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

This essay constructs a picture of the meaning of life based on De Anima 2. 2-4. It shows that there are organisms that preserve their form through the exercise of identifiable functions. For an individual to be a short, living thing is for it to be one of these naturally species-preserving organisms. For an individual living thing to be actually living is for it to be able to perform one of the psychic or living functions appropriate to its species.

The most important things in this seminal paper are (a) showing that the first part of the chapter is only setting up the aporia and does not provide the solution; (b) showing that the rest of the chapter provides the material for resolving the aporia; (c) showing that the question is not about how we perceive that we perceive, but how we can distinguish between seeing and hearing—how we are aware that we are seeing rather than hearing; (c) showing that (...) this is reducible to how we are aware that a colour is not a sound, and how we perceive the unity of objects that present themselves under more than one sense-modality. Hence the remainder of De anima 3.2 presents both the materials for the solution (actuality of sense and sensed object are one thing) and the solution (there is a common perceiver who receives the input from several senses and can unite them and also differentiate). De anima 3.2 is not about perceiving that we perceive, nor about reflexive self-awareness. The problems of interpretation and of the unity of the chapter are resolved once we see that the topic is how we can tell the difference between input from different sense modalities, how we distinguish between white things and sweet things, or between seeing and hearing, and how we perceive objects as a unity when they present themselves to separate senses. (shrink)

Saint Thomas Aquinas explains that, according to the method followed by the Philosopher in metaphysics, it is convenient in science to treat first the determinations in the most common and general fashion in order to attend later to what is proper to each species. And it is in these sense that, according to Aquinas, the De Anima studies the most general and common affairs of the animated realities in order to treat later, in other books, about what is proper (...) of the animated in particular. (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: (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)

In 1974, Winfried Fauser published his edition of Radulphus Brito’s commentary on the third book of Aristotle’s De anima. This contribution continues his project by providing an edition of Brito’s commentary on the first book and the first third of the second book. An analysis of this part of the commentary shows that Brito developed some original views that had an impact on the fourteenth-century commentary tradition.

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)

Translation of passages of Aristotle's De Anima into Portuguese. The passages are these: I.1, I.4 (the 'Rylean passage'); II.1-6; III.1-8. The translation is preliminary.

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

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

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)

Ever since the first edition of the De anima by Trendelenburg, modern scholars have been in trouble as to the exact interpretation of this phrase and especially of the expression Although the right one, as we think, was suggested a long time ago by Shorey, a restatement of it seems justified, because the later treatment of the problem in the edition of Sir David Ross has apparently established a different communis opinio. The first detailed examination of the whole passage (...) was given by Bonitz, who saw no other possibility of making the text render the required sense than to alter This is indeed ‘a rather improbable corruption’. It is also clear that such an emendation of a reading defended by the consensus of all our manuscripts should only be accepted if there really is no other way out. (shrink)

Book 1 of Aristotle’s De Anima extensively discusses two characteristics of the soul: the soul as the source of motion of the living being, and the soul as the seat of perception and cognition. The following conclusions are drawn on the nature and function of the soul. The soul is not a magnitude and not material; it is a substance and not an attribute; it is a unity, and the principle of unity is not material continuity. The soul is (...) the origin of perception and motion, and of psychological processes such as emotions and desires. An adequate account of how the soul causes perception, motion, and the like must not attribute motion to the soul. (shrink)

In the chapter on ‘Plato and Aristotle’ of theLectures on the History of PhilosophyHegel praises Aristotle's work for displaying a principle of ‘pure subjectivity’ in a manner that he considers to be largely absent from the Platoniccorpus:In general, Platonic thinking [das Platonische] represents objectivity, but it lacks a principle of life, a principle of subjectivity; and this principle […], not in the sense of a contingent, merely particular subjectivity, but in the sense of pure subjectivity, is proper to Aristotle. Elsewhere, (...) Hegel refers to Aristotelian conceptions of organic life and of thinking as to the earliest speculative insights of Western philosophy. In § 378 of theEncyclopaedia he calls theDe Anima‘the best or even only work of speculative interest ever written on the philosophy of spirit’. In yet other places, however, Hegel attributes at least ‘intuitive’ forms of speculation to Plato as well.In a preliminary way, a 'speculative relation’ in Hegel's acceptation is instantiated by a subject's theoretical and practical relation to itself — that is, theoretical self-knowing and practical self-will. ‘Speculative’ is any concept which grasps as a unity what other kinds of cognition keep asunder: for example, the subjective and objective dimensions of a phenomenon or state of affairs. But even independently of a detailed analysis of what ‘the speculative’ entails, one is struck by the apparent inconsistency of these claims regarding Plato or Aristotle with Hegel's overall view of the logical necessity of philosophy's historical development. This view is synthetically expressed in the 1820 Introduction to these sameLectures. (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)

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)

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. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta uma comparação conceitual entre a obra De anima, de Aristóteles, e a concepção das faculdades da alma no Kitáb al-Nafs – edição árabe – (Livro da Alma, De anima), de Ibn Sina (Avicena), com o intuito de mostrar similitudes e in#uências de Aristóteles sobre o pensamento de Ibn Sina, nessa temática. Destaca, ainda, como e a época em que o estagirita foi recebido em terras do Islã, indicando o seu primeiro receptor, o &lósofo Al-Kindi, assim (...) como, de modo pormenorizado, uma comparação sobre a de&nição de alma dada pelos dois &lósofos, e as três espécies de alma, com ênfase para o conceito de alma racional. Apresenta, também, a estrutura de cada uma das obras. (shrink)

Iamblichus , successor to Plotinus and Porphyry, brought a new religiosity to Neoplatonism. This edition of the fragments of Iamblichus' major work on the soul, De Anima, is accompanied by the first English translation of the work and a commentary.

