Certainly Plato (c. 428 BCE-c. 348 BCE) and Aristotle (384 BCE-322 BCE) have a great deal in common. They are the two most influential figures in the history of Western thought from the ancient world. They both revered Socrates and his spirit of open-minded inquiry. They both did the bulk of their work in Athens, and founded famous schools there. (Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum.) They were personally connected, in that Aristotle was a student of Plato’s.
Still, it is not hard to find contrasts between these two great philosophers. Let’s examine a few of them:
1. Plato’s surviving written works are more literary in style than those of Aristotle. His philosophy is written in the form of dialogues-a revolutionary prose form at the time-making use of metaphor and other entertaining literary devices, and allowing things to flow in a free, conversational manner that includes different perspectives.
Aristotle’s surviving written works are much more dry and straightforward. Modern readers sometimes find them more dull and technical than the works of Plato.
In part this is due to the fact that only a minority of Aristotle’s output survives, and most or all of what does are not really books and articles in final form, but more the detailed lecture notes that Aristotle used in teaching at the Lyceum.
2. Plato’s philosophy tends toward the metaphysically extravagant. He is not bound by practicality or precedent, but allows his imagination to roam into speculative areas most people today would dismiss as irrelevant and unrealistic.
His political philosophy, for instance, is frankly utopian. He sets for himself the task of imagining the ideal way to structure and govern a society, and ends up with an impressively inventive and elaborate scheme, but one that bears little resemblance to how human beings ever have or likely ever will interact politically in the real world.
Aristotle’s philosophy is much more grounded in realism and common sense. He’s more about describing the world as it is than going too far in the direction of speculating about how it should be.
In contrast to Plato’s utopian political philosophy, Aristotle’s political philosophy 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.
Plato is more the type of intellectual to swing for the fences and (arguably) strike out a lot. His ideas often seem the product of the mind of someone who is a fascinating combination of genius and kook. Aristotle is more the steady, competent, singles hitter who avoids spending too much time with his head in the clouds.
3. Plato focuses his attention mostly on matters that remain a part of philosophy today. That is, normative matters of ethics and political philosophy, and very speculative metaphysics.
While Aristotle certainly did important work in ethics and political philosophy, he devoted as much or more of his attention to what would be considered science today.
This difference in part comes from the fact that Plato’s worldview rendered the material, physical world less important than the realm of ideas and abstractions. According to him, the world we see around us consists of imperfect copies of the ideal versions of the same things that are accessible to us only through our minds, and therefore our time is better spent contemplating the better, “real,” abstractions than their flawed manifestations. Aristotle does not share this worldview.
Related to this, Plato is a rationalist who arguably is dismissive toward science. He believes that the most important truths are innate, and thus not to be discovered empirically in the world.
Aristotle is not similarly disparaging of science. He taught the value of empiricism in gaining knowledge of the world. As noted above, he is as much a scientist as a philosopher, at least as those terms are used today.
Plato and Aristotle have plenty of differences in both style and substance, but what they have in common is that both are still being read today, and still are inspiring and challenging philosophers and students the world over.
