The Timpson Lyceum · History of Philosophy (2024)

Alexander the Great & Aristotle Review – Lecture 30 (History of Philosophy)

Overview

This lecture closes the Aristotle unit with a sweep back through his five fields of philosophy — metaphysics, epistemology (logic and the Organon), ethics, politics, and aesthetics — and then turns to the historical figure who carried Greek civilization across the known world: Alexander the Great (356–323 BC), Aristotle's own pupil. The pairing is deliberate. Aristotle stood at the intellectual summit of the classical Greek world just as that world's independent city-states were about to be absorbed into something far larger, and his student's conquests mark the hinge between the Classical and the Hellenistic ages.

The historical thread runs from Philip II of Macedon — who forged a professional standing army, reformed the phalanx, and subdued Greece — to Alexander, who inherited that instrument, crushed a revolt, and in 334 BC crossed the Hellespont to overthrow the Persian Empire. In roughly a decade he campaigned from Greece to the Indus, spreading Greek language, cities, and culture across an empire of unprecedented extent before dying at Babylon at thirty-two. The review also fixes the place of Aristotle's most important pupils — not only Alexander, but Theophrastus, who carried the philosophy itself forward.

Key Concepts

• Aristotle's five fields — Metaphysics (form/matter, actuality/potentiality, the four causes, the prime mover), epistemology and logic (the Organon, categories, the syllogism, induction from sense-perception), ethics (flourishing as activity of the soul in accordance with virtue), politics (the polis, the six constitutions, polity), and aesthetics (the beautiful as what is both useful and pleasing).
• The map of knowledge — Aristotle divides knowledge into the theoretical (concerned with the true: metaphysics, mathematics, physics/natural science), the practical (concerned with the good: ethics, politics, economics), and the productive (concerned with the beautiful: poetics, rhetoric). Logic (the Organon) is the universal instrument used across them all.
• Philip II of Macedon — Alexander's father; unified the fractious Macedonian tribes under a strong monarchy, funded a standing professional army from conquered gold mines, and brought Greece under Macedonian hegemony.
• The Macedonian phalanx — Philip's reform: pikes (sarissas) roughly twice the length of the hoplite spear, wielded two-handed, requiring smaller shields slung from the neck. Flanked by conventional hoplites and screened by light missile troops.
• Heavy shock cavalry — Philip and Alexander deployed the Companion cavalry as a decisive striking arm, charging in a wedge formation to punch through and rout enemy lines — a departure from cavalry used merely for skirmishing. Most casualties in ancient battle came during the rout, so shock tactics that broke morale were devastating.
• Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC) — Philip's decisive victory over the allied armies of Athens and Thebes; the eighteen-year-old Alexander commanded a wing. It gave Macedon mastery of Greece.
• League of Corinth — The federation Philip organized after Chaeronea, binding the Greek states to contribute money and troops under Macedonian leadership, nominally for a war of vengeance against Persia.
• Alexander secures the throne (336 BC) — On Philip's assassination Alexander, then twenty, eliminated rivals and swiftly crushed revolts. He destroyed Thebes (335 BC), razing the city and enslaving the population — a shock to the Greek world that cowed further resistance.
• The invasion of Persia (334 BC) — Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor with roughly 40,000 troops against the far larger and wealthier empire of Darius III. His first victory came at the River Granicus, followed by a campaign to seize the coastal cities and deny the Persian fleet its bases.
• Aristotle as tutor — Aristotle taught Alexander and other Macedonian nobles roughly from ages 13 to 16. As a Macedonian, Aristotle was a resident alien in Athens, never a citizen, and left the city near the end of his life amid anti-Macedonian feeling after Alexander's death.
• Theophrastus — Aristotle's most important philosophical successor, who continued and preserved the Peripatetic tradition — his true intellectual heir, as distinct from Alexander, his most famous pupil.
• The Hellenistic spread — Alexander's conquests diffused Hellenistic (Greek) culture, language, and city-founding across the Near East, from Egypt to the fringes of India, defining the era that followed the Classical age.
• Greeks, "Asians," and northern tribes — Aristotle's framework contrasts the "Asians" (e.g. the Persians — intellect and civilization but, in his view, servile) with the northern tribes (spirited but uncivilized), holding that the Greeks alone balanced spirit and intellect — a schema used to explain Greek political distinctiveness.

Worked Example

Estimating the pace of Alexander's advance. All figures are deliberately approximate — the point is the order of magnitude.

1. Fix the time span. Alexander crossed into Asia in 334 BC and died in 323 BC:

$\Delta t \approx 334 - 323 = 11 \text{ years.}$

1. Estimate the extent of conquest as the straight-line distance from the Greek/Macedonian heartland to the easternmost reach at the Indus River. A reasonable great-circle figure is

$d_{\text{extent}} \approx 4{,}800 \text{ km.}$

1. Compute the average rate of eastward extension of the empire:

$v_{\text{extent}} = \frac{d_{\text{extent}}}{\Delta t} \approx \frac{4{,}800 \text{ km}}{11 \text{ yr}} \approx 440 \text{ km/yr.}$

1. But the army did not travel in a straight line — it looped through Asia Minor, down the Levant to Egypt, back through Mesopotamia and Persia, and on into Central Asia and India. The actual distance marched is far greater; a common approximation for the whole campaign is

$d_{\text{marched}} \approx 30{,}000 \text{ km.}$

1. Averaged over the full period, the marching rate is

$v_{\text{march}} = \frac{d_{\text{marched}}}{\Delta t} \approx \frac{30{,}000 \text{ km}}{11 \text{ yr}} \approx 2{,}700 \text{ km/yr.}$

1. Convert to a daily figure, spreading the total over every day of the campaign (marching days and the many months spent besieging, resting, and governing):

$v_{\text{day}} = \frac{30{,}000 \text{ km}}{11 \text{ yr} \times 365 \text{ day/yr}} \approx \frac{30{,}000}{4{,}015} \approx 7.5 \text{ km/day.}$

1. On days the army actually marched, the pace was of course much higher — well over $30$ km/day was routine. The averaged $\approx 7.5$ km/day figure instead captures the relentlessness of a decade in which an empire spanning roughly $4{,}800$ km east–west was assembled by a commander who died at just 32. $\blacksquare$

Summary

• The lecture reviews Aristotle across all five fields — metaphysics, logic/epistemology, ethics, politics, aesthetics — unified by his map of knowledge (the true, the good, the beautiful) with logic as the universal instrument.
• Philip II built the tool of conquest: a standing army, the long-pike Macedonian phalanx, and heavy shock cavalry, winning Chaeronea (338 BC) and forming the League of Corinth.
• Alexander (356–323 BC), tutored by Aristotle, took the throne in 336 BC, destroyed Thebes, and in 334 BC crossed the Hellespont, defeating Persia beginning at the Granicus.
• A rough calculation puts the empire's east–west extent near 4,800 km built in about 11 years — roughly 440 km/yr of extension, with total marching on the order of 30,000 km — before Alexander's death at thirty-two.
• The conquests launched the Hellenistic age, spreading Greek culture from Egypt to the Indus, while Theophrastus carried Aristotle's philosophy itself into the future.