Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Aristotle. First published Thu Sep 25, 2008 Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) numbers among the greatest philosophers of all time. Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence, only Plato is his peer: Aristotle's works shaped centuries of philosophy from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance, and even today continue to be studied with keen, non-antiquarian interest. A prodigious researcher and writer, Aristotle left a great body of work, perhaps numbering as many as two-hundred treatises, from which approximately thirty-one survive.[1] His extant writings span a wide range of disciplines, from logic, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, through ethics, political theory, aesthetics and rhetoric, and into such primarily non-philosophical fields as empirical biology, where he excelled at detailed plant and animal observation and taxonomy.
Because of its wide range and its remoteness in time, Aristotle's philosophy defies easy encapsulation. 1. 2. Organon Categories (Cat.) 3. Socratic problem. The Socratic problem refers to the difficult or impossible nature of determining what information from antiquity accurately reflects the views and attributes of the historical Socrates.[1] Although Socrates—who was the main character in most of Plato's dialogues—was a genuine historical figure, it is widely understood that in later dialogues Plato used the character of Socrates to give voice to views that were his own. Besides Plato, three other important sources exist for the study of Socrates: Aristophanes, Aristotle and Xenophon. Since no extensive writings of Socrates himself survive to the modern era, his actual views must be discerned from the sometimes contradictory reports of these four sources. Socrates and Plato[edit] Scholarly analysis[edit] Karl Popper treats the Socratic problem in his first book of The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) and Søren Kierkegaard tackles the problem in his dissertation On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841).
Socrates. Socrates (/ˈsɒkrətiːz/;[2] Greek: Σωκράτης [sɔːkrátɛːs], Sōkrátēs; 470/469 – 399 BC)[1] was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity, though it is unclear the degree to which Socrates himself is "hidden behind his 'best disciple', Plato".[3] Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus.
Socratic problem Nothing written by Socrates remains extant. Socrates as a figure Socrates as a philosopher Biography Early life Military service Arrest of Leon Trial and death Notes. Western philosophy. Origins[edit] The scope of philosophy in the ancient understanding, and the writings of (at least some of) the ancient philosophers, were all intellectual endeavors. This included the problems of philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such as pure mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy, and biology (Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics.) The term "Western philosophy" is at times unhelpful and vague, since the definition involves a vast variety of distinct traditions, political groups, religious groups, and individual writers over thousands of years. Western philosophical subdisciplines[edit] Western philosophers have often been divided into some major branches, or schools, based either on the questions typically addressed by people working in different parts of the field, or notions of ideological undercurrents.
Within these broad branches there are now numerous sub-disciplines of philosophy.