Aristotelianism

Lore & Background

The original followers of Aristotle were the members of the Peripatetic school. The most prominent members after Aristotle were Theophrastus and Strato of Lampsacus, who continued his researches. During the Roman era, the school concentrated on preserving and defending his work, with Alexander of Aphrodisias being the most important commentator. With the rise of Neoplatonism in the 3rd century, Peripateticism as an independent philosophy came to an end, but Neoplatonists incorporated Aristotle's philosophy into their own system and produced many commentaries. In the Islamic Golden Age, Avicenna and Averroes translated Aristotle's works into Arabic, and along with Al-Kindi and Al-Farabi, Aristotelianism became a major part of early Islamic philosophy. Moses Maimonides adopted Aristotelianism from Islamic scholars and based his Guide for the Perplexed on it, which became the basis of Jewish scholastic philosophy. In Western Europe, after the fall of the Roman empire, nearly all that was known of Aristotle consisted of Boethius's commentaries on the Organon and a few abridgments. The Latin translations of the 12th century, including those by James of Venice and Gerard of Cremona, made Aristotle's works widely available, and scholars such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas interpreted and systematized them in accordance with Catholic theology.

Reader's Guide

Aristotelianism's significance lies in its enduring influence across multiple fields, from logic and metaphysics to ethics and political philosophy. The tradition provided a framework for natural philosophy that dominated until the Scientific Revolution, and its teleological reasoning was transmitted through Wolff and Kant to Hegel, who applied it to history. Although criticized by Trendelenburg and Brentano as non-Aristotelian, Hegel's influence is regarded as a major source of Aristotelian themes in Marx. In the 20th century, Alasdair MacIntyre helped revive virtue ethics in his book After Virtue, revising Aristotelianism with the argument that the highest temporal goods are actualized through participation in social practices. Recent Aristotelian ethical philosophy, such as that of Gadamer and McDowell, often rejects traditional metaphysical or theoretical philosophy, while the early modern tradition of political republicanism can appear thoroughly Aristotelian in its view of the state as constituted by citizens' virtuous activity.

Did You Know?

• Al-Farabi was widely thought second only to Aristotle in knowledge, earning the title 'the Second Teacher'.
• Averroes wrote 38 identified commentaries on the works of Aristotle, often producing two or three different commentaries on the same work.
• The most productive translator of Aristotle's works in the 12th century was Gerard of Cremona, who translated 87 books.