"Happiness depends upon ourselves."- Aristotle. Just as the Stoics were named for the stoa or porch in Athens where they congregated, the Peripatetic school - known in its day simply as the Peripatos - took its moniker from the peripatoi or covered walkways of the Lyceum where its members met. (A similar Greek word peripatetikos refers to the act of walking, and after Aristotle's death, a legend arose that he was a 'peripatetic' lecturer - that he walked about as he taught). The Peripatetic school of philosophy dates from around 335 BCE when Aristotle began teaching. It was an informal institution whose members conducted philosophical and scientific inquiries.
Whereas Plato had sought to explain things with his theory of Forms, Aristotle preferred to start from the facts given by experience. Philosophy to him meant science, and its aim was the recognition of the why in all things. Among the members of the school in Aristotle's time were Phanias of Eresus, Eudemus of Rhodes, Clytus of Miletus, Aristoxenus, and Dicaearchus. After his death, Aristotle's successors Theophrastus and Strato continued leading the school but the school fell into a decline by the end of the 3rd century BCE.
Stoic Six Vol.8 - The Peripatetics
Lyco of Troas by Diogenes Laërtius.
The Aristotelian Sense of Proportion by William De Witt Hyde.
Strato of Lampsacus by Diogenes Laërtius.
Life of Aristotle by George Grote.
Theophrastus by George Malcolm Stratton.
Post-Aristotelian Philosophy: The Stoics by Alexander Grant.
Includes introduction by Elbert Hubbard.
About the Author: George Grote (1794 - 1871) was an English political radical and classical historian. He is now best known for his major work, the voluminous History of Greece.
Alexander Grant, (1826 - 1884) was a British educationalist and principal of the University of Edinburgh. He was born in New York and died in Edinburgh.
Elbert Green Hubbard (June 19, 1856 - May 7, 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Among his many publications were the nine-volume work Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great.
William De Witt Hyde (1858 - 1917) was an American college president, born at Winchendon, Mass.
Diogenes Laërtius (fl. c. 3rd century CE) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a principal source for the history of Greek philosophy.
George Malcolm Stratton (1865 - 1957) was a writer and psychologist who pioneered the study of perception in vision by wearing special glasses which inverted images up and down and left and right.
Charles Duke Yonge (1812 - 1891) was an English historian, classicist and cricketer. He wrote numerous works of modern history, and translated several classical works.
