Aristotle: Soul

Aristotle discusses the soul in itself in metaphysics, and as its relation to the body in physics. This issue originates in the division of sciences in Aristotle's works. The same trend continues in the works of the philosophers following him. Although Farabi presented a new classification of sciences, he maintained the main form of Aristotle's divisions and posed the related problems like him. Based on his fundamental theories, including the principiality of existence, gradation of being, and the trans-substantial motion, Mulla (...) Sadra considers the soul to be corporeally originated and spiritually subsistent, criticizes early philosophers' ideas concerning the soul and its place, and offers a new interpretation of the soul. He could have removed the distinction between the stations of the essence of the soul and its relation and considered it to be a level of the body and a mode of existence at the beginning of its creation. Accordingly, he transfers the issues related to the soul from physics to metaphysics and contributes to the independence of the latter. Mulla Sadra believes that it is the responsibility of philosophers to discuss the soul, and, in addition to emphasizing the importance of this discussion, he maintains that the issue of providence is the link between the issues of the soul and the third journey. His definition of the soul and perception of philosophy and anthropology made it possible for Mulla Sadra to create some changes in the place of the soul and discuss it in metaphysics, which is something that the philosophers before him were not able to do. This paper deals with the effects and consequences of this issue. (shrink)

Aristotle's Physics 218b21-219a has been interpreted as proof that the concept of time is determined by the perceptive (or perceptual) conditions of the mind (psyche). In this paper I will criticize such an interpretation in order to argue that the mind's conditions for the perception and experience of time are just a starting point for the investigation: what is prior and nearer to sense, and better known to man (Anal. Post. I, 2). The arrival point of Aristotle's investigation about the (...) concept of time, it's first nature or what is prior in the order of being, is the necessary connection between the existence of time and change. His description of the sleeping Sardinians allows him to determine the elements involved in the perception of time and, consequently, to determine the elements that make up the existence of time. (shrink)

Aristotle's On the Soul aims to uncover the principle of life, what Aristotle calls psuchē. For Aristotle, soul is the form which gives life to a body and causes all its living activities, from breathing to thinking. Aristotle develops a general account of all types of living through examining soul's causal powers. The thirteen new essays in this Critical Guide demonstrate the profound influence of Aristotle's inquiry on biology, psychology and philosophy of mind from antiquity to the present. They deepen (...) our understanding of his key concepts, including form, reason, capacity, and activity. This volume situates Aristotle in his intellectual context and draws judiciously from his other works as well as the history of interpretation to shed light on his intricate views. It also highlights ongoing interpretive debates and Aristotle's continuing relevance. It will prove invaluable for researchers in ancient philosophy and the history of science and ideas. (shrink)

This paper investigates the notion of ‘distributed cognition’—the idea that entities external to one’s organic brain participate in one’s overall cognitive functioning—and the challenges it poses to the notion of personhood. Related to this is also a consideration of the ever-increasing ways in which neuroprostheses replace and functionally replicate organic parts of the brain. However, the literature surrounding such issues has tended to take an almost exclusively physicalist approach. The common assumption is that, given that non-physicalist theories (chiefly, dualism, and (...) hylomorphism) postulate some form of immaterial ‘soul’, then they are immune from the challenges that these advances in cognitive science pose. The first aim of this paper, therefore, is to argue that this is not the case. The second aim of this paper is to attempt to elucidate a route available for the non-physicalists that will allow them to accept the notion of distributed cognition. By appealing to an Aristotelian framework, I propose that the non-physicalist can accept the notion of distributed cognition by appealing to the notion of ‘unitary life’ which I introduce, as well as to Aristotle’s dichotomy between active and passive mind. (shrink)

