Aristotle's Critique of Platonic Ideas

Aristotle, in all his works including Metaphysics, Physics and Generation and Corruption, wherever expressing a view on an issue, makes references to Plato and other philosophers who preceded him trying to present flaws in their thoughts. To begin with critique is Aristotle’s specific philosophic method. Especially in Metaphysics, which, in his words, is the knowledge of ‘being in itself’ dealing with the what and why in all beings, he had to first consider and criticize the well-known views of his time among them the most vexatious one was that of Plato. Aristotle’s fight with Plato’s ‘theory of ideas’ started from the time he was a student of academy. His brief thesis ‘on ideas’, peri ideon, belongs to that era. The present article classifies Aristotle’s objections to Plato’s ideas trying to show their essence and intensity. To this end, the author’s have adopted a neutral stance toward the issues in their analysis and classification of the objections.