20.How do you appreciate the role of Aristotle’s philosophy

In Greek Culture?

Aristotle was born in the city of Stagira in Macedonia. His father,

Nichomacus, was the personal physician to King Amyntas of

Macedonia.

In 367, at the age of 17, Aristotle went to Athens to attend

the institution of philosophical learning known as the Academy,

which was founded by Socrates' pupil Plato, where he stayed

until Plato's death in 347. Then, since he wasn't named

successor, Aristotle left Athens, traveling around until 343

when he became tutor for Amyntas' grandson, Alexander – later

known as "the Great."

In 336, Alexander's father, Philip of Macedonia, was

assassinated. Aristotle returned to Athens in 335.The most

important among Plato’s disciples is Aristotle of Stagira

 (384-322 BCE), who shares with his master the title of the

greatest philosopher of antiquity. But whereas Plato had

sought to elucidate and explain things from the supra-sensual

standpoint of the forms, his pupil preferred to start from

the facts given us by experience. Philosophy to him meant

science, and its aim was the recognition of the purpose in

all things. Hence he establishes the ultimate grounds of

things inductively — that is to say, by a posteriori conclusions

from a number of facts to a universal. In the series of works

collected under the name of Organon, Aristotle sets forth the

laws by which the human understanding effects conclusions

from the particular to the knowledge of the universal. Like

Plato, he recognizes the true being of things in their concepts,

but denies any separate existence of the concept apart from

the particular objects of sense. They are inseparable as matter

and form. In matter and form, Aristotle sees the fundamental

principles of being. Matter is the basis of all that exists; it

comprises the potentiality of everything, but of itself is not

actually anything. A determinate thing only comes into being

when the potentiality in matter is converted into actuality.

This is effected by form, inherent in the unified object and

the completion of the potentiality latent in the matter.

Although it has no existence apart form the particulars, yet,

in rank and estimation, form stands first; it is of its own nature

the most knowable, the only true object of knowledge. For matter

without any form cannot exist, but the essential definitions

of a common form, in which are included the particular

objects may be separated from matter. Form and matter are

relative terms, and the lower form constitutes the matter of

a higher (e.g. body, soul, reason). This series culminates in

pure, immaterial form, the Deity, the origin of all motion, and

therefore of the generation of actual form out of potential matter.

All motion takes place in space and time; for space is the

potentiality, time the measure of the motion. Living beings

are those which have in them a moving principle, or soul.

In plants the function of soul is nutrition (including

reproduction); in animals, nutrition and sensation; in humans,

nutrition, sensation, and intellectual activity. The perfect form

of the human soul is reason separated from all connection

with the body, hence fulfilling its activity without the help of

any corporeal organ, and so imperishable. By reason the

apprehensions, which are formed in the soul by external

sense-impressions, and may be true or false, are converted

into knowledge. For reason alone can attain to truth either

in cognition or action. Impulse towards the good is a part of

human nature, and on this is founded virtue; for Aristotle 

does not, with Plato, regard virtue as knowledge pure and

simple, but as founded on nature, habit, and reason. Of the

particular virtues (of which there are as many as there are

contingencies in life), each is the apprehension, by means of

reason, of the proper mean between two extremes which are

not virtues — e.g. courage is the mean between cowardice and

foolhardiness. The end of human activity, or the highest good,

is happiness, or perfect and reasonable activity in a perfect life.

To this, however, external goods are more of less necessary

conditions.

The followers of Aristotle, known as Peripatetics (Theophrastus

 of Lesbos, Eudemus of Rhodes, Strato of Lampsacus, etc.),

to a great extent abandoned metaphysical speculation, some

in favor of natural science, others of a more popular treatment

of ethics, introducing many changes into the Aristotelian

doctrine in a naturalistic direction. A return to the views of

the founder first appears among the later Peripatetics, who did

good service as expositors of Aristotle’s works, such as 

Avicenna and Averroes.

The Peripatetic School tended to make philosophy the

exclusive property of the learned class, thereby depriving it of

its power to benefit a wider circle. This soon produced a

negative reaction, and philosophers returned to the practical

standpoint of Socratic ethics. The speculations of the learned

were only admitted in philosophy where serviceable for ethics.

The chief consideration was how to popularize doctrines,

and to provide the individual, in a time of general confusion

and dissolution, with a fixed moral basis for practical life.