The Science of the Soul

Author: Sander Wopke de Boer
Publisher: Leuven University Press
ISBN: 9058679306
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
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.

On the Soul

Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191026433
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
'. . . the more honourable animals have been allotted a more honourable soul. . . ' What is the nature of the soul? It is this question that Aristotle sought to answer in De Anima (On the Soul). In doing so he offers a psychological theory that encompasses not only human beings but all living beings. Its basic thesis, that the soul is the form of an organic body, sets it in sharp contrast with both Pre-Socratic physicalism and Platonic dualism. On the Soul contains Aristotle's definition of the soul, and his explanations of nutrition, perception, cognition, and animal self-motion. The general theory in De Anima is augmented in the shorter works of Parva Naturalia, which deal with perception, memory and recollection, sleep and dreams, longevity, life-cycles, and psycho-physiology. This new translation brings together all of Aristotle's extant and complementary psychological works, and adds as a supplement ancient testimony concerning his lost writings dealing with the soul. The introduction by Fred D. Miller, Jr. explains the central place of the soul in Aristotle's natural science, the unifying themes of his psychological theory, and his continuing relevance for modern philosophy and psychology.

Aristotle's De Anima

Author: Ronald Polansky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139466054
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 525

Book Description
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.

Aristotle's On the Soul

Author: Caleb Cohoe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108485839
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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

Mortal Imitations of Divine Life

Author: Eli Diamond
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 081013070X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Book Description
In Mortal Imitations of Divine Life, Diamond offers an interpretation of De Anima, which explains how and why Aristotle places souls in a hierarchy of value. Aristotle’s central intention in De Anima is to discover the nature and essence of soul—the principle of living beings. He does so by identifying the common structures underlying every living activity, whether it be eating, perceiving, thinking, or moving through space. As Diamond demonstrates through close readings of De Anima, the nature of the soul is most clearly seen in its divine life, while the embodied soul’s other activities are progressively clear approximations of this principle. This interpretation shows how Aristotle’s psychology and biology cannot be properly understood apart from his theological conception of God as life, and offers a new explanation of De Anima’s unity of purpose and structure.

Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Author: Dorothea Frede
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110216523
Category : Philosophy
Languages : de
Pages : 573

Book Description
The problem of body and soul has a long history that can be traced back to the beginnings of Greek culture. The existential question of what happened to the soul at the moment of death, whether and in what form there is life after death, and of the exact relationship between body and soul was answered in different ways in Greek philosophy, from the early days to Late Antiquity. The contributions in this volume not only do justice to the breadth of the topic, they also cover the entire period from the Pre-Socratics to Late Antiquity. Particular attention is paid to Plato, Aristotle and Hellenistic philosophers, that is the Stoics and the Epicureans.

Mind and World in Aristotle's De Anima

Author: Sean Kelsey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108832911
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
This innovative new reading of Aristotle's De Anima sheds new light on a most important and difficult ancient philosophical text.

The Soul

Author: John Patrick Rowan
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1606082566
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Book Description
Psychology that ignores the soul is indeed an odd sort of psychology. But such it is in many colleges today. On the basis of thoroughgoing materialism it has to be nothing more than the physiology of the nervous system. Hence a sound philosophical study of the soul is timely. Where are we to find an exposition and proof of the basic truths on which the structure of psychology must be erected? They are in St. Thomas' DE ANIMA. This opusculum discusses twenty-one questions about the soul, among which are the following: Whether the angel and the human soul differ specifically. Whether the soul is in the whole body and in each part of it. Whether the soul is identical with its powers. Whether the soul, existing apart from the body, can suffer punishment by corporeal fire. Doctor Rowan's translation, though a faithful rendition of the original, is in clear, readable English. The value of this version is greatly enhanced by copious footnotes of two kinds: exact citations of authors (e.g., Aristotle, St. Augustine) to whom St. Thomas refers; explanations of terms and views that otherwise might be obscure to modern readers. The translator has also provided a comprehensive index.

Aristotle's De Anima in Focus

Author: Michael Durrant
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317377168
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
Originally published in 1993. This book presents an amended version of R.D. Hick's classic translation of Aristotle's "De Anima" Books 2 and 3, with pertinent extracts from Book 1, together with an introduction and six papers by prominent international Aristotelian scholars. The editor brings together up-to-date discussions of Aristotle's "De Anima", examining central topics such as the nature of perception, perception and thought, thinking and the intellect, the nature of the soul and the relation between body and soul. These papers draw attention to the importance and value of Aristotle's original contributions both to these topics and to philosophical psychology in general. They show the relevance of Aristotle's ancient classical philosophy to contemporary philosophical debate. This book also examines the key issues of Aristotle's thesis and aims to demonstrate its enduring significance. The "De Anima" is placed within a wider Aristotelian framework, and also within a more comprehensive structure, as a contribution to philosophical development and advance.

The Powers of Aristotle's Soul

Author: Thomas Kjeller Johansen
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191633011
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
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.