Plato and Aristotle Essay

Plato and Aristotle both have been very influential as the superannuated Hellenic philosophers. Aristotle was a student of Plato and there ar many similarities between these intellectual giants of the ancient world but there are also many things that distinguish them from separately other. Aristotle was far much empirical-minded than Plato. First, Platos philosophy relegated the material, physical world to a straighten out of metaphysical second class.His contention was that the summary truths of the mind-mathematical truths, moral and normative truths about ideals-are what in truth matter in life and in philosophy, and that the empirical world around us consists of merely poor copies of these ideals. By contrast, Aristotle did as much or more locomote in what we would today call recognition (physics, biology, etc. ) as in what trunk a part of philosophy. While Aristotle certainly did important work in moral philosophy and related areas, he concentrated as much or mor e on examining the material world.Plato can be look at at times as creation quite disparaging of science. This is not trus twainrthy of Aristotle. Second, the difference in the approaches and values of these two philosophers resulted in very different policy-making philosophies. Platos governmental philosophy, which can be found principally in the Republic. For him, the bonnie state is one ruled by ascetic philosophers who have been raised from stand not to value material rejoin or exclusive human connections, so far with their own kin. They are the ideal of wise, objective, fair-minded, ultra-rational beings.In contrast to Platos utopian governmental philosophy, Aristotles political philosophy, which can be found principally in the Politics, has a large component of descriptive political science. When he does argue for certain political schemes, they tend to be incremental improvements on existing systems. Like his teacher Plato, Aristotles philosophy aims at the universa l. Aristotle, however, finds the universal in particular things, which he calls the essence of things, spell Plato finds that the universal exists apart from particular things. Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he also would run along as science.Note, however, that his use of the terminus science carries a different heart and soul than that covered by the term scientific method. For Aristotle, all science is functional, poetic or theoretical. By practical science, he meaning ethics and politics by poetical science, he means the study of poetry and the other alright arts by theoretical science, he means physics, mathematics and metaphysics. In general, Plato is the more extravagant thinker, the thinking outside the package type who was equal parts graphic and bizarre in his ideas. Aristotle is more the cool, logical, dry, imperious thinker whose works tend to pick out like encyclopedias.