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Aristotle: De Anima
The Clarendon Aristotle Series is designed for both students and professionals. It provides accurate translations of selected Aristotelian texts, accompanied by incisive commentaries that focus on philosophical problems and issues, The volumes in the series have been widely welcomed and favourably reviewed. Important new titles are being added to the series, and a number of well-established volumes are being reissued with revisions and/or supplementary material.
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. This volume includes the crucial first book, which the original translation in the Clarendon Aristotle Series omitted.
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. This volume includes the crucial first book, which the original translation in the Clarendon Aristotle Series omitted.
415 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 351
About the author
Aristotle
3,444 books4,811 followers384 BC–322 BC
Greek philosopher Aristotle, a pupil of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great, authored works on ethics, natural sciences, politics, and poetics that profoundly influenced western thought; empirical observation precedes theory, and the syllogism bases logic, the essential method of rational inquiry in his system, which led him to see and to criticize metaphysical excesses.
Empirical, scientific, or commonsensical methods of an Aristotelian, also Aristotelean, a person, tends to think. Deductive method, especially the theory of the syllogism, defines Aristotelian logic. The formal logic, based on that of Aristotle, deals with the relations between propositions in terms of their form instead of their content.
Commentaries of well known Arab philosopher, jurist, and physician Averroës ibn Rushd of Spain on Aristotle exerted a strong influence on medieval Christian theology.
German religious philosopher Saint Albertus Magnus later sought to apply his methods to current scientific questions. Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the most influential thinker of the medieval period, combined doctrine of Aristotle within a context of Christianity.
Aristotle numbers among the greatest of all time. Almost peerless, he shaped centuries from late antiquity through the Renaissance, and people even today continue to study him with keen, non-antiquarian interest. This prodigious researcher and writer left a great body, perhaps numbering as many as two hundred treatises, from which 31 survive. His extant writings span a wide range of disciplines from mind through aesthetics and rhetoric and into such primary fields as biology; he excelled at detailed plant and animal taxonomy. In all these topics, he provided illumination, met with resistance, sparked debate, and generally stimulated the sustained interest of an abiding readership.
Wide range and its remoteness in time defies easy encapsulation. The long history of interpretation and appropriation of texts and themes, spanning over two millennia within a variety of religious and secular traditions, rendered controversial even basic points of interpretation.
Greek philosopher Aristotle, a pupil of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great, authored works on ethics, natural sciences, politics, and poetics that profoundly influenced western thought; empirical observation precedes theory, and the syllogism bases logic, the essential method of rational inquiry in his system, which led him to see and to criticize metaphysical excesses.
Empirical, scientific, or commonsensical methods of an Aristotelian, also Aristotelean, a person, tends to think. Deductive method, especially the theory of the syllogism, defines Aristotelian logic. The formal logic, based on that of Aristotle, deals with the relations between propositions in terms of their form instead of their content.
Commentaries of well known Arab philosopher, jurist, and physician Averroës ibn Rushd of Spain on Aristotle exerted a strong influence on medieval Christian theology.
German religious philosopher Saint Albertus Magnus later sought to apply his methods to current scientific questions. Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the most influential thinker of the medieval period, combined doctrine of Aristotle within a context of Christianity.
Aristotle numbers among the greatest of all time. Almost peerless, he shaped centuries from late antiquity through the Renaissance, and people even today continue to study him with keen, non-antiquarian interest. This prodigious researcher and writer left a great body, perhaps numbering as many as two hundred treatises, from which 31 survive. His extant writings span a wide range of disciplines from mind through aesthetics and rhetoric and into such primary fields as biology; he excelled at detailed plant and animal taxonomy. In all these topics, he provided illumination, met with resistance, sparked debate, and generally stimulated the sustained interest of an abiding readership.
Wide range and its remoteness in time defies easy encapsulation. The long history of interpretation and appropriation of texts and themes, spanning over two millennia within a variety of religious and secular traditions, rendered controversial even basic points of interpretation.
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March 12, 2017
As I have lately been making my way through Aristotle’s physical treatises, I have often observed that many of Aristotle’s errors stem from his tendency to see the physical world as analogous to a biological organism. So it is a pleasure to finally see Aristotle back on his home territory—living things. While Aristotle’s work in proto-physics and proto-chemistry is interesting mainly from a historical perspective, this work is interesting in its own right; in just a hundred pages, Aristotle manages to assemble a treatise on the fundamentals of life.
The first thing the modern student will notice is that Aristotle means something quite different by ‘soul’ than how we normally understand the word. The word ‘soul’ has come to mean an immaterial, specter-like wraith, the spiritual core of one’s personality—trapped, only temporarily, in a body; and this view has, over the years, caused problems for philosophers and theologians alike, for it remains to be explained how an immaterial spirit could move a material body, or how a material body could trap an immaterial spirit. Aristotle avoids these awkward questions. What he means is quite different.
Aristotle begins by observing that all forms of behavior, human or animal, require a body. Even supposedly ‘mental’ states, such as anger, love, and desire, all have concomitant physical manifestations: an angry man gets red in the face, a man in love stares at his beloved, and a man who desires alcohol tries to get it. From this, Aristotle quickly concludes that all the Pythagorean and Platonic talk of the transmigration of souls is silly; a soul needs a body, just as a body needs a soul. Furthermore, a specific soul doesn’t need just any body, but it needs its specific body. Soul and body are, in other words, codependent and inseparable. In Aristotle’s words, “each art must use its tools, each soul its body.”
This still leaves the question unanswered, what is a soul? Aristotle answers that the soul is the form of the body. Alright, what does that mean? Keep this in mind: when Aristotle says ‘form’, he is not merely talking about the geometrical shape of the object, but means something far more general: the form, or essence, of something is that by which it is what it is. Here’s an example: the form of a bowl is that which makes a bowl a bowl, as opposed to something else like, say, a plate or a cup. In this particular case, the form would seem to be the mere shape of the object; isn't the thing that makes a bowl a bowl its shape? But consider that there is no such thing as a disembodied bowl; for a bowl to be a bowl, it must have a certain shape, be within a certain size range, and be embodied in a suitable material. All of these qualifications, the shape, size, and material, Aristotle would include in the ‘form’ of an object.
So the soul of living things is the quality (or qualities) that differentiate them from nonliving things. Now, the main difference between animate and inanimate objects is that animate objects possess capacities; therefore, the more capacities a living thing has, the more souls we must posit. This sounds funny, but it’s just a way of speaking. Plants, for Aristotle, are the simplest forms of living beings; they only possess the ‘vegetative soul’, which is what makes them grow and develop. Animals possess additional souls, such as that which allows them to sense, to desire, to imagine, and—in the case of humans—to think. The ‘soul’, then, is a particular type of form; it is a form which gives its recipient a certain type of capability. Plants are only capable of growth; animals are capable of growing, of moving, and of many other things.
Aristotle sums up his view in a memorable phrase: “From all this it is obvious that the affections of soul are enmattered formulable essences.” These capacities cannot be ‘enmattered’ in just anything, but must be embodied in suitable materials; plants are not made of just anything, but their capacities for growth always manifest themselves in the same types of material. Aristotle sums up this point with another memorable phrase: “soul is an actuality or formulable essence of something that possesses the potentiality of being besouled.”
So an oak tree is made of material with the potentiality of being ‘besouled’, i.e., turned into a living, growing oak tree. Conversely, a life-sized statue of an oak tree made of bronze would still not be an oak tree, even if it shared several aspects of its form with a real oak tree. It isn’t made of the right material, and thus cannot possess the vegetative soul.
I have given a somewhat laborious summary of this because I think it is a very attractive way of looking at living things. It avoids all talk of ‘ghosts in the machine’, and concentrates on what is observable. (I should note, however, that Aristotle thought that ‘mind’, which is the faculty of reason, is immaterial and immortal. Nobody's perfect.)
I also find Aristotle metaphysical views attractive. True to his doctrine of the golden mean, he places equal emphasis on matter and form. He occupies an interesting middle-ground between the idealism of Plato and the materialism of Democritus. In order for a particular thing to be what it is, it must both have a certain form—which is embodied in, but not reducible to, its matter—and be made of the ‘right’ types of matter. Unlike Plato’s ideals, which reside in a different sphere of reality, existing as perfect essences devoid of matter, Aristotle’s forms are inherent in their objects, and thus are neither immaterial nor simply the matter itself.
The treatise ceases to be as interesting as it progresses, but there are a few gems along the way. He moves on to an investigation of the five senses, and, while discussing sight, has a few things to say about light. Aristotle defines light as the quality by which something transparent is transparent; in other words, light is the thing that can be seen through transparent things. I suppose that’s a respectable operational definition. Aristotle also considers the idea that light travels absurd; nothing could go that fast:
Aristotle also has a few interesting things to say about sense:
So we don’t take in the matter of a bowl through our eyes, but only its form. All of our senses, then, are adapted for observing different aspects of the forms of objects. Thus, Aristotle concludes, all knowledge consists of forms; when we learn about the world, we are mentally reproducing the form of the world in our minds. As he says: “It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools [i.e. the tool by which we use tools], so the mind is the form of forms [i.e. the form by which we apprehend forms]." (Notice how deftly Aristotle wields his division of everything into matter and form; he uses it to define souls, to define senses, and then to define knowledge. It is characteristic of him to make so much headway with such seemingly simple divisions.)
For a long time, I was perplexed that Aristotle was so influential. I was originally repulsed by his way of thinking, put off by his manner of viewing the world. His works struck me as alternately pedantic, wrongheaded, or obvious. How could he have exerted such a tremendous influence over the Western mind? Now, after reading through much more Aristotle, this is no longer perplexing to me; in fact, I often find myself thinking along his lines, viewing the world through his eyes. It takes, I believe, a lot of exposure in order to really develop a sympathy for Aristotle’s thought; but with its emphasis on balance, on growth, on potentiality, it succeeds in being a very aesthetically compelling (if often incorrect) way of viewing things.
This piece represents, to me, Aristotle at his best. It is a grand synthesis of philosophy and biology, probably not matched until William James’s psychological work. Unlike many gentlemanly philosophers who shut themselves in their studies, trying to explain human behavior purely through introspection, Aristotle’s biologically rooted way of seeing things combines careful observation—of humans and nonhumans alike—with philosophical speculation. It is a shame that only the logic-chopping side of Aristotle was embraced by the medievals, and not his empirical outlook.
The first thing the modern student will notice is that Aristotle means something quite different by ‘soul’ than how we normally understand the word. The word ‘soul’ has come to mean an immaterial, specter-like wraith, the spiritual core of one’s personality—trapped, only temporarily, in a body; and this view has, over the years, caused problems for philosophers and theologians alike, for it remains to be explained how an immaterial spirit could move a material body, or how a material body could trap an immaterial spirit. Aristotle avoids these awkward questions. What he means is quite different.
Aristotle begins by observing that all forms of behavior, human or animal, require a body. Even supposedly ‘mental’ states, such as anger, love, and desire, all have concomitant physical manifestations: an angry man gets red in the face, a man in love stares at his beloved, and a man who desires alcohol tries to get it. From this, Aristotle quickly concludes that all the Pythagorean and Platonic talk of the transmigration of souls is silly; a soul needs a body, just as a body needs a soul. Furthermore, a specific soul doesn’t need just any body, but it needs its specific body. Soul and body are, in other words, codependent and inseparable. In Aristotle’s words, “each art must use its tools, each soul its body.”
This still leaves the question unanswered, what is a soul? Aristotle answers that the soul is the form of the body. Alright, what does that mean? Keep this in mind: when Aristotle says ‘form’, he is not merely talking about the geometrical shape of the object, but means something far more general: the form, or essence, of something is that by which it is what it is. Here’s an example: the form of a bowl is that which makes a bowl a bowl, as opposed to something else like, say, a plate or a cup. In this particular case, the form would seem to be the mere shape of the object; isn't the thing that makes a bowl a bowl its shape? But consider that there is no such thing as a disembodied bowl; for a bowl to be a bowl, it must have a certain shape, be within a certain size range, and be embodied in a suitable material. All of these qualifications, the shape, size, and material, Aristotle would include in the ‘form’ of an object.
So the soul of living things is the quality (or qualities) that differentiate them from nonliving things. Now, the main difference between animate and inanimate objects is that animate objects possess capacities; therefore, the more capacities a living thing has, the more souls we must posit. This sounds funny, but it’s just a way of speaking. Plants, for Aristotle, are the simplest forms of living beings; they only possess the ‘vegetative soul’, which is what makes them grow and develop. Animals possess additional souls, such as that which allows them to sense, to desire, to imagine, and—in the case of humans—to think. The ‘soul’, then, is a particular type of form; it is a form which gives its recipient a certain type of capability. Plants are only capable of growth; animals are capable of growing, of moving, and of many other things.
Aristotle sums up his view in a memorable phrase: “From all this it is obvious that the affections of soul are enmattered formulable essences.” These capacities cannot be ‘enmattered’ in just anything, but must be embodied in suitable materials; plants are not made of just anything, but their capacities for growth always manifest themselves in the same types of material. Aristotle sums up this point with another memorable phrase: “soul is an actuality or formulable essence of something that possesses the potentiality of being besouled.”
So an oak tree is made of material with the potentiality of being ‘besouled’, i.e., turned into a living, growing oak tree. Conversely, a life-sized statue of an oak tree made of bronze would still not be an oak tree, even if it shared several aspects of its form with a real oak tree. It isn’t made of the right material, and thus cannot possess the vegetative soul.
I have given a somewhat laborious summary of this because I think it is a very attractive way of looking at living things. It avoids all talk of ‘ghosts in the machine’, and concentrates on what is observable. (I should note, however, that Aristotle thought that ‘mind’, which is the faculty of reason, is immaterial and immortal. Nobody's perfect.)
I also find Aristotle metaphysical views attractive. True to his doctrine of the golden mean, he places equal emphasis on matter and form. He occupies an interesting middle-ground between the idealism of Plato and the materialism of Democritus. In order for a particular thing to be what it is, it must both have a certain form—which is embodied in, but not reducible to, its matter—and be made of the ‘right’ types of matter. Unlike Plato’s ideals, which reside in a different sphere of reality, existing as perfect essences devoid of matter, Aristotle’s forms are inherent in their objects, and thus are neither immaterial nor simply the matter itself.
The treatise ceases to be as interesting as it progresses, but there are a few gems along the way. He moves on to an investigation of the five senses, and, while discussing sight, has a few things to say about light. Aristotle defines light as the quality by which something transparent is transparent; in other words, light is the thing that can be seen through transparent things. I suppose that’s a respectable operational definition. Aristotle also considers the idea that light travels absurd; nothing could go that fast:
Empedocles (and with him all others who used the same forms of expression) was wrong in speaking of light as ‘traveling’ or being at a given moment between the earth and its envelope, its movement being unobservable by us; that view is contrary both to the clear evidence of argument and to the observed facts; if the distance traversed were short, the movement might have been unobservable, but where the distance is from extreme East to extreme West, the draught upon our powers of belief is too great.
Aristotle also has a few interesting things to say about sense:
By a ‘sense’ is meant what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter. This must be conceived of as taking place in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold; we say that what produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but its particular metallic constitution makes no difference: in a similar way the sense is affected by what is colored or flavored or sounding, but it is indifferent what in each case the substance is; what alone matters is what quality is has, i.e. in what ratio its constituents are combined.
So we don’t take in the matter of a bowl through our eyes, but only its form. All of our senses, then, are adapted for observing different aspects of the forms of objects. Thus, Aristotle concludes, all knowledge consists of forms; when we learn about the world, we are mentally reproducing the form of the world in our minds. As he says: “It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools [i.e. the tool by which we use tools], so the mind is the form of forms [i.e. the form by which we apprehend forms]." (Notice how deftly Aristotle wields his division of everything into matter and form; he uses it to define souls, to define senses, and then to define knowledge. It is characteristic of him to make so much headway with such seemingly simple divisions.)
