The Powers of Aristotle's Soul

by Johansen, Thomas Kjeller

• ISBN13: 9780199658435
• ISBN10: 0199658439
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-12-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Thomas Kjeller Johansen presents a new account of Aristotle's major work on psychology, the De Anima. He argues that Aristotle explains a variety of psychological phenomena--including perception, intellect, memory, and imagination--by reference to the soul's capacities. He goes on to consider how the account of the capacities in the De Anima is adopted and adapted in Aristotle's biological and minor psychological works.

Author Biography

Thomas Kjeller Johansen studied Philosophy and Classics at Cambridge, before taking up lectureships at Bristol, Edinburgh and Oxford. He has held a British Academy Research Readership, a membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a fellowship the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington DC. He is the author of Plato's Natural Philosophy (CUP, 2004), Aristotle on the Sense-Organs (CUP, 1998), and the translator of Plato, Timaeus and Critias (Penguin Classics, 2008).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Circumscribing the soul
2. Towards a scientific definition of the soul
3. Parts and unity in the definition of the soul
4. The definition of dunamis
5. The priority of the objects over the capacities of the soul
6. The importance of nutrition
7. The soul as an efficient cause
8. The matter of the soul's activities
9. The perceptual capacity extended
10. Phantasia
11. The intellect and the limits of naturalism
12. The locomotive capacity
13. The descent from definition: The capacities of the soul applied
14. The capacities in the Parts and lives of animals