Contributed by Eugenia Voskidou, Musician
 
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Although a pupil of Plato's- and that is to tell us something about teaching -I think that Aristotle has moved away from platonic thought and even has been critical of his teacher's work.

Plato formed his opinions following two main streams of influence, the pythagorean science and mysticism, and the dialectic inquiry of Socrates. His main belief was the projection of truth (= the absolute) to another world, the so called World of Ideas, and that the world we sense is a reflection of these metaphysical ideals/models. For that his ethic has been one striving beyond what is apparent.

For Aristotle I would think this idealism seemed to be unrealistic for a society to live along with, and he interested himself in explaining and defining the world of experience systematically; with _experience_ meaning of course every adventure of the intellect, whether it is derived from a sensual message or not.He gave to his thought processes beginnings, middles and ends, attempting thus to explain a universe that was thought of as rational with an equally rational language.

This pragmatic quality of Aristotelianism -and his peripatetic school- as opposed to the dual contemplation of Plato's over the real and the immaterial, if one may call immaterial the metaphysical...is what attracted the Arabic scholars when they re-discovered him, and then the Scholastic and indeed the Humanistic schools of thought.

Our present societies derive their structures much more from Neo-Aristotelianism, I think then from Neo-Platonism: the objects of our attention are approached as concrete things, even products, rather then realised reflections (=one of many possibilities), and they have precisely defined beginnings and ends, and therefore middles.

On the other hand one may see a lot of Christianity as re-written Platonism; and the moral life of a greek would probably be very close to the one of a proto-christian.

Such questions must have been around at the time of Petrarch, i.e. his inquiry about the nature and the distinction between the philosopher and the orator: the one working in solitude and the other in society. But from a personal point of view I would like to ask whether one can know what it is that moves us(emotionally and intellectually), or more to the point: are we moved from_without_ or from within (in which case we may well, from a scientific perspective, be called _ automata_.)

All good wishes for all the deeper inquiry,