For a long time, I was perplexed that Aristotle was so influential. I was originally repulsed by his way of thinking, put off by his manner of viewing the world. His works struck me as alternately pedantic, wrongheaded, or obvious. How could he have exerted such a tremendous influence over the Western mind? Now, after reading through much more Aristotle, this is no longer perplexing to me; in fact, I often find myself thinking along his lines, viewing the world through his eyes. It takes, I believe, a lot of exposure in order to really develop a sympathy for Aristotle’s thought; but with its emphasis on balance, on growth, on potentiality, it succeeds in being a very aesthetically compelling (if often incorrect) way of viewing things.
This piece represents, to me, Aristotle at his best. It is a grand synthesis of philosophy and biology, probably not matched until William James’s psychological work. Unlike many gentlemanly philosophers who shut themselves in their studies, trying to explain human behavior purely through introspection, Aristotle’s biologically rooted way of seeing things combines careful observation—of humans and nonhumans alike—with philosophical speculation. It is a shame that only the logic-chopping side of Aristotle was embraced by the medievals, and not his empirical outlook.
Want to read
January 23, 2017
I am intrigued by this unexpected suggestion from the Goodreads Recommendations Engine. But who is Aristotle going to fight? Some possible challengers:
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
- Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
- William Gibson, Neuromancer
- Miranda Kerr, Treasure Yourself: Power Thoughts for My Generation
- Michael E. Gordon and Donald J. Trump, Trump University Entrepreneurship 101: How to Turn Your Idea Into a Money Machine
November 2, 2023
Dealing with the concept of the soul, particularly the human soul, is never an easy thing. We often speak of the soul in a rather facile manner: we talk about how Doctor Faustus or Dorian Grey “sold his soul” to the devil; we say that when R.M.S. Titanic sank on 15 April 1912, “1500 souls were lost.” But what is "the soul" – that term we use to refer to a sort of intangible quality, an undefinable thing of which we are nonetheless acutely conscious; that thing that gives each of us an individual identity, an individual participation in life, while we are alive? Aristotle took on such questions with his customary rigor in one of his best-known philosophical texts. Fellow Greeks of his time would have called it Περὶ Ψυχῆς, Peri Psychēs; but it is generally known to people of the modern world by a Latin title, De Anima. Either way, the reader is getting Aristotle’s reflections On the Soul.
In a helpful foreword (and an extensive one – 116 pages, compared with 96 pages of De Anima proper), Hugh Lawson-Tancred of the University of London explains that the Greeks of Aristotle’s time were not at all sure whether the soul was best discussed in physical terms, as a matter of biology, or in metaphysical terms that would defy biological classification. Aristotle tends to look at all of existence in materialist terms – remember that in Raphael’s painting The School of Athens (1511), young Aristotle is pointing down towards the earth and material reality, while an elderly Plato is pointing up towards the heavens and a higher World of Forms – but as Lawson-Tancred points out, “the expression psyche is hardly less vague in Greek than the expression ‘soul’ in English, and it would by no means be obvious to a thinking Greek of Aristotle’s time that the discussion of what the soul is belongs quite so firmly in the area of the foundations of Biology.” Indeed, “Aristotle seems himself at one stage in his life to have held a distinctively non-biological view of the soul” (p. 50).
If Aristotle seems at times uncertain about how to define the soul – if On the Soul never seems to arrive at a unified field theory of the soul – that may be a mark of Aristotle’s intellectual honesty, his willingness to acknowledge when he has come up against a problem that he cannot yet solve.
Aristotle sets forth his sense that “the soul is, so to speak, the first principle of living things”, along with the manner in which he plans to “seek to contemplate and know its nature and substance and then the things that are accidental to it” – even though, “In general, and in all ways, it is one of the hardest of things to gain any conviction of the soul” (p. 126).
Aristotle is interested in the idea of the soul as a motivating faculty common to all creatures – something that brings together a living thing’s capacity for knowledge, perception, and movement. In the course of analyzing these three functions of the soul, he takes issue with earlier philosophers like Empedocles who posited that the soul must be in some way material, composed of elements: "All those…who say that the soul is composed from the elements on the grounds of its having knowledge and perception of the things that exist, as well as all who say that it is the thing most productive of movement, are not offering an account to cover every type of soul.” When looking at animals, after all, “there seem to be some animals incapable of locomotion, which is thought to be the one type of motion in which the soul moves the animal.” Similarly, “plants seem to live without partaking of perception” (p. 151).
Perhaps it is for this reason that Aristotle takes issue so strongly with the ways in which prior philosophers have sought to divide the soul into parts – “distinguishing the reasoning, spirited, and desiderative parts, or with others, the rational and irrational.” These attempts to dissect the soul, for Aristotle, quickly fall apart in logical terms, presenting the student with a maze of irreconcilable contradictions: “a patent absurdity, as there is then wishing in the rational part, and appetite and passion in the irrational, and, on a tripartite division, desire in all three parts of the soul” (p. 212). Clearly, Aristotle will settle for nothing less than an internally consistent working model of the soul, one that will be free of contradictions.
In his pursuit of that goal, Aristotle somewhat sidesteps the question of whether the soul has materiality or not, stating that “soul is substance as the form of a natural body which potentially has life, and since this substance is actuality, soul will be the actuality of such a body” (p. 157). The philosopher goes on to set forth this idea at somewhat greater length, adding that “soul is the first actuality of a natural body which potentially has life”, and that the soul “would be the first actuality of a natural body with organs” (p. 157). “Actuality,” as Lawson-Tancred explains, is a translation of the Greek term ενέργεια, energeia -- “This literally means a ‘putting into use,’ an ‘employment’” (p. 117). The soul, accordingly, is that which employs the body of a living thing, or puts it into use.
Throughout De Anima, Aristotle explores that idea that the soul forms a sort of life principle in and of itself, something that is distinct from the mind, something whose departure from the body of a living thing marks the moment of death. Yet Aristotle, with humility equal to his philosophical brilliance, acknowledges the limitations on his ability to seek further into the heart of these mysteries, stating forthrightly that “it remains unclear whether the soul is the actuality of a body in this way or rather is as the sailor of a boat” (p. 158).
For Aristotle, the possession of a soul is fundamental to being alive, saying that “the ensouled is distinguished from the unsouled by its being alive”, and adding a helpful definition of life itself, declaring that “we say that the thing is alive if, for instance, there is intellect or perception or spatial movement and rest or indeed movement connected with nourishment and growth and decay” (p. 159). In Aristotle’s reading, “soul is that by which primarily we live and perceive and think” (p. 161).
The ensouled. The unsouled. While modern science cannot locate the soul, there is that sense of its existence that is pervasive if not quantifiable. A person lives and interacts with our life, and we have a sense of a life force, a spirit, a soul, within that person. Then that person dies, and we have a sense that all that is left is the body, is clay – that some indefinable, non-physical quality that made the person who he or she was is gone forever. Is that quality, that soul, easy to define? No, not at all. Is the effort worthwhile? Absolutely.
The influence of De Anima, since its first appearance around 350 B.C., would be difficult to overstate. Centuries after Aristotle’s death on the island of Euboea in the year 322 B.C., Christian theologians were looking to this work to inform their ideas regarding the soul, and it has informed discussions about the soul by philosophers and metaphysicians of every belief system ever since. It is one of Aristotle’s most challenging works – and, for those readers who have the soul for it, it is one of the most rewarding.
In a helpful foreword (and an extensive one – 116 pages, compared with 96 pages of De Anima proper), Hugh Lawson-Tancred of the University of London explains that the Greeks of Aristotle’s time were not at all sure whether the soul was best discussed in physical terms, as a matter of biology, or in metaphysical terms that would defy biological classification. Aristotle tends to look at all of existence in materialist terms – remember that in Raphael’s painting The School of Athens (1511), young Aristotle is pointing down towards the earth and material reality, while an elderly Plato is pointing up towards the heavens and a higher World of Forms – but as Lawson-Tancred points out, “the expression psyche is hardly less vague in Greek than the expression ‘soul’ in English, and it would by no means be obvious to a thinking Greek of Aristotle’s time that the discussion of what the soul is belongs quite so firmly in the area of the foundations of Biology.” Indeed, “Aristotle seems himself at one stage in his life to have held a distinctively non-biological view of the soul” (p. 50).
If Aristotle seems at times uncertain about how to define the soul – if On the Soul never seems to arrive at a unified field theory of the soul – that may be a mark of Aristotle’s intellectual honesty, his willingness to acknowledge when he has come up against a problem that he cannot yet solve.
Aristotle sets forth his sense that “the soul is, so to speak, the first principle of living things”, along with the manner in which he plans to “seek to contemplate and know its nature and substance and then the things that are accidental to it” – even though, “In general, and in all ways, it is one of the hardest of things to gain any conviction of the soul” (p. 126).
Aristotle is interested in the idea of the soul as a motivating faculty common to all creatures – something that brings together a living thing’s capacity for knowledge, perception, and movement. In the course of analyzing these three functions of the soul, he takes issue with earlier philosophers like Empedocles who posited that the soul must be in some way material, composed of elements: "All those…who say that the soul is composed from the elements on the grounds of its having knowledge and perception of the things that exist, as well as all who say that it is the thing most productive of movement, are not offering an account to cover every type of soul.” When looking at animals, after all, “there seem to be some animals incapable of locomotion, which is thought to be the one type of motion in which the soul moves the animal.” Similarly, “plants seem to live without partaking of perception” (p. 151).
Perhaps it is for this reason that Aristotle takes issue so strongly with the ways in which prior philosophers have sought to divide the soul into parts – “distinguishing the reasoning, spirited, and desiderative parts, or with others, the rational and irrational.” These attempts to dissect the soul, for Aristotle, quickly fall apart in logical terms, presenting the student with a maze of irreconcilable contradictions: “a patent absurdity, as there is then wishing in the rational part, and appetite and passion in the irrational, and, on a tripartite division, desire in all three parts of the soul” (p. 212). Clearly, Aristotle will settle for nothing less than an internally consistent working model of the soul, one that will be free of contradictions.
In his pursuit of that goal, Aristotle somewhat sidesteps the question of whether the soul has materiality or not, stating that “soul is substance as the form of a natural body which potentially has life, and since this substance is actuality, soul will be the actuality of such a body” (p. 157). The philosopher goes on to set forth this idea at somewhat greater length, adding that “soul is the first actuality of a natural body which potentially has life”, and that the soul “would be the first actuality of a natural body with organs” (p. 157). “Actuality,” as Lawson-Tancred explains, is a translation of the Greek term ενέργεια, energeia -- “This literally means a ‘putting into use,’ an ‘employment’” (p. 117). The soul, accordingly, is that which employs the body of a living thing, or puts it into use.
Throughout De Anima, Aristotle explores that idea that the soul forms a sort of life principle in and of itself, something that is distinct from the mind, something whose departure from the body of a living thing marks the moment of death. Yet Aristotle, with humility equal to his philosophical brilliance, acknowledges the limitations on his ability to seek further into the heart of these mysteries, stating forthrightly that “it remains unclear whether the soul is the actuality of a body in this way or rather is as the sailor of a boat” (p. 158).
For Aristotle, the possession of a soul is fundamental to being alive, saying that “the ensouled is distinguished from the unsouled by its being alive”, and adding a helpful definition of life itself, declaring that “we say that the thing is alive if, for instance, there is intellect or perception or spatial movement and rest or indeed movement connected with nourishment and growth and decay” (p. 159). In Aristotle’s reading, “soul is that by which primarily we live and perceive and think” (p. 161).
The ensouled. The unsouled. While modern science cannot locate the soul, there is that sense of its existence that is pervasive if not quantifiable. A person lives and interacts with our life, and we have a sense of a life force, a spirit, a soul, within that person. Then that person dies, and we have a sense that all that is left is the body, is clay – that some indefinable, non-physical quality that made the person who he or she was is gone forever. Is that quality, that soul, easy to define? No, not at all. Is the effort worthwhile? Absolutely.
The influence of De Anima, since its first appearance around 350 B.C., would be difficult to overstate. Centuries after Aristotle’s death on the island of Euboea in the year 322 B.C., Christian theologians were looking to this work to inform their ideas regarding the soul, and it has informed discussions about the soul by philosophers and metaphysicians of every belief system ever since. It is one of Aristotle’s most challenging works – and, for those readers who have the soul for it, it is one of the most rewarding.
June 10, 2018
“Ruh Üzerine” teknik bir felsefe kitabı olduğu kadar aynı zamanda bir biyoloji kitabı da. Ayrıca, metne kaynaklık eden el yazmaları zamanımıza sağlıklı bir biçimde ulaşamadığından özellikle sonlara doğru, takip etmesi ve anlaması yer yer zor bir metin. Bu nedenle Aristoteles’in bu eserinin ilk etapta teknik amaçlarla yapılacak okumalar için tavsiye edilmesi daha doğru olur.
Bunları kenara bırakırsak, Aristoteles’in bin yıllar ötesinden gelen bilim insanı sesini duymak her zamanki gibi okuyanı etkiliyor. Filozof, kendi üslubuna uygun olarak ilk önce, ruh üzerine ondan önce söz söylemiş başka filozofların görüşlerini de sayıp döküyor. Bu filozofların günümüze kalan yazılı eserlerinin azlığı düşünülürse “Ruh Üzerine” tarihi bir kaynak eser olarak da görülebilir.
Pinhan Yayıncılık’ın bu özenli baskısı Goodreads’te yoktu, ben ekledim. Metnin orijinal eski Yunanca hali ve Türkçe çevirisi yanyana hazırlanmış ve basılmış, Dip notlar okuma esnasında kaybolmamamız için çok verimli kullanılmış. Metnin sonunda güzel bir kaynakça ve bir de sözlük var. Hepsi birlikte bu baskı 5 yıldızı hakediyor.
Bunları kenara bırakırsak, Aristoteles’in bin yıllar ötesinden gelen bilim insanı sesini duymak her zamanki gibi okuyanı etkiliyor. Filozof, kendi üslubuna uygun olarak ilk önce, ruh üzerine ondan önce söz söylemiş başka filozofların görüşlerini de sayıp döküyor. Bu filozofların günümüze kalan yazılı eserlerinin azlığı düşünülürse “Ruh Üzerine” tarihi bir kaynak eser olarak da görülebilir.
Pinhan Yayıncılık’ın bu özenli baskısı Goodreads’te yoktu, ben ekledim. Metnin orijinal eski Yunanca hali ve Türkçe çevirisi yanyana hazırlanmış ve basılmış, Dip notlar okuma esnasında kaybolmamamız için çok verimli kullanılmış. Metnin sonunda güzel bir kaynakça ve bir de sözlük var. Hepsi birlikte bu baskı 5 yıldızı hakediyor.
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November 8, 2017مسلماً نمیخوام راجع به درباره نفس ارسطو بنویسم. میخوام بنویسم چه قدر تقصیر بر گردنمونه که علیمراد داودی رو اونطور که بهحق باشه، نشناختهیم. با اختلاف از ترجمههای مرحوم لطفی از آثار ارسطو بهتره. فارسی خیلی خوب، مقدّمه کتاب، دقّت بالای فلسفی توی ترجمه، پانویسها و ارجاعاتی که نشون میده به آثار شارحهای بزرگ ارسطو هم نظر داشته، تا حدی من رو از مراجعه به متن انگلیسی بینیاز کرده، یه جاهایی هم توضیحات خودش تو فهم متن کمکم کرده. آدم احساس میکنه انگار پشتکار و تعهد علمی آدما تو گروه فلسفه دانشگاه تهران فقط اختصاص به همون دورهای داره که امثال علیمراد داودی و یحیی مهدوی بیسروصدا استاد فلسفه بودن. تموم شد. دیگه کسی خاطرهای هم نداره که وقت کلاس رو به تعریفکردنشون بگذرونه.
