Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
Page 28
she chooses, in addition to her present maid and the slave Pyrrhaeus; and if she wishes to live in Chalcis, the guest house by the garden; if in Stagira, my father’s house. Whichever of these houses she chooses, let the executors furnish it with whatever furniture they think right and adequate for Herpyllis to have.
15 Let Nicanor take charge of the boy Myrmex,45 in order that he be conveyed to his own people in a manner worthy of me with the property we received from him. Let Ambracis be granted her freedom and, when my daughter marries, five hundred drachmas and her present maid. And let Thale be given, in addition to the maid that she has and who was bought, one thousand drachmas and a maid. And for Simon, in addition to the money
16 Let the executors see to it that the images that Gryllion has been commissioned to execute are set up when they are finished, namely that of Nicanor and that of Proxenus,46 which I was intending to have executed, and that of Nicanor’s mother. And let them set up the bust, already completed, of Arimnestus,47 that there may be a memorial of him, since he died childless; and let them dedicate
These are the terms of Aristotle’s will.49 It is said that a large number of his dishes were found; Lyco50 is also reported to have said that Aristotle bathed in a tub of warm oil and sold the oil. Some say that he placed a bag of warm oil on his stomach, and that, when he went to sleep, a bronze ball was placed in his hand, with a vessel lying under it, so that when the ball fell into the vessel he might be awakened by the sound.51
17 The following delightful sayings are attributed to him. When asked what people gain by telling lies, he replied, “That when they tell the truth they are not believed.” Reproached one day because he gave alms to a good-for-nothing, he said, “It was the man that I pitied, not his conduct.” He was constantly saying to his friends and students, whenever and wherever he happened to be lecturing, that the eyes receive light from the surrounding air, while the soul receives it from mathematics. He declared often and vehemently that the Athenians had discovered wheat and laws; and that they made use of the wheat, but not the laws.
18,19 He said of education that its roots are bitter, but its fruit sweet. When asked what ages quickly, he replied, “Gratitude.” When asked to define hope, he said, “It is a waking dream.” When Diogenes52 offered him some figs, he noticed that unless he accepted them, Diogenes had a quip prepared for him; so he took them and remarked that Diogenes had lost his quip along with his figs. At another time, he took the offered figs, raised them aloft as one does with a baby, and returned them with the exclamation “Diogenes is a big boy!” He said that three things are necessary for education: natural ability, study, and practice. On hearing that someone had reviled him, he said, “As long as I’m not in his presence, let him flog me as well.” Beauty, he used to say, was more effective than any letter of introduction. Others, however, attribute this maxim to Diogenes, and say that Aristotle called good looks a gift
20 When asked how the educated differ from the uneducated, he said, “as much as the living from the dead.” He used to say that education was an adornment in prosperity, and a refuge in adversity. Those parents who educate children deserve to be honored more than those who only engender them: for parents make them live, but teachers make them live well. To someone who boasted that he came from a great city, he said, “That is not what one should consider, but who it is that is worthy of a great country.” When asked to define a friend, he said, “One soul dwelling in two bodies.” Mankind, he used to say, was divided into those who were as thrifty as if they were going to live forever, and those who were as extravagant as if they were going to die any moment. When someone asked him why we spend so much time with the beautiful, he replied, “That’s a blind man’s question.”
Aristotle and a pupil. From Kitab Na’t al-hayawan, an Arabic treatise on animals and the medical properties of the various parts of their bodies, compiled from works of Aristotle by Ibn Bakhtishu’, thirteenth century.
21 When asked what benefit he had ever derived from philosophy, he said, “That I do without being ordered what some are forced to do by their fear of the law.” When asked how students could make progress, he said, “By pursuing the front-runners and not waiting for those who lag behind.” To a talkative fellow, who poured out a torrent of words and then said, “Let’s hope I haven’t been boring you with my chatter!” he replied, “No, by Zeus, I haven’t been listening.” To someone who faulted him for having made a loan to a dishonest man—for the story is also told in this way—he said, “It was not the man that I assisted, but mankind.” When asked how we should behave to friends, he said, “As we would wish them to behave to us.” He defined justice as a virtue of the soul that distributes according to merit. The best provision for old age, he said, was education. Favorinus, in the second book of his Reminiscences, says that Aristotle was always saying, “He who has friends has no true friend.”54 This is also found in the seventh book of the Ethics.55 These then are the sayings attributed to him.
