Here’s a compact but wide‑ranging overview of Aristotle (Aristotélēs; Latin: Aristoteles), aiming to cover his life, works, core ideas across fields, and historical impact.

Who he was
- Greek philosopher (384–322 BCE), born in Stagira (Chalcidice), son of Nicomachus (a physician at the Macedonian court).
- Student at Plato’s Academy for about 20 years; left after Plato’s death (347).
- Lived in Asia Minor with Hermias of Atarneus; married his ward Pythias; later partner Herpyllis; son named Nicomachus.
- Tutor to Alexander the Great at Mieza (c. 343–335).
- Founded his own school, the Lyceum, in Athens (335), where he and his collaborators pursued coordinated research (the “Peripatetic” school).
- Charged with impiety in 323 amid anti‑Macedonian sentiment; left Athens for Chalcis (“so the city might not sin twice against philosophy”); died in 322.

The Aristotelian corpus and its transmission
- Most surviving works are technical treatises and lecture notes used at the Lyceum, not polished “public” dialogues (those exoteric works are largely lost).
- Corpus organized in antiquity (not by Aristotle) by Andronicus of Rhodes; authenticity of some treatises debated; many works later labeled “pseudo‑Aristotelian.”
- Key groups:
  - Logic (the Organon): Categories; On Interpretation; Prior Analytics; Posterior Analytics; Topics; Sophistical Refutations.
  - Natural philosophy: Physics; On the Heavens; On Generation and Corruption; Meteorology.
  - Psychology/biology: On the Soul; Parva Naturalia; History of Animals; Parts of Animals; Movement/Progression of Animals; Generation of Animals.
  - First philosophy: Metaphysics.
  - Practical works: Nicomachean Ethics; Eudemian Ethics; Politics (the Athenian Constitution is a separate school document discovered in 1890).
  - Language/literature: Rhetoric; Poetics (second book on comedy is lost).
  - Often considered spurious or of uncertain authorship: Magna Moralia; Economics; Mechanics; Problems; Physiognomonics; On the Universe; On Colors.

Method and overarching themes
- Start from endoxa (credible, well‑regarded opinions), refine by dialectic, seek explanatory causes.
- Knowledge (epistēmē) is demonstrative: a syllogistic proof from true, primary principles; we grasp first principles by nous (intuitive intellect), aided by induction (epagōgē) and experience.
- Explanations are causal and often teleological (purpose‑oriented).

Logic
- Founder of formal logic. Syllogistic theory (term logic) dominated until modern predicate logic.
- Categorical propositions (universal/particular; affirmative/negative), syllogistic moods/figures, square of opposition.
- Posterior Analytics: demonstrative science; middle term as explanatory cause.
- Modal and temporal issues addressed; famous problem of future contingents (the “sea‑battle” in On Interpretation 9).

Metaphysics (first philosophy)
- Study of being qua being; centrality of substance (ousia).
- Hylomorphism: substances are composites of matter (hulē) and form (eidos).
- Potentiality (dunamis) and actuality (energeia/entelecheia).
- Four causes: material, formal, efficient, final.
- Theology of the unmoved mover: the cosmos requires eternal immaterial actuality as the ultimate final cause; “thought thinking itself.” Later tradition counts multiple celestial movers; Aristotle also speaks of a primary mover.

Natural philosophy (physics and cosmology)
- Eternality of motion and time; no creation ex nihilo in Aristotle’s physics.
- Time as “the number of motion with respect to before and after”; depends on a counter (a mind) but is not merely subjective.
- No vacuum; nature abhors a void. Elements (earth, water, air, fire) with natural places; celestial aether moves circularly. Geocentric cosmos with concentric spheres.
- Natural vs violent motion; speed proportional to force and inversely to resistance (pre‑Galilean view).
- Much later overturned by early modern science, but methodically significant in unifying observation with causal explanation.

Biology and psychology
- Among the first systematic biologists: extensive observations and classifications (blooded vs bloodless; modes of reproduction; comparative anatomy).
- Embryology: chick development studies; many accurate descriptions, some errors (e.g., heart as seat of cognition; role of the brain as a cooling organ).
- Noted that some marine animals (e.g., dolphins) give live birth and nurse.
- Explanations are teleological: structures exist for the sake of functions.
- On the Soul: soul as the form of a living body (hylomorphic psychology); faculties—nutritive, perceptual, appetitive, locomotive, and intellectual.
- Perception as reception of form without matter; imagination (phantasia) mediates between sense and thought.
- Active vs passive intellect (controversial passage in III.5 prompted later divergent interpretations—Averroist, Thomist, etc.).

Epistemology
- Scientific understanding requires knowing the cause; demonstration must proceed from true, better known, prior, and explanatory premises.
- First principles are not demonstrable but known by nous, made possible through habituated experience and induction.

Ethics (chiefly Nicomachean Ethics)
- Human good (eudaimonia) is an activity of the soul in accord with virtue, over a complete life, requiring some external goods.
- Virtue ethics: moral virtues are states disposed to choose the “mean” relative to us, as determined by reason; not mediocrity but excellence calibrated to context.
- Moral virtues: courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, mildness, truthfulness, wit, friendliness, justice, etc.
- Intellectual virtues: nous, epistēmē, sophia, technē, phronēsis (practical wisdom).
- Akrasia (weakness of will): conflict between reason and desire; role of habituation and character formation.
- Highest life is theoretical contemplation (sophia), yet political and practical virtues are integral to a good life.

Politics
- Humans are “political animals”: the polis is natural and prior in form to the individual.
- Analysis of constitutions; best practicable regime is a mixed polity (politeia) with a strong middle class; ideal regimes (monarchy/aristocracy) vs deviant forms (tyranny/oligarchy/democracy in his technical sense).
- Critiques Plato’s communal property/family proposals; defends private property with communal use as a virtue.
- Household management (oikonomia) distinguished from chrematistics (limitless wealth‑seeking, esp. usury) as “unnatural.”
- Deeply problematic views by modern lights: defense of “natural slavery”; views of women’s inferiority; these reflect and reinforced ancient hierarchies.

Rhetoric and poetics
- Rhetoric: art of discovering the available means of persuasion; ethos, pathos, logos; genres (deliberative, forensic, epideictic); enthymeme (rhetorical syllogism); topoi (commonplaces).
- Poetics: tragedy as imitation (mimesis) of serious action leading to catharsis of pity and fear; priority of plot over character; devices like peripeteia (reversal) and anagnorisis (recognition); unity of plot; lost treatment of comedy.

Language and categories
- Ten categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state (having), action, passion.
- Distinguishes different kinds of