July 14, 2015
"If then we must say something in general about all types of soul, it would be the first actuality of a natural body with organs. We should not then inquire whether the soul and body are one thing, any more than whether the wax and its imprint are, or in general whether the matter of each thing is one with that of which it is the matter. For although unity and being are spoken of in a number of ways, it is of the actuality that they are most properly said."
Here is Aristotle's biological treatment of the soul. Before approaching this treatise, the reader must suspend the popular conception of the soul as a type of ethereal, ghostlike figure that inhabits a body but is also distinguishable from it. The soul, for Aristotle and most of his contemporaries, is the form of the living body, that by virtue of which things have their life. To have a particular soul is what makes a human being a human being, or a tree a tree. The soul is inseparable from the physical body, and indeed the actualities of the soul--emotions, actions, sensations, intuitions, and so on--have their physical, bodily manifestations. Each body has its peculiar soul.
Interestingly enough, alone of all the "types" of soul, the intellectual part of the soul is taken to be immortal, separated from corruptible matter. The mind, as Aristotle saw it, was not attached to any physical organ. One might chalk this up to ignorance of the brain and its functions, but perhaps "mind" for Aristotle had a more fundamental, conceptual meaning than it typically does for us.
More of an intellectual curiosity for the twenty-first century reader, De Anima was profoundly influential for medieval scholastic philosophy.
Here is Aristotle's biological treatment of the soul. Before approaching this treatise, the reader must suspend the popular conception of the soul as a type of ethereal, ghostlike figure that inhabits a body but is also distinguishable from it. The soul, for Aristotle and most of his contemporaries, is the form of the living body, that by virtue of which things have their life. To have a particular soul is what makes a human being a human being, or a tree a tree. The soul is inseparable from the physical body, and indeed the actualities of the soul--emotions, actions, sensations, intuitions, and so on--have their physical, bodily manifestations. Each body has its peculiar soul.
Interestingly enough, alone of all the "types" of soul, the intellectual part of the soul is taken to be immortal, separated from corruptible matter. The mind, as Aristotle saw it, was not attached to any physical organ. One might chalk this up to ignorance of the brain and its functions, but perhaps "mind" for Aristotle had a more fundamental, conceptual meaning than it typically does for us.
More of an intellectual curiosity for the twenty-first century reader, De Anima was profoundly influential for medieval scholastic philosophy.
December 23, 2016
Ακολουθούν κάποια αποσπάσματα που είναι χαρακτηριστικά του τι συναντάμε στο Περί Ψυχής, του Αριστοτέλη, καθώς και της έκφρασης του, όπως και των διαλεκτικών του εργαλείων, που κατά βάση είναι άλλοτε η υπερβολή, άλλοτε η χρήση του αντιθέτου και απαγωγή εις άτοπο κι άλλοτε η γενίκευση του ειδικού, ή η ειδίκευση του γενικού. Επίσης γίνεται ιδιαίτερα διακριτή η με ευθύτητα ειρωνεία που όμως παραμένει καλοπροαίρετη, ωστόσο όμως αμείλικτη. Επίσης γίνεται φανερή η ευρύτατη γνώση όλων των επιστημών της εποχής του, τουλάχιστον στο επίπεδο της πρακτικής γνώσης αν όχι και των ίδιων των θεωριών, Βιολογία, Μαθηματικά, Ζωολογία, Ανθρωπολογία, Φυσική, Ιατρική. Έχει ενδιαφέρον πιστεύω να διαβάσετε αυτά τα αποσπάσματα:
‘’Αρχή για κάθε απόδειξη είναι η ουσία, έτσι που όσοι ορισμοί δε συμβαίνει να μας κάνουν γνωστές τις ιδιότητες, αλλά και ούτε μας διευκολύνουν να υποθέσουμε κάτι γι’ αυτές, είναι φανερό ότι όλοι διατυπώνονται για χάρη του συλλογισμού και είναι κενοί περιεχομένου’’.
‘’Το έμψυχο πράγματι δείχνει να διαφέρει από το άψυχο, σε δύο κυρίως πράγματα, στην κίνηση και την αίσθηση’’.
‘’Δεν αντιμετωπίζει λοιπόν το νου ως μια ικανότητα για την αλήθεια, αλλά λέει ότι ψυχή και νους είναι το ίδιο π��άγμα’’.
‘’…ο νους είναι το ένα και η γνώση το δύο ( γιατί προχωρεί προς ένα σημείο από μια μοναδική κατεύθυνση ), ενώ ο αριθμός του επιπέδου είναι η γνώμη και εκείνος του στερεού η αίσθηση… Τα πράγματα εξάλλου συλλαμβάνονται άλλα με το νου, άλλα με τη γνώση, άλλα με τη γνώμη και άλλα με την αίσθηση, και, οι αριθμοί αυτοί είναι ταυτόχρονα οι ιδέες των πραγμάτων’’.( συγκριτική θέση με του Πλάτωνα, όπως ο ίδιος αναφέρει )
‘’…τέσσερα είδη κινήσεων, η φορά, η αλλοίωση, η φθίση και η αύξηση’’.
‘’Το σώμα όμως κινείται αλλάζοντας θέση και η ψυχή επομένως θα έπρεπε να μεταβληθεί όπως το σώμα, αλλάζοντας θέση είτε ολόκληρη, είτε κατά μέρη. Αν όμως μπορούσε να συμβεί αυτό, θα μπορούσε επίσης να βγει από το σώμα και πάλι να ξαναμπεί και το αποτέλεσμα θα ήταν να ανασταίνονται τα ζώα που πέθαναν’’.
‘’…. η ψυχή δε φαίνεται να κινεί το ζώο με αυτό τον τρόπο, αλλά με μια ορισμένη βούληση και κάποια σκέψη’’
‘’Ο νους όμως είναι ένας και συνεχής, όπως ακριβώς η νόηση και η νόηση είναι τα νοήματα και τα τελευταία με το να διαδέχονται το ένα το άλλο, αποτελούν ενότητα όπως ο αριθμός, αλλά όχι όπως το μέγεθος’’.
‘’πως θα σκεφτεί ο νους το διαιρετό με το αδιαίρετο, ή το αδιαίρετο με το διαιρετό; …. η κίνηση του νου είναι η νόηση’’
‘’ τι είναι αυτό που χάνεται όταν η ψυχή αφήσει το σώμα’’;
‘’Να λέμε όμως ότι η ψυχή οργίζεται, είναι σαν κάποιος να έλεγε ότι η ψυχή υφαίνει, ή κτίζει σπίτι. Γιατί όπως φαίνεται , είναι καλύτερα να μη λέμε ότι η ψυχή οικτίρει ή μαθαίνει ή σκέφτεται, αλλά ο άνθρωπος με την ψυχή’’.
‘’…η αίσθηση ξεκινά από συγκεκριμένο αντικείμενο, ενώ η ανάμνηση από την ψυχή’’
‘’Με το ευθύ πράγματι γνωρίζουμε και το ίδιο και το καμπύλο, γιατί κριτής και για τα δύο είναι ο κανόνας, ενώ το καμπύλο δεν είναι κριτής, ούτε για τον εαυτό του, ούτε για το ευθύ’’.
‘’Η εντελέχεια όμως έχει δυο σημασίες: άλλοτε είναι όπως η γνώση κι άλλοτε όπως η άσκηση της γνώσης. Είναι φανερό λοιπόν ότι η ψυχή είναι γνώση, γιατί όσο υπάρχει η ψυχή, υπάρχει και ύπνος και εγρήγορση και η εγρήγορση είναι ανάλογη με την άσκηση της γνώσης, ενώ ο ύπνος με την κατοχή χωρίς την άσκηση’’
‘’…η ψυχή είναι η αρχή των ικανοτήτων και ορίζεται με αυτές, την ικανότητα της θρέψης, της αίσθησης, της σκέψης και με την κίνηση…όπου υπάρχει αίσθηση, υπάρχει και λύπη και ηδονή και όπου υπάρχουν αυτά, υπάρχει αναγκαστικά και επιθυμία. Όσο τώρα για το νου φαίνεται πως πρόκειται για άλλο γένος ψυχής και πως μόνο αυτό μπορεί να χωρίζεται. Τα υπόλοιπα μέρη της ψυχής είναι φανερό πως δε μπορούν να χωριστούν…επίσης όμως διαφέρουν, γιατί η ικανότητα της αίσθησης είναι άλλο από την ικανότητα της γνώμης’’.
‘’Η πείνα και η δίψα τώρα είναι επιθυμία και η μεν πείνα για το ξηρό και το θερμό, ενώ η δίψα για το ψυχρό και το υγρό και η γεύση είναι κάτι σαν το καρύκευμα τους’’
‘’Φαίνεται όμως πως ούτε εκείνα τα αντίθετα, είναι με τον ίδιο τρόπο τροφή το ένα για το άλλο, αλλά το νερό είναι τροφή για τη φωτιά, ενώ η φωτιά δεν τρέφει το νερό. Στα απλά σώματα λοιπόν φαίνεται πως τα αντίθετα είναι κατεξοχήν, το ένα τροφή και το άλλο τρεφόμενο… Αυτό που τρέφει είναι η πρωταρχική ψυχή ενώ εκείνο που τρέφεται είναι το σώμα που την έχει και αυτό με το οποίο τρέφεται είναι η τροφή…κι εδώ σκοπός είναι κάτι να γεννήσει ένα ον ίδιο με τον εαυτό του, η πρωταρχική ψυχή θα ήταν αυτή που μπορεί να γεννήσει ένα ον ίδιο με εκείνο που την έχει’’
‘’Υπεύθυνος για τον ήχο…πρέπει στερεά σώματα να χτυπήσουν μεταξύ τους και με τον αέρα. Κι αυτό συμβαίνει όταν ο αέρας μετά το χτύπημα μείνει στη θέση του και δε διασκορπιστεί. Γι’ αυτό αν χτυπηθεί γρήγορα και δυνα��ά παράγει ήχο, γιατί πρέπει η κίνηση του σώματος που ραπίζει να προλάβει τη διάχυση του αέρα… Ηχώ τώρα, παράγεται όταν ο αέρας, αφού γίνει ένα σώμα, εξαιτίας του αγγείου που τον περιορίζει και τον εμποδίζει να σκορπίσει, απωθήσει πάλι τον εξωτερικό αέρα, σα να ήταν σφαίρα. Φαίνεται όμως ότι πάντα παράγεται ηχώ, αλλά δεν είναι πάντα ευδιάκριτη…’’
‘’…η γεύση μας είναι ακριβέστερη, επειδή είναι κάποιο είδος αφής και ο άνθρωπος έχει πολύ ανεπτυγμένη αυτή την αίσθηση, γιατί στις άλλες αισθήσεις υστερεί από πολλά ζώα, ενώ στην αφή είναι ακριβής με μεγάλη διαφορά από τα άλλα. Γι’ αυτό είναι και το πιο έξυπνο από τα ζώα’’
‘’…όλα τα αισθανόμαστε με ενδιάμεσο…η αίσθηση είναι είδος μεσότητας ανάμεσα στις αντιθέσεις των αισθητών…η αίσθηση είναι εκείνο που δέχεται τις αισθητές μορφές χωρίς την ύλη, όπως το κερί δέχεται το αποτύπωμα του δαχτυλιδιού χωρίς το σίδερο και το χρυσό… Με τον ίδιο τρόπο και η αίσθηση κάθε αισθητού πάσχει από εκείνο που έχει χρώμα, ή γεύση, ή ήχο, όμως όχι από το συγκεκριμένο πράγμα, όπως κι αν λέγεται αυτό, αλλά από την ποιότητα και τη μορφή του’’
‘’…η κίνηση και η ενέργεια και το πάθος υπάρχουν σε αυτό που υφίσταται την ενέργεια…ως δυνατότητα, γιατί η ενέργεια του ενεργητικού και του κινητικού παράγεται μέσα σε αυτό που πάσχει’’
‘’…η αίσθηση και το αισθητό παίρνουν δυο σημασίες, αφενός δηλαδή τη σημασία της δυνατότητας και αφετέρου τη σημασία της εντελέχειας’’
‘’…η ικανότητα που αποφαίνεται, ώστε όπως αποφαίνεται έτσι και σκέπτεται και αισθάνεται… Η αρχή αυτή όμως αποφαίνεται ως εξής: αποφαίνεται τώρα και, συνάμα, πως η διαφορά υπάρχει τώρα, αποφαίνεται λοιπόν ταυτόχρονα. Επομένως η αρχή που κρίνει είναι αδιαίρετη και κρίνει σε χρόνο αδιαίρετο’’
‘’Την ψυχή τώρα την ορίζουν κυρίως με δυο ιδιαίτερα χαρακτηριστικά: από τη μια με την κίνηση στο χώρο και από την άλλη με τη σκέψη, την κρίση και την αίσθηση, ακόμη νομίζουν πως και η σκέψη και η φρόνηση είναι είδος αίσθησης, γιατί και στις δυο περιπτώσεις η ψυχή διακρίνει και γνωρίζει τα όντα και οι παλαιοί βέβαια υποστηρίζουν ότι η σκέψη και η αίσθηση είναι το ίδιο πράγμα, όπως το έχει πει ο Εμπεδοκλής: << η σκέψη των ανθρώπων μεγαλώνει σύμφωνα με αυτό που παρουσιάζεται στις αισθήσεις τους >> και σε άλλο σημείο: << γι’ αυτό και πάντα η σκέψη τους παρουσιάζει διαφορετικές ιδέες >>. Το ίδιο όμως με αυτά θέλει να πει και ο λόγος του Ομήρου: <<γιατί τέτοιος είναι ο νους >>. Γιατί όλοι αυτοί θεωρούν ότι η σκέψη είναι κάτι σωματικό, όπως η αίσθηση και ότι το όμοιο αισθάνεται και σκέπτεται με το όμοιο. Παρόλα αυτά, αυτοί θα έπρεπε ταυτόχρονα να μιλήσουν και για την πλάνη, γιατί αυτή είναι η πιο οικεία στα ζώα, και η ψυχή μέσα σε αυτή περνά τον περισσότερο χρόνο της. Γι’ αυτό είναι ανάγκη, είτε όπως λένε μερικοί << όλα τα φαινόμενα να είναι αληθή >>, είτε η πλάνη να είναι επαφή με το ανόμοιο…’’
‘’ Φαντάζομαι, λοιπόν, σημαίνει σχηματίζω γνώμη γι’ αυτό που αισθάνομαι…το όνομα της η φαντασία το πήρε από το φως ( φάος )…οι εικόνες παραμένουν και μοιάζουν με τις αισθήσεις’’
‘’η νόηση αυτό το μέρος της ψυχής πρέπει να είναι απαθές, μα, να μπορεί να δέχεται τη μορφή και δυνάμει να είναι όπως η μορφή, αλλά να μην ταυτίζεται με αυτή και η σχέση που υπάρχει ανάμεσα στην ικανότητα της αίσθησης και τα αισθητά, να υπάρχει ανάμεσα και στο νου και τα νοητά. Είναι ανάγκη επομένως αφού νοεί τα πάντα, να παραμένει αμιγής…για να κυριαρχεί, δηλαδή να γνωρίζει’’
‘’Πρέπει λοιπόν να συμβαίνει ότι με έναν πίνακα, στον οποίο δεν υπάρχει τίποτα γραμμένο σε εντελέχεια. Πράγμα που συμβαίνει και στην περίπτωση του νου’’
‘’…σε όσα πράγματα βρίσκουμε και την πλάνη και την αλήθεια, υπάρχει και κάποια σύνθεση νοημάτων…πάντα, η πλάνη βρίσκεται στη σύνθεση’’
‘’…για παράδειγμα πως γνωρίζει κανείς το κακό ή το μαύρο, γιατί κατά κάποιον τρόπο το γνωρίζει με το αντίθετο τους. Πρέπει όμως το υποκείμενο που τα γνωρίζει, να είναι δυνάμει αυτά τα αντίθετα και η ενότητα να υπάρχει μέσα του’’
‘’Και η αποστροφή λοιπόν και η επιθυμία, είναι ενέργειες της ίδιας ικανότητας και δεν είναι άλλο να επιθυμείς και άλλο να αποστρέφεσαι, ούτε μεταξύ τους διαφέρουν…αλλά μόνο η ουσία τους είναι διαφορετική…όταν η ψυχή βεβαιώσει ή αρνηθεί το καλό ή το κακό, αποφεύγει, ή επιδιώκει. Γι’ αυτό η ψυχή ποτέ δε σκέφτεται χωρίς εικόνα… Η νοητική ικανότητα λοιπόν σκέφτεται τις μορφές μέσα στις εικόνες’’
‘’…η αλήθεια και το ψεύδος ανήκουν στο ίδιο γένος με το καλό και το κακό, διαφέρουν όμως στο ότι τα πρώτα είναι απόλυτα, ενώ τα άλλα υπάρχουν για κάποιον’’.
