Aristotle's De Anima: A Critical Commentary

by Ronald Polansky

• ISBN13: 9780521148856
• ISBN10: 0521148855
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-07-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

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 new 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.

Author Biography

Ronald Polansky is professor of philosophy at Duquesne University. Editor of the journal Ancient Philosophy since founding it in 1979, he is the author of Philosophy and Knowledge: A Commentary on Plato's Theaetetus, and coeditor of Bioethics: Ancient Themes in Contemporary Issues.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
List of Abbreviations	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
Commentary on De Anima
Book I
The Nobility and Difficulty of Study of Soul; Its Connection with Body	p. 33
The Predecessors' Use of Soul to Account for Motion and Perception	p. 62
Criticism of Predecessors' Way of Accounting for Motion	p. 83
Criticism of the Harmonia View as an Account of Motion	p. 103
Criticism of Predecessors' Way of Accounting for Cognition	p. 123
Book 2
Definition of Soul	p. 145
What is Life?	p. 171
How Powers of Soul Are Distributed and United in the Soul	p. 188
The Nutritive Faculty: Its Object and Subfaculties	p. 200
Clarification of Being Affected, Living as Saving, and the First Definition of Sense	p. 223
The Three Sorts of Sensible Objects	p. 250
Vision, Medium, and Objects	p. 263
Hearing, Sound, and Voice	p. 285
Smell and Odor	p. 302
Taste Is a Contact Sense; the Tasteable	p. 313
Touch, the Tangibles, and Sense as a Mean	p. 321
Definition of Sense and Whether Sensibles Affect Nonperceiving Bodies	p. 338
Book 3
In the World As It Is There Can Be but the Five Senses	p. 361
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	p. 380
Distinguishing Sense and Thought; What Is Phantasia?	p. 403
What Is Mind as That Capable of Thinking All Things	p. 434
What Enables Thinking to Occur	p. 458
The Sorts of Intelligible Objects	p. 473
Phantasia Has a Role in All Thinking	p. 481
That Mind Can Think All Things	p. 494
There Is a Capacity for Progressive Motion	p. 501
The Desiderative Capacity Is the Primary Cause of Progressive Motion	p. 514
Even the Simplest Animals Have Indefinite Phantasia, and Calculative Phantasia Fits the Account of Progressive Motion	p. 527
The Necessary Order of the Faculties of Soul	p. 534
The Sort of Body Requisite to Support the Order of the Faculties of Soul	p. 546
Bibliography	p. 555
Index	p. 563
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