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Unit 4: Aristotle’s Theory of Revolution

for different purposes. Plato emphasized training in self-sacrifice for rulers and obedience for the Notes
ruled; Aristotle emphasized the need to match the educational objectives to the form of government”.

4.3 Theory of Revolution

Aristotle was born in Stageira, Chalcidice, in 384 BC, about 55 km (34 mi) east of modern-day
Thessaloniki. His father Nicomachus was the personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon.
Aristotle was trained and educated as a member of the aristocracy. At about the age of eighteen,
he went to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy. Aristotle remained at the academy
for nearly twenty years before quitting Athens in 348/47 BC. The traditional story about his
departure reports that he was disappointed with the direction the academy took after control
passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus upon his death, although it is possible that he feared anti-
Macedonian sentiments and left before Plato had died. He then traveled with Xenocrates to the
court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. While in Asia, Aristotle traveled with
Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of
the island. Aristotle married Hermias's adoptive daughter (or niece) Pythias. She bore him a
daughter, whom they named Pythias. Soon after Hermias' death, Aristotle was invited by Philip
II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander the Great in 343 BC.
Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding
figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system
of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and
metaphysics.
Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their
influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian
physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in
the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was
incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism
had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish
traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially the
scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed
interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to
be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and
dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold").

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the
Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry,
theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and
zoology.

Revolution: Causes and Remedies

The search for stability through polity made Aristotle examine the causes for instability, change and
revolution, and prescribe remedies against unnecessary and incessant change. Unlike Plato, who did
not accept change and equated it with decay and corruption, Aristotle on the contrary regarded
change as inevitable. Change represented movement towards an ideal. Unlike Plato, Aristotle accepted
the possibility of progress. Things changed because they had the potential to inch towards perfection.
Aristotle derived his conception of change from his understanding of science and nature:

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