>>>>We've explored the Greeks through the writings of Sophocles, the tragic playwright,
the Sophists, Plato, and we end our journey through Greece with Aristotle. And in many
ways, Aristotle is the greatest of the ancient Greek philosophers. And I want you to see
that Aristotle's political philosophy, the way that he thinks about justice is an entire
way of seeing the world. And it's a way of seeing the world and a way of thinking about
moral reasoning, a way of thinking about political philosophy, a way of thinking about justice
that can, in fact, enrich and illuminate for us our own world. Aristotle comes into the
same Greek world that Plato inhabits. And in fact, at the age of seventeen Aristotle,
who's from the Northern stretches of the Greek world--Stagira, comes to Athens to study with
Plato at Plato's Academy. And he learns there at the feet of the great Athenian philosopher.
He would though, eventually then go off to study on his own. And in fact, Aristotle would
spend time as what we would consider a natural scientist. Aristotle spends time studying
marine biology, in fact, he studies the the life of the oceans itself. And I want you
to keep that idea in mind, because truly to understand Aristotle's way of seeing the world,
it's important to appreciate that Aristotle looks at nature. He looks at the world and
he sees nature. He looks at human society and he sees nature. He looks at human beings,
and he sees nature. Nature will become the grounds of Aristotle's views about morality.
Aristotle then goes on from being an an observer of the world, to acting as the tutor to a
king, or rather a prince in the northern kingdom of Macedonia. A prince named Alexander, the
man who would become the King of Macedon--Alexander the Great. Aristotle served for a time as
the tutor to this most important political figure. And there's a deep symbolism there,
because in a way, Aristotle is the last of the truly giant Greek philosophers: the most
important and the last. And Aristotle lives at a moment of transition. Aristotle still
moves during his life throughout the world of the ancient Greek city-states, the polis.
This way of life: living in a city, cities that would be no more than ten to 50,000 people
in most cases, what we would think of as small towns. But which were nevertheless the seedbed
of political creativity, where nevertheless the, this environment in which enormous constitutional
experimentation would give rise to political strife, but also to a kind of political philosophizing
about the best way to live, the best way to organize a constitution--a kind of conversation
that had never taken place at this level of richness at any part of human history. And
Aristotle lives at a moment of transition, because he lives at the end of this age. And
indeed the figure that he tutored, Alexander the Great, would not only become King of Macedon
but would lead Macedon to become the hegemon of the Greek world, and indeed beyond. The
career of Alexander would forever destroy the independence of the Greek city-state and
give rise to an age of empires, when cities would be incorporated into larger sovereign
bodies—empires. And it would bring, at least to a slow, the age of enormous political experimentation
of the Greek polis. Aristotle, though, would tutor this man Alexander, who would be responsible
for carrying Greek philosophy, Greek language, Greek culture on a worldwide scale. Alexander's
conquests would take him to India, all the way down to Egypt, and would spread Greek
culture everywhere in his wake. So Aristotle lives at a moment of closure, a moment when
the Greek polis is coming to its end. But Aristotle's thought world, his philosophical
vocabulary, his way of viewing the world is still very much a part of the conversations
that we've been exploring. The Sophists come to Athens and destabilize traditional beliefs.
Some, like Sophocles, would defend tradition as a valid grounds of knowledge. Others, like
Plato, would realize the severity of the challenge and would erect grand new systems of knowledge
based on human reason. Aristotle as part of those conversations, he's unwilling to accept
the relativism of the Sophists. He's unwilling to accept that our moral beliefs are simply
subjective, that they're somehow mere convention. Remember the distinction that the Sophists
create between nature, "phusis" and culture, "nomos" -- convention and objective, natural
order. This distinction would drive Greek philosophy for nearly a century, and, as we've
seen, it's a profoundly provocative way of thinking about the world. Plato realizes how
challenging it is and tries to salvage a system of morality by grounding it on objective reason
alone. And in doing so, Plato was willing to discount the influence of the senses. He's
willing to discount the kind of information that we get from observing the world altogether.
Aristotle though, wants to create a philosophical system that can rescue knowledge, that can
provide a grounds for moral belief. That says it's not simply subjective, it's not simply
relative, it's not simply your culture. But he wants to do so in a way that grounds that
in a system that's defensible but doesn't rely entirely, as with Plato, on reason alone.
Aristotle will try and create a system of knowledge, a system of morality that synthesizes
our observations of the world, in other words, empirical knowledge, and reasoning about the
world--logic and the use of reason. And in fact, Aristotle is the first great systematic
thinker about logic. How can we combine our observations of the world into a valid set
of inferences about what is true? Aristotle's system of logic would prevail for over a millennium,
and that's a count, a measure of how influential his philosophy of knowledge truly was. But
it's not as a philosopher of knowledge that Aristotle is most important to us today. Even
though Aristotle's reasoning about the nature of morality and the nature of politics equally
belongs to the ancient world, it still has things to teach us and the way we think about
the morality of justice.