Aristotle: History's Most Influential Thinker

this videos made possible by brilliant you're gonna learn more about brilliant later in today's video but if you'd like to learn more around the right now you go to brilliant a dork forward slash by graphics you'll also find a link in the description below he was the most influential thinker in world history a man whose ideas permeated every sector of society here's the father of modern logic the inventor of the science of biology and the founder of ethical reasoning despite only a small fragment of his writing surviving to our times his influence on both the Western and the Islamic world has been profound in this week's by graphics we discover the brilliance of Aristotle [Music] the details of aristotle's life are sketchy we know that he was born in 384 BCE in the greek-macedonian town of Styria on the north coast of the Aegean Sea his father nikka Marcus was the court physician to the Macedonian King Amon insist the seconds it is believed that Aristotle's mother faced us was descended from Greek aristocracy the couple had three children with Aristotle being the youngest he had a sister named Aaron Nestor and a brother named Aaron Estes nikka Marcus died when aristotle was only 13 his mother died soon after and he was raised through his teenage years by his older sister's husband Proximus by the age of 17 aristotle II was sent to Athens to pursue higher education there he enrolled at Plato's Academy Plato was the most renowned thinker of the time who himself had been taught by the great Socrates the Academy had been founded 20 years earlier and was situated beside an olive grove outside of the city walls rather than a formal school with a set curriculum and a clear delineation between teacher and students the Academy provided an informal setting where the master Plato would pose problems to be pondered by his students instead of listening to lectures the students were encouraged to engage in dialectic discussion in order to establish a truth by means of reasoned argument the main subjects under discussion were philosophy mathematics and astronomy aristotle studied at the academy for 20 years advancing from students to teacher during this time he developed a great respect and a close friendship with Plato the two men however they did have some fundamental philosophical differences as a result when Plato died in 347 BCE Aristotle his most brilliant student was not offered the directorship of the Academy that privilege instead went to Plato's nephew spew Sufis shortly thereafter Aristotle left the Academy apparently unhappy with the direction that it was taking it is also possible that he was keen to get out of Athens as a result of the tide of anti Macedonian sentiment in the city Aristotle had by this time developed some important friendships which would pave the way forward for him one of them was hummus king of the Greek city of our tenías in Asia Minor hummus was a former student at Plato's Academy upon hearing of the Masters death he invited Aristotle to come to our tenías Aristotle settled in Asus the city which faced the island of Lesbos there he became the head of a group of philosophers establishing a brand new Academy his focus there was on the observation of the natural world he also began to work on two volumes dealing with politics and kingship during his time in our source Aristotle met fell in love with and married the niece of Hermia's named fie theists soon a daughter was born who was also named a theist soon after a source was attacked by the Persians and King Hermia's was taken captive and executed Aristotle and his family they relocated to the island of Lesbos where they spent the next two years it was here that he indulged in his passion for the study of marine life the work that Aristotle conducted on the islands gave rise to a whole new scientific discipline biology the study of life he was relentlessly systematic in his classifications creatures they were divided into larger groups according to their characteristics this resulted in the publication of three books that minutely detail the characteristics of living things he also studied the ecology of the island in 343 BCE Aristotle received an invitation from philip ii the king of Macedon to come and tutor his son Alexander who was 13 at the time Aristotle accepted and moved his family to Macedonia where he became the director of the Royal Academy King Philip had a reputation as an uncouth and uneducated barbarian warrior he was prouder that his son was developing the same strength of resolve but wanted the prince to balance his strength with knowledge and with wisdom and he feared that the instruction that was being provided by the boys tutors would only create another version of himself it was these concerns that prompted the king to call for the great teacher Aristotle at the academy Aristotle taught Alexander and other young members of the royal household in a style reminiscent of the Platonic Academy he instructed them in morality in logic as well as the arts and medicine in addition one-on-one lessons were given to Alexander the Roy was impetuous and stubborn often challenging and resisting his teacher however Aristotle exhibited a great patience as he shaped and molded the thinking of the future conqueror his superior reasoning inevitably won over the prince one of Aristotle's greatest challenges was to reign in Alexander's impetuous nature in one memorable exchange he asked the prince what the most valuable