However, Aristotle also writes, " since it is impossible that contradictories should be at the same time true of the same thing, obviously contraries also cannot belong at the same time to the same thing " ( Book IV, CH 6, p. 531 ).

Paul Waldau writes that the overriding of animals ' interests was traditionally justified by arguing that they existed for human use ; Aristotle made this claim in the 4th century BCE, as did Cicero in the 1st century CE.

Aristotle writes of the unscribed tablet in what is probably the first textbook of psychology in the Western canon, his treatise " Περί Ψυχῆς " ( De Anima or On the Soul, Book III, chapter 4 ).

* Aristoxenus, a Greek peripatetic philosopher, and writer on music and rhythm, and a pupil of Aristotle, writes a treatise on music called the " Elements of Harmony ".

Aristotle writes about an influence of ambiguities on arguments and also about an influence of ambiguities depending on either combination or division of words.

Indeed, Aristotle writes, " It is clear that the soul, or at least some parts of it ( if it is divisible ), cannot be separated from the body.

Indeed, Aristotle writes, " It is clear that the soul, or at least some parts of it ( if it is divisible ), cannot be separated from the body.

Michael Davis, a translator and commentator of Aristotle writes:

It was also current among the first generation of his pupils, such as Aristotle, who writes, " Those who provide necessaries for an individual are slaves, and those who provide them for society are handicraftsmen and day-laborers.

Aristotle writes in the Poetics that tragedy was born from the beginning improvisation, namely " by those who chant the dithyramb " (, apò ton exarchòntōn tòn dithýrambon ), a song choir in honor of Dionysus.

For example Aristotle writes " that which people know to happen or not to happen, or to be or not to be, mostly in a particular way, is likely, for example, that the envious are malevolent or that those who are loved are affectionate.

Aristotle ( Poetics 5. 1449b5 ) writes that he and Phormis invented comic plots ( muthos ).

Ironically, in the story, Averroës casually observes some children play-acting, then later hears a traveler ineptly describe an actual theatrical performance he once saw in a distant land, but still fails to understand that the tragedies and comedies of which Aristotle writes are a kind of performance art, rather than merely literature.

Aristotle writes that " Of the dispositions described above, the deliberate avoidance of pain is rather a kind of softness ( malakia ); the deliberate pursuit of pleasure is profligacy in the strict sense.

In her introduction to the 1985 facsimile edition E. J. Ashworth writes that " The young Isaac Newton studied Sanderson's logic at Cambridge, and as late as 1704 " Thomas Heywood of St. John's College, Ashworth adds, recommended Newton " Sanderson or Aristotle himself ".

Aristotle writes, " it is not what has nothing outside it that is infinite, but what always has something outside it " ( 6. 206b33-207a1-2 ).

Aristotle also tended to stratify all aspects of human nature and activity into levels of excellence and, like Plato, he put the pure and unimpassioned intellect on the top level.

Plato and Aristotle agree on some vital literary issues.

Aristotle " says that ' on the subject of reasoning ' he ' had nothing else on an earlier date to speak of '".

The first Greek Christians to comment extensively on Aristotle were John Philoponus, Elias, and David in the sixth century, and Stephen of Alexandria in the early seventh century.

Averroes, Avicenna and Alpharabius, who wrote on Aristotle in great depth, also influenced Thomas Aquinas and other Western Christian scholastic philosophers.

Ayn Rand accredited Aristotle as " the greatest philosopher in history " and cited him as a major influence on her thinking.

The secondary literature on Aristotle is vast.

Essays on Plato and Aristotle, Oxford University Press, USA.

Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity.

Articles on Aristotle Vol 1.

* Scholarly surveys of focused topics from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: articles on Aristotle, Aristotle in the Renaissance, Biology, Causality, Commentators on Aristotle, Ethics, Logic, Mathematics, Metaphysics, Natural philosophy, Non-contradiction, Political theory, Psychology, Rhetoric

Category: Commentators on Aristotle

Albertus was the first to comment on virtually all of the writings of Aristotle, thus making them accessible to wider academic debate.

The study of Aristotle brought him to study and comment on the teachings of Muslim academics, notably Avicenna and Averroes, and this would bring him in the heart of academic debate.

