ABSTRACT
Plato was the first philosopher to found a philosophical school. Aristotle was a student in Plato’s school for nineteen years. But when Plato died, he was succeeded as head of the school, not by Aristotle, but by his nephew Speusippus. Aristotle left Athens, and studied not just philosophy but also biology for a time in Assos and in Mytilene, before becoming tutor to Alexander the Great in Macedonia. When Aristotle did return to Athens, he founded his own philosophical school, the Lyceum. He withdrew from Athens again shortly before his death, on being prosecuted for impiety. (He would seem to have been innocent of impiety, but guilty of Macedonian connections at a time when this made him unpopular.)
Ross suggests that in Plato’s philosophy, Aristotle ‘found the master-influence of his life’ (Ross, 1949:2). Certainly, this is true of the three aspects of Aristotle’s conception of philosophy that I propose to explore in this chapter-his view of philosophical method, his view of the organisation of knowledge (and the doctrine of being on which this view ultimately rests) and his conception of the role of philosophy in the good life.