‘’…ο νους και η επιθυμία είναι που προκαλούν την κίνηση στο χώρο…ώστε εύλογα φαίνεται πως αυτά τα δύο δίνουν την κίνηση, η επιθυμία και η πρακτική σκέψη, πράγματι κινεί το αντικείμενο της επιθυμίας…το ίδιο και η φαντασία όταν κινεί δεν κινεί χωρίς επιθυμία, ένα πράγμα λοιπόν δίνει την κίνηση, το αντικείμενο της επιθυμίας’’
‘’( ο νους πράγματι προστάζει να αντιστεκόμαστε αποβλέποντας στο μέλλον, ενώ η επιθυμία μας σπρώχνει σε αυτό που είναι ήδη μπροστά μας, γιατί εκείνο που αυτή τη στιγμή είναι ευχάριστο φαίνεται απόλυτα ευχάριστο και απόλυτα καλό, γιατί δε βλέπουμε το μέλλον )’’
‘’Γιατί είναι φανερό πως έχουν μέσα τους πόνο και ηδονή. Αν όμως έχουν αυτά, είναι ανάγκη να έχουν κι επιθυμία’’
‘’…ό,τι γεννήθηκε είναι ανάγκη να αναπτυχθεί και να ωριμάσει και να παρακμάσει και αυτά χωρίς τροφή είναι αδύνατο να γίνουν’’
‘’Αμέσως μόλις γεννηθούν τα παιδιά, εκδηλώνουν επιθυμίες, ενώ η σκέψη και η περίσκεψη, από τη φύση, συνοδεύουν τον άνθρωπο καθώς η ηλικία προχωρεί. Γι’ αυτό επιβάλλεται να ασχοληθούμε με το σώμα πρώτα και μετά με την ψυχή, πρώτα με την επιθυμία και μετά με το νου. Προς όφελος της ψυχής, προηγείται η φροντίδα για το σώμα, προς όφελος του νου, φροντίδα για την επιθυμία’’
Λίγες σκέψεις:
Η διττή φύση, υπόσταση, μορφή πάντοτε με γοήτευε, εδώ βλέπουμε να ξεδιπλώνεται μέσα σε μια ολόκληρη θεωρία που αγγίζει σχεδόν όλες τις επιστήμες πως όλα ξεκινούν από μας, φανταστείτε μας σαν τετράεδρα στους τρεις άξονες όπου οι πλευρές μας είναι συνιστώσες διανυσμάτων, τα διανύσματα όμως που τις αποτελούν εκεί βρίσκονται…
Το βιβλίο αυτό είναι ποτ πουρί όλων των γνωστών τότε επιστημών. Πώς να κατανοηθεί η ψυχή του ατόμου, αν δεν γίνει κατανοητή η ψυχή της ζωής; Επομένως βλέπω με απόλυτο θαυμασμό ότι ο Αριστοτέλης παρατηρεί τον εαυτό του, τους ανθρώπους γύρω του, τη γη, τη θάλασσα, τα ζώα, τα φυτά χωρίς να εκφέρει γνώμη. Πρώτα μελετά, χρωματίζει τη γνώμη του μες στη γνώση και προχωρά. Αυτός ο μηχανισμός είναι τόσο όμορφος.
Ένα από τα συμπεράσματα που με απασχολούν πολύ καιρό είναι αυτό: δε μπορούμε να αγγίξουμε την ψυχή του άλλου, δίχως να αντικρύσουμε, είτε διαπεράσουμε και τη σάρκα ταυτόχρονα. Η μορφή και η υπόσταση είναι αλληλένδετες. Η τάδε ψυχή καθορίζει τη δείνα μορφή, την ευπάθεια, την κίνηση , την ομιλία, την κάνει αυτό που είναι. Αν εγώ φορέσω την προβιά του Γιώργου και εννοώ οι ψυχές μας να ανταλλαχθούν το πιστεύω πως σε λίγο καιρό θα βλέπεις το Γιώργο και θα λες πως σου θυμίζει εμένα.
Διαφωνώ κάπως με τον Αριστοτέλη, δεν πιστεύω πως η επιθυμία μπορεί να γεννηθεί χωρίς σκέψη, η βούληση ίσως. Αλλά το θέμα είναι μπορούν πραγματικά να διαχωριστούν η βούληση απ’ την επιθυμία; Σε αυτό δε μου απάντησε. Είναι μήπως η επιθυμία μια αρχή της οποίας η κίνηση γίνεται με τη θέληση; Είναι δυο διαφορετικές φύσεις; Δεν ξέρω αλλά δεν τις ταυτίζω.
Όπως επίσης θεωρώ ελλιπή την ελάχιστη εξέταση της ανάμνησης, ένα θέμα που με απασχολεί πολύ γενικά και ακόμη περισσότερο αφότου διάβασα τις Θάλασσες του νότου, του Μονταλμπάν που μια απ’ τις κεντρικές ιδέες προέρχεται από ένα στίχο κάποιου ποιητή ο οποίος λέει ουσιαστικά πως η επιθυμία κι η ανάμνηση δε μπορούν ταυτόχρονα να βρίσκονται στον ίδιο χώρο, η μια είναι δολοφόνος της άλλης. Δεν ξέρω αν ισχύει ούτε αυτό, δέχομαι όμως το λόγο του πως η ανάμνηση ξεκινάει απ’ την ψυχή. Δε μου αρκεί όμως.
Τέλος μου αρέσει η ιδέα και συμφωνώ πως ο νους κι η ψυχή με τις ικανότητες της δεν εδράζονται στον ίδιο τόπο.
Και πάλι όμως ανέπτυξε πολύ το θέμα του τι λέγανε οι παλαιότεροι, εξ’ ίσου εκτεταμένα τις ίδιες τις αισθήσεις και στη σκέψη, τη βούληση, την επιθυμία, την ανάμνηση δεν έδωσε την έκταση που θα ήθελα.
3.5 αστέρια.
‘’Αρχή για κάθε απόδειξη είναι η ουσία, έτσι που όσοι ορισμοί δε συμβαίνει να μας κάνουν γνωστές τις ιδιότητες, αλλά και ούτε μας διευκολύνουν να υποθέσουμε κάτι γι’ αυτές, είναι φανερό ότι όλοι διατυπώνονται για χάρη του συλλογισμού και είναι κενοί περιεχομένου’’.
‘’Το έμψυχο πράγματι δείχνει να διαφέρει από το άψυχο, σε δύο κυρίως πράγματα, στην κίνηση και την αίσθηση’’.
‘’Δεν αντιμετωπίζει λοιπόν το νου ως μια ικανότητα για την αλήθεια, αλλά λέει ότι ψυχή και νους είναι το ίδιο π��άγμα’’.
‘’…ο νους είναι το ένα και η γνώση το δύο ( γιατί προχωρεί προς ένα σημείο από μια μοναδική κατεύθυνση ), ενώ ο αριθμός του επιπέδου είναι η γνώμη και εκείνος του στερεού η αίσθηση… Τα πράγματα εξάλλου συλλαμβάνονται άλλα με το νου, άλλα με τη γνώση, άλλα με τη γνώμη και άλλα με την αίσθηση, και, οι αριθμοί αυτοί είναι ταυτόχρονα οι ιδέες των πραγμάτων’’.( συγκριτική θέση με του Πλάτωνα, όπως ο ίδιος αναφέρει )
‘’…τέσσερα είδη κινήσεων, η φορά, η αλλοίωση, η φθίση και η αύξηση’’.
‘’Το σώμα όμως κινείται αλλάζοντας θέση και η ψυχή επομένως θα έπρεπε να μεταβληθεί όπως το σώμα, αλλάζοντας θέση είτε ολόκληρη, είτε κατά μέρη. Αν όμως μπορούσε να συμβεί αυτό, θα μπορούσε επίσης να βγει από το σώμα και πάλι να ξαναμπεί και το αποτέλεσμα θα ήταν να ανασταίνονται τα ζώα που πέθαναν’’.
‘’…. η ψυχή δε φαίνεται να κινεί το ζώο με αυτό τον τρόπο, αλλά με μια ορισμένη βούληση και κάποια σκέψη’’
‘’Ο νους όμως είναι ένας και συνεχής, όπως ακριβώς η νόηση και η νόηση είναι τα νοήματα και τα τελευταία με το να διαδέχονται το ένα το άλλο, αποτελούν ενότητα όπως ο αριθμός, αλλά όχι όπως το μέγεθος’’.
‘’πως θα σκεφτεί ο νους το διαιρετό με το αδιαίρετο, ή το αδιαίρετο με το διαιρετό; …. η κίνηση του νου είναι η νόηση’’
‘’ τι είναι αυτό που χάνεται όταν η ψυχή αφήσει το σώμα’’;
‘’Να λέμε όμως ότι η ψυχή οργίζεται, είναι σαν κάποιος να έλεγε ότι η ψυχή υφαίνει, ή κτίζει σπίτι. Γιατί όπως φαίνεται , είναι καλύτερα να μη λέμε ότι η ψυχή οικτίρει ή μαθαίνει ή σκέφτεται, αλλά ο άνθρωπος με την ψυχή’’.
‘’…η αίσθηση ξεκινά από συγκεκριμένο αντικείμενο, ενώ η ανάμνηση από την ψυχή’’
‘’Με το ευθύ πράγματι γνωρίζουμε και το ίδιο και το καμπύλο, γιατί κριτής και για τα δύο είναι ο κανόνας, ενώ το καμπύλο δεν είναι κριτής, ούτε για τον εαυτό του, ούτε για το ευθύ’’.
‘’Η εντελέχεια όμως έχει δυο σημασίες: άλλοτε είναι όπως η γνώση κι άλλοτε όπως η άσκηση της γνώσης. Είναι φανερό λοιπόν ότι η ψυχή είναι γνώση, γιατί όσο υπάρχει η ψυχή, υπάρχει και ύπνος και εγρήγορση και η εγρήγορση είναι ανάλογη με την άσκηση της γνώσης, ενώ ο ύπνος με την κατοχή χωρίς την άσκηση’’
‘’…η ψυχή είναι η αρχή των ικανοτήτων και ορίζεται με αυτές, την ικανότητα της θρέψης, της αίσθησης, της σκέψης και με την κίνηση…όπου υπάρχει αίσθηση, υπάρχει και λύπη και ηδονή και όπου υπάρχουν αυτά, υπάρχει αναγκαστικά και επιθυμία. Όσο τώρα για το νου φαίνεται πως πρόκειται για άλλο γένος ψυχής και πως μόνο αυτό μπορεί να χωρίζεται. Τα υπόλοιπα μέρη της ψυχής είναι φανερό πως δε μπορούν να χωριστούν…επίσης όμως διαφέρουν, γιατί η ικανότητα της αίσθησης είναι άλλο από την ικανότητα της γνώμης’’.
