Aristotelianism

/ar'euh steuh teel"yeuh niz'euhm, -tee"lee euh-, euh ris'teuh-/, n.

1. the philosophy of Aristotle.

2. emphasis upon deduction and upon investigation of concrete and particular things and situations.

[1835-45; ARISTOTELIAN + -ISM]

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Introduction

      the philosophy of Aristotle and of those later philosophical movements based on his thought.

Assessment and nature of Aristotelianism

      The extent to which Aristotelian thought has become a component of civilization can hardly be overestimated. To begin, there are certain words that have become indispensable for the articulate communication of thoughts, experiences, and problems. Some words still carry their Greek form, whereas others have become established in their more important meanings as Latin equivalents of Aristotle's own words. The centuries-long impact of Aristotelian schooling lies at the root of the establishment of the following vocabulary: “subject” and “predicate” in grammar and logic; “form” (information, transform) and “matter” as expressing the two correlative aspects of something that has acquired or acquires something else that is possibly essential to it; “energy” as the active power inherent in a thing; “potential” for what is latent but can be released; “substance” and “essence,” “quantity” and “quality,” “accidental,” “relation,” “cause” (and the many meanings of “because” corresponding to the four causes), “genus” and “species” (general, special), “individual,” “indivisible” (atomic)—these constitute only a small sample of terms that still carry the mark of Aristotle's philosophy.

      Beyond language, features that cumulatively or severally characterize Aristotelianism include, in philosophical methodology, a critical approach to previous, contemporary, or hypothetical doctrines; the raising and discussing of doctrinal difficulties; the use of deductive reasoning (deduction) proceeding from self-evident principles or discovered general truths; and syllogistic (syllogism) forms of demonstrative or persuasive arguments.

      In epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, Aristotelianism includes a concentration on knowledge either accessible by natural means or accountable for by reason; an inductive, analytical Empiricism, or stress on experience, in the study of nature—including the study of men, their behaviour and organizations—leading from the perception of contingent individual occurrences to the discovery of permanent, universal patterns; and the primacy of the universal, that which is expressed by common or general terms.

      In metaphysics, or the theory of Being, Aristotelianism involves belief in the primacy of the individual in the realm of existence; in the applicability to reality of a certain set of explanatory concepts (e.g., 10 categories; genus–species–individual, matter–form, potentiality–actuality, essential–accidental; the four material elements and their basic qualities; and the four causes—formal, material, efficient, and final); in the soul as the inseparable form of each living body in the vegetable and animal kingdoms; in activity as the essence of things; and in the primacy of speculative over practical activity.

      In the philosophy of nature (nature, philosophy of), Aristotelianism denotes an optimistic position concerning nature's aims and its economy; believing in the perfection and in the eternity of the heavenly, geocentric spheres, perceiving them as driven by intelligent movers, as carrying in their circular movements the stars, the Sun, the planets, and the Moon, and as also influencing the sublunary world; and holding that light bodies rise naturally away from the centre of the Earth, while heavy bodies move naturally toward it with a speed related to their weight.

      In aesthetics, ethics, and politics, Aristotelian thought holds that poetry is an imitation of what is possible in real life; that tragedy, by imitation of a serious action cast in dramatic form, achieves purification (katharsis) through fear and pity; that virtue is a middle between extremes; that man's happiness consists primarily in intellectual activity and secondarily in the exercise of the virtues; and that the state is a self-sufficient society, necessary for men to achieve happiness.

History of Aristotelianism

Continuity of the Aristotelian tradition

      Since Aristotle's death there have been, without interruption until the present, schools and individuals who have cultivated the study of his works and fully or partly adopted and expounded his doctrines and methods. They have interpreted or misinterpreted, approved or condemned, and reshaped or utterly transformed them. The languages in which this interest was most forcibly expressed have changed in turn and over time from Greek to Latin; to Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew; to Italian, French, English, and German. The main centres in which it appeared have been as far apart as Greece, North Africa, and Rome in the ancient world; Persia and Spain, Sicily and the British Isles in the Middle Ages; and Germany and North America in more recent times.

      The main strand of the Aristotelian tradition has been the Greek line, which lasted 2,000 years, mainly in the area along the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and branched off at various stages between the 4th and 15th centuries, giving rise to (or strengthening) other traditions. The Latin branch originated in Rome in the 4th century and acquired a new impulse, probably from Athens, in the early 6th century. From these beginnings it was revived in the 9th century and again in the 12th, at which time a second and even stronger Aristotelian wave emerged from Constantinople, to be followed by a third, via the western Arabic schools, from Spain; and both branches spread to Italy, France, and the British Isles. The final direct contribution from the Greek to the Latin tradition came to Italy, once more from or through Constantinople, in the 15th century.

      Shortly after the beginning of Latin Aristotelianism certain Armenian and Syrian members of the Greek schools of Athens and Alexandria in Egypt introduced Aristotelian teachings into their schools. The Armenian tradition was still alive in the 19th century in such places as Madras and Venice; and the Syrian tradition, which never completely disappeared, was still powerful in the 14th century, after having given birth, in the 9th and 10th centuries, to an Arabic tradition. Arabic Aristotelianism was the product of Syrians, Persians, Turks, Jews, and Arabs who wrote and taught in their own countries as well as in Africa and Spain until the 12th century. Much of it and of what the Jews produced in Hebrew in the following two centuries passed into the Latin tradition between 1130 and 1550. Thus, all of the varied heritage that had derived ultimately from the Greek line and had been vastly enriched by other cultures came to be collected, through the Latin branch, by modern Western philosophical movements.

The Greek tradition

Early development

      For some decades after his death Aristotle's own school, the Peripatos or Lyceum, remained, in a truly Aristotelian spirit, a centre for critical research—not for the dogmatic acceptance of a closed system. Aristotle's immediate successor, Theophrastus, independently elaborated his master's metaphysics and psychology and added to his study of nature (botany and mineralogy) and logic (theory of propositions and hypothetical syllogisms). Various members of the Lyceum coordinated Aristotelian thought with other current schools of philosophy. Thus Aristoxenus joined Aristotelian and Pythagorean doctrines; Critolaus united Aristotle's theory of the influence of the heavens on the world with the Stoic theory of providence; and Clearchus of Soli combined Plato's views on the human soul with Aristotle's.