By scholarly consensus, extant fragments from, and testimony about, Aristotle’s lost dialogue Eudemus provide strong evidence for thinking that Aristotle at some point defended the human soul’s unqualified immortality (either in whole or in part). I reject this consensus and develop an alternative, deflationary, speculative, but textually supported proposal to explain why Aristotle might have written a dialogue featuring arguments for the soul’s unqualified immortality. Instead of defending unqualified immortality as a doctrine, I argue, the Eudemus was most likely offering (...) a dramatically engaging propaedeutic to the sort of philosophical inquiry about the soul and its prospects that Aristotle pursues more scientifically in the De anima and Parva naturalia. (shrink)

In De Anima 2.4, Aristotle claims that nutritive soul encompasses two distinct biological functions: nutrition and reproduction. We challenge a pervasive interpretation which posits ‘nutrients’ as the correlative object of the nutritive capacity. Instead, the shared object of nutrition and reproduction is that which is nourished and reproduced: the ensouled body, qua ensouled. Both functions aim at preserving this object, and thus at preserving the form, life, and being of the individual organism. In each case, we show how Aristotle’s detailed (...) biological analysis supports this ontological argument. (shrink)

I argue that the science of the soul only covers sublunary living things. Aristotle cannot properly ascribe ψυχή to unmoved movers since they do not have any capacities that are distinct from their activities or any matter to be structured. Heavenly bodies do not have souls in the way that mortal living things do, because their matter is not subject to alteration or generation. These beings do not fit into the hierarchy of soul powers that Aristotle relies on to provide (...) unity to ψυχή. Their living consists in their activities, not in having a capacity for activity. (shrink)

The soul is an explanatory principle of Aristotle’s natural science, accounting both for the fact that living things are alive as well as for the diverse natural attributes that belong to them by virtue of being alive. I argue that the explanatory role of the soul in Aristotle’s natural science must be understood in light of his view, stated in a controversial passage from Parts of Animals (645b14–20), that the soul of a living thing is a “complex activity” of its (...) organic body. This paper explores the role of this “complex activity” model of soul in Aristotle’s study of soul in De Anima. I argue, first, that the model has its origins in De Anima II.4, where Aristotle argues that living things do all they do by nature for the sake of a single, teleologically primary end. I argue further that Aristotle uses this model to account for the psychological attributes naturally present in living things, including their capacities for vital activities like nutrition, reproduction, and perception, and that this is the task to which Aristotle devotes the obscure final chapters of De Anima III. (shrink)

Aristotle’s theory of human happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics explicitly depends on the claim that contemplation (theôria) is peculiar to human beings, whether it is our function or only part of it. But there is a notorious problem: Aristotle says that divine beings also contemplate. Various solutions have been proposed, but each has difficulties. Drawing on an analysis of what divine contemplation involves according to Aristotle, I identify an assumption common to all of these proposals and argue for rejecting it. (...) This allows a straightforward solution to the problem and there is evidence that Aristotle would have adopted it. (shrink)

In this ambitious first book, Erick Raphael Jiménez argues that a good model for understanding Aristotle’s concept of mind (nous) lies in Aristotle’s account of the perception of time. This “time-perception model” of mind and its activity, thinking, bridges a gap between Jiménez’s unorthodox readings of Aristotelian mind and its objects. The book will attract the interest of specialists in Aristotle’s psychology, as well as other scholars interested in Aristotle’s concept of mind and its influence, for instance, theologians interested in (...) Aristotle’s tantalizing discussion of active or maker mind in De Anima 3.5 (DA). (shrink)

For Aristotle, human cognition has a lot in common both with non-human animal cognition and with divine cognition. With non-human animals, humans share a non-rational part of the soul and non-rational cognitive faculties (DA 427b6–14, NE 1102b29 and EE 1219b24–6). With gods, humans share a rational part of the soul and rational cognitive faculties (NE 1177b17– 1178a8). The rational part and the non-rational part of the soul, however, coexist and cooperate only in human souls (NE 1102b26–9, EE 1219b28–31). In this (...) chapter, I show that a study of this cooperation helps to uncover some distinctive aspects of human cognition and desire. (shrink)

