To summarize "everything" about Aristotle is a massive undertaking, as he is arguably the most influential thinker in Western history. A staggeringly prolific polymath, his work laid the foundations for logic, biology, ethics, politics, and literary theory. 

Here is a comprehensive breakdown of the life, philosophy, and legacy of Aristotle.

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### 1. Biography
* **Birth:** Born in 384 BC in Stagira, a town in northern Greece (which is why he is often called "the Stagirite"). His father, Nicomachus, was the personal physician to the King of Macedon, which likely sparked Aristotle’s lifelong interest in biology and anatomy.
* **Plato’s Academy:** At age 17, he traveled to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy. He stayed for 20 years, becoming Plato's most brilliant, but ultimately most rebellious, student.
* **Tutoring Alexander the Great:** After Plato died, Aristotle left Athens. In 343 BC, King Philip II of Macedon summoned him to tutor his teenage son, who would become Alexander the Great. 
* **The Lyceum:** In 335 BC, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his own school, the **Lyceum**. His followers were known as **Peripatetics** (meaning "people who walk around"), because Aristotle liked to walk the school grounds while delivering lectures.
* **Death:** After Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, anti-Macedonian sentiment flared in Athens. Fearing he would be executed like Socrates, Aristotle fled, famously declaring he would not allow Athens to "sin twice against philosophy." He died a year later in 322 BC of a digestive disease.

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### 2. Aristotle vs. Plato: The Great Divide
To understand Aristotle, you must understand how he disagreed with Plato. 
* **Plato** believed in the **Theory of Forms**: the idea that the physical world is just a shadow of a higher, flawless, abstract reality (the realm of Forms). 
* **Aristotle** was an **empiricist**. He believed that reality is right here, in the physical world. For Aristotle, "form" and "matter" cannot be separated. You cannot have the "concept" of a dog without an actual, physical dog to observe. Truth is found through observing nature, not just through thinking abstractly.

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### 3. Core Philosophical Concepts
Aristotle systematized human knowledge. Here are his primary contributions by category:

#### A. Logic (The Organon)
Aristotle effectively invented formal logic. For 2,000 years, to study logic meant to study Aristotle.
* **The Syllogism:** A formal method of deductive reasoning. 
  * *Major premise:* All men are mortal.
  * *Minor premise:* Socrates is a man.
  * *Conclusion:* Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
* **Principle of Non-Contradiction:** A thing cannot *be* and *not be* at the same time and in the same respect.

#### B. Metaphysics
Aristotle sought to understand the fundamental nature of reality—what it means "to be."
* **The Four Causes:** To truly understand anything, Aristotle said you must know four things about it. (Example: A marble statue of Zeus):
  1. **Material Cause:** What it is made of *(Marble)*.
  2. **Formal Cause:** Its shape or design *(The blueprint/shape of Zeus)*.
  3. **Efficient Cause:** The agent that made it *(The sculptor)*.
  4. **Final Cause (Teleology):** Its ultimate purpose *(To be worshipped/admired)*.
* **The Unmoved Mover:** Aristotle noticed that everything in the universe is in motion, set in motion by something else. To avoid an infinite regression, he deduced there must be an initial "Prime Mover" or "Unmoved Mover" that started it all—a concept later adapted by Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theologians to explain God.

#### C. Ethics (Virtue Ethics)
His moral philosophy is masterfully detailed in the *Nicomachean Ethics*.
* **Eudaimonia:** Often translated as "happiness," it more accurately means "human flourishing" or a life well-lived. This is the ultimate goal of human existence.
* **The Golden Mean:** Aristotle argued that moral virtue is a habit and exists as a midpoint (mean) between two extremes: excess and deficiency. 
  * *Example:* Courage is the Golden Mean. Too little courage is *cowardice* (deficiency). Too much courage is *recklessness* (excess).

#### D. Politics
Aristotle believed ethics and politics were linked; ethics makes a good person, politics makes a good society.
* **The Political Animal:** He famously stated, "Man is by nature a political animal" (*zoon politikon*). Humans can only achieve *eudaimonia* within a community (the *polis* or city-state).
* **Six Forms of Government:** He categorized governments into good and corrupt forms based on who rules and whose interest they serve:
  * *Rule by One:* Monarchy (Good) / Tyranny (Corrupt)
  * *Rule by Few:* Aristocracy (Good) / Oligarchy (Corrupt)
  * *Rule by Many:* Polity (Good - middle class rule) / Democracy (Corrupt - mob rule)

#### E. Science and Biology
Aristotle was history's first great observational biologist. 
* He dissected animals, studied chick embryos, and created a taxonomy system, dividing animals into those with red blood (vertebrates) and those without (invertebrates). 
* He believed nature did nothing in vain (Teleology); every biological mechanism has a purpose.

#### F. Rhetoric and Poetics
* **Rhetoric:** He identified the three modes of persuasion still taught in communication today: **Ethos** (credibility of the speaker), **Pathos** (emotional appeal), and **Logos** (logical argument).
* **Poetics:** He practically invented literary criticism. He analyzed Greek tragedy, introducing concepts like **Mimesis** (imitation of life) and **Catharsis** (the purging of pity and fear that an audience experiences when watching a tragedy).

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### 4. The Surviving Works
Interestingly, we do not have the books Aristotle published for the public. Ancient writers said his prose was "a river of gold," but those works were lost. 
What survives today are essentially his **lecture notes** or internal school manuals. This is why his writings are famously dense, dry, and highly structured. Key surviving texts include:
* *Physics* & *Metaphysics*
* *Nicomachean Ethics* & *Eudemian Ethics*
* *Politics*
* *De Anima* (On the Soul)
* *Poetics* & *Rhetoric*
* *The Organon* (Collected works on logic)

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### 5. Legacy and Impact
Aristotle’s influence on the world is difficult to overstate:
* **The Islamic Golden Age:** After the fall of Rome, Aristotle was largely lost to the Christian West but preserved by Islamic scholars like Avicenna and Averroes, who synthesized his texts with Islamic theology.
* **The Middle Ages:** In the 13th century, Saint Thomas Aquinas reconciled Aristotle's philosophy with Christian doctrine. Aristotle became so revered in the medieval Church that he was referred to simply as *"The Philosopher."*
* **The Scientific Revolution:** During the Renaissance and Enlightenment, scientists like Galileo and Newton had to actively fight *against* Aristotle's physics to establish modern science (Aristotle wrongly believed heavier objects fall faster, and that the Earth was the center of the universe).
* **Modern Day:** His virtue ethics experienced a massive revival in the 20th century (spearheaded by philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre). His logic is the basis of computer science, and his dramatic theories still shape how Hollywood writes screenplays today.