      Outside the Lyceum, the Stoic (Stoicism) school was partly following Aristotle in its interest in formal logic, the theory of meaning, and use of the categories (e.g., substance, quality, relation). It was Aristotelian also in its empiricism, as well as in its concentration on nature, in several aspects of natural science, and in its belief that man is intrinsically a social being. The Skeptics (Skepticism) sometimes relied on Aristotelian forms of argument to prove their systematic doubts. Even Epicurus, who may have fought against Aristotle's early theology and psychology and ignored his mature philosophy, was, nonetheless, near him in his doctrine of the will and in his conception of friendship and the pursuit of knowledge as the high aims that give satisfaction and pleasure to man.

      Although relatively little was known of Aristotle's “esoteric” works until the 1st century BC, his more popular, literary, and Platonizing writings influenced eclectics such as Panaetius and his pupil Poseidonius; and this influence continued, helped by the Roman philosopher and lawyer Cicero (Cicero, Marcus Tullius), well into the 4th and 5th centuries AD. Upon it was based the tendency to establish a harmony between the thought of Plato and Aristotle—a feature that recurred through the whole history of Aristotelianism—and perhaps the ascription to Aristotle of the De mundo (“On the Universe”), a cosmological treatise of the 1st century BC, which found favour with all of the different traditions until the 16th century.

      In the 1st century BC Aristotle's “esoteric” writings were organized into a corpus and critically edited by Andronicus Of Rhodes and other scholars. The edition was used by Nicholas of Damascus, a historian and philosopher, in an attempt to expound Aristotle's system. This may be viewed as the beginning of a new era of a scholarly and scholastic Aristotelianism in which Aristotle had to be taken as the basis for the acquisition of true knowledge in a number of fields. Individual works began to be commented and lectured upon; organized philosophical studies began to have as their introduction Aristotle's works on logic, especially the Categories. Thus the pattern was set for the next 17 centuries. Almost pure Aristotelianism, based on the “esoteric” works, lived on until the 4th century. Many scholars—the most eminent of them being Alexander Of Aphrodisias, who from AD 195 held the Athenian chair of Aristotelian studies created by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius—provided the works on logic, ethics, metaphysics, natural philosophy, and psychology with detailed and penetrating commentaries meant for the specialist. The interpretation of Aristotle was for many generations molded by these scholars. Others—the greatest being Themistius, a professor in Constantinople in about AD 350—practically rewrote many of Aristotle's treatises in a more modern language and more readable style.

      This new, scholarly Aristotelianism had established itself sufficiently as the philosophical and methodological frame of learning for it to be adopted, at least in part, by most men of culture—including Ptolemy, the greatest astronomer of antiquity, and Galen, the most eminent medical scientist.

Relationship to Neoplatonism

      Aristotle's works were adopted by the systematic builders of Neoplatonism in the 3rd century AD. Plotinus, the school's chief representative, followed Aristotle wherever he found a possibility of agreement or development, as he did in Aristotle's theory of the intellect. And Plotinus' pupil Porphyry, the first great harmonizer of Plato and Aristotle, provided the field of logic with a short introduction (Isagoge). The Isagoge, in fact, is only concerned with a simple and rather mechanical treatment of five concepts that had been much used by Aristotle. These were the concepts of genus, or kind (as animal is the genus, or kind, under which Socrates falls); species, or sort (Socrates is a man); differentia, or distinguishing characteristic (rationality distinguishes men from other members of the genus animal); property (being capable of laughter was said to be a “property” of men inasmuch as all and only men are capable of laughter); and accident, or characteristic in general (as it might be an accident of Socrates to be pale). This introduction soon became an integral part of the Organon (the logical works of Aristotle) and thus acquired undeserved Aristotelian authority in all schools for more than 1,500 years. From that time on, Aristotelianism became indissolubly tied up with Neoplatonism.

      Neoplatonism dominated the school of Athens, where, apart from logic, Aristotle's writings were destined to be studied mainly as a basis for philosophical disputations—disputations in which the Platonic view was usually victorious. Scholars like Ammonius (Ammonius Hermiae)—a pupil of Proclus, the most accomplished systematizer of Neoplatonism, head of the Athenian school in the mid-5th century, and himself extremely well-versed in Aristotle—found Alexandria a considerably more attractive place for Aristotelian studies, in that it was tolerant of many views. There pagans and Christians coexisted and cooperated, and from there they carried Aristotelian learning to a number of other schools: Simplicius (Simplicius Of Cilicia), a pupil of Ammonius who was inclined to Platonism, took it back to Athens and—when Justinian closed that pagan school in 529—to Persia; Sergius, a physician and Nestorian priest, carried it to the Christian schools of Syria; and Stephanus of Alexandria took it to Constantinople. The schools of Alexandria and Athens produced from about AD 475 to 545 the most intensive collection of Aristotelian commentaries, by scholars like Ammonius, philosophers of science like Simplicius, and philosopher-theologians like Philoponus (see also Platonism (Plato)).

      Before the 5th century, Christian (Christianity) theology had been affected only marginally and indirectly by Aristotle. The elementary study of Aristotelian logic had proved indispensable for a disciplined training of theologians, and some of the concepts from Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics that entered into the elaboration of this logic became equally essential for the rational formulation of points of dogma. The aforementioned five terms of Porphyry and the 10 categories of Aristotle were used or implied in the mystical theology of Pseudo-Dionysius (Pseudo-Dionysius The Areopagite) (an unidentified 5th-century Christian Neoplatonist), which was to become one of the principal components of Christian speculation in the Greek, Oriental, and Latin schools. Descriptions of God and distinctions between the three Persons of the Trinity came to include, in an increasingly technical sense, the Aristotelian terms substance, essence, accident, form and matter, species and nature, quality, quantity, and property; these terms were not always used in a purely Aristotelian sense, however. In this way, as well as through the purely philosophical schools, Aristotelianism entered the first Greek Scholasticism of St. John of Damascus, an 8th-century doctor of the church.

