Aristotle was born in the year 384 BC in a small town close to Mount Athos Macedonian call Stagira, hence its nickname, the Aristotle. His father, Nicomachus, was court physician to Amyntas III, father of Philip and, therefore, grandfather of Alexander. Nicomachean belonged to the family of Asclepiades, which claimed descent from the founding god of medicine and whose knowledge was transmitted from generation to generation. This encourages us to think that Aristotle was started as a child in the secrets of medicine and hence it came his love of research experimental and positive science. Lost his father and mother, a teenager who was adopted by Proxenus, which years later was able to show his gratitude by taking to her son named Nicanor.
In 367, that is, when he was seventeen years old, was sent to Athens to study at Plato's Academy. It is not known what kind of personal relationship was established between the two philosophers, but, judging by the few references made to each other in their writings, no one can speak of undying friendship. Which, moreover, is logical if one considers that Aristotle would start his own philosophical system based on profound criticizes platonic. Both started from Socrates and his concept of eidos, but the difficulties of Plato to insert your eidetic world, the ideas in the real world forced Aristotle to be shaping the terms 'substance', 'essence' and 'form' you definitely walk out of the Academy. Instead, it is absolutely false legend that Aristotle left Athens indignant because Plato, in his death, his nephew Speusippus appoint to take charge of the Academy. In his capacity as Macedonian Aristotle was not legally eligible for that position.
Alexander the Great on the horizon
Plato's death, which occurred at 348, Aristotle was thirty-six years old, spoke last twenty of them simultaneously teaching with the study and was in Athens, as they say, without a job or benefit. So should not have to think much when he learned of Atarneo Hermias, a Greek soldier of fortune (for details, a eunuch) who came over in the northwest sector of Asia Minor, was meeting in the city of Axos a few disciples of the Academy would like to collaborate with him on the Hellenization of his domain. Aristotle was installed in Axos in company with Xenocrates of Chalcedon, a fellow academic, and Theophrastus, the disciple and heir apparent of the Aristotelian legacy. The Aristotle would
there three years peaceful and successful, devoted to teaching, writing (much of the written policy there) and reproduction, as first married a niece of Hermias called Pythias, with whom he had a daughter. Pythias must have died very soon after and joined another Aristotle Aristotle, named Erpilis, who bore him a son, Nicomachus, who devoted his Ethics. Since Aristotle himself wrote that the man must marry at thirty-seven years and women at eighteen, it is easy to deduce what age should take over and when he joined them.
After the murder of Hermias, in 345, Aristotle moved to Mytilene (Lesbos Island), focusing, in company with Theophrastus, the study of biology. Two years later, in 343, was hired by Philip of Macedonia to take over the education of his son Alexander, who was then thirteen years of age. Neither is known about the relationship between the two, as legends and forgeries have erased all traces of truth. But the truth of the character that his contemporaries attributed to Alexander (which unanimously arrogant cross out, drinking, cruel, vindictive and ignorant), not noticed any feature of the influence that Aristotle could have on him. Neither is aware of the influence Alexander on his master in the political arena, as Aristotle was preaching the superiority of the city-state when the alleged disciple was already putting the foundations of a universal empire, without which, in the words of historians, the Hellenic civilization had fallen long before . Coming home
Shortly after Philip's death, Alexander was running a nephew of Aristotle, Calisthenics Olinto, whom he accused of treason. Knowing the vindictive character of his pupil, Aristotle fled a year Stagira properties, moving to Athens in 334 to found, always in the company of Theophrastus, the Lyceum, an institution teaching that for years would have to compete with the Platonic Academy, led at that time by his old comrade Xenocrates of Chalcedon.
The eleven years between his return to Athens and the death of Alexander in 323, was used by Aristotle to conduct a thorough review of a work that, in the words of Hegel, is the foundation of all sciences. To put it as succinctly as possible, Aristotle was a wonderful synthesizer of knowledge, so attentive to the generalizations that constitute the science and the differences that distinguish not only between individuals, but also prevent the reduction of large genera phenomena and who study science. As he says, people can be mobile and immobile, while separate (the subject) or not separated. The science of mobile beings is not separate physical beings of stationary and no mathematics is separated, and the immobile beings separate theology.
The breadth and depth of his thought is such that it was necessary to wait two thousand years for someone arises similar size. And during that period, his authority came to be so established and unquestioned as exercised by the Church, and both science and philosophy of intellectual advance any attempt had to start with an attack on any Aristotelian philosophical principles.
However, the path followed by the thought of Aristotle to its current prominence is so amazing that even after deducting what may have added to the legend, it seems an argument adventure novel.
The Adventure of the manuscripts
With the death of Alexander in 323, Athens extended a wave of nationalism (anti-Macedonian) triggered by Demosthenes, a fact that Aristotle meant to face a charge of impiety. Not being in the mood to repeat the adventure of Socrates, Aristotle was exiled to the island of Chalcis, where he died in 322. According to tradition, Aristotle gave Theophrastus works, which in turn yielded to the Nele, who sent them home to their parents in Esquepsis securely packed in boxes and the order that they are hidden in a cave to avoid their being seized bound for Pergamum library.
Many years later, Neleo heirs sold them to Apelicón of Teos, a philosopher who took them with him to Athens. In 86 BC, in the midst of Roman occupation, Sila learned of the existence of such cases and seized to be sent to Rome, where they were purchased by Tiranión the Grammarian. Hand in hand, these works were suffering successive deterioration until, in the year 60 BC, were acquired by Andronicus Rhodes, the last manager of the Lyceum, who proceeded to final editing. He was responsible, for example, the invention of the term "metaphysics", the title under which the books are grouped VII, VIII and IX and that simply means leaving then physics.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, the works of Aristotle, as the rest of the Greco-Roman culture disappeared until, well into the thirteenth century, were recovered by the Arab Averroes, who met through the version of the Syrian Arab and beans. Of the total of 170 works that collected old catalogs, only 30 were saved, they come to occupy some 2,000 printed pages. Most of them come from the writings called "acroamáticos" designed to be used as discussed in the Lyceum and not to be published. In contrast, all works published in Aristotle's own life, written for the general public in the form of dialogues, have been lost.
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