The Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity

This essay offers an overview of the fortune of Aristotle’s philosophy in antiquity. It argues that the reception of Aristotle can be divided into a Hellenistic and a post-Hellenistic period. It also argues that the post-Hellenistic period, which begins in the first century BC, is characterized by a critical engagement with the text of Aristotle’s writings. This engagement took different forms, including that of the philosophical commentary. And yet even after the so-called return to Aristotle, certain aspects of his philosophy (most notably, his biology) remained at the margins of the philosophical tradition. For a full appreciation of these aspects, we have to go beyond antiquity.