‘’Η πείνα και η δίψα τώρα είναι επιθυμία και η μεν πείνα για το ξηρό και το θερμό, ενώ η δίψα για το ψυχρό και το υγρό και η γεύση είναι κάτι σαν το καρύκευμα τους’’
‘’Φαίνεται όμως πως ούτε εκείνα τα αντίθετα, είναι με τον ίδιο τρόπο τροφή το ένα για το άλλο, αλλά το νερό είναι τροφή για τη φωτιά, ενώ η φωτιά δεν τρέφει το νερό. Στα απλά σώματα λοιπόν φαίνεται πως τα αντίθετα είναι κατεξοχήν, το ένα τροφή και το άλλο τρεφόμενο… Αυτό που τρέφει είναι η πρωταρχική ψυχή ενώ εκείνο που τρέφεται είναι το σώμα που την έχει και αυτό με το οποίο τρέφεται είναι η τροφή…κι εδώ σκοπός είναι κάτι να γεννήσει ένα ον ίδιο με τον εαυτό του, η πρωταρχική ψυχή θα ήταν αυτή που μπορεί να γεννήσει ένα ον ίδιο με εκείνο που την έχει’’
‘’Υπεύθυνος για τον ήχο…πρέπει στερεά σώματα να χτυπήσουν μεταξύ τους και με τον αέρα. Κι αυτό συμβαίνει όταν ο αέρας μετά το χτύπημα μείνει στη θέση του και δε διασκορπιστεί. Γι’ αυτό αν χτυπηθεί γρήγορα και δυνα��ά παράγει ήχο, γιατί πρέπει η κίνηση του σώματος που ραπίζει να προλάβει τη διάχυση του αέρα… Ηχώ τώρα, παράγεται όταν ο αέρας, αφού γίνει ένα σώμα, εξαιτίας του αγγείου που τον περιορίζει και τον εμποδίζει να σκορπίσει, απωθήσει πάλι τον εξωτερικό αέρα, σα να ήταν σφαίρα. Φαίνεται όμως ότι πάντα παράγεται ηχώ, αλλά δεν είναι πάντα ευδιάκριτη…’’
‘’…η γεύση μας είναι ακριβέστερη, επειδή είναι κάποιο είδος αφής και ο άνθρωπος έχει πολύ ανεπτυγμένη αυτή την αίσθηση, γιατί στις άλλες αισθήσεις υστερεί από πολλά ζώα, ενώ στην αφή είναι ακριβής με μεγάλη διαφορά από τα άλλα. Γι’ αυτό είναι και το πιο έξυπνο από τα ζώα’’
‘’…όλα τα αισθανόμαστε με ενδιάμεσο…η αίσθηση είναι είδος μεσότητας ανάμεσα στις αντιθέσεις των αισθητών…η αίσθηση είναι εκείνο που δέχεται τις αισθητές μορφές χωρίς την ύλη, όπως το κερί δέχεται το αποτύπωμα του δαχτυλιδιού χωρίς το σίδερο και το χρυσό… Με τον ίδιο τρόπο και η αίσθηση κάθε αισθητού πάσχει από εκείνο που έχει χρώμα, ή γεύση, ή ήχο, όμως όχι από το συγκεκριμένο πράγμα, όπως κι αν λέγεται αυτό, αλλά από την ποιότητα και τη μορφή του’’
‘’…η κίνηση και η ενέργεια και το πάθος υπάρχουν σε αυτό που υφίσταται την ενέργεια…ως δυνατότητα, γιατί η ενέργεια του ενεργητικού και του κινητικού παράγεται μέσα σε αυτό που πάσχει’’
‘’…η αίσθηση και το αισθητό παίρνουν δυο σημασίες, αφενός δηλαδή τη σημασία της δυνατότητας και αφετέρου τη σημασία της εντελέχειας’’
‘’…η ικανότητα που αποφαίνεται, ώστε όπως αποφαίνεται έτσι και σκέπτεται και αισθάνεται… Η αρχή αυτή όμως αποφαίνεται ως εξής: αποφαίνεται τώρα και, συνάμα, πως η διαφορά υπάρχει τώρα, αποφαίνεται λοιπόν ταυτόχρονα. Επομένως η αρχή που κρίνει είναι αδιαίρετη και κρίνει σε χρόνο αδιαίρετο’’
‘’Την ψυχή τώρα την ορίζουν κυρίως με δυο ιδιαίτερα χαρακτηριστικά: από τη μια με την κίνηση στο χώρο και από την άλλη με τη σκέψη, την κρίση και την αίσθηση, ακόμη νομίζουν πως και η σκέψη και η φρόνηση είναι είδος αίσθησης, γιατί και στις δυο περιπτώσεις η ψυχή διακρίνει και γνωρίζει τα όντα και οι παλαιοί βέβαια υποστηρίζουν ότι η σκέψη και η αίσθηση είναι το ίδιο πράγμα, όπως το έχει πει ο Εμπεδοκλής: << η σκέψη των ανθρώπων μεγαλώνει σύμφωνα με αυτό που παρουσιάζεται στις αισθήσεις τους >> και σε άλλο σημείο: << γι’ αυτό και πάντα η σκέψη τους παρουσιάζει διαφορετικές ιδέες >>. Το ίδιο όμως με αυτά θέλει να πει και ο λόγος του Ομήρου: <<γιατί τέτοιος είναι ο νους >>. Γιατί όλοι αυτοί θεωρούν ότι η σκέψη είναι κάτι σωματικό, όπως η αίσθηση και ότι το όμοιο αισθάνεται και σκέπτεται με το όμοιο. Παρόλα αυτά, αυτοί θα έπρεπε ταυτόχρονα να μιλήσουν και για την πλάνη, γιατί αυτή είναι η πιο οικεία στα ζώα, και η ψυχή μέσα σε αυτή περνά τον περισσότερο χρόνο της. Γι’ αυτό είναι ανάγκη, είτε όπως λένε μερικοί << όλα τα φαινόμενα να είναι αληθή >>, είτε η πλάνη να είναι επαφή με το ανόμοιο…’’
‘’ Φαντάζομαι, λοιπόν, σημαίνει σχηματίζω γνώμη γι’ αυτό που αισθάνομαι…το όνομα της η φαντασία το πήρε από το φως ( φάος )…οι εικόνες παραμένουν και μοιάζουν με τις αισθήσεις’’
‘’η νόηση αυτό το μέρος της ψυχής πρέπει να είναι απαθές, μα, να μπορεί να δέχεται τη μορφή και δυνάμει να είναι όπως η μορφή, αλλά να μην ταυτίζεται με αυτή και η σχέση που υπάρχει ανάμεσα στην ικανότητα της αίσθησης και τα αισθητά, να υπάρχει ανάμεσα και στο νου και τα νοητά. Είναι ανάγκη επομένως αφού νοεί τα πάντα, να παραμένει αμιγής…για να κυριαρχεί, δηλαδή να γνωρίζει’’
‘’Πρέπει λοιπόν να συμβαίνει ότι με έναν πίνακα, στον οποίο δεν υπάρχει τίποτα γραμμένο σε εντελέχεια. Πράγμα που συμβαίνει και στην περίπτωση του νου’’
‘’…σε όσα πράγματα βρίσκουμε και την πλάνη και την αλήθεια, υπάρχει και κάποια σύνθεση νοημάτων…πάντα, η πλάνη βρίσκεται στη σύνθεση’’
‘’…για παράδειγμα πως γνωρίζει κανείς το κακό ή το μαύρο, γιατί κατά κάποιον τρόπο το γνωρίζει με το αντίθετο τους. Πρέπει όμως το υποκείμενο που τα γνωρίζει, να είναι δυνάμει αυτά τα αντίθετα και η ενότητα να υπάρχει μέσα του’’
‘’Και η αποστροφή λοιπόν και η επιθυμία, είναι ενέργειες της ίδιας ικανότητας και δεν είναι άλλο να επιθυμείς και άλλο να αποστρέφεσαι, ούτε μεταξύ τους διαφέρουν…αλλά μόνο η ουσία τους είναι διαφορετική…όταν η ψυχή βεβαιώσει ή αρνηθεί το καλό ή το κακό, αποφεύγει, ή επιδιώκει. Γι’ αυτό η ψυχή ποτέ δε σκέφτεται χωρίς εικόνα… Η νοητική ικανότητα λοιπόν σκέφτεται τις μορφές μέσα στις εικόνες’’
‘’…η αλήθεια και το ψεύδος ανήκουν στο ίδιο γένος με το καλό και το κακό, διαφέρουν όμως στο ότι τα πρώτα είναι απόλυτα, ενώ τα άλλα υπάρχουν για κάποιον’’.
‘’…ο νους και η επιθυμία είναι που προκαλούν την κίνηση στο χώρο…ώστε εύλογα φαίνεται πως αυτά τα δύο δίνουν την κίνηση, η επιθυμία και η πρακτική σκέψη, πράγματι κινεί το αντικείμενο της επιθυμίας…το ίδιο και η φαντασία όταν κινεί δεν κινεί χωρίς επιθυμία, ένα πράγμα λοιπόν δίνει την κίνηση, το αντικείμενο της επιθυμίας’’
‘’( ο νους πράγματι προστάζει να αντιστεκόμαστε αποβλέποντας στο μέλλον, ενώ η επιθυμία μας σπρώχνει σε αυτό που είναι ήδη μπροστά μας, γιατί εκείνο που αυτή τη στιγμή είναι ευχάριστο φαίνεται απόλυτα ευχάριστο και απόλυτα καλό, γιατί δε βλέπουμε το μέλλον )’’
‘’Γιατί είναι φανερό πως έχουν μέσα τους πόνο και ηδονή. Αν όμως έχουν αυτά, είναι ανάγκη να έχουν κι επιθυμία’’
‘’…ό,τι γεννήθηκε είναι ανάγκη να αναπτυχθεί και να ωριμάσει και να παρακμάσει και αυτά χωρίς τροφή είναι αδύνατο να γίνουν’’
‘’Αμέσως μόλις γεννηθούν τα παιδιά, εκδηλώνουν επιθυμίες, ενώ η σκέψη και η περίσκεψη, από τη φύση, συνοδεύουν τον άνθρωπο καθώς η ηλικία προχωρεί. Γι’ αυτό επιβάλλεται να ασχοληθούμε με το σώμα πρώτα και μετά με την ψυχή, πρώτα με την επιθυμία και μετά με το νου. Προς όφελος της ψυχής, προηγείται η φροντίδα για το σώμα, προς όφελος του νου, φροντίδα για την επιθυμία’’
Λίγες σκέψεις:
Η διττή φύση, υπόσταση, μορφή πάντοτε με γοήτευε, εδώ βλέπουμε να ξεδιπλώνεται μέσα σε μια ολόκληρη θεωρία που αγγίζει σχεδόν όλες τις επιστήμες πως όλα ξεκινούν από μας, φανταστείτε μας σαν τετράεδρα στους τρεις άξονες όπου οι πλευρές μας είναι συνιστώσες διανυσμάτων, τα διανύσματα όμως που τις αποτελούν εκεί βρίσκονται…
Το βιβλίο αυτό είναι ποτ πουρί όλων των γνωστών τότε επιστημών. Πώς να κατανοηθεί η ψυχή του ατόμου, αν δεν γίνει κατανοητή η ψυχή της ζωής; Επομένως βλέπω με απόλυτο θαυμασμό ότι ο Αριστοτέλης παρατηρεί τον εαυτό του, τους ανθρώπους γύρω του, τη γη, τη θάλασσα, τα ζώα, τα φυτά χωρίς να εκφέρει γνώμη. Πρώτα μελετά, χρωματίζει τη γνώμη του μες στη γνώση και προχωρά. Αυτός ο μηχανισμός είναι τόσο όμορφος.
Ένα από τα συμπεράσματα που με απασχολούν πολύ καιρό είναι αυτό: δε μπορούμε να αγγίξουμε την ψυχή του άλλου, δίχως να αντικρύσουμε, είτε διαπεράσουμε και τη σάρκα ταυτόχρονα. Η μορφή και η υπόσταση είναι αλληλένδετες. Η τάδε ψυχή καθορίζει τη δείνα μορφή, την ευπάθεια, την κίνηση , την ομιλία, την κάνει αυτό που είναι. Αν εγώ φορέσω την προβιά του Γιώργου και εννοώ οι ψυχές μας να ανταλλαχθούν το πιστεύω πως σε λίγο καιρό θα βλέπεις το Γιώργο και θα λες πως σου θυμίζει εμένα.
Διαφωνώ κάπως με τον Αριστοτέλη, δεν πιστεύω πως η επιθυμία μπορεί να γεννηθεί χωρίς σκέψη, η βούληση ίσως. Αλλά το θέμα είναι μπορούν πραγματικά να διαχωριστούν η βούληση απ’ την επιθυμία; Σε αυτό δε μου απάντησε. Είναι μήπως η επιθυμία μια αρχή της οποίας η κίνηση γίνεται με τη θέληση; Είναι δυο διαφορετικές φύσεις; Δεν ξέρω αλλά δεν τις ταυτίζω.
Όπως επίσης θεωρώ ελλιπή την ελάχιστη εξέταση της ανάμνησης, ένα θέμα που με απασχολεί πολύ γενικά και ακόμη περισσότερο αφότου διάβασα τις Θάλασσες του νότου, του Μονταλμπάν που μια απ’ τις κεντρικές ιδέες προέρχεται από ένα στίχο κάποιου ποιητή ο οποίος λέει ουσιαστικά πως η επιθυμία κι η ανάμνηση δε μπορούν ταυτόχρονα να βρίσκονται στον ίδιο χώρο, η μια είναι δολοφόνος της άλλης. Δεν ξέρω αν ισχύει ούτε αυτό, δέχομαι όμως το λόγο του πως η ανάμνηση ξεκινάει απ’ την ψυχή. Δε μου αρκεί όμως.
Τέλος μου αρέσει η ιδέα και συμφωνώ πως ο νους κι η ψυχή με τις ικανότητες της δεν εδράζονται στον ίδιο τόπο.
Και πάλι όμως ανέπτυξε πολύ το θέμα του τι λέγανε οι παλαιότεροι, εξ’ ίσου εκτεταμένα τις ίδιες τις αισθήσεις και στη σκέψη, τη βούληση, την επιθυμία, την ανάμνηση δεν έδωσε την έκταση που θα ήθελα.
3.5 αστέρια.
June 16, 2014
كنت قد قرأت كتاب النفس لابن باجة وهو من اكبر شراح ارسطاطاليس بعد ابن سينا وقد وضح علم النفس على منهج ارسطو
اعجبني مما جاء بكتابه قوله
من لا يوثق بأنه يعرف حال نفسه فهو اخلق ان لا يوثق به في معرفة غيره
أما كتاب النفس لارسطو فقد رأيته ممتعاً اكثر من كتب الشرح بل وابسط
الكتاب هنا من ثلاثة اجزاء الاول في مذاهب القدماء الرئيسية في النفس والثانية في تعريف النفس وطبيعتها وجوهرها وتركيبها واللوازم التي تتعلق بالاحوال التي تخص النفس بالذات والاحوال التي تخصها في الحيوان وحركتها ويصف النفس انها منقسمة فجزء منها يفكر وجزء اخر يشتاق فماذا يوحد النفس اذا كانت بطبيعتها منقسمة؟
والثالثة في الحس المشترك والتخيل والتفكير والنزوع
اعجبني مما جاء بكتابه قوله
من لا يوثق بأنه يعرف حال نفسه فهو اخلق ان لا يوثق به في معرفة غيره
أما كتاب النفس لارسطو فقد رأيته ممتعاً اكثر من كتب الشرح بل وابسط
الكتاب هنا من ثلاثة اجزاء الاول في مذاهب القدماء الرئيسية في النفس والثانية في تعريف النفس وطبيعتها وجوهرها وتركيبها واللوازم التي تتعلق بالاحوال التي تخص النفس بالذات والاحوال التي تخصها في الحيوان وحركتها ويصف النفس انها منقسمة فجزء منها يفكر وجزء اخر يشتاق فماذا يوحد النفس اذا كانت بطبيعتها منقسمة؟
والثالثة في الحس المشترك والتخيل والتفكير والنزوع
April 8, 2016
Aristotle's De Anima was the primary text for the first part of my course on the history of philosophy: ancient philosophy. It is almost certainly composed of lecture notes by Aristotle and/or some of his more astute students. Its translation as On the Soul in English is likely to mislead, or at least to surprise, modern readers who have in mind the associations belonging to that laden word. For what we generally understand by 'the soul' is not that in which Aristotle is interested. In De Anima, Aristotle seeks to understand 'psyche', or that in virtue of which something is alive – which, of course, is a much broader investigation than translations of 'psyche' in English, like 'soul' (or 'mind', 'consciousness', etc.) would suggest. As Lawson-Tancred points out in his long and highly informative introduction to this edition, a more accurate translation of 'psyche' would be 'principle of life' or 'principle of animation' – and it is this principle that Aristotle examines in De Anima.
Aristotle begins from this notion, which runs through much of earlier Greek thought – namely that the soul is the principle of life, that which makes living things alive, and that which is responsible for the different living fuctions. He further refines the principle, after taking issue with his predecessors in Book I, in order to arrive at his account of the soul as the form of a living body, or more precisely, the 'first actuality (or first entelechy) of a natural body which has organs'. The first actuality is a special sort of potentiality (hexis), which is 'actual' compared to the potentialities of non-living things. Differently put, to speak of the soul is to speak of the potentialities that a living thing has for different forms of life. This account, ultimately, is descriptive/classificatory rather than explanatory: the notion of 'actuality' employed by Aristotle serves to distinguish the potentialities possessed by a living thing from the potentialities (for movement and change, for instance) held by inanimate bodies. As Hamlyn points out, Aristotle, in a relatively simplistic conceptual scheme, tries to distinguish between living things and inanimate things, and to provide a descriptive account of forms of life using a few schematic concepts like 'potentiality', 'activity', 'actuality', and 'being affected'. The manifestations of life are all considered as forms of change, or, more accurately, as the actualizations of various potentialities. These potentialities constitute the 'faculties' on which Aristotle expounds in De Anima, such as those of nutrition and reproduction, perception, and thought, as well as imagination and locomotion – which are fitted somewhere between perception and thought. These faculties are all things that a living thing can do or has the potential for doing, and Aristotle thinks that they form a hierarchy so that the higher functions are dependent on the lower. As Lawson-Tancred straightforwardly puts it in the introduction, the task of De Anima, for Aristotle, is to show how nutrition occurs in plants, animals, and men, how perception and motivation occur in animals and men but not plants, and how thought occurs in men alone of the species of which we have certain knowledge.
