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and what did he believe about human nature according to this quote...


"Since human reason is the most godlike part of human nature, a life guided by human reason is superior to any other...fir man,this is the life of reason, since the faculty of reason is the distinguishing characteristic of human beings

2007-01-08 10:12:24 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Education & Reference Quotations

3 answers

Latitude 360 has provided the essential facts and framework. I will add some more context. A student of Plato, he departed form his master in the direction of a more concrete and realistic understanding of the world; for Plato, the phenomenal world has only a deceptive and misleading reality, and the philosophical task is to penetrate the Reality which lies beyond it, in the world of what he called Ideas. Aristotle said of his departure from Plato's teachings, "Truth is more important than friendship." He had an encyclopedic mind, inquiring into every aspect of human and natural life. He could think as creatively about biology as about politics or ethics or literature. Here are some of his major ideas: Greek tragedy shows great men who nevertheless suffer from what may be called a tragic flaw (hamartia); tragedy purges us (catharsis) by arousing the emotions of pity and terror. He is famous for enunciating the Golden Mean in ethics, on which he wrote two treatises: thus courage is the Golden Mean between cowrdice and brashness, and so with many of the other virtues. He has provided a masterly analysis of different kinds of political constitutions, from tyranny and aristocracy to democracy and anarchy. An understanding of the physical world being an asect of ancient philosophy, Aristotle wrote of the arrangement of the universe, of astronomy and physics. It would not be too much to say that he was the most comprehensive intellect of all time, even though some of his facts are now outdated. Dante, the medieval poet, called him the Master of those who know. And Rembrandt thought it fitting to devote a major canvas to Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer. Plato tends to mysticism, Aristotle to rationality: reason is the glory and crown of of being human: man is a rational animal. But he did think about God, whom he defined as the unmoved mover. Thomas Acquinas, the master theologian of the Middle Ages, is Aristotle applied to Catholic Christianity. Religion, which some people oppose to reason, Aristotle and Acquinas understood through the reason. All in all, Aristotle is an intellectual colossus magisterially presiding over the thought of the West.

2007-01-09 04:01:29 · answer #1 · answered by tirumalai 4 · 0 0

Aristotle (384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on diverse subjects, including physics, poetry, biology and zoology, logic, rhetoric, politics, government and ethics. Along with Socrates and Plato, Aristotle was one of the most influential of ancient Greek philosophers. They transformed Presocratic Greek philosophy into the foundations of Western philosophy as we know it. Some consider Plato and Aristotle to have founded two of the most important schools of Ancient philosophy; others consider Aristotelianism as a development and concretization of Plato's insights.

2007-01-08 18:59:25 · answer #2 · answered by Latitude 360 5 · 0 0

He was a Greek philosopher in ancient times. I hear he studied greatly on the Human mind and facts about life. I think what he means by that quote is to follow your own path through life is the best path to take.

2007-01-08 18:22:16 · answer #3 · answered by Gettysburg Ghost 3 · 0 0

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