Peripatetic philosophy

The Peripatetic school was a school of philosophy in Ancient Greece.

Its teachings derived from its founder, Aristotle (384–322 BC), and peripatetic is an adjective ascribed to his followers. The school dates from around 335 BC when Aristotle began teaching in the Lyceum. It was an informal institution whose members conducted philosophical and scientific inquiries. After the middle of the 3rd century BC, the school fell into a decline, and it was not until the Roman era that there was a revival. Later members of the school concentrated on preserving and commenting on Aristotle's works rather than extending them, and it eventually died out in the 3rd century AD.

The study of Aristotle's works continued by scholars who were called Peripatetics through Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the works of the Peripatetic school were lost to the west, but in the east they were incorporated into early Islamic philosophy, which would play a large part in the revival of Aristotle's doctrines in Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The term "Peripatetic" is a transliteration of the ancient Greek word περιπατητικός peripatêtikos, which means "of walking" or "given to walking about". The Peripatetic school was actually known simply as the Peripatos. Aristotle's school came to be so named because of the peripatoi ("colonnades" or "covered walkways") of the Lyceum where the members met. The legend that the name came from Aristotle's alleged habit of walking while lecturing may have started with Hermippus of Smyrna.

Unlike Plato (428/7-348/7 BC), Aristotle (384-322 BC) was not a citizen of Athens and so could not own property; he and his colleagues therefore used the grounds of the Lyceum as a gathering place, just as it had been used by earlier philosophers such as Socrates. Aristotle and his colleagues first began to use the Lyceum in this way about 335 BC, after which Aristotle left Plato's Academy and Athens, and then returned to Athens from his travels about a dozen years later. Because of the school's association with the gymnasium, the school also came to be referred to simply as the Lyceum. Some modern scholars argue that the school did not become formally institutionalized until Theophrastus took it over, at which time there was private property associated with the school.

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