Peripatetic Conditionals

Abstract Although Aristotle had no worked-out notion of a conditional, later Peripatetics did. Little has been said about Peripatetic conditionals so far. This paper examines the historical evidence and the philosophical and logical characteristics of these conditionals, thus providing some fresh insights. Specifically, it (i) explores the Peripatetic containment relations both between terms and between sentences; (ii) analyses how Peripatetic one-way and two-way conditionals relate to transitivity, symmetry and reflexivity; and (iii) reveals how Peripatetics deliberately anchored their concept of conditionals in passages from Aristotle’s Organon.