The epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and theology of Sankhya, one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy.

This is a close scrutiny of "De Anima II 5", led by two questions. First, what can be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotle's theory of perception? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: (i) that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver (...) becoming like the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary alteration of the type exemplified when fire heats the surrounding air, (ii) that this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim (i) is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim (ii) is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any underlying material realisation for perceiving. The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actuality is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exemplifies one of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge and in an embryo's first acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction of suitably refined meanings of 'alteration' allows Aristotle to explain perception and learning within the framework of his physics, which by definition is the study of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from "Physics" III 1-3 and "De Generatione et Corruptione" I, to the task of accounting for the cognitive accuracy of (proper object) perception and second potentiality knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective truth. Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation, and to Aristotle's cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted earlier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it. (shrink)

This is a close scrutiny of De Anima II 5, led by two questions. First, what can be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotle's theory of perception? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver becoming (...) like the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary alteration of the type exemplified when fire heats the surrounding air, that this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any underlying material realisation for perceiving. The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actuality is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exemplifies one of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge and in an embryo's first acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction of suitably refined meanings of 'alteration' allows Aristotle to explain perception and learning within the framework of his physics, which by definition is the study of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from Physics III 1-3 and De Generatione et Corruptione I, to the task of accounting for the cognitive accuracy of perception and second potentiality knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective truth. Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation, and to Aristotle's cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted earlier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it. (shrink)

Please note, this is the original Greek text.

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

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Garrulus sum et loquax et expedire nescio. Diu te tenui in istis, sed de cetero procedam.” These are the words of Richard Rufus of Cornwall, a thirteenth-century Scholastic and lecturer at the Universities of Paris and Oxford. Rufus is apologizing to his readers: “I am garrulous and loquacious, and I don’t know how to be efficient. I have detained you with these things a long while, but let me (...) now proceed to another topic.” This apology introduces the third part of the Speculum animae, a preliminary modern edition of which we publish here. In this short treatise, Rufus presents a unique Aristotelian theory of perception, describes what is and is not intelligible, and finally proves to his own satisfaction the immortality of the rational soul. To us this would hardly seem the place to apologize for being long-winded; indeed, we might wonder how Rufus could accomplish such an ambitious task in such a short treatise. We would certainly not accuse him of excessive verbosity. But Rufus was a man of exceptional humility, who once referred to himself as the least of the lesser thinkers of his time.1Despite Rufus’s humility, he was no minor figure in the development of Scholastic philosophy. A teacher at the Universities of Paris and Oxford ,2 he is the author of the earliest known, surviving lectures on several of Aristotle’s major texts, including the Metaphysics, the Physics, De generatione et corruptione, and De anima3 . In fact, Rufus was one of the very first lecturers to teach the libri naturales at Paris after a ban on such instruction was effectively lifted in 1231 A.D. His works were influential not only among his contemporaries, but also among later authors, particularly John Duns Scotus. Roger Bacon, though a harsh critic of Rufus, acknowledged Rufus’s influence and fame decades after his death, albeit among what Bacon termed the “vulgar multitude.”4The Speculum animae is one of Rufus’s later works. He begins the treatise by posing the following question: “In what way is the soul all things?” This refers, of course, to a familiar doctrine Aristotle establishes in the De anima—that the soul is, in some way, all things —and Rufus is here seeking to clarify it. But this is, in fact, only the first of five questions addressed in the Speculum. The five questions Rufus posits and answers in this treatise are, in order:1. In what manner is the soul all things?2. In what manner do a sensible and the sense, or an intelligible and the possible intellect, become one?3. What is predicated and of what is it predicated?4. What is intelligible?5. What is the cause of the immortality of the soul?In this short work, therefore, Rufus addresses apparently diverse topics including perception, understanding, logic, and the nature of the soul. But, in fact, the Speculum is principally a summary of Rufus’s theory of human perception and understanding. Like other medieval theories of perception and understanding, Rufus’s theory centers around the notion of species, a kind of form that is received in the soul when a person senses something or grasps something intellectually.5 In this, and in other aspects of the theory, Rufus was heavily dependent on Aristotle and St. Augustine. Rufus was working in a philosophical tradition based on Aristotle’s categories that had been accepted for centuries in the West. But in his lifetime, the Aristotelian corpus was enlarged to include Aristotle’s psychology and more generally his natural philosophy and metaphysics, together with the commentaries of Averroës . As is well known, this philosophical tradition was respected and continued not just by Rufus but by many authors after his time.So what makes Rufus’s theory.. (shrink)

