Alexander of Aphrodisias

Alexander of Aphrodisias (150-215) was the most influential Aristotelian commentator of antiquity, serving as head of the Peripatetic school in Athens. His systematic expositions of Aristotelian philosophy significantly shaped subsequent philosophical and theological discourse about God and divine causation. Alexander developed a sophisticated account of the Unmoved Mover as pure actuality and thought thinking itself, while denying divine providence over particulars. His treatise "On Fate" defended compatibilist human freedom against Stoic determinism while maintaining divine causation of the cosmic order. His arguments that the soul perishes with the body challenged both Platonic and later Christian conceptions of immortality. Through Arabic translations, Alexander's commentaries profoundly influenced medieval Islamic philosophers like Al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd, and through them, Jewish and Christian scholastics including Maimonides and Aquinas, who grappled with his naturalistic interpretations of divine intellect and providence.