This volume is the first in English to provide a full, systematic investigation into Aristotle's criticisms of earlier Greek theories of the soul from the perspective of his theory of scientific explanation. Some interpreters of the De Anima have seen Aristotle's criticisms of Presocratic, Platonic, and other views about the soul as unfair or dialectical, but Jason W. Carter argues that Aristotle's criticisms are in fact a justified attempt to test the adequacy of earlier theories in terms of the theory (...) of scientific knowledge he advances in the Posterior Analytics. Carter proposes a new interpretation of Aristotle's confrontations with earlier psychology, showing how his reception of other Greek philosophers shaped his own hylomorphic psychology and led him to adopt a novel dualist theory of the soul–body relation. His book will be important for students and scholars of Aristotle, ancient Greek psychology, and the history of the mind–body problem. (shrink)

When translating phantasia as ‘imagination’, one commits a dangerous anachronism: interpreting the Greek concept from the vantage point of a modern, post-Kantian framework which sees imagination as a faculty mediating between sensibility and reasoning. A close reading of the Aristotelian sources shows why phantasia cannot be identifi ed as a distinct faculty, but rather designates a transversal power common to all psychic acts. The article argues that a more adequate translation of phantasia would be ‘visualization’.

Aristotle's De Anima is one of the great classics of philosophy. Aristotle examines the nature of the soul-sense-perception, imagination, cognition, emotion, and desire, including, memory, dreams, and processes such as nutrition, growth, and death.

In De Anima 1.4, Aristotle asks whether the soul can be moved by its own affections. His conclusion—that to say the soul grows angry is like saying that it weaves and builds—has traditionally been read on the assumption that it is false to credit the soul with weaving and building; I argue that Aristotle’s analysis of psychological motions implies his belief that the soul does in fact weave and build.

Fred D. Miller, Jr.'s stated goal for his new translation for the Oxford World's Classics series is, 'to provide a clear and accessible translation of Aristotle's psychological works while . . . conveying something of his distinctive style'. Not only does Miller achieve these goals in spades, but he also provides something more. His translation of Aristotle's De Anima and Parva Naturalia (the 'short works concerning nature'), along with twenty-three selected fragments from Aristotle's lost works and his 'Hymn to Hermias', (...) is elegant, philosophically sensitive, and informed by some of the best recent scholarly work on Aristotle's psychology and biology. (shrink)

In De Anima I 4, Aristotle describes the intellect (nous) as a sort of substance, separate and incorruptible. Myles Burnyeat and Lloyd Gerson take this as proof that, for Aristotle, the intellect is a separate eternal entity, not a power belonging to individual humans. Against this reading, I show that this passage does not express Aristotle’s own views, but dialectically examines a reputable position (endoxon) about the intellect that seems to show that it can be subject to change. The passage’s (...) argument for the indestructibility of intellect via an analogy to perception does not fit with Aristotle’s own views. Aristotle thinks that perception operates via bodily organs, but denies this of understanding. He also requires separability from the body for indestructibility, something this analogy rules out. However, Aristotle’s Platonist interlocutors may well endorse such an argument. My dialectical interpretation best resolves the interpretative difficulties and explains its place in the larger context, Aristotle’s discussion of Platonist views on the soul. Aristotle presents a challenge to his insistence that the soul is subject to change, dialectically resolves that challenge, and then ends by reserving the right to give a different account of the intellect. (shrink)

This is an excellent translation of Aristotle's De Anima or On the Soul, part of C.D.C. Reeve's impressive ongoing project of translating Aristotle's works for the New Hackett Aristotle. Reeve's translation is careful and accurate, committed to faithfully rendering Aristotle into English while making him as readable as possible. This edition features excellent notes that will greatly assist readers (especially in their inclusion of related passages that illuminate the sections they annotate) and an introduction that situates the work within Aristotle's (...) scientific method and his overall view of reality. (shrink)

