The word `` mimesis '' ( `` imitation '' ) is usually associated with Plato and Aristotle.

But Aristotle kept the principle of levels and even augmented it by describing in the Poetics what kinds of character and action must be imitated if the play is to be a vehicle of serious and important human truths.

For both Plato and Aristotle artistic mimesis, in contrast to the power of dialectic, is relatively incapable of expressing the character of fundamental reality.

The Chicago contingent of modern critics follow Aristotle so far in this direction that it is hard to see how they can compare one poem with another for the purpose of evaluation.

In his study Samuel Johnson, Joseph Wood Krutch takes this line when he says that what Aristotle really means by his theory of catharsis is that our evil passions may be so purged by the dramatic ritual that it is `` less likely that we shall indulge them through our own acts ''.

Together with Plato and Socrates ( Plato's teacher ), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.

Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues ( Cicero described his literary style as " a river of gold "), it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived.

It is during this period in Athens from 335 to 323 BC when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works.

A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander's death, but there is little evidence for this.

With the Prior Analytics, Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic, and his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th century advances in mathematical logic.

Aristotle is referred to as " The Philosopher " by Scholastic thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas.

It is Martin Heidegger, not Nietzsche, who elaborated a new interpretation of Aristotle, intended to warrant his deconstruction of scholastic and philosophical tradition.

The secondary literature on Aristotle is vast.

Aristotle ( 384-322 BC ) understood that sound consisted of contractions and expansions of the air " falling upon and striking the air which is next to it ...", a very good expression of the nature of wave motion.

On the Soul ( De anima ) is a treatise on the soul written along the lines suggested by Aristotle in his own De anima.

The work is a discussion of ethical issues based on Aristotle, and contains responses to questions and problems deriving from Alexander's school.

It is noteworthy that Socrates ( Plato, Phaedo, 98 B ) accuses Anaxagoras of failing to differentiate between nous and psyche, while Aristotle ( Metaphysics, Book I ) objects that his nous is merely a deus ex machina to which he refuses to attribute design and knowledge.

We know little more of the life of Andronicus, but he is of special interest in the history of philosophy, from the statement of Plutarch, that he published a new edition of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, which formerly belonged to the library of Apellicon, and were brought to Rome by Sulla with the rest of Apellicon's library in 84 BC.

Payment for jurors was introduced around 462 BC and is ascribed to Pericles, a feature described by Aristotle as fundamental to radical democracy ( Politics 1294a37 ).

In Aristotle this is categorized as the difference between ' arithmetic ' and ' geometric ' ( i. e. proportional ) equality.

The challenge to the assumption that beauty was central to art and aesthetics, thought to be original, is actually continuous with older aesthetic theory ; Aristotle was the first in the Western tradition to classify " beauty " into types as in his theory of drama, and Kant made a distinction between beauty and the sublime.

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.

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

Several of Alexander's works were published in the Aldine edition of Aristotle, Venice, 1495 – 1498 ; his De Fato and De Anima were printed along with the works of Themistius at Venice ( 1534 ); the former work, which has been translated into Latin by Grotius and also by Schulthess, was edited by J. C. Orelli, Zürich, 1824 ; and his commentaries on the Metaphysica by H. Bonitz, Berlin, 1847.

Andronicus wrote a work upon Aristotle, the fifth book of which contained a complete list of the philosopher's writings, and he also wrote commentaries upon the Physics, Ethics, and Categories.

As Aristotle offered the categories and the act of existence, and Aquinas the analogy of being, the rationalists also had their own system, the great chain of being, an interlocking hierarchy of beings from God to dust.

Charles Sanders Peirce, who had read Kant closely and who also had some knowledge of Aristotle, proposed a system of merely three phenomenological categories: Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, which he repeatedly invoked in his subsequent writings.

He also believed ( contra Aristotle ) that death was not to be feared.

Greek was also the language in which many of the foundational texts of Western philosophy, such as the Platonic dialogues and the works of Aristotle, were composed ; the New Testament of the Christian Bible was written in Koiné Greek.

The examinations of Vesalius also disproved medical theories of Aristotle and Mondino de Liuzzi.

He also pushed for the study of Greek, housing Barlaam of Calabria, and encouraging his tentative translations of works by Homer, Euripides, and Aristotle.

Information about Hippocrates can also be found in the writings of Aristotle, which date from the 4th century BC, in the Suda of the 10th century AD, and in the works of John Tzetzes, which date from the 12th century AD.

Edward B. Titchener also mentioned that the studies were the greatest undertaking in the topic of memory since Aristotle.

The works of over five hundred authors, from Aristotle to James I, were digested and methodized, including those of Aquinas, Scotus, and medieval theology, as also those of medieval science, such as De Natura Rerum.

In it Anatoli manifests a wide acquaintance not only with the classic Jewish exegetes, but also with Plato, Aristotle, Averroes, and the Vulgate, as well as with a large number of Christian institutions, some of which he ventures to criticize, such as celibacy and monastic castigation, as well as certain heretics ( compare 15a, 98a, 115a ); and he repeatedly appeals to his readers for a broader cultivation of the classic languages and the profane branches of learning.

But it must also be remembered that Aristotle is describing a view of morality, not a system of law, and therefore his remarks as to nature here are about the grounding of the morality enacted as law not the laws themselves.

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 ).

Aristotle has also been accused of being a misogynist ; He has written that women were inferior to men.

Because of his path-finding synthesis of Aristotle and Biblical faith, Maimonides also had a fundamental influence on the great Church theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas.

While Xenophon and Plato also described realistic politics, and were closer to Machiavelli than Aristotle was, they, like Aristotle, also saw Philosophy as something higher than politics.

He returned to Alexandria, and began determinedly studying the works of Aristotle under Olympiodorus the Elder ( he also began studying mathematics during this period as well with a teacher named Heron ( no relation to Hero of Alexandria who was also known as Heron ).