Classical World

On Aristotle’s view, we all strive for what appears good to us; it motivates us to act, although it is only the virtuous person who responds to appearances in the right way. But how exactly does it motivate us? Jessica Moss aims to show that his texts provide the resources for a substantive theory of apparent goodness. She argues, first, that Aristotle’s discussion of animal locomotion shows that there is a particular type of evaluative cognition pertinent to action on which all desire depends. The basic form of this cognition is evaluative perception, both pleasurable and painful, to be considered as a genuine cognition of value, since, for example, pleasure functions as a way of tracking the good. The most crucial element of evaluative cognition concerning action is phantasia. On Moss’s view, Aristotle has a unified conception of this, defining it as a faculty of preserving and reproducing perceptual experiences. It saves and reproduces the pleasurable or painful motivating aspects of evaluative perception.

This leads to an account of the apparent good: for something to appear good to an agent is for that agent to possess a pleasurable motivating appearance of that thing through phantasia. The account yields further results in central issues in Aristotle’s theory of action. Emotions are based on evaluative phantasia, not on belief (δόξα). New light is shed on akrasia, for we can argue, on the basis of De anima 3.9–10, that it can be paralleled to perceptual illusion. The view that results will reconcile the account of akrasia as ignorance with the account saying that it is a struggle between desires. Non-rational desire wins out not by overpowering rational desire in a direct trial of strength, but rather by undermining the cognitive basis of that desire. It drives out the agent’s knowledge of what [End Page 420] is to be done or avoided, and with it the rational motivation dependent on that information. Practical reasoning also draws on evaluative phantasia, just as wish (βούλησις) does. Wishes are for things as ends, and the ends are determined by our non-rational character since the discernment (κρίσις) due to virtue is in line with the command of practical reason, but not a function of it.

Thus it is phantasia, not reason, which furnishes us with a view of the end. Phantasia is linked to habituation, too, which is considered the practical analogue of induction. Repeated perceptions of virtuous activities do not on their own provide the grasp of virtuous activity as a goal. One must preserve one’s pleasurable perceptions in memory and reproduce them as representing something to be pursued. It leads to the Practical Empiricism thesis according to which the relation of perception to higher cognitive activities such as phantasia and thinking entails that appearances and thoughts of the good must derive from perceptions of it.

One might raise two small queries. It is far from clear that hatred is based on evaluative phantasia since, unlike anger, it seems to be grounded on judgment (Rhet. 2.4, 1382a4). This may invite the question as to what extent Aristotle has a unified account of emotions besides what he says in Rhet. 2.1, 1378a19–23, which does not mention phantasia or belief. Furthermore, if virtue of character is non-rational (163–74), how shall we interpret the function argument which connects human goodness to the excellent exercise of reason, the capacity which separates us from the rest of the animal realm?

The book offers important new insights, which makes it a welcome addition to the rapidly growing literature on Aristotle’s practical philosophy. It is furnished with a good bibliography and two indices.