To which science, if any, does the intellect’s study belong? Though the student of nature studies every other vital capacity, most interpreters maintain that Aristotle excludes the intellect from natural science’s domain. I survey the three main reasons that lead to this interpretation: the intellect (i) is not realized physiologically in a proprietary organ, (ii) its naturalistic study would corrupt natural science’s boundaries and leave no room for other forms of inquiry, and (iii) it is not, as all other vital (...) capacities are, a principle of movement and rest. I show that the third consideration is the most significant and then defend the view that the student of nature can (and ought to) study the intellect despite its not being a principle of movement. I argue that all of an organism’s vital activities have one and only one nature as their principle, namely, the organism’s soul considered as a unitary whole. The student of nature must concern herself with whatever activities are involved in the coming to be, development, and full realization of these natural forms. (shrink)

This is an epistemologically-driven history of the concept of evolution. Starting from its inception, this work will follow the development of this pregnant concept. However, in contradistinction to previous attempts, the objective will not be the identification of the different meanings it adopted through history, but conversely, it will let the concept to be unfolded, to be explicated and to express its own inner potentialities. The underlying thesis of the present work is, therefore, that the path that leads to the (...) development of the concept of evolution is the path that studies the possibilities of the evolution of concepts, and that the historical reconstruction of its conceptual trajectory will shed light into potential and unexploited possibilities. This methodology will provide useful tools and resources for future developments of the concept. For example, it will define the concept of transmutation as a different conceptual trajectory deviating from the one corresponding to evolution, at the onset of the 19th century. Moreover, epigenesis will not be the opposing concept to evolution, but only to simultaneous and instantaneous generation. It will demonstrate that every important system of epigenesis drew upon some kind of formative power to explain development. More importantly, it will show that the problem of preformation cannot be overlooked, and that some kind of virtual preformation must be considered in order to address the problems of generation and development. (shrink)

In the article author analyses the extent to which it is possible to regard the Aristotelian conception of the soul as actually necessary and applicable for modern neuroscience. The framework in which this objective is going to be accomplished is provided by the idea of the coexistence of the “manifest” and “scientific” images of the world and persons, as introduced by Wilfrid Sellars. In subsequent sections, author initially formulates an answer to the questions of what it is that Aristotle sought (...) to explain with his conception of soul as formal cause, and how this notion could be portrayed in terms drawn from contemporary neurological science. It is author’s intention to show that no other concepts—be they the Cartesian “mind” or a Chalmers-style “self”—come anywhere close to matching the breadth of scope of Aristotelian “soul”. At the same time, though, analysis carried out here do not intend to undertake any kind of defence of the soul as a spiritual entity of the sort popular where religious faith is concerned, namely as an entity separable from the body, immortal, and inimitably tied to God. Then, in the second major part of the article, author analyses the extent to which the Aristotelian conception of the soul can be thought of as involving criteria of the sort that we encounter in the contemporary theory of strong emergence. According to the author the theory of strong emergence has, as a heuristic theory, quite general predictive and explanatory power as regards the field of human thought and behaviour. (shrink)

Of all the criticisms that Aristotle gives of his predecessors’ theories of soul in De anima I.3–5, none seems more unmotivated than the ones directed against the world soul of Plato’s Timaeus. Against the current scholarly consensus, I claim that the status of Aristotle’s criticisms is philosophical rather than eristical, and that they provide important philosophical reasons, independent of Phys. VIII.10 and Metaph. Λ.6, for believing that νοῦς is without spatial extension, and that its thinking is not a physical motion.

Christopher Shields. Aristotle De Anima. Oxford University Press : Oxford, 2016, 415 p. US $ 32.00. ISBN 978-0-19-924345-7.

