Rembrandt.Aristotle Before the Bust
of Homer. 1653. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, USA. More.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was born at Stagica,
in Macedonia, where his father was physician to the king Amyntas II. Sent
to Athens in 367, he studied under Plato for twenty years, and then, in
342, was summoned by Philip of Macedonia to be the tutor to his son, the
future Alexander the Great. Seven years later he returned to Athens where
he opened a school in the Lyceum, a grove outside the city. He taught there
logic, ethics, metaphysics, physics, zoology, politics, rhetorics, and
poetics. Transmitted through translations, his works shaped the development
of medieval thought first in the Arab world, then in the Latin West, where
Aristotle came to be regarded as the source of all knowledge.