virtue was that a soldier could possess Alexander immediately replied that it was courage but what Aristotle asked would happen if the warriors excess couraged caused him to run ahead of his army and face the enemy all alone Alexander acknowledged that he would surely be killed what though the teacher asked would happen if a lack of courage caused the soldier to run the other direction well then he would be a coward chaotic scientist reply by this exchange Aristotle taught Alexander the importance of always finding the middle points and therefore developing balance in one's life Aristotle also educated Alexander in the warrior hero traditions of the past he provided the teenager with a copy of the Iliad and encouraged him upon assuming rulership so conquer the barbarian lands to the east Aristotle has a very ethnocentric view of non Greeks which he earned out they passed on to his people he viewed them as fit only for slavery and famously gave this piece of advice to the future Conqueror be a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians to look after the former as friends and relatives and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants Aristotle was able to cultivate in the teenage prince love of reading and of a learning for the rest of his life Alexander remained an avid reader developing a special love for the writings of Homer it is claimed that he learned all 15,000 693 lines of poetry in the Iliad by heart the princes education at the hands of the great philosopher it came to an abrupt halt in 340 BC Alexander was the 16 year old heir to the throne and he was called to Pella to rule over Macedonia while his father was off waging war by 335 BCE Alexander had succeeded his father as king one of his first acts was to conquer Athens which paved the way of her Aristotle to return to the city where he had spent his formative years Plato's Academy which was now run by a former student names and ah Critias was still the leading influence on creeks thinking however Aristotle was given permission by Alexander to start up his own rival Academy as a foreigner Aristotle was not able to own property in Athens as a result he rented a building called the Lyceum which was a former wrestling school now outside of the city unlike Plato's Academy the Lyceum was not a private club for half of the Daris Dawson and his tutors would teach their paying students in advanced topics and the doors would be opened and the lectures and discussion would be free of charge and open to anyone who wished to attend Aristotle spent the bulk of the remainder of his life working at the Lyceum he developed a unique style teaching his students while they wandered around the gardens of the school this gave rise to the nickname peripatetic s' meaning people who wander about the scope of study at the Lyceum was vast Aristotle wanted his students to research and write about every area of human thought from mathematics to biology philosophy politics and rhetoric students were required to ride their arguments down in manuscript form these were collected in the Lyceum's library which became one of the first great collections of historical writings at some time during the first few years after his return to Athens Aristotle's wife atheists she died it is believed that the Persian King upset that Aristotle had helped to arrange an alliance with NASA donea had paisius arrested and then executed Aristotle he was heartbroken in his grief he raped the only poem of his life that survived which he titled an ode to virtue in time though Aristotle he became romantically involved with a woman named her Phyllis some account states that her Phyllis was a slave who had been given to Aristotle by the court of Alexander but this cannot be verified the two were never married but her Phyllis bore Aristotle many children the first of whom they named Nick amicus after Aristotle's father her Phyllis remains with Aristotle until his death during the years that Aristotle established his Lyceum at Athens his former pupil Alexander was very busy conquering the known world as his power grew so did his ego the virtues that the Philosopher's had instilled in him were cast aside as he became increasingly megalomaniacal eventually he proclaimed himself to be divine and required that all peoples prostrate themselves before him in awe of his status as a living God on Aristotle's recommendation his nephew calles the news had been appointed as an office historian of Alexander's Asiatic expedition callousness was concerned about the Kings out of control ego and somewhat foolishly let his concerns be known and well this led to his execution then in 323 BC the 32 year old Alexander he suddenly died soon thereafter the pro Macedonian governments it was forcibly removed the Athenians were now back in control and a backlash was unleashed against the Macedonians [Music] Aristotle is the leading Macedonian intellect and supporter of Alexander was a prime target of the new regime he was formally charged with in piety or not believing in the gods of the state this was the same charge that had been leveled at Socrates and had led to his conviction and his execution stating that he refused to allow Athens to sin against philosophy twice Aristotle decided not to stay and defend himself he fled the city and headed for the island of Euboea where his mother's estate was located he died on the island in 323 BC of natural causes it was 62 years of age now normally this is where a biographical video