The possibility of a harmony between the psychological doctrine of Aristotle and that of Plato marks a significant issue within the context of the debate surrounding Aristotle’s putative opposition to or harmony with Plato’s philosophy. The standard interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of the soul being purely hylomorphic leaves no room for harmonisation with Plato, nor does a functionalist interpretation that reduces Aristotle’s psychological doctrine to physicalist terms. However, these interpretations have serious drawbacks, both in terms of ad-hoc explanations formulated in (...) the developmentalist mode, and the misconstruing of some of the fundamental features of Aristotle’s psychological doctrine. A dualist interpretation that accepts Aristotle’s doctrine of some part of the soul being properly incorporeal, separable and immortal overcomes these drawbacks and, significantly, opens the door for Platonic harmonisation. Furthermore, it can be shown that the kind of immortality in question is also in line with the Platonic stance, due to a deep similarity between the conceptions of metaphysical and moral personhood held by Plato and his student. However, this Aristotelian dualism is not Platonic dualism simpliciter. Rather, it is best understood in terms of the division of labour between Aristotle and Plato suggested by the Neoplatonic commentators generally, and Simplicius in particular. I argue that though questions surrounding these issues and particularly the issue of reincarnation remain, an account of Aristotle’s psychological doctrine as dualist and in harmony with Plato’s view of the soul can be shown to be stronger than both standard hylomorphic and functionalist accounts, both exegetically and philosophically. (shrink)

This is the overdue replacement of D. W. Hamlyn’s somewhat dismissive 1968 translation and commentary of the first two books of Aristotle’s De Anima. Hamlyn hardly did justice to this foundational treatise of Aristotle’s science of living beings: not only did he mistake it for a treatise on “the” philosophy of mind, he also did not bother to translate the first book apart from two snippets. Shields’s replacement is entirely free from such vices. It provides a new translation and commentary (...) on the whole argument of De Anima, and offers a much more philosophically satisfying interpretation... (shrink)

Sense experience, naïvely conceived, is a way of knowing perceptible properties: the colors, sounds, smells, flavors, and textures in our perceptual environment. So conceived, ordinary experience presents the perceiver with the essential nature of a property like Sky Blue or Middle C, such that how the property appears in experience is identical to how it essentially is. In antiquity, as today, it was controversial whether sense experience could meet the conditions for knowledge implicit in this naïve conception. Aristotle was a (...) partisan in this debate, but his position is poorly understood. This dissertation examines how Aristotle’s perceptual psychology responds to ancient challenges to the naïve conception, and so articulates his defense of perceptual knowledge. -/- Aristotle’s defense relies on an ontology of “perceptual qualities"—a core class of perceptible properties—according to which those qualities, despite having a perceiver-independent essence rooted in the physics of causation and affection, nevertheless can be present in experience as they essentially are. Chapter 1 defends this realist and objectivist reading against competing interpretations, which overlook a crucial distinction between perceptual qualities and perceptual objects. Chapter 2 presents Aristotle’s ontology as a physicalism that uncharacteristically allows for perceptual qualities to appear in experience as they essentially are. -/- This ontology informs Aristotle’s account of the psychological conditions under which perceivers actually are presented with the essence of perceptual qualities. The locus of this account is an obscure passage where Aristotle purports to show that the senses “discriminate” perceptual qualities because the senses are “mean states” (An. 2.11, 424a5–7). Chapter 3 develops a comprehensive interpretation of the sensory mean state, which Chapter 4 uses to elucidate Aristotle’s argument for sensory discrimination. Sensory discrimination turns out to be a process in which the essence of a perceptual quality comes to be present in the affection it produces in a perceiver. For Aristotle, this shows that sense perception meets a condition for knowledge that his predecessors, including Plato, thought it could not meet. For in his view, but not in theirs, sense experience shares in both the truth and the essence of the qualities it perceives. (shrink)

