Examined Lives_ From Socrates to Nietzsc - By James S. Miller Page 0,43
as well as in logic played a large role in the curriculum. It is said that Aristotle lectured at night to the Lyceum’s students, and in the morning to a large public. Where Plato had prized debate and “dialectic,” Aristotle (or his ancient editors) preferred to present the results of his school’s inquiries in the form of systematic summaries. Unlike Plato’s dialogues, which are open to multiple readings that often yield inconclusive results, Aristotle’s treatises generally consist of authoritative statements that reflect apparently expert knowledge about things that actually exist. As the twentieth-century political philosopher Leo Strauss put it, Aristotle believed that “wisdom and not merely philosophy is available. This … [is] the difference between Plato and Aristotle.”
It seems true that Aristotle thought that we could develop reliable information about a great many matters. Whereas Plato in many contexts implies a need to separate sharply real knowledge, which is of unchanging Forms, from the transient world of sentient experience, Aristotle favors an approach to understanding that, in principle, allows a philosopher to learn from experience. This helps to explain the sheer range of Aristotle’s research on a vast array of concrete topics and may also help to explain his relative adroitness in practical affairs: unlike Plato, whose intransigent idealism proved self-defeating in Syracuse, Aristotle was a pragmatist whose political experience taught him, among other things, how to build strategic alliances with powerful patrons.
In 330, presumably with the support of the Macedonian authorities who now controlled Delphi, Aristotle was honored with an official inscription. Whatever his enemies might say, he was now a consecrated Greek hero, as renowned as such Athenian contemporaries as Isocrates, Diogenes, and Demosthenes. An ancient bust of Aristotle excavated in Athens in 2007 depicts a man with “an aquiline nose, protruding forehead, floppy hair and minute eyes and mouth.”
As happened with Socrates, Plato, and Diogenes, stories began to circulate about the famous philosopher. The ancient sources report that Aristotle spoke with a lisp, that his calves were slender, his eyes small, and “he was conspicuous by his attire, his rings, and the cut of his hair.” They say that “when Diogenes offered him dried figs, Aristotle saw that the Cynic had prepared a caustic quip if he did not accept them; so he took them, and said Diogenes had lost his figs, and his joke as well. On another occasion, he took the figs when offered, lifted them aloft…, and returned them with an exclamation: ‘Great is Diogenes.’ ” (Anecdotes like this are about the only evidence that Aristotle had a sense of humor.)
During the first years of the Lyceum’s existence, Alexander the Great was cutting a triumphant, if bloody, swath across Asia with his army and attended by a small retinue of philosophers, including Callisthenes (c. 360–328 B.C.), Aristotle’s nephew and also a graduate of the Lyceum. As Plutarch tells the story, Alexander’s worst impulses were bridled for a while by the love for philosophy that Aristotle had been the first to instill. This love Callisthenes valiantly endeavored to reinforce through his personal integrity: exemplifying a kind of rational unity, his way of life was “so orderly, dignified, and self-sufficient” that it annoyed “all the other sophists and flatterers” in the king’s entourage.
Unfortunately, as Alexander conquered more kingdoms to add to his growing empire, he grew increasingly capricious and cruel, and also more credulous about various superstitious beliefs at odds with his enlightened upbringing. The ancient sources say that Alexander began to dress and act like an oriental despot and demanded that his subjects prostrate themselves before him and worship him as if he were a god—conduct that Callisthenes had the courage (or recklessness) to tell the king directly that he thought was wrong.
In 330, Alexander successfully quelled a mutiny among some of his troops who had lost confidence in his leadership. But as his army plunged deeper into Asia, the qualms of his soldiers and the king’s paranoia grew. Alexander gradually became convinced that Callisthenes was out to get him, and that the philosopher’s “haughty” demeanor—or perhaps his continued willingness to criticize the king’s increasingly arbitrary behavior—“smacked of the intention to overthrow the monarchy.” So Alexander placed Aristotle’s nephew under arrest, charging that he was part of a conspiracy to kill the king.
One might anticipate that Aristotle would be upset when he heard about what had happened to his nephew, who after all had tried to live up to the original Socratic model of moral perfection. But according to the classical biographers, Aristotle neither criticized