Aristotle's famous argument was contrary to the atomist's depiction of a non-eternal cosmos which, he argued, would require an efficient first cause, a notion that Aristotle took to demonstrate a critical flaw in their reasoning.

The same is true for Thomas Aquinas, Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant, who claim that there are duties to ourselves as Aristotle did, although it has been argued that, for Aristotle, the duty to one's self is primary.

Identifying Aristotle's God with rational thought, Davidson argued, contrary to Aristotle, that just as the soul cannot exist apart from the body, God cannot exist apart from the world.

Philosophers such as Aristotle and Pliny the Elder argued that the full Moon induced insanity in susceptible individuals, believing that the brain, which is mostly water, must be affected by the Moon and its power over the tides, but the Moon's gravity is too slight to affect any single person.

Leo Strauss argued that the strong influence of Xenophon, a student of Socrates more known as an historian, rhetorician and soldier, was a major source of Socratic ideas for Machiavelli, sometimes not in line with Aristotle.

Aristotle scholar and Objectivist Allan Gotthelf, chairman of the Society, and his colleagues have argued for more academic study of Objectivism, viewing the philosophy as a unique and intellectually interesting defense of classical liberalism that is worth debating.

Aquinas argued that both the essence of a thing and its existence were clearly distinct, in this regard he is close to the teaching of Aristotle.

Aristotle argued for the existence of one or more unmoved movers to serve as nature's role models and constant inspiration ( see Prime Mover and Daimon ).

Forms of hedonism were put forward by Aristippus and Epicurus ; Aristotle argued that eudaimonia is the highest human good and Augustine wrote that " all men agree in desiring the last end, which is happiness.

Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Aquinas and Hegel are sometimes said to have argued that reason must be fixed and discoverable — perhaps by dialectic, analysis, or study.

Mary P. Winsor, Ron Amundson and Staffan Müller-Wille have each argued that in fact the usual suspects ( such as Linnaeus and the Ideal Morphologists ) were very far from being essentialists, and it appears that the so-called " essentialism story " ( or " myth ") in biology is a result of conflating the views expressed by philosophers from Aristotle onwards through to John Stuart Mill and William Whewell in the immediately pre-Darwinian period, using biological examples, with the use of terms in biology like species.

Aristotle in e. g. Physics IV 6-9 had argued against the existence of the void and his views commanded near universal endorsement by philosophers and scientists up to the 17th century.

We could begin with Aristotle, who argued that sensory information went from the senses to the heart, which he thought was the seat of reason.

On the other hand, al-Ghazali ( also known as " Algazel " in Europe ), who often disagreed with Aristotle and Ibn Sina ( Avicenna ) on many issues, argued that animals do possess anger as one of the three " powers " in their Qalb (" heart "), the other two being appetite and impulse.

Similarly, Aristotle argued that Democritus was wrong to attempt to reduce all things to mere necessity, because doing so neglects the aim, order, and " final cause ," which brings about these necessary conditions:

For Aristotle, natural ends are produced by " natures " ( principles of change internal to living things ), and natures, Aristotle argued, do not deliberate:

Concerning sexual reproduction, Aristotle argued that the male parent provided the " form ," or soul, that guided development through semen, and the female parent contributed unorganized matter, allowing the embryo to grow.

Plethon derides Aristotle for discussing unimportant matters such as shellfish and embryos while failing to credit God with creating the universe, for believing the heavens are composed of a fifth element, and for his view that contemplation was the greatest pleasure ; the latter aligned him with Epicurus, Plethon argued, and he attributed this same pleasure-seeking to monks, whom he accused of laziness.

Later, in response to Gennadius ' Defence of Aristotle, Plethon argued in his Reply that Plato's God was more consistent with Christian doctrine than Aristotle's, and this, according to Darien DeBolt, was probably in part an attempt to escape suspicion of heterodoxy.

The first person known to have criticized the device was Aristotle in his Poetics, where he argued that the resolution of a plot must arise internally, following from previous action of the play.

Aristotle argued at length against many aspects of Plato's forms, creating his own doctrine of hylomorphism wherein form and matter coexist.

In the Poetics, Aristotle argued that poetry is superior to history because poetry speaks of what must or should be truerather than merely what is true.

Near the end of Alexander's life, Alexander began to suspect plots against himself, and threatened Aristotle in letters.

Aristotle fled the city to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining, " I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy ," a reference to Athens's prior trial and execution of Socrates.

He was a contemporary of Aristotle, against whom he wrote with great bitterness.

In Plato, knowledge of whom came to Wycliffe through Saint Augustine, he saw traces of a knowledge of the Trinity, and he championed the doctrine of ideas as against Aristotle.

Aristotle even explicitly argues against some of the ideas that were demonstrated during the scientific revolution, such as heliocentrism.

Aristotle wrote critically of terror employed by tyrants against their subjects.

The issue being that Aristotle, through resolving Parmenides ' Third Man argument against Plato's forms and ontology created a second philosophical school of thought.

As far as is known, his writings may be classified into philosophical ( interpretations of Aristotle, Porphyry, and others, translations of Petrus Hispanus and Thomas Aquinas, and defenses of Aristotelianism against the recrudescence of Neoplatonism ) and theological and ecclesiastical ( partly concerning the union and partly defending Christianity against Muslims, Jews, and pagans ), in addition to numerous homilies, hymns, and letters.

There are also various philosophical treatises of which the chief is a Defence of Aristotle ( antilepseis hyper Aristotelous ) against the Neoplatonist, Gemistus Pletho.

Laws were passed against it, without effect, at Rhodes and Byzantium ; and even Aristotle conformed to the new custom, unlike the other philosophers, who retained the beard as a badge of their profession.

Aristotle has much to say against the Xenocratean interpretation of the theory, and in particular points out that, if the ideal numbers are made up of arithmetical units, they not only cease to be principles, but also become subject to arithmetical operations.

The Exercitationes excited much attention, though they contain little or nothing beyond what others had already advanced against Aristotle.

The three scholars set out to demonstrate that Christians could hold their own in conversations with learned Greek-speaking intellectuals and that Christian faith, while it was against many of the ideas of Plato and Aristotle ( and other Greek philosophers ), was an almost scientific and distinctive movement with the healing of the soul of man and his union with God at its center — one best represented by monasticism.

Plato and Aristotle define a tyrant as, " one who rules without law, looks to his own advantage rather than that of his subjects, and uses extreme and cruel tactics — against his own people as well as others ".

* Simplicio, a dedicated follower of Ptolemy and Aristotle, presents the traditional views and the arguments against the Copernican position.

Albergati wrote against Bodin from 1595, comparing his political theories unfavourably with those of Aristotle.

In his philosophy he was mainly concerned to defend Plato against the followers of Aristotle.

Aristotle was not against literature as such ; he stated that human beings are mimetic beings, feeling an urge to create texts ( art ) that reflect and represent reality.

She eventually rejects the Platonic notion that human goodness can fully protect against peril, siding with the tragic playwrights and Aristotle in treating the acknowledgment of vulnerability as a key to realizing the human good.

He argues against the theory of Aristotle that the soul of man is his thought and that only the soul of the philosopher will be united, after the death of the body, with the active intellect.

According to the Vita Aristotelis Marciana, a much mutilated single manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale di San Marco in Venice, written about 1300, Aristotle left the city, saying, " I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy " ( Vita Aristotelis, 41 ).