Aristotle

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) was an ancient Greek philosopher who studied under Plato in Athens and later founded the Lyceum, his own school. He made foundational contributions to logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric, aesthetics, and empirical biology. In his work Poetics, he articulated the concept of catharsis—the purgation or purification of emotions such as pity and fear through the experience of tragedy. His surviving treatises, originally lecture notes and draft manuscripts, have shaped Western philosophy from antiquity through the Renaissance and remain widely studied today.