Peripatetics is a philosophical teaching that appeared in Rome along with other Greek philosophies thanks to Carnead and Diogenes, but was little known until the time of Silla. Grammar Tyrannion and Andronicus of Rhodes were the first to pay attention to the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus.
The invisibility of Aristotle's works hindered the success of his philosophy among the Romans. Julius Caesar and Augustus patronized the peripatetic teachings. However, under Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius, peripatetics, along with other philosophical schools, were either expelled or forced to remain silent about their views. This also took place during most of Nero's reign, although his philosophy was approved at the beginning. Ammonius of Alexandria, a peripatetic, made great efforts to expand the influence of Aristotle, but at about the same time the Platonists began to study his works and paved the way for eclectic peripatetics under Ammonia Sakas. After Justinian times, philosophy as a whole fell into decay. But in the writings of the scholastics, the views of Aristotle prevailed.
School development
The immediate followers of Aristotle comprehended and accepted only parts of his system - those that are not of primary importance in speculative thought. Very few thinkers came out of the school of Aristotle-peripatetics, worthy of being remembered. We are talking here only about three - Theophrastus of Lesbos, Straton of Lamps and Dykearch of Messenia. There were also peripatetics, which, as it turned out, did even more than Aristotelian editors and commentators.
Theofrast Lesbosky
Theophrastus (Feofrast, circa 372-287 BC), Aristotle's beloved student, chosen by him as the successor to the head of the peripatetic school, gave Aristotle theories a noticeable naturalistic interpretation. Obviously, driven by the desire to bring mind and soul into closer unity than, as it seemed to him, Aristotle brought them. However, he did not completely abandon the transcendence of reason, but interpreted the movement into which, unlike Aristotle, he included the genesis and destruction as a limitation of the soul, and “energy” - not just as pure activity or relevance, but also as something akin to physical activity.
His philosophical ideas and peripatetics are practically confirmation that there was no movement that did not contain “energy”. This was tantamount to giving the movements an absolute character, while at Aristotle the absolute did not change. The alleged movements of the soul (Aristotle denied the movement of the soul) were of two types: bodily (for example desire, passion, anger) and intangible (for example, judgment and the act of cognition). He retained the idea of Aristotle that external benefits are a necessary concomitant of virtue and necessary for happiness, and believed that a small deviation from the rules of morality is permissible and necessary when such a deviation leads to the reflection of a great evil from a friend or provides him with a great good. The main merit of Feofrast lies in the expansion that he gave to natural science, especially botany (phytology), in devotion to nature, with which he fulfilled his definition of human characters
Straton Lampsack
He was a pupil of Feofrast and the next after him the head of the school of peripatetics (281-279 BC). Straton abandoned the doctrine of the true transcendence of reason. He placed sensations not in the members of the body, not in the heart, but in the mind; gave the feeling part of the activity of understanding; made understanding interchangeable with thought aimed at sensitive phenomena, and so came close to solving thoughts about understanding meaning. This was done in an attempt to deduce from Aristotle's view of nature as a force unconsciously moving toward a goal, a completely simple organic concept of the universe. It would seem that Straton did not deal with experimental facts, but built his theory on a purely speculative basis. His peripatetics is obviously a step forward in the direction taken by Theophrastus.
Dikearch Messenian
He went even further and reduced all concrete forces, including souls, to a single, omnipresent, natural, vital and sensitive force. Here is a naturalistic concept of organic unity in perfect simplicity. Dykearch is said to have devoted himself to empirical research, rather than speculative speculation.
Sources
In addition to the primary sources, consisting of treatises and comments by philosophers of the school of peripatetics, there are works of Diogenes Laertius as secondary sources. They also include references made by Cicero, who, it must be said, deserves more trust when he mentions peripatetics than when he speaks of pre-Socratic philosophers.
The architect Tarentsky, known as the Musician, introduced many Pythagorean ideas into the teaching of peripatetics, emphasizing the concept of harmony.
The works of Demetrius Falerius and other early peripatetics in philosophy are mainly literary works limited to a common history.
Among the later peripatetics, one should mention Andronicus of Rhodes, who edited the works of Aristotle (about 70 BC). To the second century AD belong to Exegetes and Aristocles of Messina. Porfiry belongs to the third century, and Philoponus and Simplicus to the sixth century. All of them, although they belonged to Neoplatonic or eclectic schools, enriched the literature of the peripatetic school with their commentaries on Aristotle. Doctor Galen, born about 131 AD e., is also among the translators of Aristotle.
Retrospective
In fact, peripatetics is Aristotle's philosophy, which was centered around the concept of essence, and essence implies the fundamental dualism of matter and form. Consequently, it is precisely in the philosophy of Aristotle that the objective and the subjective are combined in the highest and most perfect synthesis. The concept is the simplest expression of the union of subject and object. The next in complexity is the idea, which is a form of existence and knowledge of existing separately from what is and what is known, while the highest in complexity is the essence, which is partially a question, and partially - a form that exists in reality, as well as in the object of knowledge.
Consequently, from Socrates to Aristotle, true development takes place, the historical formula of which is ideally compact: concept, idea and essence.