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)

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 recent years, the attention of scholars to the figure and work of Iamblichus has increased, while the emphasis is on his thought in the history of the Platonic school. However, a major work still remains to be studied: the De Anima. Preserved only in fragments in the anthology of Stobaeus, it proves to be of crucial importance for the understanding of the development of Platonism at the end of antiquity.

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.

Aristotle, De Anima: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary. By Shields Christopher.

Bringing together a group of outstanding new essays on Aristotle's De Anima, this book covers topics such as the relation between soul and body, sense-perception, imagination, memory, desire, and thought, which present the philosophical substance of Aristotle's views to the modern reader. The contributors write with philosophical subtlety and wide-ranging scholarship, locating their interpretations firmly within the context of Aristotle's thought as a whole.u.

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

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.

With regard to the importance and position of phone for thought and language in Aristotle, and his brief account of it in Περὶ Ψυχῆς / De Anima, here I am going to paraphrase his brief mentioning in the chapter eight of the second book of the mentioned treatise. When we read the pertinent section of 4201b - 421a, we see that Aristotle examines it in connection with “hearing” as a sense that is embedded in his wide discussion about “soul”. (...) But when we go into details under this general topic, we see that phone definition is connected with three concepts such as sound, phantasia and semantic. In other words, Aristotle considers human phone in a unit that consists of “hearing, sound, phantasia and semantic” and all of these within a broader specific discussion about human “soul” denotes to the texture and nature of his account. (shrink)

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

Although it is common for interpreters of Aristotle's De Anima to treat the soul as a specially related set of powers of capacities, I argue against this view on the grounds that the plausible options for reconciling the claim that the soul is a set of powers with Aristotle's repeated claim that the soul is an actuality cannot be unsuccessful. Moreover, I argue that there are good reasons to be wary of attributing to Aristotle the view that the soul (...) is a set of powers because this claim conflicts with several of his metaphysical commitments, most importantly his claims about form and substance. I argue that although there are passages in the De Anima in which Aristotle discusses the soul in terms of its powers or capacities, these discussions do not establish that the soul is a set of capacities. (shrink)

Myles Burnyeat has argued that in De Anima II.5 Aristotle marks out a refined kind of alteration which is to be distinguished from ordinary alteration, change of quality as defined in Physics III.1-3. Aristotle's aim, he says, is to make it clear that perception is an alteration of this refined sort and not an ordinary alteration. Thus, it both supports his own interpretation of Aristotle's view of perception, and refutes the Sorabji interpretation according to which perception is a composite (...) of form and matter where the matter is a material alteration in the body. I argue that Burnyeat's interpretation of II.5 should be rejected for a number of reasons, and offer a new interpretation of the distinctions drawn in the chapter, and the relations between them. I conclude that the chapter provides no evidence against the Sorabji view or for Burnyeat's view. Aristotle's assertion that perception is a refined kind of alteration means that it is the kind of alteration that preserves and is good for the subject of that alteration. There is no inconsistency in the thought that perception is a refined alteration of this sort while it, or its matter, is an ordinary alteration. (shrink)

So Ross, incorporating Bywater's transposition of συμβέβηκε τοîς αἰσθητοîς from 24 to 20. Thereby Aristotle distinguishes ‘the three types of objects of perception: the ἲδια αἰσθητά, colour, sound, etc. , the objects to which these belong, but which are here described as being contingent on the ἳδια αἰσθητά , and the κοιυà αἰσθητà, such as movement and size ’—D. Ross, Aristotle De Anima , 6; see also 289.

Myles Burnyeat has argued that in De Anima II.5 Aristotle marks out a refined kind of alteration which is to be distinguished from ordinary alteration, change of quality as defined in Physics III.1-3. Aristotle's aim, he says, is to make it clear that perception is an alteration of this refined sort and not an ordinary alteration. Thus, it both supports his own interpretation of Aristotle's view of perception, and refutes the Sorabji interpretation according to which perception is a composite (...) of form and matter where the matter is a material alteration in the body. I argue that Burnyeat's interpretation of II.5 should be rejected for a number of reasons, and offer a new interpretation of the distinctions drawn in the chapter, and the relations between them. I conclude that the chapter provides no evidence against the Sorabji view or for Burnyeat's view. Aristotle's assertion that perception is a refined kind of alteration means that it is the kind of alteration that preserves and is good for the subject of that alteration. There is no inconsistency in the thought that perception is a refined alteration of this sort while it, or its matter, is an ordinary alteration. (shrink)

The Oxford Classical texts, of Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxeniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus critics at the foot of each page. There are now over 100 volumes, representing the greater part of classical Greek and Latin literature.

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 philosophy of mind has recently attracted renewed attention and respect from philosophers. This volume brings together outstanding new essays on De Anima by a distinguished international group of contributors including, in this paperback efdition, a new essay by Myles Burnyeat. The essays form a running commentary on the work, covering such topics as the relation between body and soul, sense-perception, imagination, memory, desire, and thought. the authors, writing with philosophical subtlety and wide-ranging scholarship, present the philosophical substance of (...) Aristotle's views to the modern reader. they locate their interpretations firmly within the context of Aristotle's thought as a whole. (shrink)