Charcter

Aristotle appeared handsome and refined. Notably, he was well dressed. Presumably he was rich, with large family holdings at Stagira. Aristotle was an intellectual but not devoid of passion. Aristotle was, in fact, spellbound by the Socratic doctrine of immortality as expounded by Plato. He was interested in it.

Aristotle’s character comprised of two prominent qualities :
(i) Kindness, and (ii) Affection, without any trace of self-importance that can be detected from his works. Aristotle’s will exhibits the same kindly traits, he made reference to his happy family life and took solicitous care of his children and servants.

Aristotle’s personal happiness is revealed in ‘On Philosophy’, the last of his purely literary works. This work was completed in about 348 B.C., and after that, he devoted his energies to research, teaching, and writing of more technical treatises. He established philosophy as a profession.

Aristotle defined the specific role of the philosopher. He divided the historical development of civilization into five main stages. Aristotle found the emergence of philosophy as its culmination.

In his manifesto, Aristotle had optimistic affirmation of the values of this world, simultaneously he rejected the Platonic doctrine that the soul is imprisoned in the body and is in need of struggling free from the bonds of matter. By this stroke Aristotle established his identity in the history of thought.

Chief among Aristotalian lost works are : ‘Eudemus’, in the tradition of Plato’s ‘Phaedo’, ‘On Philosophy’, a type of philosophical programme containing themes to be developed in his ‘Metaphysics’, ‘Protreplicus’ or exhortation to the life of philosophy, Gryllus, or ‘On Rhetoric’, ‘On Justice’, expressing nascent themes of his Politics, and ‘On Ideas’, which criticizes Plato’s theory of forms.