From the Byzantine (Byzantine Empire) renaissance to the 15th century

      The Byzantine scholarly renaissance in the 9th century included a revival of interest in Aristotle: the old books were rediscovered and reedited (the oldest manuscripts still existing today belong to this time). Photius (Photius, Saint), patriarch of Constantinople and a leading figure in that renaissance, included in his encyclopaedic works summaries of the elements of Aristotelian logic. More extensive scholarly activity resulted from the reestablishment of the Academy in Constantinople in the 11th and 12th centuries under the successive leadership of such men as Michael Psellus, an encyclopaedic philosopher; his student John Italus; Michael, the archbishop of Ephesus; and Eustratius, the metropolitan of Nicaea. At the Academy teaching and exegetical work went hand in hand; debates on the superiority of Plato or Aristotle and attacks on philosophy by the religious schools did not seriously weaken these activities. There was perhaps not much that was new in the understanding or the development of Aristotle's doctrine; but logic was no longer the only focal point of Aristotelian studies. Indeed, they covered, more widely than had been done in Alexandria, practically the whole corpus, including some work on Aristotle's political theory, on his ethics, and on his biology. In addition, there were philosophical debates similar to those taking place in the Latin schools; they were based on texts of Aristotle and treated such issues as the theory of universals and the logical structure of language.

      In the 13th and 14th centuries popularization and systematization—in an encyclopaedic or philosophical form—took the upper hand in the work of Nicephorus Blemmydes, George Pachymeres, and Theodore Metochites. At a time when Greek thought was being strongly influenced by the Latin tradition, especially by the work of Thomas Aquinas, the traditional debate on Plato and Aristotle took new forms. Aristotelianism appeared in the teaching of Barlaam the Calabrian, who sought to champion rationalism in faith; this was combated from a Platonic point of view by Nicephorus Gregoras. In the 15th century, when Greeks were becoming part of the Italian philosophical scene, Aristotelian rationalism was strongly defended by the upholders of Christian theology against such men as George Gemistus Plethon, who proposed a new universal religiosity tinged with an admiration for Plato and paganism. The victory in this intellectual battle went to the moderates like John Bessarion (Bessarion), Plethon's influential pupil, who, though he preferred Plato, admired Aristotle, translated his Metaphysics, and collected manuscripts of his works; he converted from the Greek (i.e., the Greek Orthodox) church to the Latin (i.e., what is now called the Roman Catholic) church, in which latter communion he became a cardinal.

The early Latin tradition

      The echoes of Aristotle's early writings in Cicero, a few signs of his indirect influence on other writers, and a more considerable contribution to post-Aristotelian logic in Apuleius (Apuleius, Lucius), a Platonic philosopher who flourished in the 2nd century AD, are indications of the general cultural intercourse in this area between Latins and Greeks. The presence of Plotinus and Porphyry in Rome in the 3rd and early 4th centuries probably started the more serious interest in Aristotle there, of which the first results were, perhaps, Victorinus' adaptations in Latin of Porphyry's Isagoge and Aristotle's Categories. Logic was still the only part of Aristotle that had entered Latin culture when Themistius' teaching attracted the attention of Roman pagan circles in the 4th century.

      Again, only the logical works of Aristotle, together with some extracts from Greek commentaries on them, seem to have reached the hands of Boethius (Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus), a Roman scholar and statesman of the early 6th century, when he was attempting to transmit to the Latins as much as he could of Greek learning. He translated these works and elaborated on the commentaries and on some other later texts of logic that are partly based on Aristotle. He acted primarily as a conduit, and some scholars are not prepared to ascribe to him interpretations and plans contained in the Latin works that bear his name. Even the plan of commenting on “as much of Aristotle as would come into his hands” and showing that Aristotle and Plato agreed was the traditional approach going back at least to Porphyry. Nothing remains to show where Boethius himself stood in judging Aristotle and the several parts of his philosophy. The same observations probably hold true with regard to Boethius' various theological treatises, in which the Aristotelian concepts that helped to organize the theology of the Trinity were unmistakably taken over from similar Greek treatises. A disproportionate value, however, was later attached to Boethius' own original contribution in both logic and theology; simply the fact that his name was connected with these texts made people in the Middle Ages ascribe to him the primary responsibility for their contents.

The Syriac, Arabic, and Jewish traditions

      The increased sense of linguistic and national identity and the religious movements of the 5th and 6th centuries such as Nestorianism (Nestorian) (a heterodox doctrine that so stressed the distinction between the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ as to suggest that they belonged to two persons) and Monophysitism (monophysite) (a heterodox doctrine asserting that there is only one nature in Jesus Christ) led to the foundation of Syriac centres of studies in the Persian and Byzantine empires, especially at Edessa (now Urfa, Tur.) and Antioch. Proba and Sergius of Resaina were among those who contributed, through translations of the basic logical texts and commentaries on them, to the establishment of Aristotelian studies in these centres. At the time of the Arabic invasion of the Byzantine and Sāsānian empires around 640, and for several generations afterward, these centres continued to grow in importance. Most notable was the great school of Kinnesrin, which was represented by such men as Severus Sebokht, who wrote on Aristotle's syllogisms; Jacob, bishop of Edessa, a theologian, grammarian, and translator; and Georgius, bishop of the Arabs, author of a commentary on the Organon. Interest remained, however, mainly confined to logic and its application to theology.

      The Syrian Christians formed the philosophical and scientific intelligentsia when in the 9th century al-Maʿmūn (Maʾmūn, al-), the seventh ʾAbbāsid caliph, organized the Arabic centre of learning of the new Islāmic (Arabic philosophy) empire in Baghdad. By then the Syrian scholars had acquired and translated most of Aristotle's works. They also then translated them into Arabic, both from the Syriac and directly from the Greek, and added many texts of commentators on Aristotle. In this way Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, his son Isḥāq, Abū Bishr Mattā ibn Yūnus, Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī, and many other Syrians provided the basis for a brilliant philosophical activity in Arabic. The Syrians retained their own independent culture; as late as the 13th century their language was used by the converted Jew Bar Hebraeus, “Son of the Hebrew” (also known as Gregorius or Abū al-Faraj), an encyclopaedist, philosopher, and theologian, who expounded all the works of Aristotle in his Kěthabhā dhē-ḥēwath ḥekhměthā (Book of the Cream of Wisdom), elaborating many sections on the basis of the Greek and Arabic Aristotelians.

