On Aristotle, Cake and the Many Ways of Knowing
To understand knowledge, we need to understand what it is for
Aristotle is one of the most influential of all philosophers in the Greek tradition. He was Plato’s most famous student, but he ended up rejecting many of Plato’s central ideas, in particular his theory of forms. And he was a formative influence not only on the philosophical traditions of Europe, but also on those of the Islamic world. And one of his significant contributions to the history of thought was his division of human knowledge into three domains: theoretical, practical and productive.
But before getting into that, who was Aristotle? If the ancient biographer Diogenes Laërtius is to be believed (which, alas, he isn’t always), Aristotle was quite a curious individual. He had skinny calves and small eyes. He dressed in fancy clothes, wore his hair short — not a fashion at the time — and had a fondness for elaborate rings. When he spoke, he spoke with a lisp. And although we are used to seeing images of Aristotle with a full beard, it is said he preferred to be cleanly shaven. He was, in short, an oddball.
This picture of Aristotle as an oddball may have something to do with the fact that he was always an outsider in Athens, and never became an Athenian citizen.
