The name of
Aristotle is associated with teaching in three important respects, these being
as the tutor of Alexander the Great, the founder of the Lyceum in Athens, and a
profound influence on learning for many centuries after his death.
Aristotle and
Alexander
Aristotle was
a Macedonian by birth (in 384 BC) and upbringing but he spent some twenty years
in Athens, from 367 to 347 BC, studying and teaching in Plato’s Academy, although
he left Athens when he was apparently overlooked as Plato’s successor. In 342
BC he was invited by King Philip of Macedon to become the tutor of his son
Alexander, who was then thirteen years old.
Aristotle was
treated with the greatest respect by Philip, who provided him with all the
facilities he needed and also encouraged other Macedonian nobles to enrol their
sons at his school, which was established in his native city of Stagira.
Aristotle ran the school for seven years although Alexander only stayed for
four, after which Philip reckoned that he was old enough to undertake state
duties as a royal prince.
The degree of
influence that Aristotle had on his pupil, who would soon set off on a campaign
of military conquests and empire-building, is open to question. It is true that
Alexander had a lot to do with the spread of Hellenistic culture and
civilization around much of the Middle East ,
but how much of this was down to Aristotle’s teaching?
Bertrand
Russell was of the view that the influence was slight, given that Alexander’s
admiration for Greek culture was common to Macedonian aristocrats who had no
wish to be thought of as barbarians when they ventured abroad. This attitude
would have been the same whether or not one had been tutored by Aristotle.
In Russell’s
words: “I cannot imagine his pupil regarded him as anything but a prosy old
pedant, set over him by his father to keep him out of mischief.”
It would also
appear that Aristotle, the urbane philosopher from Athens who had himself been
taught by the greatest teacher of his age, namely Plato, did little to correct
the faults of his star pupil. A W Benn , quoted
by Russell, described the adult Alexander as: “Arrogant, drunken, cruel,
vindictive and grossly superstitious. He united the vices of a Highland chief to the frenzy of an Oriental despot”.
However, it
was also the case that Alexander did not forget his tutor, and as long as
Alexander lived, Aristotle had his protection. Alexander also supported him
financially and sent him items of interest that he collected during his
campaigns. The picture of the relationship between the distinguished teacher
and his former pupil is therefore a mixed one.
Aristotle and
the Lyceum
In 335 BC
Aristotle returned to Athens where he found that his friend Xenocrates had been
made president of the Academy, originally founded by Plato. The state granted
him a site, functioning as a gymnasium that trained athletes, that was sacred
to Apollo Lyceus (the “wolf-god”) and hence named the Lyceum.
Over the next
twelve years Aristotle devoted himself to teaching scholars at the Lyceum while
also writing the works for which he is best known. He was forced to leave Athens
Aristotle’s
method of teaching was to give lectures as the group of scholars (to be regarded
more as “postgraduates” than “undergraduates” in modern terminology) walked
through the lime groves of the Lyceum. This has given his followers the name
“Peripatetics” from the Greek word “peripatein” meaning “to walk around”. The
sessions therefore combined training of the mind with gentle exercise of the
body, a method that has much to recommend it.
According to
the Roman writer Aulus Gellius, Aristotle offered two distinct courses of
instruction. The morning sessions were directed at an “inner circle” of hearers
whom he dubbed “esoterics”. They covered the more abstruse subjects of
theology, physics and dialectics. In the afternoons Aristotle welcomed a wider
group of “exoteric” scholars for his lectures on rhetoric and politics. No
doubt there was considerable interest in being promoted to the inner circle
that was allowed to attend the morning sessions, which would have ensured that
Aristotle was listened to with rapt attention.
Aristotle was
the archetypal polymath of the ancient world, with his surviving works
incorporating a huge range of knowledge including science, mathematics, logic,
economics, politics, ethics and metaphysics. The word “metaphysics” derives
from a published edition of Aristotle’s works put together by Andronicus of
Rhodes in the first century BC. Aristotle’s various works on the nature of
reality and existence were placed after (“meta”) the Physics in the collection,
and the name has stuck.
Aristotle’s
later influence
As a teacher,
Aristotle’s influence lasted for hundreds of years after his death, even to the
extent that teachers at medieval universities relied on his works as being
reliable repositories of knowledge; they performed no original research of
their own but tweaked Aristotle’s teaching as and when the facts gathered from
experience seemed to be at odds with what he had written.
At the heart
of Aristotle’s beliefs and teaching was the concept that the world was ordered
and continuous. There were four elements, namely earth, air, fire and water,
and four qualities that were possessed by everything in different degrees,
these being hot, cold, dry and wet. Every object and event can be described in
terms of those qualities acting on those elements, according to Aristotle.
The idea of
order and purpose in creation was in line with the Christian concept of divine
creation, so that it was natural for Aristotelian thinking to be generally
acceptable to Christian scholars of later ages. There were problems with it,
such as Aristotle’s world being eternal and the Christian one being destined to
end with a Day of Judgement, but scholars such as Thomas Aquinas in the 13th
century found ways round these difficulties and were thus able to retain
Aristotle’s teachings as the basis of university curricula, with the basic
ideas being virtually unquestioned.
The real
problem with Aristotle’s works is that they were built on pure theory rather
than on experience. Having established a world-view of how things should be,
all observations were made to fit that world-view rather than the theories
being derived from experience and experiment and adjusted until they fitted
with reality.
As it
happens, there are huge difficulties with Aristotle’s teachings in many areas,
and learning was held back for centuries by being locked into a general
acceptance of his writings rather than a rigorous examination of them. It was
only when scientists such as Galileo and Newton
In some
areas, however, Aristotelian ideas have continued down to relatively recent
times. Aristotle invented the science of formal logic, based on the syllogism,
and this was being taught in universities well into the 20th
century. However, his system was a closed and complete one that was incapable
of being expanded to deal with new ways of thinking and arguing.
As a teacher,
Aristotle belonged to his age, and he was clearly a revolutionary one in
comparison to what had gone before. His pupils, particularly at the Lyceum,
continued to promulgate and develop his ideas such that they became extremely
influential.
However, the
lack of anyone who was remotely comparable to Aristotle for centuries after his
time meant that he continued to “teach” long after he should have been set to
one side.
© John
Welford
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