      In the 9th century the Arab al-Kindī (Kindī, Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq aṣ-Ṣabāḥ, al-) was the first notable scholar to use the Arabic language in a general introduction of mainly Aristotelian philosophy. In the following century the Turkish Muslim al-Fārābī (Fārābī, al-) produced a more specialized study in which he commented upon and expounded the books of logic and attempted to establish the relationship between philosophy and Islām. It was through the writings of Avicenna and Averroës, however, that Aristotle's thought became an integral part of lay Arabic culture.

      Early in the 11th century, the Arab Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) made Aristotle's philosophy the foundation of an original system of his own. For this he also found inspiration in a group of Plotinian texts that had been translated into Arabic under the title “Theology of Aristotle.” Aristotle became, in Avicenna's hands, a much more systematic and coherent thinker than he really had intended to be; problems and solutions that were, at best, hinted at by Aristotle (e.g., the distinction between essence and existence or the relation between possible and necessary existence) were among the distinctive marks of Avicenna's own work.

      For the Spanish Arab Averroës (Ibn Rushd) in the 12th century, Aristotle was “the measure and model offered by nature to show the ultimate perfection of man.” He held that philosophy, specifically Aristotelian philosophy, was and taught truth; revelation or revealed religion was a debased philosophy for the simple. Averroës dissected Aristotle's works, analyzing and reconstructing them with a fine scholarly and philosophical sense and an incredible wealth of information derived from previous Greek and Arabic philosophers. He elicited doctrines that are not easily apparent and made them in some cases more compelling than the texts themselves might allow, but he rarely forced his own views onto Aristotle without at least finding some support in the texts themselves. The doctrines concerning the mortality of the individual soul, the eternity of the world, and the existence of a single Mind for the whole human race to the exclusion of individual minds were key doctrines for Averroës; they had some basis—but not much—in the thought of Aristotle.

      Until the 13th century, Jewish (Judaism) Aristotelianism developed within the Arabic culture of North Africa, Mesopotamia, and Spain. This work was carried out in the Arabic language and distinguished itself for its almost constant concern with the relation between philosophy and Judaism. Many Aristotelian concepts were considered and discussed by Isaac ben Solomon Israeli (Israeli, Isaac ben Solomon), a 10th-century Neoplatonist, in his Kitāb al-ḥudūd (“Book of Definitions”) and Kitāb al-usṭuqusāt (“Book of the Elements”). Form and matter were the basis of the metaphysical structure of the Neoplatonic system of Solomon Ibn Gabirol, an 11th-century poet and philosopher known as Avicebron. A fully conscious plan of inserting Aristotle—or at least the Aristotle of al-Fārābī and Avicenna—into the intellectual and spiritual life of Judaism was carried out by Abraham ibn Daud (ibn Daud, Abraham ben David Halevi) of Toledo in the mid-12th century. Moses Maimonides (Maimonides, Moses) of Córdoba found a way of reconciling the claims of empirical knowledge with those of revelation, which places him into clear contrast with his contemporary Spaniard Averroës, and in so doing he provided a Jewish anticipation of Thomas Aquinas' Christian compromise. His proofs for the existence of God and his acceptance of a theory of creation from eternity were typical of his approach. From the 13th century onward philosophical works, particularly those of Averroës on Aristotle, were being translated into Hebrew; a vast Hebrew literature of “super-commentaries” (those on the works of Aristotle as commented on by Averroës) appeared, and independent works were also produced, notably by Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides), who was faithful to both Maimonides and Averroës. Soon after, however, the more orthodox tradition based upon the Bible and the Talmud prevailed. Aristotelian works by Jews and Hebrew versions of Averroës, translated into Latin, contributed their share to the Italian philosophical movement of the 16th century (see also Judaism: Jewish philosophy).

The later Latin tradition

The discovery of Aristotle's works in the Latin West

       Before 1115 only the very short Categories and On Interpretation were known in Latin, and these two works circulated, from about 800, in a version by Boethius. By 1278 practically the whole of the Aristotelian corpus existed in translations from the Greek, and much of it had a wide circulation. Apart from three other works of logic in translations done by Boethius, which reappeared in about 1115, this wholesale discovery was the result of cultural contacts with Constantinople and a few other Greek centres and the personal initiative of a few scholars. Most notable and first of these was James of Venice, who was in Constantinople and translated the Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Soul, Metaphysics, and several minor texts before or around 1150; other scholars translated anew or for the first time works on ethics, natural philosophy, and logic before 1200. With higher standards of linguistic scholarship, Robert Grosseteste (Grosseteste, Robert), about 1240, revised and completed the translation of the Nicomachean Ethics and translated On the Heavens for the first time from the Greek.

      The Flemish translator William of Moerbeke, active between about 1255 and 1278, completed the Latin Aristotelian corpus; he was the first to translate the Politics and Poetics and to give a full and reliable translation of the books on animals; he also translated anew some books of natural philosophy, and he revised several of the older translations. About half of the works were also translated from the Arabic, mainly in Toledo by Gerard of Cremona and Michael Scot, between 1165 and 1230. With two or three exceptions, these translations came after those from the Greek; all had a much more limited circulation and influence. A considerable contribution to the knowledge of Aristotle came from the translations of the ancient commentaries; nearly all of these were made from the Greek.

      The view that Aristotle came to be known in Latin by way of the Arabic scholars must be understood as true only in the sense that a number of Aristotelian doctrines—partly transformed in the process—spread in Latin circles from the works of such men as al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Albumazar before the texts of Aristotle were accessible or had been properly interpreted. Further, there is little truth in a view that in the Latin world in the Middle Ages Aristotle was seen in a Neoplatonic light because Plotinian and Proclan texts translated from the Arabic—namely the Theologia Aristotelis (“Theology of Aristotle”) and the Liber de causis (“Book of Causes”)—were ascribed to him.

From the 9th through the mid-13th century

      The study of Porphyry's (Porphyry) Isagoge, of Aristotle's Categories and On Interpretation, and of theological texts containing Aristotelian elements formed the basis, from the 9th century onward, of logical methodology ( dialectic) in a wide number of fields. When applied to problems concerning the Trinity or the Eucharist, or in general to problems concerning individuality and universality of concepts and things, dialectic was perceived as a powerful instrument for clarifying faith or—on the opposite side—for endangering it. For Abelard (Abelard, Peter), the first great Aristotelian of the Middle Ages, dialectic was an essential method for analysis and the discovery of truth. As part of his study, he produced an illuminating account of the linguistic, mental, and objective aspects of universals on the basis of Aristotelian doctrines. Soon thereafter, new developments of Aristotle's theory of language and logic took place, partly as a result of the recently acquired knowledge of his Sophistical Refutations.

