Aristotle's De Anima: A Critical Commentary

✍ Scribed by Ronald Polansky

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 598
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

I read these works for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.

Soul- De Anima Latin for Greek word Psuche=Life. It is a Phenomenology of Life. Living things are Aristotle¡¦s primary interest. Renee Descartes says thinking is only aspect of soul, not life. For Descartes the soul is the mind. Aristotle classifies features of living things. A soul can¡¦t be a body, (like a corpse). Psuche=life is a living form of the body, the phenomenon of life. Capacity to live is what he means. Ergon=function or work, thus when he talks about soul it is a body¡¦s function. Thus, a corpse is a deactivated body. Dunamis=capacity, Energia= actuality, thus both words are active words and can be seen as ¡§activating capacity.¡¨ Like a builder while building a house, past potential but not actual until the house is complete.
Entelecheia=¡¨living things have their ends inside them.¡¨ A living being has an end in itself.

What is the soul? Psuche= soul is being working toward ends of a self-moving body having the capacity to live. This is another way of talking about desire (like an animal that is hungry). Desire-animals have this as we do. Orexis=desire. The phenomenology of desire is to be motivated towards something that is lacking at the time, hunger, etc. Pleasure and pain.
Desire and action there are 3 kinds of desire.

1. Appetite like hunger and sex.
2. Emotion-like love not on crude level as appetite.
3. Wish-desire of the mind, (I want a good job).

All three strive towards something that is lacking. ¡§Desire is movement of the soul.¡¨ Human life is a set of desires. Human desires are more complicated. Desires clash like dieting and appetite.

¡§All humans desire to know.¡¨ This is the first line of the Metaphysics. Knowledge examined in terms of distinction between matter and form, perception has to do with intelligible form. Perception takes in visible form of something without the matter. Like imagination, an animal and human can do this. All knowledge starts with perception thus memory. Ultimate knowledge is intelligible form from visible form but mind is also using abstractions, this is a human capacity only. Humans use language to do this. Animals have image of a cat, word ¡§cat¡¨ is an abstraction for us. True knowledge organizes language.

Seing<³being seen. Two beings, seer and seen, this is act of vision it is only one actuality and two potentialities. In effect, Aristotle is saying that the capacity to see can only be actualized by seeing something. However, he goes the other way as well; something seeable only actualizes its seeability by being seen. One actuality, two potentials, the potential to see, the potential to be seen. In the modern world since Descartes, it is spoken as two actualities, the mind, and the outside world and there is a split between the two, two actualities, the mind as a separate thing and the object as a separate thing being seen. This is the source of the classic problem of skepticism. When there is seeing obviously you have two beings, the seer and the seen, but the act of vision is one actuality. Aristotle does not have this skeptical problem because he seems to stipulate this idea of single actuality and the whole point of the capacity to know is meant to hook up with things known. The whole point of knowable things is to be known by knower¡¦s, that is what he means by one actuality, thus there is no split between the mind and the world. There is no purely inside and outside. It isn¡¦t that minds are in here and the world is out there, and we might wonder about how they hook up. The nature of things and the nature of the mind are meant to hook up. Thus, Aristotle is not a radical skeptic like Descartes or Hume. Act of seeing the desk is joint actuality of seer and seen.

Actual hearing and actual sounding occur at the same time. Berkeley¡¦s famous question¡K¡¨If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? For Berkeley, to be is to be perceived. Aristotle answers Berkeley¡¦s question that it does make a sound, but you have to have the capacity to hear, it is a joint venture. The mind and the world are not separated like for Descartes. Aristotle doesn¡¦t buy the idea that ¡§everything in my mind can be false¡¨ like the skeptics argue, Aristotle would say this is impossible. Getting things true and false are part of what the mind has to do, but the possibility that the whole mental realm could be put into question is impossible. Thus, he doesn¡¦t have to answer the question put to skeptics. ¡§If you are right that there is a radical doubt about the possibility of our knowledge hooking up with reality, why would the human situation ever come to pass in this way that it is possible that we could be totally wrong.¡¨ The skeptics answer we are not sure that we are wrong, they are saying we can¡¦t be sure that we are right. If that were the case then Aristotle can say, well is this a recipe for the human condition? One can be skeptical about this or that, but not about everything.

Aristotle moves from perception to thought. The thinking of the world and world to be thought is actualization. Nous=highest capacity of intellect for Aristotle. Mind is potential and until it thinks isn¡¦t actualization. The implication of this the world wants to be known according to Aristotle. The world also activates our desire. One actualization of two potentialities. Taking in form without matter that is what knowledge is. A knowing soul cannot be separation from the body. The mind has built in capacity to understand for Aristotle, no actual knowledge until intellect engages with objects. ¡§Actually thinking mind is the thing that it thinks. In this respect the soul is all existing things.¡¨ Soul is capacity to think the world in the passage.

I recommend Aristotle¡¦s works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy. Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.

✦ Table of Contents

Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
Preface......Page 11
Abbreviations......Page 17
1 The De anima and Self-Knowledge......Page 19
2 Study of Soul in Relation to Physics......Page 24
3 The Cognitive Faculties and Physics......Page 30
4 Aristotle's Procedures and the Quest for Thoroughness......Page 37
5 Background Assumptions for Study of the Soul......Page 42
6 The Truth and Interest of the De anima......Page 44
7 The Text of the De anima......Page 46
COMMENTARY ON DE ANIMA Book 1......Page 49
1
The Nobility and Difficulty of Study of Soul; Its
Connection with Body......Page 51
2 The Predecessors' Use of Soul to Account for Motion and Perception......Page 80
3 Criticism of Predecessors' Way of Accounting for Motion......Page 101
4 Criticism of the Harmonia View as an Account of Motion......Page 121
5 Criticism of Predecessors' Way of Accounting for Cognition......Page 141
Book 2......Page 161
1 Definition of Soul......Page 163
2 What Is Life?......Page 189
3
How Powers of Soul Are Distributed and
United in the Soul......Page 206
4
The Nutritive Faculty:
Its Object and Subfaculties......Page 218
5
Clarification of Being Affected, Living as Saving,
and the First Definition of Sense......Page 241
6 The Three Sorts of Sensible Objects......Page 268
7 Vision, Medium, and Object......Page 281
8 Hearing, Sound, and Voice......Page 303
9 Smell and Odor......Page 320
10
Taste Is a Contact Sense; the Tasteable......Page 331
11 Touch, the Tangibles, and Sense as a Mean......Page 339
12
Definition of Sense and Whether Sensibles Affect
Nonperceiving Bodies......Page 356
Book 3......Page 377
1
In the World As It Is There Can Be but the Five Senses......Page 379
2 What Allows for Perceiving That We Perceive; Sense Joins in a Common Power so That the Five Senses Are Subfaculties of a Central Sense Faculty......Page 398
3
Distinguishing Sense and Thought; What Is Phantasia?......Page 421
4
What Is Mind as That Capable of Thinking All Things......Page 452
5 What Enables Thinking to Occur......Page 476
6 The Sorts of Intelligible Objects......Page 491
7 Phantasia Has a Role in All Thinking......Page 499
8 That Mind Can Think All Things......Page 512
9
There Is a Capacity for Progressive Motion......Page 519
10
The Desiderative Capacity Is the Primary Cause
of Progressive Motion......Page 532
11
Even the Simplest Animals Have Indefinite Phantasia,
and Calculative Phantasia Fits the Account
of Progressive Motion......Page 545
12
The Necessary Order of the Faculties of Soul......Page 552
13
The Sort of Body Requisite to Support the Order
of the Faculties of Soul......Page 564
Bibliography......Page 573
Index......Page 581