Aristotle's De Anima is the first systematic philosophical account of the soul, which serves to explain the functioning of all mortal living things. In his commentary, Ronald Polansky argues that the ...work is far more structured and systematic than previously supposed. He contends that Aristotle seeks a comprehensive understanding of the soul and its faculties. By closely tracing the unfolding of the many-layered argumentation and the way Aristotle fits his inquiry meticulously within his scheme of the sciences, Polansky answers questions relating to the general definition of soul and the treatment of each of the soul's principal capacities: nutrition, sense perception, phantasia, intellect, and locomotion. The commentary sheds light on every section of the De Anima and the work as a unit. It offers a challenge to earlier and current interpretations of the relevance and meaning of Aristotle's highly influential treatise.
Following Alexander of Aphrodisias through the Aristotelian tradition from the second to the sixteenth century, this book discovers an almost forgotten leading figure in the fervently disputed ...development of psychology and natural philosophy in early modern times.
Questo saggio si occupa della tesi contemporanea della sopravvenienza psicofisica e della sua applicazione nell’interpretazione dell’ilomorfismo psicologico di Aristotele. Si dimostrerà che la tesi ...della sopravvenienza, nelle sue diverse versioni, non è in grado di rendere conto dell’unità essenziale dell’anima e del sinolo psicofisico. Verranno forniti argomenti sulla base della discussione di Aristotele della dottrina dell’anima come harmonia del corpo (de An. I 4) e più in generale sulle sue affermazioni metodologiche in merito alla definizione dell’anima e delle sue affezioni (de An. I 1).
This note reviews the new translation of Aristotle’s De Anima and Parva Naturalia by Fred D. Miller Jr. Against its backdrop, the importance of these psychological treatises for interdisciplinary, ...rhetorical research is also analyzed, with special emphasis on both Aristotelian criticism and the arts of memory from Antiquity to the early modern period.
This volume brings together contributions from distinguished scholars in the history of philosophy, focusing on points of interaction between discrete historical contexts, religions, and cultures ...found within the premodern period. The contributions connect thinkers from antiquity through the Middle Ages and include philosophers from the three major monotheistic faiths—Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. By emphasizing premodern philosophy’s shared textual roots in antiquity, particularly the writings of Plato and Aristotle, the volume highlights points of cross-pollination between different schools, cultures, and moments in premodern thought. Approaching the complex history of the premodern world in an accessible way, the editors organize the volume so as to underscore the difficulties the premodern period poses for scholars, while accentuating the fascinating interplay between the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin philosophical traditions. The contributors cover many topics ranging from the aims of Aristotle’s cosmos, the adoption of Aristotle’s Organon by al-Fārābī, and the origins of the Plotiniana Arabica to the role of Ibn Gabirol’s Fons vitae in the Latin West, the ways in which Islamic philosophy shaped thirteenth-century Latin conceptions of light, Roger Bacon’s adaptation of Avicenna for use in his moral philosophy, and beyond. The volume’s focus on ""source-based contextualism"" demonstrates an appreciation for the rich diversity of thought found in the premodern period, while revealing methodological challenges raised by the historical study of premodern philosophy. Contextualizing Premodern Philosophy: Explorations of the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin Traditions is a stimulating resource for scholars and advanced students working in the history of premodern philosophy.
Resumen: La “visión escotópica” (o “visión de la oscuridad”) desarrollada por Aristóteles en De Anima II 7 es la primera formulación sistemática de este fenómeno clave para las actuales ...neurociencias. En la teoría aristotélica surge una aparente contradicción entre el “compromiso ontológico” de la oscuridad como privación y el “realismo gnoseológico” que considera visible esa misma oscuridad. Tomás de Aquino en su Sententia libri De Anima propone una interpretación que establece la relación analógica entre luz y oscuridad a través del color. Esta estrategia permite disolver cualquier contrariedad y establecer una percepción visual de la oscuridad en sentido realista.
Abstract: The “scotopic vision” (or “vision of darkness”) developed by Aristotle in De Anima II 7 is the first systematic formulation of this key phenomenon for current neurosciences. In this theory an apparent contradiction arises between the “ontological commitment” of darkness as deprivation and the “gnoseological realism” that considers that same darkness visible. Tomás de Aquino in his Sententia libri De Anima proposes an interpretation that establishes the analogical relationship between light and darkness through color. This strategy allows to dissolve any annoyance and establish a visual perception of darkness in a realistic.
Rabinoff strives to account for ethical perception (aisthesis) in Aristotle’s ethics—to give it a place of importance in ethical choice and action—and to offer an account of the faculty of perception ...expansive enough to include reception of the ethical significance of particulars. The book is motivated by particular features of Aristotle’s thought and by increasing philosophical awareness that the ethical agent is an embodied, situated individual, rather than a disembodied, abstract rational will. Traditionally, the soul has been understood to have a non-rational part characterized by desire and perception and a rational part characterized by thinking, knowledge, and argument. Depending on how the relationship between the sides is conceived, the non-rational is either a bane to be controlled by the rational, or plays an irreducible role in moral action. By establishing and accounting for perception’s place in ethics, Rabinoff shows the importance for ethical life of integrating both.
InMortal Imitations of Divine Life, Diamond offers an interpretation ofDe Anima, which explains how and why Aristotle places souls in a hierarchy of value. Aristotle's central intention inDe Animais ...to discover the nature and essence of soul-the principle of living beings. He does so by identifying the common structures underlying every living activity, whether it be eating, perceiving, thinking, or moving through space. As Diamond demonstrates through close readings ofDe Anima, the nature of the soul is most clearly seen in its divine life, while the embodied soul's other activities are progressively clear approximations of this principle. This interpretation shows how Aristotle's psychology and biology cannot be properly understood apart from his theological conception of God as life, and offers a new explanation ofDe Anima's unity of purpose and structure.
This paper articulates and defends a novel view of the strict distinction that Aristotle makes between human and non-human mental life. We examine two crucially relevant but overlooked arguments that ...turn on the human capacity for reasoning and inference (syl/logismos) to reconstruct his view of what makes some cognitive processes rational and how they differ from non-rational counterparts. A creature is rational just in case its occurrent cognitive states exhibit a sequential coherence wherein prior cognitive activity constrains subsequent activity for the sake of attaining truth. Processes are rational, then, in virtue of how constituent states relate to each other, not whether any given state involves some peculiar content or grasps some distinct object. This study aids, but does not exhaust, a systematic examination of the rational soul in Aristotle's writing, based on (a) the human/animal comparisons through which he often elucidates rational cognitive capacities and (b) the distinctions that he draws between elements of rational cognition and non-rational counterparts in terms of what minimally suffices to distinguish between them.
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