Ad aprire questo volume è l’eccezionale testo Über Leib und Seele di Max Scheler sinora rimasto inedito. Seguono le interviste a Roger Scruton e Pierangelo Sequeri. Nella storia dell’Occidente il concetto di anima ha radici profonde. Esso sembra essere in uso principalmente in un contesto cristiano, la sua origine però è contemporaneo l’anima ha però subito una trasformazione, per cui pare lecito parlarne in contesti religiosi mentre sembra sempre più opportuno trattare di mente o cervello in altri ambiti. (...) Questo volume, attraverso una corale di contributi, vuole offrire uno studio sul tema dell’anima, mettendo in evidenza la trasformazione che nella storia della cultura tale concetto ha subito. Sono qui inclusi gli studi di Gianfranco Basti, Christopher Hughes, Joseph Karbowski, Andrea Lavazza, Antonio Petagine, Vittorio Possenti, Josef M. Seifert. Chiude il volume una ricca sezione di cronache di convegni e testi di recente pubblicazione. (shrink)

Hicks' edition of the De Anima contains valuable commentary from Hicks as well as useful summaries of the views of earlier commentators.

Aristoteles’ Traktat De anima befasst sich mit der Natur der Seele. Die verhältnismäßig kurze Schrift – sie umfasst nicht mehr als 33 Seiten in der Bekker-Ausgabe – teilt sich in drei mehr oder weniger gleichlange ›Bücher‹. Sie gehört neben der Metaphysik zu den besonders häufig kommentierten Schriften des Aristoteles.

Comparing the passage of Aristotle’s treatise De anima, III, 8, 431b.21-24 and Ecclesiastes 3: 10-11, the author reveals a similar epistemological image: the universe is in the soul of the cognizing subject, for it embraces all existing things in the process of perception and cognition of the world.

"Corpus Anima" is a collection of previously published essays written for professional Jungian journals about the unity of psyche and soma, spirit and matter, body and soul. There are also two chapters of more personal reflections, previously unpublished, including a series of articles on the mid-Atlantic Azorean Archipelago. The essays on psyche and soma come from the direct experience of their unity. We live, life moves, at the confluence of these polarities of spirit and matter, body and soul, where (...) through the capacity to hold contradiction and paradox we can become whole. Included in this collection is a published essay (Routledge) on the Portuguese poet and writer, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). His particular paradoxical expression of the soul and its life in the world is radically inspiring. The lines below are written on his tomb in Lisbon, resting in the same national monument with Vasco de Gama (c. 1460s-1524), world oceanic explorer. Pessoa was an explorer of inner worlds. He is, posthumously, a national treasure. I am nothing. I shall always be nothing. I cannot want to be anything. But I have in me all the dreams of the world. Cedrus Monte, PhD, is a Jungian Analyst, graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Switzerland (1995) where she now resides. She is originally from Northern California. Her roots lie there, even her heart; but even deeper roots, soul roots, lie in the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous island regions of Portugal. An uprooted wanderer of many lands, she has grounded herself as much as possible in the one constant earth, the body. (shrink)

In der gegenwärtigen Debatte um Aristoteles’ Wahrnehmungstheorie herrscht ein Dissens darüber, welche Relevanz dem Kapitel De Anima II 5 beizumessen ist. Während Burnyeat davon ausgeht, daß in diesem Kapitel eine für die Wahrnehmung spezifische und gegenüber physischen Vorgängen vollkommen andere Art von Veränderung eingeführt wird, sehen die Literalisten in diesem Kapitel lediglich eine Erweiterung des Bewegungsmodells der Physik, das für seelische wie nicht-seelische Tätigkeiten gleichermaßen gilt. Ich zeige, daß beide Interpretationsstrategien der Aussage und Relevanz von De an. II 5 (...) nicht gerechtwerden. Meine Interpretation konzentriert sich auf die Klärung zweier Punkte, die für den Status von De an. II 5 entscheidend sind: das Verhältnis von De an. II 5 zur Bewegungslehre von Phys. III 1-3 und die Funktion von De an. II 5 innerhalb der Argumentation des zweiten Buchs von De Anima. Die Klärung beider Punkte beantwortet die Frage, was der Sinn der umstrittenen Termini alloiôsis tis und sôteria ist und auf welche Klasse von Vermögen sie sich beziehen. (shrink)

Book synopsis: For the Pre-Socratic philosophers the soul was the source of movement and sensation, while for Plato it was the seat of being, metaphysically distinct from the body that it was forced temporarily to inhabit. Plato's student Aristotle was determined to test the truth of both these beliefs against the emerging sciences of logic and biology. His examination of the huge variety of living organisms - the enormous range of their behaviour, their powers and their perceptual sophistication - convinced (...) him of the inadequacy both of a materialist reduction and of a Platonic sublimation of the soul. In De Anima, he sought to set out his theory of the soul as the ultimate reality of embodied form and produced both a masterpiece of philosophical insight and a psychology of perennially fascinating subtlety. (shrink)

t. 1. Texto inédito de los doce primeros capítulos. Facsímil de la segunda versión suareciana (Lyon 1621).