For all of its conceptual simplicity and partially outdated physiology, De Anima remains, as Hamlyn states, the first systematic attempt to account for all the activities of the soul and mind under a single theoretical umbrella. It is also the work that contains, as a consequence of Aristotle's diligent inquiry, the first systematic treatment of the imagination as a distinct faculty of the soul.
The professor for the ancient philosophy part of my course especially recommended this edition. For my essay, which is on Aristotle's treatment of the imagination (and Averroës' commentary on it), I am reading 4 different translations of De Anima; so far, I prefer Lawson-Tancred's translation, and his extensive introduction (116 pages!) to the work is excellent.
Aristotle begins from this notion, which runs through much of earlier Greek thought – namely that the soul is the principle of life, that which makes living things alive, and that which is responsible for the different living fuctions. He further refines the principle, after taking issue with his predecessors in Book I, in order to arrive at his account of the soul as the form of a living body, or more precisely, the 'first actuality (or first entelechy) of a natural body which has organs'. The first actuality is a special sort of potentiality (hexis), which is 'actual' compared to the potentialities of non-living things. Differently put, to speak of the soul is to speak of the potentialities that a living thing has for different forms of life. This account, ultimately, is descriptive/classificatory rather than explanatory: the notion of 'actuality' employed by Aristotle serves to distinguish the potentialities possessed by a living thing from the potentialities (for movement and change, for instance) held by inanimate bodies. As Hamlyn points out, Aristotle, in a relatively simplistic conceptual scheme, tries to distinguish between living things and inanimate things, and to provide a descriptive account of forms of life using a few schematic concepts like 'potentiality', 'activity', 'actuality', and 'being affected'. The manifestations of life are all considered as forms of change, or, more accurately, as the actualizations of various potentialities. These potentialities constitute the 'faculties' on which Aristotle expounds in De Anima, such as those of nutrition and reproduction, perception, and thought, as well as imagination and locomotion – which are fitted somewhere between perception and thought. These faculties are all things that a living thing can do or has the potential for doing, and Aristotle thinks that they form a hierarchy so that the higher functions are dependent on the lower. As Lawson-Tancred straightforwardly puts it in the introduction, the task of De Anima, for Aristotle, is to show how nutrition occurs in plants, animals, and men, how perception and motivation occur in animals and men but not plants, and how thought occurs in men alone of the species of which we have certain knowledge.
For all of its conceptual simplicity and partially outdated physiology, De Anima remains, as Hamlyn states, the first systematic attempt to account for all the activities of the soul and mind under a single theoretical umbrella. It is also the work that contains, as a consequence of Aristotle's diligent inquiry, the first systematic treatment of the imagination as a distinct faculty of the soul.
The professor for the ancient philosophy part of my course especially recommended this edition. For my essay, which is on Aristotle's treatment of the imagination (and Averroës' commentary on it), I am reading 4 different translations of De Anima; so far, I prefer Lawson-Tancred's translation, and his extensive introduction (116 pages!) to the work is excellent.
July 10, 2023
The human being, to Aristotle, is a body soul compound, driven by imagination and appetite, or the calculations of the mind. It is the soul that provide the animation to all animate beings, the pattern of all life to all living things, and the source of formation to all forms.
January 22, 2024
Aristoteles his in tribus libris, qui "De Anima" appellantur, principium magnifici praecepti sui facit. Idem praeceptum in primis philosophia vivendi est - quid est vivere, quae res sunt viventes, quid sunt condiciones vitae? Igitur animam principium rerum viventium esse putat. Eam tres in partes dividit: Prima est alens, quem stirpes animalia homines habent, secunda percipiens, quem animalia hominesque habent, denique rationalis, quem solum homines habent. Eadem divisione etiam in libro I,13 Ethicae Nicomacheae utitur.
Praeterea multas veterum philosophorum doctrinas primo in libro "De Anima" colligit, explanat, aestimat. Idem magna veteris philosophiae Graecae fons est. Sunt multa testimonia Heracliti, Empedoclis, Platonis et aliorum illustrium philosophorum.
Certum est hanc librum omnibus, qui litteras et philosophiam Graecam ament, legendum esse!
Praeterea multas veterum philosophorum doctrinas primo in libro "De Anima" colligit, explanat, aestimat. Idem magna veteris philosophiae Graecae fons est. Sunt multa testimonia Heracliti, Empedoclis, Platonis et aliorum illustrium philosophorum.
Certum est hanc librum omnibus, qui litteras et philosophiam Graecam ament, legendum esse!
April 14, 2023
O livro "De Anima" (Da Alma), escrito por Aristóteles, é uma obra filosófica que trata da natureza da alma e suas funções. Aristóteles argumenta que a alma é a forma do corpo e que ela é responsável pela vida, movimento e pensamento.
Aristóteles divide a alma em três tipos: a alma vegetativa, a alma sensitiva e a alma racional. A alma vegetativa é responsável pelas funções vitais dos seres vivos, como a nutrição, o crescimento e a reprodução. A alma sensitiva é responsável pelas funções sensoriais e emocionais, como a percepção, o desejo e a emoção. Por fim, a alma racional é responsável pelo pensamento e pela razão.
Aristóteles também discute a relação entre a alma e o corpo, argumentando que a alma é inseparável do corpo e que as funções da alma dependem do corpo. Ele afirma que a alma é mortal e que ela é destruída quando o corpo morre.
Ao longo do livro, Aristóteles explora várias questões filosóficas relacionadas à alma, como a relação entre a alma e a mente, a natureza da percepção e da memória, e a relação entre a alma e a moralidade. "De Anima" é uma obra fundamental na história da filosofia e influenciou muitos filósofos posteriores.
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Aristóteles divide a alma em três tipos: a alma vegetativa, a alma sensitiva e a alma racional. A alma vegetativa é responsável pelas funções vitais dos seres vivos, como a nutrição, o crescimento e a reprodução. A alma sensitiva é responsável pelas funções sensoriais e emocionais, como a percepção, o desejo e a emoção. Por fim, a alma racional é responsável pelo pensamento e pela razão.
Aristóteles também discute a relação entre a alma e o corpo, argumentando que a alma é inseparável do corpo e que as funções da alma dependem do corpo. Ele afirma que a alma é mortal e que ela é destruída quando o corpo morre.
Ao longo do livro, Aristóteles explora várias questões filosóficas relacionadas à alma, como a relação entre a alma e a mente, a natureza da percepção e da memória, e a relação entre a alma e a moralidade. "De Anima" é uma obra fundamental na história da filosofia e influenciou muitos filósofos posteriores.
PS, eu te amo. E pedi ao aplicativo Ask AI para escrever isso para mim. Obtenha gratuitamente --> https://get-askai.app
January 5, 2022
Una obra un tanto difícil de entender para el lector no iniciado. Aristóteles parte de la existencia del alma para preguntarse: ¿qué es el alma? y ¿en qué consiste el alma? A partir de aquí, utilizará su sabiduría y su conocimiento para tratar de responder a estas dos cuestiones fundamentales.
Entiendo que para poder realizar una lectura comprensiva de este texto es necesario contar con una buena base de conocimiento sobre los griegos clásicos, y si es posible, también con la orientación de algún experto en la materia.
Recomendable.
Entiendo que para poder realizar una lectura comprensiva de este texto es necesario contar con una buena base de conocimiento sobre los griegos clásicos, y si es posible, también con la orientación de algún experto en la materia.
Recomendable.
April 18, 2024
absolute banger
August 26, 2017
عن حواس الإنسان الخمس يتحدث أرسطو ولكن من منظور فلسفى و مفاهيم قديمة و نظريات بعيدة عن العلم الحديث .
January 5, 2023
As expected, Aristotle is right about most things.
July 5, 2016
It was very difficult to engage this book (the writing is bad), but there’s an overall perspective that might be gleaned from it.* Aristotle describes three levels of soul, each with distinctive characteristics (plant–nutritive, animal-movement, and human-movement in thought). But underneath each the mission of life is the same. It’s to enable the body to survive and reproduce. Seen this way, today’s evolutionary theory adds a scientific basis to what Aristotle described over two thousand years ago: Replicating DNA as expressed in its plant, animal and human (body) forms, might be seen as the soul. It can be seen as a life force that actively seeks the objects it needs to survive (and replicate) and actively defends itself against threats.
While Aristotle’s final cause has been criticized, there’s an certain undeniably about it: Like an acorn growing into a tree, the human body does develop into its pre-determined (assuming favorable conditions) adult form. Looked at from the modern perspective, the final cause is not an external cause that pulls this development process. Rather, there’s a “life force” (“soul”) the development of which proceeds logically from within, toward an inevitable result (just like adding two and two ends up, necessarily, as four). It’s self-assembly and self-organization toward an inherent design of what is meant to be.
Aristotle and many modern-day thinkers focus on the essence of human soul as “man’s” (i.e., human) capacity to think, but that’s only taking the cream from the top. This ability to think is a by-product of a mind that was developed to serve the same elemental goals seen in all of life: nurture, or the importation of energy to counter entropy, and replication. Seen this way, human essence (the soul), is life’s essence and life’s soul so that, at our most fundamental level, we are one with all of life, not its exception. In this sense, science is one with, say, Buddhism.
*This is my second time around with this book, but it’s a different edition and translation. It was interesting to compare this review with my August 2009 review on De Animas (On the Soul). While my reaction to the book is the same, both versions illustrate the potential issues involved with translation. On page one of De Animas, the translator (Hugh Lawson-Tancred) writes: “For the soul is, so to speak, the first principle of living things.” In this version I just read, translated by J.P. Smith, that same line is, “[F]or the soul is in some sense the principle of animal life.” The former version is consistent with the intent of my review. The second version could be read to make a distinction between animal and human soul.
While Aristotle’s final cause has been criticized, there’s an certain undeniably about it: Like an acorn growing into a tree, the human body does develop into its pre-determined (assuming favorable conditions) adult form. Looked at from the modern perspective, the final cause is not an external cause that pulls this development process. Rather, there’s a “life force” (“soul”) the development of which proceeds logically from within, toward an inevitable result (just like adding two and two ends up, necessarily, as four). It’s self-assembly and self-organization toward an inherent design of what is meant to be.
Aristotle and many modern-day thinkers focus on the essence of human soul as “man’s” (i.e., human) capacity to think, but that’s only taking the cream from the top. This ability to think is a by-product of a mind that was developed to serve the same elemental goals seen in all of life: nurture, or the importation of energy to counter entropy, and replication. Seen this way, human essence (the soul), is life’s essence and life’s soul so that, at our most fundamental level, we are one with all of life, not its exception. In this sense, science is one with, say, Buddhism.
*This is my second time around with this book, but it’s a different edition and translation. It was interesting to compare this review with my August 2009 review on De Animas (On the Soul). While my reaction to the book is the same, both versions illustrate the potential issues involved with translation. On page one of De Animas, the translator (Hugh Lawson-Tancred) writes: “For the soul is, so to speak, the first principle of living things.” In this version I just read, translated by J.P. Smith, that same line is, “[F]or the soul is in some sense the principle of animal life.” The former version is consistent with the intent of my review. The second version could be read to make a distinction between animal and human soul.
October 6, 2016
En este importante ensayo el genio griego Aristóteles intenta definir el concepto de alma desde una punto de vista biológico y psicológico de tal manera que se aleja de las corrientes religiosas que sus antepasados tuvieron con este tema.
Evidentemente nos encontramos con una obra puramente especulativa donde lo que es real e imaginario danzan a sus anchas en una obra que perfectamente podría pasar por un libro de fantasía contemporáneo. La falta de descubrimientos científicos sobre la realidad ha provocado desde siempre que las grandes mentes pensantes hayan intentado justificar las cosas a través de una manera muy personal pero al fin y al cabo legítima sobre lo que implica la existencia.
Aristóteles fue un adelantado a su época porque supo aunar el concepto abstracto del alma con la vida y el universo físicos, algo que hasta entonces a ningún filósofo se le había ocurrido, manteniéndose sus ideas vigentes y más o menos aceptadas durante dos milenios.
Desde un punto de vista vigente lo más interesante de este tratado es el estudio y reflexión que el griego hace de los sentidos, su funcionamiento y su finalidad, parte que además se hace sumamente interesante porque me permitió fijarme en aspectos de mi propia fisiología en las que nunca me había parado a reflexionar por resultarme demasiado obvio y natural.
Esta concepción del análisis de la naturaleza desde una perspectiva que mezclaba lo empírico con lo racional fue la base en torno a la cual se construyó el método científico y que convirtió a Aristóteles en uno de los primeros ejemplos de científicos tal y como los conocemos hoy día.
Así mismo, su visión del cosmos como un todo formado por pequeñas partes que originan una armonía superior y perfecta es el origen de gran parte del anhelo de los científicos modernos por buscar una gran realidad unificadora, en cierto modo propulsora de la teoría del todo y del modelo de supercuerdas, salvando las evidentes diferencias entre la cosmovisión de unos y de otros.
Por último destacar las teorías de Aristóteles sobre la imaginación y el intelecto. La realidad que conocemos de las cosas se llevan a cabo a través del procesamiento mental de los elementos que captamos sensorialmente, de tal manera que cada pensamiento va a asociado a una imagen, sonido, olor, etc. De esta manera la realidad es esencialmente una construcción sensorial y en cierta manera limitada por estos mismos sentidos, por lo que la especulación racional, a pesar de tener una base igualmente sensorial, constituye en muchas ocasiones la única manera de captar y representar lo que está más allá de lo estrictamente sensorial, aunque en sí mismo, esta realidad, sea al fin y al cabo una construcción sensorial, más abstracta o compleja si se prefiere pero esencialmente terrenal.
Evidentemente nos encontramos con una obra puramente especulativa donde lo que es real e imaginario danzan a sus anchas en una obra que perfectamente podría pasar por un libro de fantasía contemporáneo. La falta de descubrimientos científicos sobre la realidad ha provocado desde siempre que las grandes mentes pensantes hayan intentado justificar las cosas a través de una manera muy personal pero al fin y al cabo legítima sobre lo que implica la existencia.
Aristóteles fue un adelantado a su época porque supo aunar el concepto abstracto del alma con la vida y el universo físicos, algo que hasta entonces a ningún filósofo se le había ocurrido, manteniéndose sus ideas vigentes y más o menos aceptadas durante dos milenios.
Desde un punto de vista vigente lo más interesante de este tratado es el estudio y reflexión que el griego hace de los sentidos, su funcionamiento y su finalidad, parte que además se hace sumamente interesante porque me permitió fijarme en aspectos de mi propia fisiología en las que nunca me había parado a reflexionar por resultarme demasiado obvio y natural.
Esta concepción del análisis de la naturaleza desde una perspectiva que mezclaba lo empírico con lo racional fue la base en torno a la cual se construyó el método científico y que convirtió a Aristóteles en uno de los primeros ejemplos de científicos tal y como los conocemos hoy día.
Así mismo, su visión del cosmos como un todo formado por pequeñas partes que originan una armonía superior y perfecta es el origen de gran parte del anhelo de los científicos modernos por buscar una gran realidad unificadora, en cierto modo propulsora de la teoría del todo y del modelo de supercuerdas, salvando las evidentes diferencias entre la cosmovisión de unos y de otros.
Por último destacar las teorías de Aristóteles sobre la imaginación y el intelecto. La realidad que conocemos de las cosas se llevan a cabo a través del procesamiento mental de los elementos que captamos sensorialmente, de tal manera que cada pensamiento va a asociado a una imagen, sonido, olor, etc. De esta manera la realidad es esencialmente una construcción sensorial y en cierta manera limitada por estos mismos sentidos, por lo que la especulación racional, a pesar de tener una base igualmente sensorial, constituye en muchas ocasiones la única manera de captar y representar lo que está más allá de lo estrictamente sensorial, aunque en sí mismo, esta realidad, sea al fin y al cabo una construcción sensorial, más abstracta o compleja si se prefiere pero esencialmente terrenal.