      At the same time, in the later 12th century and during the beginning of the 13th century, Aristotle's physics, cosmology, and metaphysics began to attract attention through the Latin texts both of Arabic works on science and philosophy and of Aristotle's own works, and did so mainly among scientists of the famous medical school at Salerno and among the English philosophers. Around 1190 Alfred of Sareshel used the new texts in his treatise De motu cordis (“On the Movement of the Heart”). Between 1210 and 1235 Robert Grosseteste commented on Aristotle's Physics and drew on various aspects of Aristotle's natural philosophy (nature, philosophy of) for his own scientific and philosophical treatises, and around 1245 Roger Bacon (Bacon, Roger) commented on the Physics and part of the Metaphysics. It would be wrong, however, to try to find in this scholarship (Scholasticism) the origin of modern experimental science, which is rather to be found in the study of ancient and more recent mechanics, medicine, and technology or in original inventiveness.

      The introduction of the new Aristotle met with difficulties in Paris (Paris I–XIII, Universities of). The impact of non-Christian Aristotelian and Arabic philosophy engendered fears, doubts, and suspicions. Although the masters at Paris were free to teach Aristotle's logic, which was value free, and although no obstacle was put in the way of lecturing on any of Aristotle's works at the universities of Oxford and Toulouse, in the first part of the 13th century the ecclesiastical authorities at Paris imposed a ban on lectures relating to the physics, the metaphysics, and the psychology of Aristotle and his commentators. While this ban succeeded in slowing down some activities it also quickened reactions and aroused strong curiosity; the very demand for some kind of censorship of the works led to more intimate study of them. Certainly by the 1240s the prohibition against teaching Aristotle had become a dead letter at Paris, as can be seen from the fact that Roger Bacon was then commenting on the “dangerous” Physics and Metaphysics. Shortly thereafter, before 1255, all of Aristotle's philosophical treatises then known had become a required part of the Parisian Master of Arts curriculum, and, around the same time, Albertus Magnus (Albertus Magnus, Saint)—committed though he was, as a Dominican friar, to safeguarding the purity of faith and dogma—made Aristotle's works an indissoluble part of philosophical and scientific literature in the Latin world. Albertus Magnus announced it as his intention to make all of Aristotle's natural philosophy “intelligible to the Latins.” His vast encyclopaedia of secular knowledge and wisdom consisted of an analytical exposition of Aristotle's thought combined with all the information and interpretations that Albertus had gathered from other, mainly Arabic, sources or that he had gained as the product of his own extensive research and speculation. Faced with the danger of being accused of following Aristotle against church dogma, he asserted: “I expound, I do not endorse, Aristotle.”

      The approach of Albertus' pupil, Thomas Aquinas (Aquinas, Thomas, Saint), to Aristotle was that of a scholar. He wrote numerous detailed commentaries on a variety of Aristotle's works, including the Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics; he analyzed the structure of every section of most works; he tried to discover their organization and to follow the arguments; and he was careful to obtain the best texts and to get from them the genuine meaning. Above all, Thomas Aquinas drew heavily on Aristotle's thought in composing his own masterwork, the Summa theologiae. He respected Aristotle's authoritativeness and credited him with reasonableness, even when that was not explicitly justified. Sometimes he drew inferences that went beyond Aristotle's own conclusions, and he allowed himself considerable freedom whenever Aristotle had left loose ends in his attempts to solve difficulties. At these points he often went his own way, without ascribing the new steps to Aristotle but without feeling that he was going against him. Compromises followed; for example, he stepped beyond Aristotle when he argued that the individual soul, although remaining essentially and indissolubly the form of the individual body, is separable from it and immortal. Aristotle's account was stretched almost to the breaking point but it was not transformed. Beyond that point Thomas Aquinas was not a Christian Aristotle but a man of faith and dogma; he divorced himself from Aristotle when necessary and approached closer to St. Augustine, to the Neoplatonists, or to Avicenna.

From the late 13th century through the 15th century

      The suspicion that reading Aristotle might lead to heresy became stronger when the closer study of his texts and of Averroës' interpretations enhanced the admiration for The Philosopher and increased the following of The Commentator, as these two thinkers were known respectively. Siger De Brabant was the most redoubtable of many Averroistic Aristotelians. What came to be called Averroism (Latin Averroism) was in fact a tendency to accept genuine or consistent Aristotelian tenets, particularly those concerning the eternity of the world, the unity of the intellect, and the ability of humans to achieve happiness on earth. Ecclesiastical condemnations of propositions considered false or dangerous and threats against the holders of doctrines implied by these propositions gave a more definite status to the Averroists, although many propositions condemned at Paris and Oxford in 1270 and 1277 had nothing to do with Aristotle and little with Averroës. The effect of the condemnations soon became visible: it took the form of a separation between the teaching of “philosophy” in the faculty of arts and the teaching of “truth” in the faculty of theology. This separation became rigid, with the ambiguous result that two “truths”—truth of coherence in philosophical contexts and revealed truth—were thought to coexist.

      At the turn of the century, however, Dante's (Dante) powerful poetical vision could still merge the Averroists' Aristotle, who claimed that natural truths were self-sufficient, and Thomas Aquinas' Aristotle, who endorsed many of the truths of faith. For Dante, as for Averroës, Aristotle was the embodiment of total human knowledge—“the master of them that know.” A remarkable index of Dante's commitment to Aristotelianism is the fact that he placed Siger de Brabant, by that time condemned for his Aristotelian heresy, in Paradise. In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Dante found moral guidance (he even said that this work “showed man his true happiness”), and in Aristotle's scientific books he found the key to understanding the workings of nature. In some aspects of Averroës' theory of a universal human Intellect combined with the Stoic-Aristotelian principle that all men are by nature citizens of one city, he found the basis of the Empire, seeing it as the one polity (civilitas) for the whole human race.

