School of thought
Peripatetic School
School
Classification
- Period
- c. 335 BCE - 200 CE
- Regions
- europe
- Domains
- Ethics , Logic , Metaphysics
Overview
The Peripatetic School is the philosophical community that began when Aristotle established the Lyceum in Athens in 335 BCE. Its members investigated subjects ranging from logic and metaphysics to ethics, politics, and biology. After an early decline, a text-centered Aristotelian commentary tradition revived in the first century BCE and culminated around 200 CE with Alexander of Aphrodisias, the last major ancient commentator committed strictly to Aristotelian philosophy.
Key ideas
- Four Causes: To explain anything fully requires identifying its material, formal, efficient, and final causes — what it's made of, its structure, what produced it, and its purpose.
- Hylomorphism: Aristotle analyzes perceptible substances as compounds of matter (*hyle*) and form (*morphe*), locating their forms in the substances rather than in a separate Platonic realm.
- Eudaimonia and Virtue: The good life consists in flourishing (eudaimonia), achieved by developing virtues — stable dispositions to act in accordance with reason, hitting the mean between extremes.
- Formal Logic: Aristotle's logical works contain the earliest surviving formal study of logic. Their account of syllogistic deduction shaped later ancient, Arabic, and Latin logical traditions.
Key figures
Aristotle · Theophrastus · Alexander of Aphrodisias
Methods used
Positions held
- Virtue Ethics
Question scope: The Basis of Right Action
Influenced by
- Platonism
Aristotle trained in Plato's Academy for about twenty years, and Platonic questions and methods remained a major point of departure even where his own school rejected Plato's answers.
Reacts to
- Platonism
Aristotle's rejection of separately existing Forms — locating form in the particular substance rather than a transcendent realm — is his defining departure from his teacher.
Later connections
- Averroism Influenced by this tradition
Averroes was 'The Commentator' on Aristotle; the movement is defined by Aristotelian naturalism, the eternity of the world, and the unity of the intellect.
- Medieval Islamic Philosophy Influenced by this tradition
- Medieval Jewish Philosophy Influenced by this tradition
Maimonides used Aristotelian logic and metaphysics to reinterpret Scripture, reconciling revelation with demonstrative reason in the Guide of the Perplexed.
- Scholasticism Influenced by this tradition
- Virtue Ethics Revival Renewed this tradition after a break
- Neoplatonism Incorporated this tradition into a synthesis
References
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Aristotle, §1 (Aristotle established the Lyceum in 335 BCE)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Alexander of Aphrodisias, introduction and §1.1 (the last strictly Aristotelian commentator, active in the late second and early third century CE)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Aristotle's Logic, §§1–3
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Books I-II
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Analysis, §2.4, “Aristotle” (Plato as the major influence on Aristotle)
- Aristotle, Metaphysics I.9, 990b–991b and XIII.4–5 (the arguments against separate Forms)
- Aristotle, Posterior Analytics I.2 (demonstrative knowledge as deduction from premises prior to and better known than the conclusion)
- Aristotle, Prior Analytics I.1–7 (definition and first figures of syllogistic deduction)
- Nicomachean Ethics — Aristotle (trans. Terence Irwin)
- Metaphysics — Aristotle (trans. W. D. Ross)
- Physics — Aristotle (trans. Robin Waterfield)