According to a distinction that originates with એરિસ્ટોટલ himself, his writings are divisible into two groups: the "exoteric" and the "esoteric". Most scholars have understood this as a distinction between works એરિસ્ટોટલintended for the public (exoteric), and the more technical works (esoteric) intended for the narrower audience of એરિસ્ટોટલ's students and other philosophers who were familiar with the jargon and issues typical of the Platonic and Aristotelian schools. Another common assumption is that none of the exoteric works is extant - that all of એરિસ્ટોટલ's extant writings are of the esoteric kind. Current knowledge of what exactly the exoteric writings were like is scant and dubious, though many of them may have been in dialogue form. ("Fragments" of some of એરિસ્ટોટલ's dialogues have survived.) Perhaps it is to these that Cicero refers when he characterized એરિસ્ટોટલ's writing style as "a river of gold"; it is hard for many modern readers to accept that one could seriously so admire the style of those works currently available to us. However, some modern scholars have warned that we cannot know for certain that Cicero's praise was reserved specifically for the exoteric works; a few modern scholars have actually admired the concise writing style found in એરિસ્ટોટલ's extant works.

One major question in the ઇતીહાસ of એરિસ્ટોટલ's works, then, is how were the exoteric writings all lost, and how did the ones we now possess come to us? The story of the original manuscripts of the esoteric treatises is described by Strabo in his "Geography" and Plutarch in his "Parallel Lives". The manuscripts were left from એરિસ્ટોટલto his successor Theophrastus, who in turn willed them to Neleus of Scepsis. Neleus supposedly took the writings from એથેન્સ to Scepsis, where his heirs let them languish in a cellar until the first century BC, when Apellicon of Teos discovered and purchased the manuscripts, bringing them back to એથેન્સ. According to the story, Apellicon tried to repair some of the damage that was done during the manuscripts' stay in the basement, introducing a number of errors into the text. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla occupied એથેન્સ in 86 BC, he carried off the library of Apellicon to Rome, where they were first published in 60 BC by the grammarian Tyrannion of Amisus and then by philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes.

Carnes Lord attributes the popular belief in this story to the fact that it provides "the most plausible explanation for the rapid eclipse of the Peripatetic school after the middle of the third century, and for the absence of widespread knowledge of the specialized treatises of એરિસ્ટોટલ throughout the Hellenistic period, as well as for the sudden reappearance of a flourishing Aristotelianism during the first century B.C." Lord voices a number of reservations concerning this story, however. First, the condition of the texts is far too good for them to have suffered considerable damage followed by Apellicon's inexpert attempt at repair. Second, there is "incontrovertible evidence," Lord says, that the treatises were in circulation during the time in which Strabo and Plutarch suggest they were confined within the cellar in Scepsis. Third, the definitive edition of એરિસ્ટોટલ 's texts seems to have been made in એથેન્સ some fifty years before Andronicus supposedly compiled his. And fourth, ancient library catalogues predating Andronicus' intervention list an Aristotelean corpus quite similar to the one we currently possess. Lord sees a number of post-Aristotelean interpolations in the "Politics", દા.ત., but is generally confident that the work has come down to us relatively intact.

As the influence of the "falsafa" grew in the West, in part due to Gerard of Cremona's translations and the spread of Averroism, the demand for એરિસ્ટોટલ's works grew. William of Moerbeke translated a number of them into Latin. When Thomas Aquinas wrote his theology, working from Moerbeke's translations, the demand for એરિસ્ટોટલ's writings grew and the Greek manuscripts returned to the West, stimulating a revival of Aristotelianism in Europe, and ultimately revitalizing European thought through Muslim influence in Spain to fan the embers of the Renaissance.

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