      The 14th century was no less Aristotelian than the 13th. Some scholars have indeed claimed that Aristotelianism collapsed, but such an assertion does not take into account the non-Aristotelian components of previous philosophies and the permanent acceptance of Aristotelian doctrines in the new ones. Form, matter, causality, and the idea of a universe in which events occurred with regularity but were not necessitated provided the Aristotelian frame of the system of Duns Scotus (Duns Scotus, John). The nominalism (or “terminism”) of William of Ockham (Ockham, William of), an English Franciscan, his rejection of “useless entities,” his metaphysics of a world of individual self-contained things, and his conceptualism gave neat, though extreme, expression to Aristotle's theory of language, the economy of nature, and the primacy of individuals in existence and of universals in intellectual knowledge. He followed Aristotle closely in his views on the scientific coordination of notions. He was more faithful to Aristotle than either Thomas Aquinas or Averroës when he said that Aristotle did not give a clear lead on the question of the immortality of the soul. The various schools of Scholastic philosophy—Thomism, Scotism, Ockhamism—that asserted themselves in the 14th century and that lived on had a common Aristotelian basis, but they had different ways of interpreting it (see also Scholasticism and Christianity).

      Averroistic Aristotelianism flourished in this century in connection with, or independently of, the other trends. The Italian medical faculties at Bologna and Padua were lively centres of logical and philosophical studies; for example, Peter of Abano, a professor of medicine at Padua who had been trained at Paris, pushed Aristotle's cosmology to the brink of determinism in human affairs and used his logic to suggest that Christ's death was only apparent. political science, which had been a field for lofty speculations or restrained exercises in the analysis and exposition of texts, became important for those who practiced politics and those who wanted to satisfy, under the aegis of Aristotle's doctrine, the potentialities of human beings for happiness. John Of Paris wanted France to be self-sufficient, self-controlling, and without interference from the pope; John Of Jandun, a successor of Siger de Brabant, upheld Aristotle's Politics in all its worldliness; and Marsilius Of Padua, John of Jandun's friend in Paris, followed Aristotle in his insistence that government had no supernatural origins but arose naturally from the needs of the governed and that priests should be considered in the same way as members of a guild in a city, without special privileges.

      Perhaps with less attachment to the details of Aristotle's doctrines and with a keen critical sense, the Mertonians, a group of logician-philosophers based in Merton College, Oxford (e.g., Thomas Bradwardine, William of Heytesbury), and encyclopaedists, scientists, and philosophers in France (e.g., Jean Buridan and Nicholas Oresme) made laborious efforts to express science wholly in terms of mathematics, to quantify changes in quality, and to determine the nature of continuity in movement and the acceleration and speed of falling bodies. Their starting points were the Physics and the other texts of Aristotle. In a similar (almost mathematical) spirit, many of the same men carried logic even further than Ockham had done into the fields of logical calculus, paradoxes, and sophisms. Thus one may say that Aristotle was not abandoned but expanded.

Modern developments

From the Renaissance to the 18th century

      In the 15th century Italy became the focal point at which various forms of Aristotelianism converged. Certain links between Italian universities and religious schools and the University of Paris had already flourished for a long time. In the late 14th century Paolo Nicoletti (Paul Of Venice) (Paulus Venetus) returned from Oxford to Padua after having absorbed the new logic and physics of the Mertonians and the radical nominalism of Ockham and after having increased his acquaintance with the French Averroistic trend; works by the Englishmen and by Paolo were textbooks in Italian universities for many generations. At the end of the century a number of Spanish and Italian Jews were passing on, in Latin, still more texts of Averroës on Aristotle, as well as the Jews' own recent contributions to Aristotelian learning.

      A more spectacular contribution of books, linguistic and didactic competence, and stimulating debates came with an influx of Greek scholars into the Western sphere. They were attracted by the humanists' craving for classical learning, the theological discussions between Orthodox and Roman Catholic leaders, and the relative freedom offered by the Republic of Venice and by Florence to those who were taking refuge from Turkish domination. Many manuscripts were taken to Italy, and many were transcribed in Italy by the Greeks, who also taught the Greek language to the Italian scholars. An editorial masterpiece by Aldus Manutius (Manutius, Aldus, the Elder), an early printer, publisher, and editor, at the end of the 15th century made accessible to many almost the complete Greek corpus of Aristotle's works. A great number of Greek and Latin scholars—such as Bessarion, John Argyropoulos, Leonardo Bruni, and Lorenzo Valla—produced new translations of those texts; others translated many works on Aristotle previously unknown in Latin.

      As soon as printing had been established (that is to say, by the late 15th century), editorial activity was directed to the production of many complete as well as partial editions of the Latin versions of Aristotle and Averroës in both their older and newer versions from the Greek, the Arabic, and the Hebrew. At the universities of Padua and Bologna and at Ferrara and Venice, Averroists such as Agostino Nifo and Nicoletto Vernia and independent interpreters such as Pietro Pomponazzi (Pomponazzi, Pietro) were dominating the philosophical scene. For Pomponazzi, Aristotle, whether right or wrong, had to be studied directly by way of his own works and not by way of his interpreters; yet he did not think that Aristotle had a monopoly on knowledge, and for this reason his mistakes concerning facts needed to be exposed.

      There were others who followed Aristotle in his vast scientific achievements or searched his works for a clearer formulation of scientific methods. It was this scientific spirit that kept alive the interest in Aristotle's methodology and in his philosophy of nature down to the time, in the 17th century, when William Harvey, the English physician who discovered the circulation of the blood, was lecturing on Aristotle's books on animals and Galileo was writing on science and logic.

      In a less apparent form, Aristotelianism, still strongly entrenched in most European schools, continued to have its effect on the most modern philosophers. The methodology of Francis Bacon (Bacon, Francis, Viscount Saint Alban (or Albans), Baron of Verulam), English philosopher, scientist, and statesman, grew out of it, and his basic metaphysical concepts were borrowed from Aristotle, although he was critical of the distorted version of Aristotelianism in the academic circles of his day. The Polish astronomer Copernicus (Copernicus, Nicolaus) was still attached to the perfection of circular movements. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm), the German Rationalist and mathematician, not only admired Aristotle's logic but also built his own metaphysics of individuals (“monads” (monad)) around the theory of matter and form. Like Aristotle, political theorists such as Jean Bodin (Bodin, Jean) in France carried on their inquiries into the nature of the state by studying existing organizations and their natural backgrounds.

