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A BRIEF HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY – The Later Peripatetics

GREEK PHILOSOPHY – II. RATIONALISM

§ 22 – The Later Peripatetics

The later Peripatetics were not to any great extent originators of philosophical conceptions or theories but were chiefly Aristotelian editors and commentators.

Of these editors and commentators we may mention Andronicus of Rhodes, by whom, it is supposed, the works of Aristotle «were first properly collected and edited» (70 B.C.); Boëthus of Sidon (first century B.C.); an unknown author of a remarkable work entitled On the Cosmos; Alexander of Ægœ (first century A.D.); Aspasius and Adrastus of Aphrodisias (120 A.D.); Aristocles of Messene, and, particularly, the pupil of Aristocles, Alexander of Aphrodisias (200 A.D.), who was known as the Exegete κατ’έξοχήν (commentator par excellence).

Most of these men in their interpretations and developments of Aristotle’s doctrine incline towards a materialistic view of the universe, similar to that held by the earlier Peripatetics and by the Stoics. Their effort was directed towards removing apparent dualistic features of Aristotle’s philosophy, such as the separateness of God and nature, of reason and the lower faculties, of knowledge considered as having for its object the universal, and the real as the individual. None of these identified God and nature; but they represented God as actively working in nature though preserving a distinct identity. They attained what is undoubtedly a very exalted conception of the Deity. By Alexander of Aphrodisias and others the soul was considered a product of the bodily organism. Alexander explained the universal as merely a form of knowledge; holding, on the other hand, that the individual is the only real. In doing this he did not solve the difficulty but merely put it a little aside, inasmuch as it does not appear that he asserted the organic unity of the universal and the individual. —We may, with sufficient propriety, class with these Peripatetics the celebrated physician Galen (Claudius Galenus), who lived in the second century A.D. He followed Aristotle in logic, physics, and metaphysics, though inclined to keep physical speculation, as such, within narrow bounds. He seems to be an example of the «scientist» who is cautious in regard to making affirmations concerning the supersensible, though holding belief in the supersensible to be necessitated by religious and moral experience.