Abstract

The thirteen essays that make up the bulk of this volume all began as papers or comments on papers presented at the first Representation and Reality conference in Gothenburg on 6–8 June 2014. They are perhaps most straightforwardly read as accounts of so many episodes in the history of the ancient and medieval reception of a classical philosophical work, Aristotle’s Parva naturalia. By and large, they can also be read as inquiries into different passages in the development of a specific theme in the history of ancient and medieval philosophy. For in ancient and medieval times, the reception of classical philosophical works, not least Aristotle’s, was part of the daily business of philosophers, not historians. Each of these accounts presents original research designed to widen and deepen our understanding of the episode in hand.