      In the literary field, Aristotle's Poetics, practically unknown until 1500, was now read and analyzed in both the Greek and Latin versions; its doctrines were compared and partly made to harmonize with the then-prevailing views of the ancient Roman poet Horace, and Aristotle's view that art imitates nature prevailed for many over the conflicting theory that stressed the creativity of the poet. The doctrine of the unities of action, place, and time—though actually a later development resulting from forced interpretations of Aristotle—ruled over the work of many writers of tragedies (tragedy) (e.g., Gian Giorgio Trissino in Italy, Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille in France, and, to a certain extent, Goethe in Germany). Many critics (literary criticism) (including the English critics from Sir Philip Sidney to Matthew Arnold) accepted those rules, although few English poets (poetry)—the great exception was John Milton—welcomed them. A lesser influence was exercised by Aristotle's Rhetoric outside the field of systematic theory.

      Scholasticism in these centuries belonged to the history of Aristotelianism. All over western and central Europe and also in Spanish America the continuance of Scholasticism ensured that higher education remained generally within an Aristotelian framework. Remarkable work was produced by Scholastics in the fields of commentaries and of detailed interpretation; Pedro de Fonseca, the “Portuguese Aristotle,” in the 16th century and Sylvester Maurus, author of short but pithy commentaries on all of Aristotle's works, in Rome in the 17th are noteworthy examples. Insofar as the different Scholasticisms (Scholasticism) were living and interesting philosophical movements, however, they had more to do with newer philosophies than with Aristotle.

      Martin Luther's (Luther, Martin) rebellion against Rome, on the other hand, involved a rebellion against Scholastic philosophy and its distorted Aristotelian structure, although not against Aristotle. In fact, when Luther's follower Philipp Melanchthon (Melanchthon, Philipp) undertook to reorganize the curriculum for higher education, a more genuine, humanistic Aristotle emerged as the great master of philosophy, independent of theology. Once again, as in the early 13th century in Paris, Aristotle took pride of place, particularly in the realms of logic and ethics, and to a lesser extent in metaphysics and natural philosophy.

      The anti-Aristotelianism of the 16th to 18th century touched only a small part of the real Aristotle. Partly it was a reaction against Scholasticism, as though this had faithfully represented Aristotle's own philosophy. Thus, Aristotle was wrongly accused of extreme formalism, irresponsible use of syllogisms consisting of empty or irrelevant concepts, a multiplication of pseudo-real entities, and the application of “scientific” methods to facts that could be vouched for only by faith. For other critics the whole of Aristotle's canon stood condemned because of his unsatisfactory account of local movement and the consequences it had in the areas of mechanics, dynamics, cosmology, and astronomy. His downfall in the 17th century was the result, above all, of his failure to create, in the 4th century BC, a language that allowed him to describe the forms of things and events (i.e., their knowable aspects) in mathematical formulas and of his failure to lay sufficient stress, in his philosophy of experience, on the need for experiments.

The 19th and 20th centuries

      The anti-Aristotelian movement was countered mainly by historical and philological scholarship. As Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg (Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf), a German philosopher, saw it, Aristotle's personality and works must be known as exactly as possible because he provides the indispensable historical basis of any serious philosophy. Such a type of study had declined after the great achievements of the 16th century. After the work done between the first new learned edition of the collected Greek texts of Aristotle by J.G. Buhle (1791–93) and a vast collection of all documentary material in the Aristoteles-Archiv at Berlin (which began in 1965), there is little, if anything, that remains to be discovered concerning the original and deteriorated forms of Aristotle's traditional corpus. A monumental edition sponsored by the Prussian Academy from 1831 to 1870 became the basis for almost innumerable critical editions of individual works. A rich crop of fragments, which were identified and edited in the last centuries, brought to light previously almost unknown aspects of Aristotle's early activity. And in 1890 a papyrus was discovered in Egypt that contained most of the otherwise lost Constitution of Athens. European and American academies have sponsored the editing of ancient and medieval commentaries and translations in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew. Historical, philological, and philosophical exegesis has explored in great detail the contents and background of most of Aristotle's writings. Translations of all the works into English, German, and French and of many of them into most of the other European languages as well as into Hebrew, Arabic, and Japanese have made Aristotle widely accessible. Historians of ideas have investigated Aristotle's relationship to Plato and to the Greece of his day, his influence in following ages, and his own philosophical development.

      Philosophical Aristotelianism has been mainly confined to the German schools established by Trendelenburg and Franz Brentano (Brentano, Franz). Trendelenburg was concerned to effect a revaluation of Aristotle's metaphysics in the face of German idealism; he had a measure of influence in the United States on such thinkers as Felix Adler, George Sylvester Morris, and John Dewey. Aristotle's theories of being and knowledge formed the point of departure for Brentano's “descriptive psychology” and his doctrine of human experience, and they also contributed to Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology. Outside Germany, J.-G.-F.-L. Ravaisson-Mollien, a spiritualist philosopher, and Sir David Ross, editor and translator of Aristotle's works, acknowledged a debt to Aristotle, respectively, for their metaphysics and ethics; and the reestablishment of Thomas Aquinas, by Pope Leo XIII in 1879, as the great doctor of the church increased the interest in Aristotle and in his influence on the history of Christian (Christianity) thought. Contemporary philosophy in the Anglo-Saxon world is often associated with a keen interest in Aristotle (nor is he entirely neglected in other philosophical traditions), and the name of the Aristotelian Society (London) reflects the view that good philosophy must be practiced in the spirit of Aristotle.

Lorenzo Minio-Paluello Ed.

Additional Reading

Aristotelianism as covered in general histories

Extensive treatment of Aristotelianism is included in the fundamental history of philosophy by Friedrich Ueberweg, A History of Philosophy, from Thales to the Present Time, 2 vol. (1872–74, reprinted 1972; originally published in German, 4th ed., 3 vol., 1871–73), with a vast bibliography. Useful histories of philosophy, general or partial, are Frederick C. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 9 vol. (1946–74); Meyrick H. Carré, Phases of Thought in England (1949, reprinted 1972), which is particularly good on Aristotelianism; John Herman Randall, The Career of Philosophy, 2 vol. (1962–65, reissued 1970), imaginative and stimulating; and Étienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955, reissued 1980), a personal interpretation, with documentation and bibliography.