El ser en su riqueza se expresa en el lenguaje que emana también del ser. El lenguaje emergió de su olvido en la filosofía griega, gracias a las ideas cristianas de encarnación y trinidad que le hicieron más justicia. El mayor milagro del lenguaje no estriba en que la palabra aparezca en su ser externo, sino en el hecho de que lo que emerge y se manifiesta sea siempre palabra. La vuelta de Gadamer al final de Verdad y método, en (...) torno a la evidencia de que el ser de lo bello consiste en presentarse, ilustra la estructura universal del ser mismo. Apalabrar a lo que es el ser mismo. Lo que determina y hace posible la interpretación es el presentarse del ser de lo que es. Being in its richness expresses itself in language, which itself emanates from Being. Language emerged from its oblivion in Greek philosophy thanks to the Christian ideas of incarnation and trinity, which did it more justice. Language's greatest miracle does not rest on the fact that the word appears in its external being, but on the fact that that which emerges and manifests itself is always word. Gadamer's turn at the end of Truth and Method, regarding the evidence according to which beauty's being consists of presenting itself, illustrates the universal structure of Being itself. Bespeaking what is Being itself. What determines and make possible interpretation is the presentation itself of the being of what is. (shrink)

I examine the passages where Aristotle maintains that intellectual activity employs φαντάσματα (images) and argue that he requires awareness of the relevant images. This, together with Aristotle’s claims about the universality of understanding, gives us reason to reject the interpretation of Michael Wedin and Victor Caston, on which φαντάσματα serve as the material basis for thinking. I develop a new interpretation by unpacking the comparison Aristotle makes to the role of diagrams in doing geometry. In theoretical understanding of mathematical and (...) natural beings, we usually need to employ appropriate φαντάσματα in order to grasp explanatory connections. Aristotle does not, however, commit himself to thinking that images are required for exercising all theoretical understanding. Understanding immaterial things, in particular, may not involve employing phantasmata. Thus the connection that Aristotle makes between images and understanding does not rule out the possibility that human intellectual activity could occur apart from the body. (shrink)

O presente trabalho visa demonstrar como a relação entre corpo e alma são indispensáveis para o viver. Para tanto, considera a tese de que o ser animado é uma substância composta de matéria e forma, que também pode ser analisada sob a perspectiva de potência e ato. Neste sentido, o trabalho inicia com a compreensão sobre o que é uma substância, qual tipo de substância é o ser vivo para, em seguida, mediante as definições de alma presentes no livro Β (...) do De Anima, perceber como se dá a relação entre corpo e alma e porque tal relação é necessária ao viver. (shrink)

Is life a simple result of a conjunction of physico-chemical processes? Can be reduced to a mere juxtaposition of spatially determined events? What epistemology or world-view allows us to comprehend it? Aristotle built a novel philosophical system in which nature is a dynamical totality which is in constant movement. Life is a manifestation of it, and is formed and governed by the psyche. Psyche is the organizational principle of the different biological levels: nutritive, perceptive and intelective. Driesch's crucial experiment provided (...) empirical proof of the principle of life, which he called entelechy. Entelechy is an intensive manifoldness and cannot be comprehended by the usual extensive parameters. The entelechian's own ambiance is duration. This allows the reintroduction of the concept of teleology in the sphere of the living, understood not as a final cause, but as an order born from desire and leading to action. (shrink)

Christopher Shields presents a new translation and commentary of Aristotle's De Anima, a work of interest to philosophers at all levels, as well as psychologists and students interested in the nature of life and living systems. The volume provides a full translation of the complete work, together with a comprehensive commentary. While sensitive to philological and textual matters, the commentary addresses itself to the philosophical reader who wishes to understand and assess Aristotle's accounts of the soul and body; perception; thinking; (...) action; and the character of living systems. It aims to present controversial aspects of the text in a neutral, fair-minded manner, so that readers can come to be equipped to form their own judgments. (shrink)

Aristóteles, em sua obra De anima, além de apresentar uma intrigante teoria sobre intelecto (nous), que dá margem a uma compreensão bipartida do mesmo em ativo (nous poiētikos) e passivo (nous pathetikon), afirma que as afecções do intelecto são distintas das afecções de quem o possui. Uma das afecções deste que possui o intelecto, segundo o filósofo, é o raciocínio. Ademais, diz que este é perecível, ao passo que aquele é impassível e eterno. Desta maneira, longe de aclarar, acaba por (...) dif icultar não somente o entendimento do conceito de intelecto, como também o entendimento do que viria a ser a atividade racional (dianóia). Dessarte, o presente trabalho visa esclarecer os conceitos de nous e dianóia no intuito de obtermos, numa perspectiva aristotélica, um maior entendimento do nosso processo de conhecimento em geral. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