May 25, 2017
De Anima is filled with striking ideas: that the soul is the form of the body, that it is the body's "potential" or "capacity" and is only actualised in thought or action, that sense-perception receives the "forms" of things and not their "matter", that since everything is potentially an object of thought, and since the intellect is potentially any object of thought, the mind in some sense contains the universe. These ideas are delightful. As are Aristotle's similes. Ancient Greece must truly have been a civilisation of similitudes: Aristotle's lovely images, illustrating his points, remind me of Plato's allegories and Homer's epic comparisons. One of my favourite images, illustrating Aristotle's central thesis:
It is no surprise that Aristotle believes we can only think in images, and that perception and imagination are therefore necessary for the intellect.
I can't give the book a 5/5, despite all this, because it has in some ways seriously dated. It is not just a work of philosophy, but of science, and Aristotle's science has been left behind. There are many pages in here of arguments which are simply irrelevant today. This is in stark contrast to a book like the Poetics, for instance, every one of whose paragraphs continues to inspire actors, directors, playwrights, theatregoers and literary critics.
The apparatus in this Penguin edition is charmingly eccentric and genuinely helpful. Lawson-Tancred is surely right to argue that Aristotle's "third-personal" perspective on mental life and "non-substantialist" theory of the soul are the two most interesting aspects of his account for contemporary readers. His style is generally accessible, as he frequently reminds us, though I'm not sure all readers will be equally prepared for a discussion of monadic vs. diadic predication without prior warning or explanation. The summaries of each chapter help to ease the pain of Aristotle's dense exposition.
We should not then inquire whether the soul and body are one thing, any more than whether the wax and its imprint are, or in general whether the matter of each thing is one with that of which it is the matter.
It is no surprise that Aristotle believes we can only think in images, and that perception and imagination are therefore necessary for the intellect.
I can't give the book a 5/5, despite all this, because it has in some ways seriously dated. It is not just a work of philosophy, but of science, and Aristotle's science has been left behind. There are many pages in here of arguments which are simply irrelevant today. This is in stark contrast to a book like the Poetics, for instance, every one of whose paragraphs continues to inspire actors, directors, playwrights, theatregoers and literary critics.
The apparatus in this Penguin edition is charmingly eccentric and genuinely helpful. Lawson-Tancred is surely right to argue that Aristotle's "third-personal" perspective on mental life and "non-substantialist" theory of the soul are the two most interesting aspects of his account for contemporary readers. His style is generally accessible, as he frequently reminds us, though I'm not sure all readers will be equally prepared for a discussion of monadic vs. diadic predication without prior warning or explanation. The summaries of each chapter help to ease the pain of Aristotle's dense exposition.
April 14, 2021
This was an interesting read, I was surprised at the degree to which he didn't touch upon the phenomenological side of the mind. In my view, it seemed closer to a form of non-reductive physicalism than any form of dualism.
I'd be interested to read Aquinas' commentary to see how he makes this compatible with the immortality of the soul.
I'd be interested to read Aquinas' commentary to see how he makes this compatible with the immortality of the soul.
April 7, 2013
التقرير لاحقاً ان شاء الله
لكن التحقيق جميييييييييييل من نسختين انجليزيتين من أجود النسخ كما ذكر + مقارنة مع كتاب النفس لابن رشد اللي هو من هذا الكتلب + مراجعة على اليونانية من الأب جورج.
أقل الفائدة نطلع ببعض المصطلحات بدلالتها اليونانية
لكن التحقيق جميييييييييييل من نسختين انجليزيتين من أجود النسخ كما ذكر + مقارنة مع كتاب النفس لابن رشد اللي هو من هذا الكتلب + مراجعة على اليونانية من الأب جورج.
أقل الفائدة نطلع ببعض المصطلحات بدلالتها اليونانية
March 8, 2021
A soul is what moves a body to action. It turns the potential into kinetic.
Love this work so much that it inspired me to write an entire story about transforming the potential into kinetic within a man's soul.
Highly recommend!
Love this work so much that it inspired me to write an entire story about transforming the potential into kinetic within a man's soul.
Highly recommend!
August 20, 2019
De Anima (On the Soul) is Aristotle's introduction to a series of lectures on biology. Let this remark work on you for a moment. This is a radically different conception of the soul compared to us modern people. We stand firmly in the Cartesian tradition of substance-dualism, which implies there's matter and there's mind/soul. We think in terms of the soul or the mind both a centre of control and the subject of psychology, and this makes it hard for us to grasp the worldview of people who do not see the world in this way.
Aristotle is a case on point. For him the soul was neither a subject of psychology (this science didn't even exist) nor a centre of control in human beings. For Aristotle, the soul was the principle of life, distinguishing dead matter from living matter. Living things have a soul, the rest of nature moves according to his physical notions like 'natural place', 'rest' and 'unnatural movement through imparted force'. Again, let this work on you for a moment.
Aristotle thus claims that plants, animals, humans and all other possibly existing living beings have in common that they have a soul - are ensouled. The soul allows the living being to actualize its potential whether or not this actually happens or not. So a plant is able to feed itself through its roots whether at this particular moment it does so or not, and it is the soul that allows this function to actualize. I am able to perceive an object in potential whether I do so, right now and right here, or not - and it is my soul that allows this function to exist potentially and actualize itself.
It takes a little while to get used to this conception, but luckily Aristotle starts De Anima with an exposition of earlier theories of the soul. In general, all these earlier explanations were substantialist - explaining the soul as a thing. The main difference between particular philosophers was the nature of this thing: Is the soul made of matter or of spirit?
Natural philosophers like Thales or Herakleitos claimed everything, including the soul, was constituted from one element (respectively water and fire), while someone like Empedocles claimed everything was a mixture of multiple elements. The atomists (Leucippus and Democritus) claimed everything was the product of the interaction of indivisible elementary particles, while Anaxoras claimed that Nous (Intelligence) is both the ordering principle of the universe and the moving power of all in it, making his conception of soul (an imperfect Nous) rather undefinable.
According to Aristotle, all these theories seek explanations on the wrong level – the dig too deep, so to speak. This immediately rings a bell for those who are familiar with the reductionist debate in modern science. A reductionist is someone who claims that any scientific object of study should – at least in theory – be explained in terms of more fundamental parts. So a psychologist should explain human cognitive capacities in terms of neurological processes (neural networks, etc.); while the neuroscientist studying this should explain all these processes in terms of biochemical interactions on the molecular level; and the biochemist should, ultimately, explain everything in terms of moving atoms, handing de foundation of his science to the particle physicist, who then exclaims: All atoms are made up more fundamental particles, which are made up of quarks, which are possibly be made up of superstrings – and where does it end? Whether such a reductionist approach is fruitful (I think it is) I leave unanswered, but Aristotle seems to claim so.
Aristotle looks at the functions that living beings show in their natural habitat, and then explains these functions in terms of biological purposes – a stance we could call ‘biological functionalism’. All the materialists look at the material living beings are made from, and claim this explains their biological functions – a stance we could call ‘physicalistic reductionism’. This is an interesting observation Aristotle makes and we have to grant him his victory (especially since most materialist theories were rather vague, ambiguous or downright mysticism).
What about the alternative to materialist substantialism, psychological substantialism? Couldn’t the soul be an immaterial thing? This is the view that Pythagoras and his sect took: they claimed Nature is ultimately composed of numbers – ratios between things. This might sound absurd, but it is actually pretty close to modern day physics which describes nature in purely mathematical terms and claims this explains how Nature works. According to the Pythagoreans, everything stands in a relationship with everything else, and these relations can be expressed in ratios and ultimately are result harmony. This leads to a conception of the soul as an immaterial harmony or ratio.
And then we have Plato’s theory of Forms, which explains how the soul is an immaterial thing which exists in the realm of Ideas, where it gazes at all these perfect Forms, and only temporarily gets shackled into a corrupted material body, where it longs to break free again at the bodily death.
According to Aristotle, both these immaterial explanations of the soul cannot explain how the bodies of living beings move. This is only a legitimate criticism if one accepts, with Aristotle, that a theory of the soul should explain certain biological functions, like nutrition, movement, sense-perception and intelligence. But I think we can grant him his victory against the immaterialists as well – if not for the simple fact that any immaterial conception of the soul fails to explain the interaction with matter (this is a stumbling block for all people who believe in souls as immaterial things).
But now, in part 2 of De Anima, Aristotle has to offer his own explanation of the soul – and this he does superbly. He starts by asking what the soul actually is: Is it a thing? Or is it a part? Or what is it? He answers this tricky question with his own ‘hylemorphism’: matter does not exist formless, all things are composites of both matter and form. The form is what gives the matter its potential to actualize itself, so to speak. So, the soul is the form of living being, which is itself composed of matter. Furthermore, the soul possesses certain faculties, which allow the living being to function properly – these are the nutritive faculty, sense-perception, imagination, intelligence and the faculty of desire (as intrinsic principle of motivation). It is important to note the distinction with theories that claim the soul consists of multiple parts and Aristotle’s claim that the soul possesses multiple faculties – for Aristotle never claims the soul consists of parts (since the soul is not a thing). For example, Plato views the soul as consisting of a Rational, Desirous, and Proud part, which are in constant conflict with each other and its solution lying in the Rational part taking the reins, so to speak. This tripartite division of the soul is something Aristotle will not allow, since he claims the soul to be a form, not a thing.
The rest of book 2 and the first part of book 3 deal with an exposition of all the faculties of the soul. It goes too far to reproduce all these, mostly outdated, visions on how (e.g.) the senses operate and how nutrition is converted into bodily material. The gist of the story is that the soul functions as a formal, efficient and final cause for living beings: it impresses a form on the matter we’re build from, it works on us to produce changes inside us, and it lets us act in the world through pursuing goals, etc.
An important observation is that Aristotle views nutrition as the most primary faculty of the soul, since all living things possess it. Plants, animals, humans – all have to eat, grow and then decay. Nutrition prepares the organism for activity.
When dealing with sense-perception, Aristotle distinguishes the fives sense of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. The first three are indirect, and need a medium to transmit the form of the sense-object to our soul. Aristotle, for example, views light as the medium which carries colour from the sense-object into our eyes and from there into our soul. Taste and touch work through direct contact of the organism with the sense-object, and touch is the most primary sense – Aristotle grants it such a grandiose status that he claims that without touch the animal dies and that excessive touch kills the organism.
He further distinguishes between three types of perception: (1) of a specific object (like colour, sound, smell); (2) integrated/common perception (like movement, rest, number, shape, size); and (3) incidental perception (like seeing the whiteness of some particular person which is itself the sense-object).
The most remarking suggestion by Aristotle in his dealings with the senses and perception, is that our senses are not simple but composite. We not only perceive objects, we also perceive ourselves perceiving the object. This seems to suggest some form of proto-subjectivism à la Descartes, but in Aristotle there are no notions of a perceiving subject (or a subjective experience) – at all.
With these sense-perceptions we start to climb to the higher faculties of the soul. We use these perceptions to imagine things – conceived as ‘inner movement’ resulting from sensual perception. Once again we see Aristotle offer a purely physical explanation (movements of particles) for a faculty of the soul, once again emphasizing his lack of subjectivism. Besides imagination human beings are alone in possessing intelligence. And it is when dealing with the human intellect that the historical importance of De Anima becomes clear.
Aristotle starts by claiming that our understanding is, on the one hand, potentially the objects of my thoughts (à la John Locke’s ‘tabula rasa’ – an unwritten tablet) and, on the other hand, our understanding is nothing in reality without/before thinking. So my understanding has the potential of becoming all things (as thought-objects) while at the same time it has the potential to actualize all these things (as thought-objects). This seems to imply that there are two types of intellect – a passive one which receives all the impressions and an active one which itself sets things in motion.
Later, Christian and Islamic, writers would seize upon this distinction between passive and active intellect in Aristotle to mould his theory of the soul into a theological framework. One has to do this, if one wants to integrate Aristotle into Christianity (or Islam), since Aristotle doesn’t conceive of the soul as a thing, let alone an immaterial and infinite thing. The Christian conception of the Soul simply doesn’t fit into Aristotle’s philosophy. But if you can claim that the active intellect in a sense exists apart from the rest of Aristotle’s faculties of the soul, you have a foot between the door to infuse all the rest of the theological notions into this one obscure Aristotelean appendix. So, for example, Thomas Aquinas would later claim that the active part of the intellect would survive the bodily death and thus is perfectly commensurable with theological doctrines and Scripture.
Anyway, back to Aristotle. The final faculty of the soul he deals with is desire, which motivates us – literally moves us. For him, the motivating capacity of the soul houses in desire – the intellect cannot set us into motion, it can only reason about things. Only when things move us, we start to move – so desire is a precondition for movement (This sounds rather like David Hume who claimed that “Reason is a slave of the Passions”). For Aristotle this process of motivation consists of three parts: the object of desire, the desire, and the organism that moves. And this is a problem, since both the desired object and the organism can be explained in terms of physics, but the desire itself seems to elude this fate. How can Aristotle describe our desires in physical terms? He doesn’t do so – although he presents it in a physical framework.
Aristotle ends De Anima with a short explanation how the sense of touch is the most fundamental condition of existence for living things. Too much touch will kill them; without touch they don’t exist at all. Why he thinks this is rather a puzzle to me, but perhaps the statements were simply meant as a transition between the end of De Anima and his lectures on biology?
To summarize, for Aristotle the soul is a life-giving principle that all living things possess; the form it impresses upon the living thing allows that thing to function in various ways in its environment; and to understand these organisms we have to look at the functions they perform and how these are related to the matter and form of which they consist. This means, in ultimo, that all of Nature, including dead matter, serves particular functions or goals, so we can call Aristotle’s worldview ‘teleological physiology’ – describing all things in physical terms and explain them in relation to their various purposes. Plants, animals and humans possess the nutritive faculty; animals and humans possess sense-perception and movement (albeit in various degrees); and only humans possess intelligence (i.e. imagination and supposition/reasoning).
It is easy to shoot many holes into this conception of the soul and especially into the particular physical descriptions of particular senses and faculties. But this is not the point: Aristotle offers us the soul as a framework with which to look at the living world and I find this a truly inspirational outlook on things. The book itself is rather readable (for Aristotelean standards) and accessible, and I think reading both Fysica and De Anima offers one a very decent conception of Aristotle’s view of the world, both in terms of moving matter and living beings. And finally, I keep being amazed at how readable this stuff of 2500 years ago is – this is perhaps the most impressive feat of Aristotle.
Aristotle is a case on point. For him the soul was neither a subject of psychology (this science didn't even exist) nor a centre of control in human beings. For Aristotle, the soul was the principle of life, distinguishing dead matter from living matter. Living things have a soul, the rest of nature moves according to his physical notions like 'natural place', 'rest' and 'unnatural movement through imparted force'. Again, let this work on you for a moment.
Aristotle thus claims that plants, animals, humans and all other possibly existing living beings have in common that they have a soul - are ensouled. The soul allows the living being to actualize its potential whether or not this actually happens or not. So a plant is able to feed itself through its roots whether at this particular moment it does so or not, and it is the soul that allows this function to actualize. I am able to perceive an object in potential whether I do so, right now and right here, or not - and it is my soul that allows this function to exist potentially and actualize itself.
It takes a little while to get used to this conception, but luckily Aristotle starts De Anima with an exposition of earlier theories of the soul. In general, all these earlier explanations were substantialist - explaining the soul as a thing. The main difference between particular philosophers was the nature of this thing: Is the soul made of matter or of spirit?