Aristotelianism in various periods or cultures

Ingemar Düring, “Von Aristoteles bis Leibniz: Einige Hauptlinien in der Geschichte des Aristotelismus,” Antike und Abendland, 4:118–154 (1954), mostly on Greek and medieval Aristotelianism; Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, Opuscula: The Latin Aristotle (1972), a collection of articles and essays concerning the Latin transmission of Aristotle's works; and Richard McKeon, “Aristotelianism in Western Christianity,” in John Thomas McNeill, Matthew Spinka, and Harold R. Willoughby (eds.), Environmental Factors in Christian History, pp. 206–231 (1939, reissued 1970). On Boethius, see Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolation of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (1981); and Margaret Gibson (ed.), Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence (1981). (On Greek Aristotelianism): Eduard Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, vol. 2, Sokrates, Plato, Aristoteles (1846), and vol. 3, parts 1–2, Die nacharistotelische Philosophie (1852), parts of which have been translated from various editions: Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics, trans. by B.F.C. Costelloe and J.H. Muirhead (1897); and A History of Eclecticism in Greek Philosophy, trans. by S.F. Alleyne (1883), fundamental for the first eight centuries; Paul Moraux, D'Aristote à Bessarion: trois exposés sur l'histoire et la transmission de l'aristotélisme grec (1970); “Rückblick: Der Peripatos in vorchristlicher Zeit,” in Fritz R. Wehrli (ed.), Die Schule des Aristoteles, vol. 10, pp. 93–128 (1959); Klaus Oehler, “Aristotle in Byzantium,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 5(2):133–146 (Summer 1964); and Basile Tatakis, La Philosophie byzantine, 2nd ed. (1959), an extensive survey, with a rich bibliography. (On Latin Aristotelianism): Fernand van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West: The Origins of Latin Aristotelianism, 2nd ed. (1970; originally published in French, 1946), a scholarly survey of contemporary studies; Richard J. Lemay, Abu Maʿshar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century: The Recovery of Aristotle's “Natural Philosophy” Through Arabic Astrology (1962), important contributions; D.A. Callus, “Introduction of Aristotelian Learning to Oxford,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 29:229–281 (1943), original, fundamental research; Paul Moraux et al., Aristote et Saint Thomas d'Aquin (1957), which includes some of the most reliable studies on the subject; M.-D. Chenu, La Théologie comme science au XIII^e siècle, 3rd ed. rev. (1957, reissued 1969), on the interplay of Aristotelian methodology and dogma; and Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, new ed., 3 vol. (1936, reissued 1969), basic for Aristotelianism in the schools. (On Syriac, Arabic, and Jewish Aristotelianism): Anton Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluss der christlich-palästinensischen Texte (1922, reprinted 1968), with exhaustive factual information and a bibliography; Anton Baumstark (ed.), Aristoteles bei den Syrern vom 5. bis 8. Jahrhundert: Syrische Texte (1900, reprinted 1975), specialized research and texts; T.J. de Boer, The History of Philosophy in Islam (1903, reprinted 1983; originally published in German, 1901); Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2 vol. (1898–1902), exhaustive factual information and bibliography; F.E. Peters, Aristoteles Arabus: The Oriental Translations and Commentaries of the Aristotelian Corpus (1968), from Syriac and Arabic; R. Walzer, “Arisṭūṭālīs,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 1, pp. 630–633, and related articles; Isaac Husik, A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy (1916, reissued 1974); Georges Vajda, Introduction à la pensée juive du Moyen Age (1947), limited in scope, with a good bibliography; Harry A. Wolfson, “Revised Plan for the Publication of a Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem,” Speculum, 38(1):88–104 (January 1963), complete lists of Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew texts of Averroës' commentaries, and Crescas' Critique of Aristotle: Problems of Aristotle's “Physics” in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy (1929, reprinted 1971); and “Aristotle,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 3, col. 445–449 (1971), and related articles. (On Renaissance and later Aristotelianism): Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Philosophy and the Mediaeval Tradition (1966), a brilliant survey, with bibliography, and Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (1956, reprinted 1969), many relevant essays; Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull'Aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI (1958), one of several fundamental works by this author; Peter Petersen, Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie in protestantischen Deutschland (1921, reprinted 1964), and Die Philosophie Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburgs: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Aristoteles im 19. Jahrhundert (1913); and Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (1983).

Aristotelianism in various areas or disciplines

(On logic): William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (1962, reprinted 1984), an objective assessment of the Aristotelian and non-Aristotelian elements in the history of logic; and I.M. Bocheński, A History of Formal Logic, 2nd ed. (1970; originally published in German, 1956), technical, with much bibliography. (On science): George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, 3 vol. in 5 (1927–48, reprinted 1975), fundamental, with extensive information and bibliography; René Taton (ed.), A General History of the Sciences, 4 vol. (1963–66; originally published in French, 1957–64); Alastair C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 1100–1700 (1953, reissued 1971), which upholds the view of Aristotelian impact on experimental method; Anneliese Maier, Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Spätscholastik, 5 vol. (1949–58), fundamental research; and Alexandre Koyré, Galileo Studies (1978; originally published in French, 1939), indispensable for a proper evaluation of anti-Aristotelianism. (On politics): George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 4th ed. rev. by Thomas Landon Thorson (1973); Alexander Passerin d'Entrèves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Richard Hooker (1939, reprinted 1959); Georges de Lagarde, La Naissance de l'esprit laïque au déclin du Moyen Age, 3rd ed., 5 vol. (1956–70), fundamental for the 14th century; and Horst Dreitzel, Protestantischer Aristotelismus und absoluter Staat: Die “Politica” des Henning Arnisaeus (ca. 1575–1636) (1970), excellent, with an extensive bibliography on German Aristotelianism. (Poetics and rhetoric): Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vol. (1961, reprinted 1974), containing good surveys concerning Aristotle; Lane Cooper, The Poetics of Aristotle: Its Meaning and Influence (1923, reissued 1972); Marvin T. Herrick, The Fusion of Horatian and Aristotelian Literary Criticism, 1531–1555 (1946), and The Poetics of Aristotle in England (1930, reprinted 1976), indispensable complements to Cooper's book; and Charles S. Baldwin. Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice: Classicism in the Rhetoric and Poetic of Italy, France, and England, 1400–1600 (1939, reissued 1959), useful for both poetics and rhetoric.

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