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

This paper offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s identification, in De Anima 2.5, of αἴσθησις with an ἀλλοίωσίς τις that is not ‘a kind of destruction of something by its contrary’. Drawing on a passage from Metaphysics Iota 5, it argues that when so described, what is referred to as an ἀλλοίωσίς τις is not a uniquely perceptual alteration.

Aristotle's De Anima is 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. He contends that Aristotle seeks a comprehensive understanding of the soul and its faculties. By closely tracing the unfolding of the many-layered argumentation and the way Aristotle fits his inquiry meticulously within his scheme of the sciences, Polansky answers (...) questions relating to the general definition of soul and the treatment of each of the soul's principal capacities: nutrition, sense perception, phantasia, intellect, and locomotion. The commentary sheds light on every section of the De Anima and the work as a unit. It offers a challenge to earlier and current interpretations of the relevance and meaning of Aristotle's highly influential treatise. (shrink)

Il concetto dell'anima svolge nel pensiero di Michel Henry un'importantissima funzione di filo conduttore nell'esame di alcuni momenti fondamentali della storia della filosofia. Dal momento che le interpretazioni henriane del pensiero dei filosofi del passato hanno sempre uno scopo teoretico, lo studio di questo utilizzo del tema dell'anima in funzione di filo conduttore permette sia di comprendere meglio alcuni aspetti importanti delle tesi filosofiche di Henry, sia di valutarne con maggiore consapevolezza l'importanza per lafilosofia e per la cultura (...) di oggi. (shrink)

In this text, the word “anima” is the synonym of the notion of “conscious observer”. The paper discusses subjects from the field of physics and metaphysics in which there is a need to introduce such an observer, according to some authors.

Since Wolfgang Giegerich published his animus psychology in 1994, the topic of anima and animus has become an offense to analytical psychology. This offense began to show with Hillman's essay in 1974. However, Giegerich elaborated the problematic issues in these two notions with admirable clarity and demonstrated that the terminology of Jungian psychology has not been thought through carefully enough. In this contribution I present Giegerich's critique on the concepts of anima and animus due to Jung . Then (...) I indicate how Giegerich's position can provide new incentives for Jungian psychology. (shrink)

Un circolo lucreziano -- Furor et voluptas -- Dio, anima, natura -- Virtú e fortuna -- Platonismo e repubblicanesimo -- Pietas et sapientia -- Poeti platonici -- De miseria hominis -- Misteri d'amore -- Del bello, o della grazia -- Immortalità e resurrezione -- Anima mundi -- Il mondo delle immagini -- Sui demoni -- Fatalia -- Medicina del corpo, medicina dell'anima -- Sul male -- Profezia -- Preghiera e sacrificio -- De Trinitate -- Lode al sole.

El descubrimiento y desarrollo del poder instrumental de la razón en Occidente desde Galileo y Descartes se ha producido de modo unilateral: dominador, constructivo y, por tanto, encubridor de algunas de sus dimensiones esenciales. De esta forma, la ciencia, trocada en tecnociencia, se ha extrañado del mundo de la vida y la amenaza. Sólo haciendo oír la "otra voz" de la razón, su modulación femenina, el anima, podrán corregirse aquellas parcialidades y volver a establecer los vínculos necesarios entre ciencia, (...) tecnociencia y mundo de la vida. (shrink)

This paper begins with a discussion of C.G. Jung’s tautegorical approach to the symbol, and particularly the anima, the unconscious female component of a man’s psyche. The author then examines the anima by considering the criteria given by P. Tillich to evaluate religious symbols. The aim is to show that the consideration of anima in Tillich’s theology is likely to enrich this theologian’s approach to the process of sanctification. The emphasis is on the possibility for a man (...) to develop his link with the “power of being” by allowing his anima to enrich his personality. From a psychological point of view, this implies for the subject an awareness of his social mask, the persona, in order to allow his feminine part to reveal itself. (shrink)