The Commentary Of St Thomas Aquinas On Aristotle S Treatise On The Soul

The Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas on Aristotle's Treatise on the soul. Tanslated by R. A. Kocourek.

To ascertain, however, anything reliable about it is one of the most difficult of undertakings. Such an enquiry being Common to many topics—I mean, an enquiry into the essence, and what each thing is—it might seem to some that one definite procedure were available for all things of which we wished to know the essence; as there is demonstration for the accidental properties of things. So we should have to discover what is this one method. But if there is no one method for determining what an essence is, our enquiry becomes decidedly more difficult, and we shall have to find a procedure for each case in particular. If, on the other hand, it is clear that either demonstration, or division, or some such process is to be employed, there are still many queries and uncertainties to which answers must be found. For the principles in different subject matters are different, for instance in the case of numbers and surfaces. Aeterna Press

A study of Aristotle, providing an understanding of the Greek philosopher, and expressing Aquinas's own views on philosophical issues. Robert Pasnau includes an introduction and notes to clarify difficult points and set the context, as well as a medieval translation of De Anima.

This series offers central philosophical treatises of Aquinas in new, state-of-the-art translations distinguished by their accuracy and use of clear and nontechnical modern vocabulary. Annotation and commentary accessible to undergraduates make the series an ideal vehicle for the study of Aquinas by readers approaching him from a variety of backgrounds and interests.

In antiquity and the Middle Ages, memory was a craft, and certain actions and tools were thought to be necessary for its creation and recollection. Until now, however, many of the most important visual and textual sources on the topic have remained untranslated or otherwise difficult to consult. Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski bring together the texts and visual images from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries that are central to an understanding of memory and memory technique. These sources are now made available for a wider audience of students of medieval and early modern history and culture and readers with an interest in memory, mnemonics, and the synergy of text and image. The art of memory was most importantly associated in the Middle Ages with composition, and those who practiced the craft used it to make new prayers, sermons, pictures, and music. The mixing of visual and verbal media was commonplace throughout medieval cultures: pictures contained visual puns, words were often verbal paintings, and both were used equally as tools for making thoughts. The ability to create pictures in one's own mind was essential to medieval cognitive technique and imagination, and the intensely pictorial and affective qualities of medieval art and literature were generative, creative devices in themselves.

"Dating from 1267-1268, at the end of his time in Rome, St. Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's On the soul is the first of his commentary works on Aristotle, followed shortly thereafter by his writings on Aristotle's On sense and what is sensed and On memory and recollection, also included in this volume. Although commenting on Aristotle was not among Aquinas's duties as a university master, he seems to have undertaken this task in part as an aid to his theological work: just as he later comments on Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics while drafting the material on moral theology in the Secunda Pars of the Summa theologiae, so too his writing of the Commentary on Aristotle's On the soul was contemporaneous with his composition of questions 75-89 in the Prima Pars, on the human soul. Displaying a sound grasp of Aristotle's thought as well as a deeply developed understanding of the human person, the Commentary on Aristotle's On the soul finds Aquinas working for the first time with William of Moerbeke's new Latin translations of On the soul and its paraphrase by Themestius. This important work of Aquinas is presented here with his other two earliest writings on Aristotle in a two-column Latin-English facing format"--

Aristotle's highly influential work on the soul, entitled De anima, formed part of the core curriculum of medieval universities and was discussed intensively. It covers a range of topics in philosophical psychology, such as the relationship between mind and body and the nature of abstract thought. However, there is a key difference in scope between the so-called "science of the soul," based on Aristotle, and modern philosophical psychology. This book starts from a basic premise accepted by all medieval commentators, namely that the science of the soul studies not just human beings but all living beings. As such, its methodology and approach must also apply to plants and animals. The Science of the Soul discusses how philosophers from Thomas Aquinas to Pierre d'Ailly dealt with the difficult task of giving a unified account of life and traces the various stages in the transformation of the science of the soul between 1260 and 1360. The emerging picture is that of a gradual disruption of the unified approach to the soul, which will ultimately lead to the emergence of psychology as a separate discipline.