "Art":
Rhetoric and Poetics. VI Other works including the Constitution of
Athens; more works also of doubtful authorship. VII Fragments of
various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature; and
of treatises on rhetoric, politics and metaphysics. The Loeb
Classical Library edition ofAristotle is in twenty-three volumes.