Natural philosophers like Thales or Herakleitos claimed everything, including the soul, was constituted from one element (respectively water and fire), while someone like Empedocles claimed everything was a mixture of multiple elements. The atomists (Leucippus and Democritus) claimed everything was the product of the interaction of indivisible elementary particles, while Anaxoras claimed that Nous (Intelligence) is both the ordering principle of the universe and the moving power of all in it, making his conception of soul (an imperfect Nous) rather undefinable.
According to Aristotle, all these theories seek explanations on the wrong level – the dig too deep, so to speak. This immediately rings a bell for those who are familiar with the reductionist debate in modern science. A reductionist is someone who claims that any scientific object of study should – at least in theory – be explained in terms of more fundamental parts. So a psychologist should explain human cognitive capacities in terms of neurological processes (neural networks, etc.); while the neuroscientist studying this should explain all these processes in terms of biochemical interactions on the molecular level; and the biochemist should, ultimately, explain everything in terms of moving atoms, handing de foundation of his science to the particle physicist, who then exclaims: All atoms are made up more fundamental particles, which are made up of quarks, which are possibly be made up of superstrings – and where does it end? Whether such a reductionist approach is fruitful (I think it is) I leave unanswered, but Aristotle seems to claim so.
Aristotle looks at the functions that living beings show in their natural habitat, and then explains these functions in terms of biological purposes – a stance we could call ‘biological functionalism’. All the materialists look at the material living beings are made from, and claim this explains their biological functions – a stance we could call ‘physicalistic reductionism’. This is an interesting observation Aristotle makes and we have to grant him his victory (especially since most materialist theories were rather vague, ambiguous or downright mysticism).
What about the alternative to materialist substantialism, psychological substantialism? Couldn’t the soul be an immaterial thing? This is the view that Pythagoras and his sect took: they claimed Nature is ultimately composed of numbers – ratios between things. This might sound absurd, but it is actually pretty close to modern day physics which describes nature in purely mathematical terms and claims this explains how Nature works. According to the Pythagoreans, everything stands in a relationship with everything else, and these relations can be expressed in ratios and ultimately are result harmony. This leads to a conception of the soul as an immaterial harmony or ratio.
And then we have Plato’s theory of Forms, which explains how the soul is an immaterial thing which exists in the realm of Ideas, where it gazes at all these perfect Forms, and only temporarily gets shackled into a corrupted material body, where it longs to break free again at the bodily death.
According to Aristotle, both these immaterial explanations of the soul cannot explain how the bodies of living beings move. This is only a legitimate criticism if one accepts, with Aristotle, that a theory of the soul should explain certain biological functions, like nutrition, movement, sense-perception and intelligence. But I think we can grant him his victory against the immaterialists as well – if not for the simple fact that any immaterial conception of the soul fails to explain the interaction with matter (this is a stumbling block for all people who believe in souls as immaterial things).
But now, in part 2 of De Anima, Aristotle has to offer his own explanation of the soul – and this he does superbly. He starts by asking what the soul actually is: Is it a thing? Or is it a part? Or what is it? He answers this tricky question with his own ‘hylemorphism’: matter does not exist formless, all things are composites of both matter and form. The form is what gives the matter its potential to actualize itself, so to speak. So, the soul is the form of living being, which is itself composed of matter. Furthermore, the soul possesses certain faculties, which allow the living being to function properly – these are the nutritive faculty, sense-perception, imagination, intelligence and the faculty of desire (as intrinsic principle of motivation). It is important to note the distinction with theories that claim the soul consists of multiple parts and Aristotle’s claim that the soul possesses multiple faculties – for Aristotle never claims the soul consists of parts (since the soul is not a thing). For example, Plato views the soul as consisting of a Rational, Desirous, and Proud part, which are in constant conflict with each other and its solution lying in the Rational part taking the reins, so to speak. This tripartite division of the soul is something Aristotle will not allow, since he claims the soul to be a form, not a thing.
The rest of book 2 and the first part of book 3 deal with an exposition of all the faculties of the soul. It goes too far to reproduce all these, mostly outdated, visions on how (e.g.) the senses operate and how nutrition is converted into bodily material. The gist of the story is that the soul functions as a formal, efficient and final cause for living beings: it impresses a form on the matter we’re build from, it works on us to produce changes inside us, and it lets us act in the world through pursuing goals, etc.
An important observation is that Aristotle views nutrition as the most primary faculty of the soul, since all living things possess it. Plants, animals, humans – all have to eat, grow and then decay. Nutrition prepares the organism for activity.
When dealing with sense-perception, Aristotle distinguishes the fives sense of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. The first three are indirect, and need a medium to transmit the form of the sense-object to our soul. Aristotle, for example, views light as the medium which carries colour from the sense-object into our eyes and from there into our soul. Taste and touch work through direct contact of the organism with the sense-object, and touch is the most primary sense – Aristotle grants it such a grandiose status that he claims that without touch the animal dies and that excessive touch kills the organism.
He further distinguishes between three types of perception: (1) of a specific object (like colour, sound, smell); (2) integrated/common perception (like movement, rest, number, shape, size); and (3) incidental perception (like seeing the whiteness of some particular person which is itself the sense-object).
The most remarking suggestion by Aristotle in his dealings with the senses and perception, is that our senses are not simple but composite. We not only perceive objects, we also perceive ourselves perceiving the object. This seems to suggest some form of proto-subjectivism à la Descartes, but in Aristotle there are no notions of a perceiving subject (or a subjective experience) – at all.
With these sense-perceptions we start to climb to the higher faculties of the soul. We use these perceptions to imagine things – conceived as ‘inner movement’ resulting from sensual perception. Once again we see Aristotle offer a purely physical explanation (movements of particles) for a faculty of the soul, once again emphasizing his lack of subjectivism. Besides imagination human beings are alone in possessing intelligence. And it is when dealing with the human intellect that the historical importance of De Anima becomes clear.
Aristotle starts by claiming that our understanding is, on the one hand, potentially the objects of my thoughts (à la John Locke’s ‘tabula rasa’ – an unwritten tablet) and, on the other hand, our understanding is nothing in reality without/before thinking. So my understanding has the potential of becoming all things (as thought-objects) while at the same time it has the potential to actualize all these things (as thought-objects). This seems to imply that there are two types of intellect – a passive one which receives all the impressions and an active one which itself sets things in motion.
Later, Christian and Islamic, writers would seize upon this distinction between passive and active intellect in Aristotle to mould his theory of the soul into a theological framework. One has to do this, if one wants to integrate Aristotle into Christianity (or Islam), since Aristotle doesn’t conceive of the soul as a thing, let alone an immaterial and infinite thing. The Christian conception of the Soul simply doesn’t fit into Aristotle’s philosophy. But if you can claim that the active intellect in a sense exists apart from the rest of Aristotle’s faculties of the soul, you have a foot between the door to infuse all the rest of the theological notions into this one obscure Aristotelean appendix. So, for example, Thomas Aquinas would later claim that the active part of the intellect would survive the bodily death and thus is perfectly commensurable with theological doctrines and Scripture.
Anyway, back to Aristotle. The final faculty of the soul he deals with is desire, which motivates us – literally moves us. For him, the motivating capacity of the soul houses in desire – the intellect cannot set us into motion, it can only reason about things. Only when things move us, we start to move – so desire is a precondition for movement (This sounds rather like David Hume who claimed that “Reason is a slave of the Passions”). For Aristotle this process of motivation consists of three parts: the object of desire, the desire, and the organism that moves. And this is a problem, since both the desired object and the organism can be explained in terms of physics, but the desire itself seems to elude this fate. How can Aristotle describe our desires in physical terms? He doesn’t do so – although he presents it in a physical framework.
Aristotle ends De Anima with a short explanation how the sense of touch is the most fundamental condition of existence for living things. Too much touch will kill them; without touch they don’t exist at all. Why he thinks this is rather a puzzle to me, but perhaps the statements were simply meant as a transition between the end of De Anima and his lectures on biology?
To summarize, for Aristotle the soul is a life-giving principle that all living things possess; the form it impresses upon the living thing allows that thing to function in various ways in its environment; and to understand these organisms we have to look at the functions they perform and how these are related to the matter and form of which they consist. This means, in ultimo, that all of Nature, including dead matter, serves particular functions or goals, so we can call Aristotle’s worldview ‘teleological physiology’ – describing all things in physical terms and explain them in relation to their various purposes. Plants, animals and humans possess the nutritive faculty; animals and humans possess sense-perception and movement (albeit in various degrees); and only humans possess intelligence (i.e. imagination and supposition/reasoning).
It is easy to shoot many holes into this conception of the soul and especially into the particular physical descriptions of particular senses and faculties. But this is not the point: Aristotle offers us the soul as a framework with which to look at the living world and I find this a truly inspirational outlook on things. The book itself is rather readable (for Aristotelean standards) and accessible, and I think reading both Fysica and De Anima offers one a very decent conception of Aristotle’s view of the world, both in terms of moving matter and living beings. And finally, I keep being amazed at how readable this stuff of 2500 years ago is – this is perhaps the most impressive feat of Aristotle.
January 11, 2019
Sin duda es mucho más ameno y "fácil" de comprender y seguir que la Metafísica.
February 14, 2021
"Ruh yaşama gücüne sahip doğal bir cismin biçimi anlamında bir varlıktır. Varlık ise bir yetkinliktir [entelekheia]. O halde ruh böyle bir cismin yetkinliğidir."
"Yetkinlik gücül olanın [dinamis] biçimidir [logos]."
"Duyular olmadan hayal gücü ortaya çıkmaz, hayal gücü olmadan da yargı olmaz."
"Ruh asla hayalsiz akletmez."
"Ruh bir anlamda bütün varolanlardır. Çünkü varolanlar ya duyulurlardandır ya da akledilirlerdendir; işte ruhtaki bilgi de, bir anlamda, bilinebilir olanlardır, gene ruhta gerçekleşen duyum da duyulur olanlardır."
"Hiçbir şey duyumsamayan birisi ne birşey öğrenebilir ne de anlayabilir."
"Kendine hakim olabilen insanlar bir arzu ve iştah duymalarına rağmen arzuladıkları şeyi yapmayıp aklı takip ederler."
"Ruhta hareket ettiren güç arzu denen güçtür."
"Akıl geleceği gözeterek direnmeyi emreder, iştah ise hemen halihazırda varolanı gözetir; çünkü geleceği görmediğimiz için halihazırdaki haz bize basbayağı haz verici ve basbayağı iyi olarak görünür."
"Ruh sahibi beden bütün olarak dokunma gücü taşır."
"Hayvanlar için yaşamak dokunma duyusuyla tanımlanır."
Duyuların ruhla ilişkilendirilmesinden anlaşılacağı üzere bedenle içiçe olan, ondan ayrı olmayan bir ruhtan bahsediyor Aristoteles...
"Yetkinlik gücül olanın [dinamis] biçimidir [logos]."
"Duyular olmadan hayal gücü ortaya çıkmaz, hayal gücü olmadan da yargı olmaz."
"Ruh asla hayalsiz akletmez."
"Ruh bir anlamda bütün varolanlardır. Çünkü varolanlar ya duyulurlardandır ya da akledilirlerdendir; işte ruhtaki bilgi de, bir anlamda, bilinebilir olanlardır, gene ruhta gerçekleşen duyum da duyulur olanlardır."
"Hiçbir şey duyumsamayan birisi ne birşey öğrenebilir ne de anlayabilir."
"Kendine hakim olabilen insanlar bir arzu ve iştah duymalarına rağmen arzuladıkları şeyi yapmayıp aklı takip ederler."
"Ruhta hareket ettiren güç arzu denen güçtür."
"Akıl geleceği gözeterek direnmeyi emreder, iştah ise hemen halihazırda varolanı gözetir; çünkü geleceği görmediğimiz için halihazırdaki haz bize basbayağı haz verici ve basbayağı iyi olarak görünür."
"Ruh sahibi beden bütün olarak dokunma gücü taşır."
"Hayvanlar için yaşamak dokunma duyusuyla tanımlanır."
Duyuların ruhla ilişkilendirilmesinden anlaşılacağı üzere bedenle içiçe olan, ondan ayrı olmayan bir ruhtan bahsediyor Aristoteles...
October 9, 2022
Es una lectura necesaria para psicólogos, pues aborda los procesos sensoriales y superiores, desde la filosofía, tal como se estudiaba de modo teórico antes de la era científica y sigue siendo válido con los hallazgos de neuropsicología.
October 20, 2020
I find this quote from early on De Anima to be central to all Aristotelian thought:
"So that definitions which do not enable us to discover the derived properties, or which fail to facilitate even a conjecture about them, must obviously, one and all, be dialectical and futile."
He's not so interested in opinions or propositions for their own sake and instead focuses in analytical process, dissecting and then explaining in toto any one topic.
I know now why he was recognized as 'The Philosopher' and quite obviously a forebearer of Scientific method.
How I can only wish that Aristotle was alive today so he could see how much progress has been made in neuroscience, biology and logic —he'd be enthralled and astonished by how much of his questioning has had an answer found and how different the reality is from what he could deduct. And at the same time, I can only wonder how much farther away a fruitful mind like his been born today could have taken us to.
"So that definitions which do not enable us to discover the derived properties, or which fail to facilitate even a conjecture about them, must obviously, one and all, be dialectical and futile."
He's not so interested in opinions or propositions for their own sake and instead focuses in analytical process, dissecting and then explaining in toto any one topic.
I know now why he was recognized as 'The Philosopher' and quite obviously a forebearer of Scientific method.
How I can only wish that Aristotle was alive today so he could see how much progress has been made in neuroscience, biology and logic —he'd be enthralled and astonished by how much of his questioning has had an answer found and how different the reality is from what he could deduct. And at the same time, I can only wonder how much farther away a fruitful mind like his been born today could have taken us to.
Read
May 5, 2023As I’m advancing more in life, I’ve come to appreciate Aristotle more. Aristotle is more dry compared to Plato, and more dense. He tries to answer some problems in Platonism, such as the problem of change, the problem of hiddenness…
Especially his metaphysics of potentiality and actuality reached beautiful heights in this short book. How can mind know everything? Is everything then the same as everything, thus everything is mind? Beautiful.
Especially his metaphysics of potentiality and actuality reached beautiful heights in this short book. How can mind know everything? Is everything then the same as everything, thus everything is mind? Beautiful.
December 21, 2019
Great analysis.
August 10, 2009
De Anima is soul and soul is life and its capacity for self-movement. It stands in contrast to inorganic matter that is moved but does not move itself. Aristotle breaks down the soul into the nutritive faculty, sense perception, intellect and desire. These components of soul are arranged hierarchically so that plants are limited to the nutritive faculty, and animals are largely limited to the nutritive faculty and sense perception. Only humans have intellect and desire (intentional movement toward object). Despite contemporary criticism of Aristotle's biology, Aristotle's delineation is not a bad start to a biological science that was only beginning in the 4th century BCE. Aristotle's outline of the soul complements and supports his views in the Ethics and Politics. Only humans look at objects and deliberate whether or not to act. Desire is not an internal impulse, but an intellectual willing. We act - we desire to act - only after reason tells us it's o.k. In this way, humans become something quite separate from and special in relation to other life forms who do not consciously reason. What Aristotle misses is why we care to want one object or objective over another. In a way, his soul misses the more basic motivation force. Acting begins with internal need that prompts action to seek an object or to defend against an object. Mind performs a significant role in regulating action, but that action is in service of some internal need. In this way, humans are really no different than all life forms. The soul of man is really the soul of life. This book is a bit of a slog as is the translator's very long introduction.
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