Greetings Shadow,
Is Existentialism related to Sophilisim?
I'm not sure what you mean by sophilisim. Are you thinking of solipsism? They're not really related - i.e. you don't need to be a solipsist to be an existentialist and vice versa.
How come he was famous if his studies were very difficult and he was wrong about alot of things? :?
Was he famous for his influence and political power?
Good question. One reason why I say he's difficult is because many of his works have only survived in fragentary form. The
Politics consist of a number of lecture notes used by Aristotle. We are not sure if they are in the right order, or how many other lectures were part of the series. Also, because they are his own personal notes, he hasn't made everything totally clear in them. Presumably he could remember roughly what he wanted to say, so he didn't need to write every detail in his notes. This makes understanding them quite difficult for the modern reader.
Aristotle's thought was dominant in Western society during the Middle Ages, mainly due to the influence of the Church. The Christian Fathers decided that Aristotle's thought gave a good philosophical backing to Christian doctrine, and so they pushed for his ideas to be a major part of the Christian education system (such as it was) of the day. It was during the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment (so I'm talking roughly 16th - late 17th century) that Aristotle's ideas began to be superseded, and only during the 19th century that his logical system was decisively refuted.
To me, Aristotle has always seemed like a slightly odd choice for use by the Christian Fathers, since he was what would later be called an
empiricist, one who believes that all our ideas derive ultimately from our senses. Plato was a more mystical philosopher, perhaps more in tune with religious thought. However, the problem with Plato was that there is a lot of scepticism in his work, so maybe that's what turned the Church Fathers against him. Anyway, this is just me rambling. An important word to take with you from this is empiricist (see the link above) - you'll come across it a lot in philosophical studies.
Aristotle himself was not a hugely powerful person, although he did run a school of philosophy in Athens, the Lyceum, so that gave him a certain amount of prestige, I suppose. He was also famous for being Plato's star pupil, and for being the tutor of Alexander the Great. You can find out more about him here:
Aristotle
I hope that's of some interest. Of Aristotle's books, only the
Nichomachean Ethics is usually taught on first year degree courses. If you're interested in Aristotle, that would be the place to start.
However, I would recommend
Plato as being an easier philosopher to get on with when you're starting out. He wrote dialogues, so you can see the arguments developing clearly. The main character in the dialogues is
Socrates, the most legendary of all philosophers. Plato was taught by Socrates, but Socrates did not write any of his ideas down. Plato took it upon himself to immortalise his master in his own work. For this reason, we do not know how much of the ideas in Plato's work belongs to Socrates and how much to Plato, but this is not hugely important.
What is important are the works themselves. A good one to start off with might be the
Symposium, which is a philosophical discussion about love. The best of Plato's works is the
Republic, which is a wide ranging discussion based around the question of "what is justice?"
Plato is often regarded as being one of the most pleasant philosophers to read. There is a fair amount of humour in his work, and most of all, there is the character of Socrates. He is probably the most intelligent character I have come across in all literature, and it is impossible not to be in awe of him him as you read the dialogues.
Hopefully something in this rather long and rambling post of mine will have caught your interest. Let me know if you're going to start reading some philosophy, and I'll help out if needed (and if I can, of course!).
Peace