The Peripatos

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521040549.007

Chapter 6 - The Peripatos

from Part 1 - GREEK PHILOSOPHY FROM PLATO TO PLOTINUS

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Edited by

A. H. Armstrong

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Summary

The Peripatetic School from Theophrastus to Andronicus and Boethus

The development of the Peripatos down to the time of Strato exhibits two main aspects. First, philosophic-speculative interest is largely replaced by interest in all kinds of special and empirical knowledge, this knowledge no longer to serve as foundation for something higher, but terminal. Secondly, to the extent that philosophic interest is preserved at all, it often finds its satisfaction in non-theological, naturalistic, or even materialistic doctrines. For us only the latter aspect is important, as Plotinus' interest in empirical sciences is minimal.

Clearchus still seems to have refused to follow Aristotle's denial of the substantial character of the soul and presented him in a dialogue as having become convinced by what we should today call a telepathic experiment, that the soul can leave its body and return to it. He, then, would represent Aristotle's original Platonism.

As to Theophrastus, his so-called metaphysical fragment clearly proves that he retained Aristotle's speculative and theological interests. There is particularly no trace that he ever envisioned first philosophy to be anything but theology. The whole fragment is, from our point of view, remarkable mainly for three reasons. First, it shows to what extent Theophrastus connected the problems of Aristotle's Metaphysics with problems of the Two-opposite-principles system, including the derivation of everything from these principles and including the relation between these principles and evil. Secondly, it shows to what extent Theophrastus takes for granted that fundamentally all reality is divided into the spheres of the intelligible and the sensible, the former either including, or consisting of, mathematicals. Thirdly, it shows to what extent Theophrastus takes it for granted that knowledge of first principles will be of a particular type, non-discursive and described best as a kind of touching, so that one can be ignorant of these principles but not mistaken about them.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy , pp. 107 - 123

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521040549.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 1967

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