Aristotle was one of the richest and most comprehensive scientific geniuses to ever appear, a man to whom no time can compare. The appreciation that Aristotle received from Hegel is one that we can wholeheartedly agree with: The teacher of Alexander the Great was the most significant philosopher of antiquity, upon whose thinking the entire Western philosophy is based. The editor of the complete works of Aristotle in German, Hellmut Flashar, recounts in this comprehensive work what we know today about the life of the great thinker (384 - 322 BC) and explains each of his surviving books. The very concrete and vivid biographical sketch illuminates the private, political, and, of course, particularly the intellectual world in which Aristotle lived as the son of a successful physician, later as a student and friend of Plato.