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Aristotle and the Lyceum

Aristotle’s school took its name from its manner of teaching: Peripatetici dicti sunt, quia disputabant inambulantes in Lycio, they were called Peripatetics because they held their discussions walking in the Lyceum (Cicero, Academica 1.17).

For Aristotle the activity begins in a desire everyone has. “All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use we esteem them for their own sake” (Metaphysics A.1, tr. Tredennick). It began in wonder (A.2), and “the myth-lover is in a sense a philosopher, since myths are composed of wonders”. It is knowledge pursued for nothing beyond itself: “if it was to escape ignorance that men studied philosophy, it is obvious that they pursued science for the sake of knowledge, and not for any practical utility”; it began “with a view to recreation and pastime, at a time when practically all the necessities of life were already supplied”, and “just as we call a man independent who exists for himself and not for another, so we call this the only independent science, since it alone exists for itself”. So “although all other sciences are more necessary than this, none is more excellent” (A.2).

In the Nicomachean Ethics the best human life is philosophy’s: perfect happiness is “the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it”, and “this activity is the activity of contemplation”; “philosophy or the pursuit of wisdom contains pleasures of marvellous purity and permanence”, and contemplation “may be held to be the only activity that is loved for its own sake”. Hence the instruction: “Nor ought we to obey those who enjoin that a man should have man’s thoughts and a mortal the thoughts of mortality, but we ought so far as possible to achieve immortality, and do all that man may to live in accordance with the highest thing in him” (X.7, tr. Rackham). The study of conduct is the exception that has another aim: “we are not investigating the nature of virtue for the sake of knowing what it is, but in order that we may become good, without which result our investigation would be of no use” (II.2). The Greek says that this inquiry, unlike the others, is not for the sake of theōria.

The inquiry starts from what is already thought: “We must, as in all other cases, set the observed facts before us and, after first discussing the difficulties, go on to prove, if possible, the truth of all the common opinions” (Nicomachean Ethics VII.1, tr. Ross); the common opinions are those “accepted by every one or by the majority or by the philosophers”, and for the philosophical sciences “the ability to raise searching difficulties on both sides of a subject” helps (Topics I.1–2, tr. Pickard-Cambridge).

Aristotle also wrote an exhortation to philosophy, the Protrepticus, now lost and reconstructed from later authors who drew on it. In it “philosophy is, as we think, both a possession and a use of wisdom, and wisdom is among the greatest goods” (from Iamblichus, tr. Hutchinson and Johnson). Later commentators preserved an argument for doing philosophy at all: “if you should do philosophy, you should do philosophy, and if you should not do philosophy, then you should do philosophy. Therefore in every case you should do philosophy … since to investigate is the cause of philosophy” (from Elias; Alexander of Aphrodisias is the earlier witness).