Aristotle

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and polymath whose works span biology, physics, metaphysics, logic, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. A student of Plato and tutor to Alexander the Great, he founded the Lyceum in Athens and shaped the intellectual tradition of the Western world for millennia.

His systematic approach to knowledge — dividing it into theoretical, practical, and productive sciences — created frameworks that endured through the medieval period and beyond. Aristotle believed that the good life was one of rational activity in accordance with virtue, a view he developed in the Nicomachean Ethics.