Contributor

Aristotle

(384 BC - 322 BC)

The son of a Macedonian court physician, Aristotle moved from Macedonia to Athens in 367 bc and joined Plato’s Academy, where he remained for twenty years. Upon Plato’s death, Aristotle went to Assus and Mytilene, conducting scientific research that included classifying around five hundred species of animals. He claimed in The Physics, “Nature is everywhere a cause of order” and “Nature does nothing in vain.” He returned to his homeland around 342 bc and tutored the thirteen-year-old heir to the Macedonian throne who later became known as Alexander the Great.

All Writing

Miscellany

The astronomer and mathematician Thales of Miletus is believed to have been the first ancient Greek scholar to discuss the phenomenon of magnetism. Aristotle notes in On the Soul that Thales held the belief that “the magnet has a soul in it because it moves the iron.” Five and a half centuries later, Diogenes Laërtius concurred with Aristotle, observing that Thales “attributed a soul or life even to inanimate objects.”

Voices In Time

c. 330 BC | Athens

Rare Commodity

Aristotle’s relationship goals.More

Miscellany

“Aristotle thought earthquakes were caused by winds trapped in subterranean caves,” wrote Anne Carson in her 2019 play Norma Jeane Baker of Troy. “We’re more scientific now, we know it’s just five guys fracking the fuck out of the world while it’s still legal.”

Voices In Time

c. 340 BC | Athens

Inherit the Wind

Aristotle knows the earth is not round.More

Voices In Time

c. 330 BC | Athens

Use Values

Aristotle finds a price for all our possessions.More

Voices In Time

c. 350 BC | Athens

Primary Source

Aristotle ponders the nature of water.More

Voices In Time

c. 355 BC | Athens

Expectation Management

“We shall not fear things that we believe cannot happen to us.”More

Voices In Time

c. 335 BC | Athens

Trading Places

A very Oedipal discovery.More

Voices In Time

c. 330 BC | Athens

The Bigger Man

Can a poor man be a great one?More

Painted portrait of English philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

Conversations

Aristotle & Jeremy Bentham

The character which results from wealth is that of a prosperous fool.

—Aristotle, c. 322 BC

Color portrait of English philosopher John Locke.

Conversations

Aristotle & John Locke

Punishment is a sort of medicine.

—Aristotle, c. 340 BC

Voices In Time

c. 335 BC | Athens

Story Line

Aristotle devises a perfect tragedy.More

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Voices In Time

c. 330 BC | Athens

Census

The demographics of the ideal city.More

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

—Aristotle, c. 330 BC

Conversations

Aristotle & Henry Noel-Fearn

Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

One thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Voices In Time

c. 330 BC | Athens

True to Form

Aristotle defines the types of government.More

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Miscellany

“My music is best understood by animals and children,” Igor Stravinsky said in 1961. Over two millennia earlier, Aristotle had counseled in The Politics that young men ought to attain a musical sophistication with “a capacity for enjoying noble melodies and rhythms and not merely that general effect of music which is enjoyed by some of the lower animals, as well as by a number of slaves and children.”

Voices In Time

c. 330 BC | Athens

The Reasons Why

Aristotle explains a revolution.More

Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Voices In Time

c. 330 BC | Athens

Of Things That Exist

Aristotle struggles to define the present moment.More

If both what is before and what is after are in this same “now,” things which happened ten thousand years ago would be simultaneous with what has happened today, and nothing would be before or after anything else.

—Aristotle, c. 330 BC