would ends but there is much more about Aristotle to come but first I do want to thank today's sponsor brilliance and I know ads in the middle of a video they aren't great but sponsors like brilliant do make these longer videos possible brilliant or a science learning platform that allow you to learn through active learning which summed up is basically the opposite of that feeling of reading a complex paragraph about some principle and then just having absolutely no clue about what they were going on about you know even though you've read it 10 times still got no idea what's happening and brilliant don't just cover the basics although they totally cover those as well they go all the way through to really complex things like advanced statistics brilliant makes even complex statistical concepts very easy to understand they give me something super short to read it's easy and then you immediately apply what you just read to a problem and rinse and repeat and boom suddenly you understand stuff that you didn't really think you'd ever be able to understand I've used brilliant to do just this it's pretty amazing how quickly you grasp such a complex subjects you can support by graphics by going to brilliant org /by graphics and now let's get back to Aristotle Aristotle had died as an enemy of the state and so memory of him he was discouraged however his student and friend Theophrastus kepts is writing secretly hidden while also taking the reins of the Lyceum the works of Aristotle did not see the light of day until the beginning of the first century BCE when they became appreciated throughout the Roman world after the fall of Rome Aristotle became familiar to the Islamic world as well where many thinkers if the time came to appreciate his logical and deductive methodology in fact it was largely because of his popularity in the Byzantium world that Aristotle's teachings were able to survive the dark ages it was during the 13th century CE that Aristotle was reintroduced to the West this was achieved primarily through the work of Thomas Aquinas who attempted to amalgamate religious beliefs with science and philosophy Aquinas incorporated Aristotle's assertion that a stationary earth lies at the center of the universe as a fundamental tenet of Catholicism during the Renaissance and Reformation years a succession of religious reformers and scientists began to question some Aristotle and beliefs that had been absorbed into the Catholic Church one of them was the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei who presented observational proof that the earth orbited the Sun it's ironic that while Aristotle would undoubtedly have embraced this new observation the Catholic Church Fathers made Galileo appear before the Inquisition and recant his assertion English physicist William Harvey later discovered that internal organs don't work the way that Aristotle had stated another of Aristotle's views that was disproved was that decay only happens on the earth while the heavens never change 19th century astronomers Lord Kelvin challenged this notion with the concept of entropy which states that all matter whether earthly or heavenly will eventually decay Aristotle also taught that planets and stars are all encased in crystalline spheres each one nested inside the next with the earth being the innermost sphere by the 18th century the contradictory idea that the planets hang on a void was gaining acceptance [Music] Aristotle wrote some 10 million words in order to preserve his thoughts unfortunately the majority of them have not survived the passing of the years the manuscripts were uncovered in the 1st century BCE when they were edited by a man named Andronicus the works that we have today are derived from Andronicus as edited versions and so we're not directly prepared for publication by Aristotle today we are able to read about a million of Aristotle's writings which represents some 20% of his total work as a result of the paucity of writings that we have we are only able to see a shadow of the brilliance of Aristotle the quality of the prose which has been lost to us was hinted at by Roman statesman Cicero who went glaring Aristotle's writings to those of Plato declared if Plato's prose was silver Aristotle's was a flowing river of gold the works of Aristotle that have survived are grouped into four categories first is the organ on which quantify a set of logical principles to follow when conducting an investigation then comes the theoretical consisting of a range of treatises on the natural world the practical category focuses on achieving excellence within the individual the family and in society finally the rhetoric writing is collect together Aristotle's surviving political and philosophical speeches [Music] Aristotle divided the sciences into three categories the productive the practical and the theoretical productive sciences income for such things as building an architecture but also battlefield strategy and courtroom tactics there's also practical sciences which cover ethics and guided behavior the theoretical sciences which included mathematics and physics involved the quest for knowledge and understanding as their own end result the scope of Aristotle's scientific research it was staggering his writings feature minut descriptions of more than 500 species some of the features that he observed were not verified until the invention of the microscope thousands of years later his detailed observations included the anatomy diet habitat and