An interactive guide to Aristotle's treatises and key philosophical ideas — with search, Bekker references, and chapter-level summaries across all major works.
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was born in Stagira, a small Greek colony on the Chalcidice peninsula. His father Nicomachus served as personal physician to King Amyntas III of Macedon, giving the young Aristotle early exposure to the Macedonian court and to the empirical tradition of Greek medicine — both would shape his career. Orphaned in his teens, he was raised by a guardian named Proxenus. At seventeen he was sent to Athens and enrolled in Plato's Academy, where he remained for twenty years — first as student, then as teacher and researcher — until Plato's death in 347 BCE. Ancient sources record that Plato called him "the mind of the school" (ho nous tēs diatribēs).
After leaving the Academy (whether because Speusippus was chosen as Plato's successor, or because of rising anti-Macedonian sentiment, or both), Aristotle crossed to Asia Minor. He joined a small circle of Platonists at Assos under the patronage of Hermias, tyrant of Atarneus, whose adopted daughter Pythias he married. When Hermias was captured and killed by the Persians, Aristotle moved to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, where — in collaboration with his student Theophrastus, a native of nearby Eresos — he conducted the extraordinary zoological and marine-biological investigations that produced the History of Animals, Parts of Animals, and Generation of Animals. The lagoon of Pyrrha on Lesbos was his primary field site.
In 343 BCE Philip II of Macedon invited Aristotle to Pella to tutor the thirteen-year-old Alexander. The tutorship lasted about three years; its intellectual content is unknown but later tradition credits Aristotle with instilling in Alexander a love of Homer and of natural science. Pythias died during this period; Aristotle later formed a lasting relationship with Herpyllis of Stagira, by whom he had a son, Nicomachus — the namesake of the Nicomachean Ethics.
When Alexander set out on his eastern conquests in 334 BCE, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum in a grove sacred to Apollo Lyceus, a rival institution to the Academy. He taught by walking in the covered walkway (peripatos) — hence "Peripatetic" philosophy. The Lyceum was organized as a research community: Aristotle and his associates pursued systematic investigation across every field of inquiry then known — logic, physics, biology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetics. The collection of 158 constitutions, the zoological surveys, the compilation of dramatic records, and the philosophical treatises were all products of this collective enterprise. Theophrastus was his closest collaborator and designated successor.
After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, anti-Macedonian feeling swept Athens. Aristotle was charged with impiety (the pretext was a hymn he had written for Hermias years earlier). He withdrew to Chalcis on Euboea, his mother's hometown, reportedly saying he would not allow Athens "to sin twice against philosophy" — alluding to the execution of Socrates. He died there in 322 BCE at the age of sixty-two. His will (preserved by Diogenes Laertius) provides for Herpyllis, arranges the manumission of several slaves, requests burial beside Pythias, and names Antipater as executor — confirming his lifelong Macedonian connections.
Aristotle bequeathed his library and manuscripts to Theophrastus, who led the Lyceum until his own death (c. 287 BCE). According to Strabo, Theophrastus's heir Neleus took the manuscripts to Scepsis in the Troad, where they were hidden in a cellar to prevent confiscation by the book-collecting Attalid kings of Pergamum. There they deteriorated for nearly two centuries — damaged by damp and insects — until the bibliophile Apellicon of Teos purchased them around 100 BCE and brought them back to Athens. When Sulla sacked Athens in 86 BCE, he seized Apellicon's library and shipped it to Rome. There the grammarian Tyrannion organized the texts, and around 60 BCE the Peripatetic philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes produced the first systematic edition — establishing the order, titles, and groupings that constitute 'the Aristotelian corpus' as we know it today. The Bekker numbers used in modern citations (e.g., 1094a1) derive from Immanuel Bekker's 1831 Berlin Academy edition, which remains the standard reference system.