Aristotle
Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics
BBC
4.8 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2020
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Natalie Haynes stands up for Greek philosopher-scientist Aristotle, with Dr Adam Rutherford and Professor Edith Hall.
This week Natalie explores why it's so easy to fall in love with Aristotle, have fun with his Nicomachean ethics and how we know he had 20:20 vision. It seems he hated being tutor to Alexander the Great, although he did manage to stay alive in the lethal court of Philip of Macedon, where the usual toll of suspicious deaths was fourteen a week. But how much did he really know about elephants' tongues and bivalves on Lesbos? We love a bit of gossip from a couple of thousand years ago.
Natalie is a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greece and Rome. Each week she takes a different figure from the ancient world and tells their story through a mix of stand-up comedy, extremely well-informed analysis, and conversation. The series is – in part – about how the modern world is more interesting when it's refracted through the prism of the ancient one. Natalie picks out hilarious details and universal truths, as well as finding parallels with modern life, or those parts of life which are still influenced by ancient thought.
Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:04.9 | Ladies and gentlemen, today I am standing up for Aristotle. |
| 0:15.9 | So Aristotle was born in Stegera, Macedonia, Northern Greece, in the early 4th century BCE before the |
| 0:23.6 | common era. 3.84 BCE, to be exact. He is the son of a doctor, a man named Nicomachus, but he suffers |
| 0:30.3 | childhood tragedy. His parents both die when he's around 13 years old, but he's taken in by another |
| 0:36.3 | relative, and age 17, Aristotle moves to |
| 0:39.5 | Athens to study at Plato's Academy, by far and away the most exalted higher education |
| 0:45.6 | institute anywhere in the ancient world. He writes dialogues when he gets there, just as Plato |
| 0:50.7 | has before him. And they are wonderful. We're told they're wonderful by other ancient authors, |
| 0:55.7 | but they're lost. |
| 0:56.7 | We don't have them today. |
| 0:57.7 | It's so often the way with ancient literature. |
| 1:00.2 | In 346, Aristotle is now 37, maybe 38, nearly years old. |
| 1:06.5 | And so he's been at the academy for about 20 years. |
| 1:08.6 | Plato dies. |
| 1:10.5 | And at this point, it is worth an R. |
| 1:12.1 | No, you're absolutely right. Just because it's a long time ago doesn't make it less sad. Yes. Ah, Plato. Yes, sir. You are correct. R is right. You were right. I was heartless about the loss of Plato, and I now regret it. I feel bad for the loss of Plato. everyone a moment for Plato. |
| 1:08.2 | Good. |
| 1:10.1 | So Aristotle is his obvious successor, |
| 1:32.2 | but he does not get the job. Right? Are his feelings hurt? Well, maybe. Certainly Aristotle leaves Athens |
| 1:40.9 | at this point and goes to Lesbos, an island up near Asia Minor, Turkey, as we would now say. |
| 1:47.9 | On Lesbos, Aristotle sets aside his abstract philosophical thinking for a while and becomes a scientist. |
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