Aristotle

Plato’s most brilliant student and perhaps the most significant intellectual in world history, Aristotle of Stageira built on the doctrines he had studied at the Academy but also radically disagreed with them.

The founder of Athens’ second great university, the Lyceum, did not believe there was any perfect, ideal world that transcended human ability to see, touch, smell and hear it, and proposed that all philosophy begin from with material reality of being a human animal in a complex natural world.

Aristotle contributed to many disciplines—scientific subjects as well as ‘Humanities’, but his core philosophical beliefs are laid down in his Nicomachean Ethics, Politics and Rhetoric, which are analysed in this lecture, as well as the major works of the next generation of practitioners of what became known as 'Peripatetic' philosophy.

A lecture by Edith Hall

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

[athenassigil]

I have your book and love the fact that an academic is still in love with her original inspiration. Excellent talk and I will re-read your book, again. Cheers!

[frankdsouza]

Gresham College, an extraordinary Institution, superbly run by less than a handful of the nicest people one could hope 🤣 for.

[colonelweird]

Hard to imagine how it would be possible to present a better concise overview of Aristotle than this. But I admit I was hoping for a bit more on his ontology & theology, in view of his influence in the middle ages.

[gailspencer]

Love Aristotle and Gresham. Thanks for both coming together here.

[barrycrump]

I really enjoyed this lecture. More, please.

[dorianphilotheates]

I’ve always wondered what Aristotle would make of ‘West Coast rap’.

[stevenjbeto]

Might Aristotle, like Thomas Edison or modern corporations with their employees, have been given credit for the wide range of observations and accomplishments of his students?

[kawaljeetsingh]

"Seeing is what is beliving "

[freedomevent]

"Happiness is not a permanent state" I guess people get overwhelmed and take their feet off the gas. Thank you for your time.

[thomasjamison]

The upper classes always seem to grow fond of controlling society in their own way, and that usually leaves out the majority of people. Aristotle, apparently, was not immune to this idea. But in truth, all forms of human government tend to corruption. Where there can remain a division of powers in some format, whether as the founders of the American Republic spelled them out, or as the British developed them through Parliament, or the Romans had at first with the Senate and Tribunes and later the Emperor and his military forces, there can be more stability, but all roads lead to the downfall of Rome eventually.

[willgibbons]

This is what we all need, a great lecture on a great man. None of that social studies and stuff. Why can't all places of higher learning be like Gresham college.

[galek]

Based Aristotle, thumbs up if you agree

[parrotraiser]

Aristotle's work clearly needs careful study from dead trees. Is there a satisfactory edition of it all, and if so, who publishes it?

[valmarsiglia]

There are only nine of 10 categories listed; quantity is missing. Sorry, don't mean to be pedantic. OK, maybe a little ;)

[loolylooly]

I can only pray that Gresham would invest in better audio recording equipment for such fantastic lectures.
🌺🌸

[delhatton]

well done. your enthusiasm was a treat.

[mmccrownus]

Aristotle’s logic was the basis of Bolleian logic which formed basis of computer language

[smustafa]

At that time Turkey did not exist, therefore couldn’t have travelled to Turkey, the modern Turkey was part of Ancient Greece.

[iamcyber]

can't believe I'm clicking on an ad but I'm interested in artistole so here I am

[JimOverbeckgenius]

Aristotle said - Peri Hermenias/De Interpretatione IV:IV - 'It is impossible then that being a man should mean not being a man - i.e. - it will not be possible to be and not be the same thing' & he takes this conflation of man & thing to consolidate the 'law' [principium] of non-contradiction 'not both A and not-A simultaneously'. In creating Non-Cantorian set theory [= Mengenlehre] I showed quantities not obeying this 'law' & in fact used the Grandi [= Fourier-Bolzano] series = -1 + 1 - 1 + 1 ... as a denumerable isomorphic line to yield the ambiguous sums 0, 1 and 1/2, using the latter to suggest an 'in-betweener' function for different infinities. As non-contradiction is a correlate of tertium exclusi and identity, I considered it evident A = A in Aristotelianism implies A is not subject to 'slippage' - i.e. - it holds to a myth of fixity in which becoming [Gk: gignomai] represses movement. Aristotle himself regarded these 'laws' as without proof & in his first ever logical treatise circa 350 BC its very title Analutika Protera Ln: Analytica Priora equates analutos = solved & episteme = knowing logicality whereas, in fact, solvability is based on the falsehood of no intermediary between contradictory statements. Aristotle's self-evidence for axiomata actually assumes a self which solves [= analuo upo principium tertii exclusi], but I connected recursive, infinite bases - themselves augmentative & thus incomplete - with "human beings", demonstrating mortals are neither human nor beings. Aristotelianism bedevils western ideologies in its Essentialism & it blocks TRANSFIGURATION, whereas Platonism at least indicates homoiosis to theo without, however, knowing how to actually achieve immortalization.