The genuineness of the Laws is sufficiently proved (1) by more than twenty citations of them in the writings of Aristotle, who was residing at Athens during the last twenty years of the life of Plato, and who, having left it after his death (B.C.
Yet so completely in the tradition of antiquity is Socrates identified with Plato, that in the criticism of the Laws which we find in the so-called Politics of Aristotle he is supposed by the writer still to be playing his part of the chief speaker (compare Pol.).
As Aristotle says in the Politics, 'The greater part consists of laws'; in Books v, vi, xi, xii the dialogue almost entirely disappears.
Like several experiments in language of the writers of the Elizabethan age, they were afterwards lost; and though occasionally found in Plutarch and imitators of Plato, they have not been accepted by Aristotle or passed into the common dialect of Greece.
It is therefore rash to say with Oncken (Die Staatslehre des Aristoteles) that the form in which Aristotle knew the Laws of Plato must have been different from that in which they have come down to us.
Aristotle (Polit.) speaks of a state which is neither the best absolutely, nor the best under existing conditions, but an imaginary state, inferior to either, destitute, as he supposes, of the necessaries of life—apparently such a beginning of primitive society as is described in Laws iii.
There are two ways in which even the ideal systems of morals may regard them: either like the Stoics, and other ascetics, we may say that pleasure must be eradicated; or if this seems unreal to us, we may affirm that virtue is the true pleasure; and then, as Aristotle says, 'to be brought up to take pleasure in what we ought, exercises a great and paramount influence on human life' (Arist.
Yet he still maintains it to be the true pattern of the state, which we must approach as nearly as possible: as Aristotle says, 'After having created a more general form of state, he gradually brings it round to the other' (Pol.).
He does indeed say that the greater part of the good of this world arises, not from equality, but from proportion, which he calls the judgment of Zeus (compare Aristotle's Distributive Justice), but he hardly makes any attempt to carry out the principle in practice.
In this respect we note a falling off from the Republic, but also there is 'the returning to it' of which Aristotle speaks in the Politics.
The great question of the freedom of the will, which in modern times has been worn threadbare with purely abstract discussion, was approached both by Plato and Aristotle—first, from the judicial; secondly, from the sophistical point of view.
Aristotle, in a well-known passage (Met.) which is an echo of the Phaedo, remarks on the inconsistency of Anaxagoras in introducing the agency of mind, and yet having recourse to other and inferior, probably material causes.
His Theory of Ideas in the next generation passed into one of Numbers, the nature of which we gather chiefly from the Metaphysics of Aristotle.
Aristotle, Plato's student, is the philosopher most often called as a witness against Atlantis.
On Ancient sources on Atlantis I note that Aristotle, who lived around 384 to 322 BC, is constantly cited for alleged criticisms of the Atlantis story, including the line that the man who invented it also destroyed it, a statement that only appears in the 1800s.
The same page covers how Delambre in 1816 probably misread Casaubon's 1587 commentary on Strabo, which spread the idea of Aristotle's scepticism, and how scholars found no passage on Plato's Atlantis in any of his surviving works.
In Laws by Plato Benjamin Jowett uses Aristotle to defend the dialogue: more than twenty citations of the Laws in Aristotle's writings help prove it genuine, since Aristotle lived at Athens during the last twenty years of Plato's life.
On Alexandria and the Atlantis connection I quote Claire Heartsong's Anna, Grandmother of Jesus, which calls Alexander of Macedonia a student of Aristotle.
Ignatius Donnelly, on The antiquity of some of our great inventions, uses Aristotle to show how old Chaldean astronomy was:
Callisthenes, who accompanied Alexander the Great to Babylon, sent to Aristotle a series of Chaldean astronomical observations which he found preserved there, recorded on tablets of baked clay, and extending back as far as 2234 B.C.
On Mount Etna I note that Thucydides and Aristotle both wrote about Etna's eruptions, and on Ancient cinnamon that Herodotus, Aristotle and others placed the source of cinnamon in Arabia and passed on the myth of the cinnamon birds.
The Why Files episode on The Moon’s Dark Secret: Aliens Harvesting Human Souls for FOOD says Aristotle wrote about the Pelasgians who lived in Greece from the oldest days, at a time before the moon.
For every page I tagged with Aristotle, see the Aristotle tag archive.
These schools were different from those attended by Aristotle and Pythagoras.
Alexander of Macedonia was a student of Aristotle, who took his initiations in Egypt within the most sacred chambers hidden away from those blind to inner seeing.
(8) - Theophrastus of Lesbos (circa 372-287 BC) was a student of Aristotle and his successor at the Lyceum.
Aristotle (circa 384-322 BC), a student of Plato, is CONSTANTLY cited for his alleged criticisms of the story of Atlantis.
Delambre's disinformation: In 1816, the French mathematician and astronomer Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre probably misinterpreted a 1587 commentary on Strabo by Isaac Casaubon, leading to widespread acceptance of Aristotle's skepticism of Atlantis.
This misunderstanding was perpetuated until the end of the 21st century.Scholars who actually analyzed Aristotle's work found no justification for the claim that Aristotle dismissed Plato's Atlantis as an invention. No surviving text from Aristotle mentions Atlantis, in all the works we still have (Metaphysics, Physics, Politics, Ethics, etc.), there is no passage about Plato’s Atlantis story.
It is true that some ancient authors, mentioned by Proclus for example, were skeptical of the story, as we are about to see, and Renaissance and Enlightenment writers probably projected this skepticism onto Aristotle, since he was already seen as Plato’s intellectual “critic”, however scholars today generally agree: there’s no direct evidence Aristotle said anything about Atlantis. It's a ghost reference born in the 18th–19th centuries.
It's crazy that today there are people who confidently claim that the story of Atlantis is an invention, because Aristotle supposedly said so (ignoring all other ancient authors, most of which CORROBORATE Plato's story).Some PHDs (and college kids) like to speak from their ivory towers, insisting that "obviously Plato invented the whole thing as an allegory", "It’s self-evident that Plato made it all up as a metaphor,” or lecturing others with lines like: “You don’t even understand why Plato invented Atlantis, or what role it played in his philosophy"...If it really were so "obvious" and "self-evident" that Plato made it all up as an allegory, why did so many ancient authors (historians, geographers...) believe the story?Literally the only ones who disagreed were philosophers who didn't even agree with each other, or people who didn't even care about the veracity of the story as much as they cared about their own philosophical or religious beliefs.
They bend ancient texts to make them say what they do not say, they attribute false quotes to Aristotle, they are blinded by their ideology...
Aristotle wrote about the Pelasgians who lived in ancient Greece since the oldest days, at a time before the moon.
Pythagoras and Aristotle for their foundational contributions.
It was woven in the island of Cos in the time of Aristotle.
Callisthenes, who accompanied Alexander the Great to Babylon, sent to Aristotle a series of Chaldean astronomical observations which he found preserved there, recorded on tablets of baked clay, and extending back as far as 2234 B.C.
The Greek historian Thucydides and the philosopher Aristotle both wrote about Etna’s eruptions, noting their impact on the surrounding regions.
Herodotus, Aristotle, and others claimed Arabia as cinnamon's source, perpetuating the myth that giant "cinnamon birds" collected cinnamon sticks from distant lands to build their nests.
He wrote a brief work (which reproduces the beginning of the Emerald Tablet), which passed to his disciple Pythagoras, then to Plato, Aristotle, and finally to Alexander the Great.