From Socrates to Aristotle

This lesson asks you to identify key philosophers of the classical world and to describe how they influenced their societies. The museum offers three of them as an Arabic bibliographer presents them: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Their theories, the schools of Greece and Rome, and the other thinkers named in the expectation are for your class to bring. ¹

Follow the line from teacher to pupil, and notice what each pupil kept, left behind or took from someone else. Ask how the society around the thinker treated him, and what the source says about it.

Follow a line of teachers as one author draws it. In the record of Socrates, Ibn al-Nadim places him in Athens, which he describes as the city of scholars and sages, calls him an ascetic, an eloquent speaker and a wise man, and says that the Greeks killed him because he opposed them and that Plato was among his companions. ² In the record of Plato, Ibn al-Nadim, citing the book of Plutarch, says that in his early years Plato inclined to poetry, then attended the session of Socrates and left it, and then moved to the saying of Pythagoras; Aristotle took from him. ³ The record of Aristotle says he took from Plato and succeeded him. ⁴ Watch the verbs: attended, left, moved, took, succeeded. Each names a tie between teacher and pupil, and none says what was taught.

Ask who reports each life, and from how far. For Socrates, Ibn al-Nadim says the king who ordered his killing was Artakhshast, and transmits from the handwriting of Ishaq ibn Hunayn that Socrates lived close to the span of Plato's life. ² For Plato he cites the book of Plutarch, and the source differs on his age: eighty-one, or eighty in Ishaq's report. ³ For Aristotle he lists the pupils and says the books on logic, natural science and theology were translated into Arabic, and interpreted by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Yahya al-Nahwi, al-Farabi, al-Kindi and others. ⁴ The record of Socrates cites the Fihrist alone.

The record places Socrates only as having lived close to the span of Plato's life, on the handwriting of Ishaq ibn Hunayn. How far would you trust that statement to date Socrates, and what would you check first, and why?

• Suqrat (Socrates): his life as Ibn al-Nadim relates it, and who is named among his companions.
• Plato (Aflatun): his life from Plutarch in Ibn al-Nadim, and what al-Mas'udi and the Encyclopaedia of Islam add.
• Aristutalis (Aristotle): his pupils and commentators in the Fihrist, and al-Jahiz's reading of him.

Read Suqrat, Plato (Aflatun) and Aristutalis. Draw the line of teachers and pupils, with one fact written on each link.