In Mortal Imitations of Divine Life, Diamond offers an interpretation of De Anima, which explains how and why Aristotle places souls in a hierarchy of value. Aristotle’s central intention in De Anima is 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 of De Anima, the nature of the soul (...) is most clearly seen in its divine life, while the embodied soul’s other activi­ties are progressively clearer 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 of De Anima’s unity of purpose and structure. (shrink)

Aristotle argued that in theory one could acquire knowledge of the natural world. But he did not stop there; he put his theories into practice. This volume of new essays shows how Aristotle's natural science and philosophical theories shed light on one another. The contributors engage with both biological and non-biological scientific works and with a wide variety of theoretical works, including Physics, Generation and Corruption, On the Soul, and Posterior Analytics. The essays focus on a number of themes, including (...) the sort of explanation provided by matter; the relationship between matter, teleology, and necessity; cosmic teleology; how an organism's soul and faculties relate to its end; how to define things such as sleep, void, and soul; and the proper way to make scientific judgments. The resulting volume offers a rich and integrated view of Aristotle's science and shows how it fits with his larger philosophical theories. (shrink)

Aristotle outlines two methods in De Anima that one can employ when one investigates the soul. The first focuses on the exercises of a living organism’s vital capacities and the proper objects upon which these activities are directed. The second focuses on a living organism’s nature, its internal principle of movement and rest, and the single end for the sake of which this principle is exercised. I argue that these two methods yield importantly different, and prima facie incompatible, views about (...) what souls are. According to the first, the soul is a set of independently specifiable capacities that are related to one another in a manner that effects a unity of soul over and above the multiplicity. According to the second, the soul is a single, unitary nature that has a living organism’s form as its end. I bring the differences between these two conceptions of soul into relief and then attempt to reconcile the opposing views in a way privileges the conception according to which the soul is a unitary nature. In doing so, I discuss the following interrelated topics: (a) what makes a capacity a part of soul, (b) the relationship between the parts of soul within a given organism, (c) how a soul can be a unity while comprising various parts, (d) whether it is possible to give an adequate definition of life or soul, (e) what unity obtains among the various ways life is said that would allow for a proper, scientific investigation of life, and (f) the principle that grounds the hierarchy of souls—the nutritive, the perceptual, and the rational. (shrink)

: In Parts of Animals II.10, 655b37-656a8, Aristotle tacitly identifies a group of animals which partake of “ living only”. This paper is an attempt to understand the nature of this group. It is argued that it is possible to make sense of this designation if we consider that some animals, which are solely endowed with the contact senses, do nothing more than mere immediate nutrition by their perceptive nature and have no other action. It is concluded that some of (...) Aristotle ’s merely living animals would be certain kinds of sponge, certain sea anemones and the ascidians among testacea. (shrink)

Originally published in 1907, this book contains the ancient Greek text of Aristotle's De Anima, his treatise on the differing souls of living things. An English translation is provided on each facing page, and Hicks supplies a very detailed commentary on each line at the end of the book, as well as a summary of each section. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Greek philosophy and the history of classical scholarship.

Aristotle sometimes claims that the perception of special perceptibles by their proper sense is unerring. This claim is striking, since it might seem that we quite often misperceive things like colours, sounds and smells. Aristotle also claims that the perception of common perceptibles is more prone to error than the perception of special perceptibles. This is puzzling in its own right, and also places constraints on the interpretation of. I argue that reading Alexander of Aphrodisias on perceptual error can help (...) to make good sense of both of Aristotle’s claims. (shrink)

A review of Thomas Johansen's book: The Powers of Aristotle's Soul.