He wrote an enormous number of books, a list of which, in light of the man’s excellence and range, I deemed it right to append:56
22,23,24,25,26,27 On Justice, four books
On Poets, three books
On Philosophy, three books
On the Statesman, two books
On Rhetoric or Gryllus, one book
Nerinthus, one book
The Sophist, one book
Menexenus, one book
On Love, one book
Symposium, one book
On Wealth, one book
Hortatory, one book
On the Soul, one book
On Prayer, one book
On Noble Birth, one book
On Pleasure, one book
Alexander or In Defense of Colonies, one book
On Monarchy, one book
On Education, one book
On the Good, three books
Extracts from Plato’s “Laws,” three books
Extracts from the “Republic,” two books
On Household Management, one book
On Friendship, one book
On Suffering or Having Suffered, one book
On Branches of Knowledge, one book
On Controversies, two books
Solutions of Controversial Questions, four books
Sophistical Divisions, four books
On Opposites, one book
On Species and Genera, one book
On Characteristic Properties, one book
Three Notebooks of Dialectical Arguments
Propositions about Virtue, two books
Objections, one book
On Terms Used in a Number of Different Senses Where a Determinant Is Added, one book
On Emotions or On Anger, one book
Ethics, five books
On Elements, three books
On Knowledge, one book
On Principle, one book
Divisions, seventeen books
On Division, one book57
On Motion, one book
Propositions Concerning Motion, one book
Controversial Propositions, on
e book
Syllogisms, one book
Prior Analytics, eight books
Greater Posterior Analytics, two books
On Problems, one book
Methodics, eight books
On the Greater Good, one book
On the Idea, one book
Definitions Preceding the Topics, one book
Syllogisms, two books
On Syllogism with Definitions, one book
On the Desirable and the Contingent, one book
Preface to the Commonplaces, one book
Topics Concerning the Definitions, two books
Emotions, one book
On Division, one book
On Mathematics, one book
Definitions, thirteen books
Dialectical Proofs, two books
On Pleasure, one book
Propositions, one book
On the Voluntary, one book
On the Beautiful, one book
Theses for Dialectical Arguments, twenty-five books
Theses Concerning Love, four books
Theses Concerning Friendship, two books
Theses Concerning the Soul, one book
Politics, two books
Lectures on Politics Similar to Those of Theophrastus, eight books
On Just Actions, two books
Anthology of Arts, two books
The Art of Rhetoric, two books
Art, one book
Another Anthology of Arts, two books
Concerning Method, one book
Anthology of the Art of Theodectes, one book
A Treatise on the Art of Poetry, two books
Rhetorical Enthymemes, one book
On Style, two books
On Advice, one book
Anthology, two books
On Nature, three books
Concerning Nature, one book
On the Philosophy of Archytas, three books
On the Philosophy of Speusippus and Xenocrates, one book
Extracts from the “Timaeus” and the Works of Archytas, one book
Against the Doctrines of Melissus, one book
Against the Doctrines of Alcmeon, one book
Against the Pythagoreans, one book
Against the Doctrines of Xenophanes, one book
Against the Doctrines of Gorgias, one book
Against the Doctrines of Zeno, one book
On the Pythagoreans, one book
On Animals, nine books
Dissections, eight books
A Selection of Dissections, one book
On Composite Animals, one book
On Mythological Animals, one book
On Sterility, one book
On Plants, two books
On Physiognomy, one book
On Medicine, two books
On the Unit, one book
Warning Signs of Storms, one book
On Astronomy, one book
On Optics, one book
On Motion, one book
On Music, one book
On Memory, one book
Homeric Problems, six books
Poetics, one book
On Natural Philosophy, arranged alphabetically, thirty-eight books
Examined Problems, two books
General Education, two books
Mechanics, one book
Problems Taken from the Works of Democritus, two books
On the Magnet, one book
Analogies, one book
Miscellaneous Notes, twelve books
Descriptions of Genera, fourteen books
Justifications, one book
Victors at the Olympic Games, one book
Victors at the Pythian Games in Music, one book
On Delphi, one book
Critique of the List of Pythian Victors, one book
Victories at the Dionysia, one book
On Tragedies, one book
Catalogues of the Dramas, one book
Proverbs, one book
Rules for a Common Mess, one book
Law, four books
Categories, one book
On Interpretation, one book
Constitutions of 158 Cities, Classed by Type: Democratic, Oligarchic, Aristocratic, and Tyrannical
Letters to Philip about the Selymbrians
Letters to Alexander, four books
To Antipater, nine books
To Mentor, one book
To Ariston, one book
To Olympias,58 one book
To Hephaestion,59 one book
To Themistagoras, one book
To Philoxenus, one book
To Democritus,60 one book
An epic poem beginning, “Holy Far-Darter, most revered of gods …”61
An elegiac poem beginning, “Daughter of a mother with beautiful children …”
Aristotle stands on a cliff top in an attitude of distress and contemplates suicide at his inability to understand the source of waves. A mezzotint published by Robert Sayer of London in 1786.
