Aristotle
is referred to as "The Philosopher" by Scholastic thinkers such as
Thomas Aquinas. See Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 3, etc. These
thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the
thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. It required a repudiation of
some Aristotelian principles for the sciences and the arts to free themselves
for the discovery of modern scientific laws and empirical methods. The medieval
English poet Chaucer describes his student as being happy by having
at his beddes heed
Twenty
bookes, clad in blak or reed,
Of
aristotle and his philosophie,
The
Italian poet Dante says of Aristotle in the first circles of hell,
I
saw the Master there of those who know,
Amid
the philosophic family,
By
all admired, and by all reverenced;
There
Plato too I saw, and Socrates,
Who
stood beside him closer than the rest.
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-style-parent:"";
font-size: 10.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}
Influence
on Islamic theologians
Main
article: Islamic views on Aristotle
Aristotle
was one of the most revered Western thinkers in early Islamic theology. Most of
the still extant works of Aristotle, as well as a great number of the original
Greek commentaries, were translated into Arabic and studied by Muslim polymath,
philosophers, scientists and scholars, whose knowledge of Aristotle thus
stretched far beyond that of early Medieval Christian commentators. Oriental
interpreters of Aristotle's work followed the Greek interpreters without
chronological gap, and the Medieval western tradition was influenced equally by
Christian thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Muslim theologians such as
Averroes, Avicenna and Alpharabius, all of whom wrote on Aristotle in great
depth, and frequently compared the teachings of Aristotle with those of the
prophets of Islam. Alkindus considered Aristotle as the outstanding and unique
representative of philosophy and Averroes spoke of Aristotle as the
"exemplar" for all future philosophers. Later Muslim
philosophers, like their Christian counterparts, spoke of Aristotle as
"the philosopher" and some described him as the "first
teacher".
In
accordance with the Greek theorists, the Muslims considered Aristotle to be a
dogmatic philosopher, the author of a closed system, and believed that
Aristotle shared with Plato essential tenets of thought. Some went so far as to
credit Aristotle himself with neo-Platonic metaphysical ideas.