Peripatetics

Peripatetics, the students and followers of Aristotle. The name may be derived from Aristotle's custom of walking about (peripatein) while lecturing, or from the peripatos (“covered walk”) of the Lyceum, the parklike area outside Athens, where he lectured. Aristotle's followers developed certain points of his logic and metaphysics, but they were more concerned with studying nature and popularizing the study of ethics. Many spent their time arranging and explaining Aristotle's writings. The most prominent Peripatetic philosophers were Theophrastus of Lésvos, a friend of Aristotle as well as cofounder of the school and famed for his Characters, a series of sketches; Eudemus of Rhodes (flourished 4th century bc), who was interested mainly in the ethical aspects of Aristotelianism; Strato of Lampsacus, who championed mechanism in nature and denied the existence of a transcendent deity; and Andronicus of Rhodes, who edited many of Aristotle's works. The later Peripatetics leaned toward eclecticism and borrowed heavily from Stoicism.