☙ Peripatetics

Against ancient and medieval usage, which treats all followers of Aristotle as Peripatetics, it makes use to some extent to distinguish at least three phases: (1) the "actual" Peripatetic school or Peripatos, founded by Aristotle, whose members felt free to disagree with their founder and develop his ideas in new directions; (2) the "Aristotelians", who expounded and commented on Aristotle, and were much more invested in his specific teachings. This phase represents a revival of Peripateticism in a milieu of Stoic dominance, which significantly affected how Aristotle's ideas were understood and represented. (3) After another eclipse of Peripatetic philosophy - due to the dominance of Neoplatonism -, there was a Renaissance of Aristotelian philosophy at the very end of antiquity, around the time of the end of Neoplatonism as a coherent (pagan) philosophy. I call this third phase ❧ Post-Neoplatonism, because it is in many ways a de-Platonized continuation of Neoplatonism, rather than a revival of pristine Aristotelianism.

For the purposes of this page, I will not treat "Peripateticism" and "Aristotelianism" as clearly separate. Instead, I will divide Peripatetics into "Early" and "Roman" ones, with the caveat that this would probably make much less sense if we had more evidence about the 2nd-1st centuries BCE.

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EARLY PERIPATETICS

Aristotle

Theophrastus

Strato

(etc.)

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ROMAN PERIPATETICS

Andronicus of Rhodes

Boethus of Sidon

Aristotle the Younger

Aspasius

Alexander of Aphrodisias

(etc.)

Themistius

Not a sectarian Aristotelian, since he was also very fond of Plato, but one of the last known successors both to Peripateticism and Middle Platonism. See ❧ Mid Neoplatonism.