According to J.P. Lynch the history of the Peripatetic School after Aristotle and Theophrastus may be summed up in one word: decline. This severe (and unfair) judgement depended essentially on comparing the Peripatetics with Aristotle. When one thinks of the philosophies of the Hellenistic age, one refers to the school of Aristotle only rarely. This happens for at least three reasons: the first is that, except for Theophrastus, we possess only meagre and indirect evidence of the Peripatetics; the second is that already in antiquity (Strabo, Plutarch) the information circulated that the Peripatetic school of the Hellenistic period did not possess the works of Aristotle; the third is that it was Antiochus of Ascalon (first century bce) who had condemned the philosophy of the Peripatetics after Theophrastus (who had not been incorporated into Antiochus' philosophical system in its entirety).
S.'s book is a welcome contribution concerning the soul doctrines of the Peripatetics from Theophrastus to Critolaus (perhaps it would have been useful to include Cratippus as well), which renews interest in the Hellenistic school of Aristotle. Before S.'s research, G. Movia (Anima e intelletto [1968]) and A. Kamp (Philosophiehistorie als Rezeptionsgeschichte [2001]) had dealt with the psychology of the Hellenistic Peripatetics, but S.'s work presents itself as updated research (compared to Movia) and as a study that does not only concern Theophrastus (as Kamp's monograph) but also Dicaearchus, Aristoxenus, Clearchus, Strato and Critolaus. The structure of the book is functional: the first chapter presents a short history of the Hellenistic Peripatos (in which S. also addresses the question of the alleged disappearance of Aristotle's works), the state of the art of studies on Peripatetic psychology and an examination of ancient doxography (the Placita tradition) since most of the information on the Peripatetic doctrine of the soul comes from doxography. The second chapter is devoted to Theophrastus, the third to Dicaearchus, the fourth to Aristoxenus, the fifth to Clearchus, the sixth to Strato and the seventh to Critolaus. At the end of each chapter S. usefully adds one or two paragraphs in which he summarises his conclusions, and for each philosopher analysed he examines the similarities and differences with the other Peripatetics and especially with Aristotle. Chapter 8 concerns the outcome of the research both on the doxographic transmission of evidence and on the transformation of Aristotle's psychology by the Peripatetics. The volume closes with a bibliography and an index locorum; given the specificity of the topic, it would have been useful to add an index of ancient and modern names as well as a summary of the work in English for greater accessibility.
The analysis of Theophrastean views on the soul is detailed; S. carefully examines the late but valuable account of the Metaphrasis of Theophrastus ‘On the Souls’ by Priscian of Lydia and also that of Themistius’ commentary on Aristotle's On the Soul. S. considers that for Theophrastus soul and nous are not synonymous: as in Aristotle, the latter is a faculty of the soul. S.'s interpretation of some passages from Themistius (320A–B FHS&G), in which the thesis that the intellect is in a way a mixture (mikton) out of the productive and the potential is attributed to Theophrastus, is very interesting. Contrary to the exegesis of the Theophrastean mixis offered by M. Gabbe (Elenchos 29 [2008]), S. rightly points out how the nous is considered by Theophrastus in entirely non-materialistic terms: rather, Theophrastus wanted to offer a coherent (and immanent) interpretation of De an. Γ 4–5 by showing how the intellect had two natures influencing each other. Regarding Dicaearchus, S. examines all passages (especially from Cicero) in which it would seem that for Dicearchus the soul did not have autonomous existence but, as the harmony of the four elements, was identified with the functions of the body. In this regard, S. speaks of emergentism (p. 152), linking Dicaearchus’ position to medicine considered from the Peripatetic perspective. If, according to F. Wehrli and H. Gottschalk, Aristoxenus did not have a psychology of his own, S., denying that the philosopher defined the soul as harmonia, finds this hypothesis implausible: Aristoxenus probably distinguished between body and soul and regarded the latter as comprising the intellectual faculties and as a certain tonos of the body, capable of orienting and determining it. The body would thus be an instrument of the soul to which Aristoxenus also attributed all those faculties aimed at the composition and evaluation of music. The main work on Clearchus’ psychology is his On Sleep; Clearchus, a profound admirer of Plato, is regarded by S. as a Peripatetic philosopher, not because of his dogmatic adherence to Aristotle, but because of his interest in the physical phenomena related to sleep, which for Clearchus is a condition that frees the soul from the body. This is the reason why it cannot be ruled out that Clearchus’ position was influenced by Pythagoreanism, Orphism or certain views leaning towards Greek or Oriental mysticism. Strato is certainly the Peripatetic who examines the faculties of the soul in physical and materialistic terms (perhaps influenced by Theophrastus) more than others, denying the notions of dynamis and energeia to the soul: hence the close relationship between perceptual and intellectual activity that leads S. to consider it likely that Strato was the author of the Pseudo-Aristotelian writings De audibilibus and De coloribus.
Strato's physicalism not only unites him with Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus but, as S. Berryman (in: B. Inwood, J. Warren [edd.], Body and Soul in Hellenistic Philosophy [2020]) has shown, the influence of medicine on Strato should not be overlooked. The last Peripatetic examined is Critolaus, whose pupil Diodorus of Tyre was the last scholar of Aristotle's school known to us in the Hellenistic age. The testimony from Tertullian's De anima (17 Wehrli) informs us that according to Critolaus the soul would be identified with the fifth substantia (the reference is probably to the aether), which, according to S., Aristotle did not do (but cf. Cic. Ac. 1.26: quintum genus, e quo essent astra mentesque). S. hypothesises that Critolaus thus linked the individual, sublunar soul/nous to the nous that governs the supra-lunar dimension, bringing the microcosm and macrocosm into correspondence (a relationship hardly found in Aristotle).
The scarcity and controversial (and non-neutral) nature of the evidence makes research into Peripatetic psychology extremely difficult: hence S.'s caution in the conclusions he reaches is welcome. Nevertheless, I think S. is a little too sceptical when he concludes that, based on the surviving ‘fragments’, it is difficult to trace a clear influence of Aristotle's De anima on the Hellenistic Peripatetics. S. adds that this could be because Aristotle's research on the soul and its functions occupies a limited space in his philosophy (p. 288). I disagree with this last point, but S. is right that no textual evidence openly testifies that these pupils of Aristotle knew the De anima. Yet I wonder: would the psychology of the Peripatetics without the De anima (and the other Aristotelian works dealing with psychology i.e. the zoological treatises) have been the same? I believe that in the Hellenistic period the works of Aristotle (and Theophrastus) circulated (see the eloquent bequest of books by Strato to Lyco in Diog. Laert. 5.62) and that these were openly read and discussed in the school also in a more general context of often polemical relations with other contemporary philosophical stances. A school without a library containing at least the founder's works is unthinkable. The Peripatos (as well as the Academy) was an ‘institution’ free and open to discussion: therefore, the question about the alleged orthodoxy of the Peripatetics about Aristotle makes sense up to a point. I will exemplify just one detail: Dicaearchus’ position is certainly sui generis if one considers that Aristotle in De an. A 4 (like Plato in the Phaedo) criticises the doctrine of the soul/harmony. Despite this Aristotle seems more ‘compliant’ than Plato: in De an. B 2, 414a 19–20 Aristotle states that the opinion of those who think the soul does not exist without the body is correct (kalos). This may be a passage that did not escape Dicaearchus, who emphasised this aspect of Aristotelian psychology without necessarily contradicting Aristotle.
We must be grateful to S. for this detailed work that offers cautious analyses of the texts to all those who wish to pursue research on philosophers wrongly considered minor who instead play a crucial role in the history of ancient Aristotelianism.