reproductive system of the fish insects and animals that he observed while on the island of Lesvos a trademark of Aristotle's thinking was that evidence was the ultimate arbiter of truth regardless of what theories you may hold if observation proved them wrong then you must have the humility to discard them and go with the evidence despite being charged with in piety Aristotle he did believe in God however his God did not create nor control the universe but could affect it he viewed God as the ultimate abstract reason and considered that the highest level of attainment for a human is to as closely emulate God's ability to reason abstractly as possible so the closer a person could get to this heightened ability to reason the closer they would be to God himself Aristotle's greatest contribution to mankind was that he provided a methodology by which to find solutions to problems rather than providing these solutions themselves when he did come to conclusions he was careful to qualify it by stating that the conclusion was based upon the evidence available at the time if new evidence was to come to light that proved his conclusions wrong then he would discard them however during the period known as the Christian middle ages between 476 and 1453 C II Aristotle's methodology was cast aside and the focus went squarely on his conclusions which contrary to his wishes were accepted without question so rather than observing nature to find the answers they simply accepted what eros hood written on the subject Plato and Aristotle ended up with very different philosophical approaches plato was the ultimate idealist believing that the world around us is merely a collection of ideas on the other hand Aristotle was a realist who believed that the only reality was the physical world which we inhabit each man would provide a work of political philosophy in plato's case he was entitled the Republic while Aristotle called his the politic Plato's work was focused on achieving the ideal state he believed that one way to achieve this was through the eradication of private property the family and gender roles by doing away with the societal norms Plato was hoping to transcend human selfishness in order to achieve social unity Aristotle however rejected the end goal of Plato's ideal state he contended that selfishness is a part of human nature his idea was to design a government that acknowledged human selfishness and put in place checks and balances to mitigate it he pointed out the impracticality of Plato's views asking such questions as who would look after the children if they weren't part of a family he further contended that human selfishness is one of the driving forces the results in achievement Aristotle devised a working government that he referred to as polity in it there was balance between the rich and the poor with neither one dominating the other and people were forced to work together for the overall good of society while retaining their property rights one of the hallmarks of Aristotle's method of argument was logical developments where each point builds upon the last this was very different to Plato who would jump all over the place with his ideas in contrast Aristotle emphasized that need for mental discipline by which those engaged in debate would stay focused on the topic at hands Plato was mainly concerned with the accumulation of knowledge he believed that ideas were subjective and could be influenced by personal views Aristotle on the other hand was focused on observation and the examination of what is real he was an objective thinker who did not allow place for emotion or personal opinion Plato was an idealist he believed for example that knowing good was enough for a person to do God Aristotle however argued that knowing good was not good enough the person had to practice being good to benefit himself as well as society Plato also believe that every concept had an ideal form whereas Aristotle was of a view that every conception needed to be studied on an individual level in order to understand it Plato was of the view that reasoning and thought experiments were sufficient to prove matters whereas Aristotle relied upon direct experience as a results of their differing approaches the scientific contributions of Aristotle were much greater than those of his teacher Plato the latter's teachings were predominantly theoretical lacking practicality whereas Aristotle he's left us with the scientific method which is grounded in practical observation so I really hope you found that video interesting if you did do give us a thumbs up below and please don't forget to subscribe if you want to see more biographic Swee put out several videos just like this so hit that subscribe button and hit that notification bell if you actually want to find out when we put our videos youtube doesn't work how it used to and if you want to see something else by us we've got some videos from the archive linked you on the screen and as always thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Biographics

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Keywords: Aristotle, Aristotle biography, who was Aristotle, what did Aristotle do, life of aristotle, aristotle life, aristotle death, what did artistotle discover, what happened to aristotle, aristotle books

Id: qD5O3vXj9eU

Length: 21min 21sec (1281 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 25 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Either Aristotle or Plato - now there's a debate.