The Powers Of Aristotle S Soul

Aristotle is considered by many to be the founder of 'faculty psychology'—the attempt to explain a variety of psychological phenomena by reference to a few inborn capacities. In The Powers of Aristotle's Soul, Thomas Kjeller Johansen investigates his main work on psychology, the De Anima, from this perspective. He shows how Aristotle conceives of the soul's capacities and how he uses them to account for the souls of living beings. Johansen offers an original account of how Aristotle defines the capacities in relation to their activities and proper objects, and considers the relationship of the body to the definition of the soul's capacities. Against the background of Aristotle's theory of science, Johansen argues that the capacities of the soul serve as causal principles in the explanation of the various life forms. He develops detailed readings of Aristotle's treatment of nutrition, perception, and intellect, which show the soul's various roles as formal, final and efficient causes, and argues that the so-called 'agent' intellect falls outside the scope of Aristotle's natural scientific approach to the soul. Other psychological activities, various kinds of perception (including 'perceiving that we perceive'), memory, imagination, are accounted for in their explanatory dependency on the basic capacities. The ability to move spatially is similarly explained as derivative from the perceptual or intellectual capacities. Johansen claims that these capacities together with the nutritive may be understood as 'parts' of the soul, as they are basic to the definition and explanation of the various kinds of soul. Finally, he considers how the account of the capacities in the De Anima is adopted and adapted in Aristotle's biological and minor psychological works.

In this timeless and profound inquiry, Aristotle presents a view of the psyche that avoids the simplifications both of the materialists and those who believe in the soul as something quite distinct from body. On the Soul also includes Aristotle's idiosyncratic and influential account of light and colors. On Memory and Recollection continues the investigation of some of the topics introduced in On the Soul. Sachs's fresh and jargon-free approach to the translation of Aristotle, his lively and insightful introduction, and his notes and glossaries, all bring out the continuing relevance of Aristotle's thought to biological and philosophical questions.

Thirteen newly-commissioned essays that deepen our understanding of Aristotle's key concepts, including living, form, reason, and capacity.

Thirteen newly-commissioned essays that deepen our understanding of Aristotle's key concepts, including living, form, reason, and capacity.

'On the Soul' is Aristotle's philosophical treatise on the nature of life and all things living. Aristotle's exposition centers on, as on would expect from the title of the work, the soul. Aristotle's soul however is not the same as the common modern conception of something distinct from the body that could live on past death, rather Aristotle defines the soul as the form or essence of a living thing and wholly inseparable from that living being. Philosophers, theologians and students alike will find Aristotle's discourse 'On the Soul' of much interest.

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

In a single volume that will be of service to philosophy students of all levels and to their teachers, this reader provides modern, accurate translations of the texts necessary for a careful study of most aspects of Aristotle's philosophy. In selecting the texts Professor J. L. Ackrill has drawn on his broad experience of teaching graduate classes, and his choice reflects issues of current philosophical interest as well as the perennial themes. Only recent translations which achieve a high level of accuracy have been chosen; the aim is to place the Greekless reader, as nearly as possible, in the position of a reader of Greek. As an aid to study, Professor Ackrill supplies a valuable guide to the key topics covered. The guide gives references to the works or passages contained in the reader, and indication of their interrelations, and current bibliography.

Aristotle's De Anima was the first systematic philosophical account of the soul, which serves to explain the functioning of all mortal living things. In his commentary, Ronald Polansky argues that the work is far more structured and systematic than previously supposed.