In all, 445,270 lines.62
28,29 These are his written works. In them he advanced the following views.63 Philosophy has two divisions, the practical and the theoretical. The practical part includes ethics and politics, and in the latter the doctrines that concern both the state and the household are sketched. The theoretical branch includes physics and logic, though logic is not treated as an independent branch of study but as an instrument, and is made the object of a detailed analysis. And on the assumption that it has two aims, he elucidated the nature of the probable and of the true. For each of these aims he employed two faculties: dialectic and rhetoric when probability is the aim, analytics and philosophy when truth is the aim; nor does he neglect anything that fosters discovery, judgment, or utility. To aid discovery, he left in the Topics and Methodics a great many propositions whereby the student may be well supplied with probable dialectical arguments for the solution of problems. As an aid to judgment, he left the Prior and Posterior Analytics. (By the Prior Analytics the premises are judged, by the Posterior the deduction is tested.) For utility there are the treatises on polemics, interrogation, eristics,64 sophistical refutations, syllogisms, and the like. The criterion of truth in the realm of imaginative activities he declared to be sensation; but in the moral realm, which is concerned with the city, the household, and the laws, he made reason the criterion.
30,31 He held that the one end is the exercise of virtue in a completed life.65 Happiness, he maintained, is made up of three sorts of goods: goods of the soul, which he indeed calls the foremost in importance; secondly, goods of the body: health, strength, beauty, and the like; and thirdly, external goods: wealth, noble birth, reputation, and the like.66 He held that virtue, by itself, is not sufficient to ensure happiness; bodily and external goods are also necessary, since the wise man will be wretched if he lives in pain, poverty, and the like.67 Yet vice, by itself, is sufficient to ensure unhappiness, even if abundant bodily and external goods accompany it. He said that the virtues are not mutually dependent. For a man might be prudent, or similarly, just, and at the same time undisciplined and without self-command. He said that the wise man was not free of passions, but indulged them in moderation.
He defined friendship as an equality of mutual goodwill, which by definition encompasses the friendship of kinsmen, that of lovers, and that of host and guest.68 He held that love is aimed not solely at intercourse, but also at philosophy; that the wise man would fall in love and take part in public life; and that he would marry and reside at the court of a king. Of the three ways of life—the contemplative, the practical, and the pleasure-loving—he preferred the contemplative.69 He held that the studies that constitute a general education are of service for the attainment of virtue.
32 In the sphere of natural philosophy he surpassed all other philosophers in investigating causes, with the result that he elucidated those of the least important phenomena. This is why he compiled a considerable numbe
r of notebooks on topics in natural philosophy. He held, as did Plato, that god is incorporeal; that his providence extends to the heavenly bodies, that he is unmoved,70 and that terrestrial affairs are regulated in accordance with their affinity with those bodies. In addition to the four elements there is a fifth, from which the heavenly bodies are constituted. Its motion is different from that of the other elements, being circular.
33 He held that the soul is incorporeal, and defined it as the first entelechy of a natural and organic body potentially possessing life.71 By “entelechy” he means that which has an incorporeal form. This, according to him, is twofold. It is either potential, like that of Hermes in the wax (when the wax is prepared to receive the molds) or in the bronze;72 or it is dispositional, as in the case of the completed Hermes or the finished statue. Then, “of a natural body,” because bodies may be wrought either by hand, like the work of craftsmen (a tower, for example, or a vessel), or by nature, like plants and the bodies of animals. By “organic,” he meant constructed to serve some purpose, as sight is developed for seeing and the ear for hearing. By “potentially possessing life,” he means “possessing life within itself.”
34 “Potentially” is used in two senses; in one it refers to a disposition, in the other to its activity. In the latter sense, he who is awake is said to possess a soul; in the former, it is the sleeper who possesses one. It was therefore in order to encompass the sleeper that Aristotle added the word “potentially.”73
He set forth many other views on an array of subjects it would take too long to enumerate. Generally speaking, he was exceptionally inventive and industrious, as is clear from the list of his written works given above, which number nearly four hundred, excluding those not considered genuine. For many other written works and incisive sayings are attributed to him.
“Prodigality and Liberality” and “Avarice and Covetousness” from Aristotle’s Ethics, translated by Nicole Oresme with gloss, c. 1397.
35 There have been eight men named Aristotle: the first was our present subject; the second the Athenian statesman to whom charming forensic speeches are attributed; the third an expounder of the Iliad; the fourth a Sicilian orator who wrote a reply to the Panegyric of Isocrates;74 the fifth, who was nicknamed Myth, a student of Aeschines the Socratic; the sixth a native of Cyrene who wrote on the art of poetry; the seventh a gymnastics trainer mentioned by Aristoxenus75 in his Life of Plato; and the eighth an obscure grammarian, to whom a handbook on redundancy is attributed.