Two aspects of this attitude deserve to be mentioned: 1 ) he did not only study science from books, as other academics did in his day, but actually observed and experimented with nature ( the rumours starting by those who did not understand this are probably at the source of Albert's supposed connections with alchemy and witchcraft ), 2 ) he took from Aristotle the view that scientific method had to be appropriate to the objects of the scientific discipline at hand ( in discussions with Roger Bacon, who, like many 20th century academics, thought that all science should be based on mathematics ).

On the subject of alchemy and chemistry, many treatises relating to Alchemy have been attributed to him, though in his authentic writings he had little to say on the subject, and then mostly through commentary on Aristotle.

Category: Latin commentators on Aristotle

The press was started by Aldus based on his love of classics, and at first printed new copies of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek and Latin classics.

Although ancient Greek philosophers believed in individual virtue ethics, philosophers like " Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics not accept the formal principle that whatever the good is, we should seek only our own good, or prefer it to the good of others.

In Himanen's opinion, the hacker ethic is more closely related to the virtue ethics found in the writings of Plato and of Aristotle.

When a person's actions are completely virtuous in all matters in relation to others, Aristotle calls her " just " in the sense of " general justice ;" as such this idea of justice is more or less coextensive with virtue.

Whereas the " higher " law Aristotle suggested one could appeal to was emphatically natural, in contradistinction to being the result of divine positive legislation, the Stoic natural law was indifferent to the divine or natural source of the law: the Stoics asserted the existence of a rational and purposeful order to the universe ( a divine or eternal law ), and the means by which a rational being lived in accordance with this order was the natural law, which spelled out action that accorded with virtue.

In his work Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defined a virtue as a balance point between a deficiency and an excess of a trait.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle gives a lengthy account of the virtue phronesis ( Greek: ϕρονησιϛ ), which has traditionally been translated as " prudence ", although this has become increasingly problematic as the word has fallen out of common usage.

Aristotle made the statement "... the citizens must not live a mechanic or a mercantile life ( for such a life is ignoble and inimical to virtue ), nor yet must those who are to be citizens in the best state be tillers of the soil （ for leisure is needed both for the development of virtue and for active participation in politics.

While some philosophers such as Aristotle ( and George Bernard Shaw ) consider pride a profound virtue, some world religions consider it a sin, such as is expressed in Proverbs 11: 2 of the Old Testament.

Cynics with long dirty beards to indicate their " strict indifference to all external goods and social customs "; Stoics occasionally trimming and washing their beards in accord with their view " that it is acceptable to prefer certain external goods so long as they are never valued above virtue "; Peripatetics took great care of their beards believing in accord with Aristotle that " external goods and social status were necessary for the good life together with virtue ".

According to one interpretation of Aristotle, a properly organized body is already alive simply by virtue of its structure.

Once again Campanella engages in an explicit polemic with Aristotle, who had excluded artisans, peasants and those involved in manual labor from the category of full citizenship and from the highest levels of virtue.

For Aristotle, then, happiness is " the virtuous activity of the soul in accordance with reason ": happiness is the practice of virtue.

" However, where utilitarians focused on reasoning about consequences as the primary tool for reaching happiness, Aquinas agreed with Aristotle that happiness cannot be reached solely through reasoning about consequences of acts, but also requires a pursuit of good causes for acts, such as habits according to virtue.

Aristotle believed that happiness, or eudaimonia is constituted by rational activity in accordance with virtue over a complete life.

Aristotle takes virtue and its exercise to be the most important constituent in eudaimonia but does acknowledge the importance of external goods such as health, wealth, and beauty.

In outline, for Aristotle, eudaimonia involves activity, exhibiting virtue ( aretē sometimes translated as excellence ) in accordance with reason.

Aristotle ’ s ethical theory is eudaimonist because it maintains that eudaimonia depends on virtue.

However, it is Aristotle ’ s explicit view that virtue is necessary but not sufficient for eudaimonia.

One important difference between Epicurus ’ eudaimonism and that of Plato and Aristotle is that for the latter virtue is a constituent of eudaimonia, whereas Epicurus makes virtue a means to happiness.

So whereas Aristotle would not say that one ought to aim for virtue in order to attain pleasure, Epicurus would endorse this claim.

Concern for virtue appears in several philosophical traditions ; in the West the roots of the tradition lie in the work of Plato and Aristotle, and even today the tradition ’ s key concepts derive from ancient Greek philosophy.