Essays on Aristotle's De Anima

Front Cover
Martha C. Nussbaum, Amélie Oksenberg Rorty
Clarendon Press, Mar 26, 1992 - Philosophy - 448 pages
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.

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Contents

II
1
III
7
IV
15
V
27
VI
57
VII
75
VIII
93
IX
109
XVI
227
XVII
249
XVIII
279
XIX
297
XX
313
XXII
343
XXIII
359
XXIV
381

X
129
XI
147
XII
169
XIII
185
XIV
195
XXV
401
XXVI
421
XXVIII
435
XXIX
451
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Page 117 - But it will be said that these phenomena are false and that I am dreaming. Let it be so; still it is at least quite certain that it seems to me that I see light, that I hear noise and that I feel heat. That cannot be false; properly speaking it is what is in me called feeling; and used in this precise sense that is no other thing than thinking.
Page 190 - I say, because for any living thing that has reached its normal development and which is unmutilated, and whose mode of generation is not spontaneous, the most natural act is the production of another like itself, an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant, in order that, as far as its nature allows, it may partake in the eternal and divine. That is the goal towards which all things strive, that for the sake of which they do whatsoever their nature renders possible.
Page 71 - What a thing is is always determined by its function: a thing really is itself when it can perform its function; an eye, for instance, when it can see. When a thing cannot do so it is that thing only in name, like a dead eye or one made of stone, just as a wooden saw is no more a saw than one in a picture.
Page 114 - But what then am I ? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels.
Page 115 - Thought is a word that covers everything that exists in us in such a way that we are immediately conscious of it.
Page 171 - For those who wish to get clear of difficulties it is advantageous to discuss the difficulties well; for the subsequent free play of thought implies the solution of the previous difficulties, and it is not possible to untie a knot of which one does not know. But the difficulty of our thinking points to a 'knot...
Page 114 - I considered myself as having a face, hands, arms, and all that system of members composed of bones and flesh as seen in a corpse which I designated by the name of body. In addition to this I considered that I was nourished, that I walked, that I felt, and that I thought, and I referred all these actions to the soul: but I did not stop to consider what the soul was, or if I did stop, I imagined that it was something extremely rare and subtle like a wind, a flame, or an ether, which was spread throughout...
Page 190 - Or as eye, hand, foot, and in general each of the parts evidently has a function, may one lay it down that man similarly has a function apart from all these? What then can this be? Life seems to belong even to plants, but we are seeking what is peculiar to man. Let us exclude, therefore, the life of nutrition and growth.
Page 122 - But there is an almost total neglect of any problem arising from psycho-physical dualism and the facts of consciousness. Such problems do not seem to arise for him. The reason appears to be that concepts like that of consciousness do not figure in his conceptual schema at all; they play no part in his analysis of perception, thought, etc. (Nor do they play any significant role in Greek thought in general.) Recent work in AI and cognitive psychology has moved away from a sharp mindbody dualism.
Page 239 - asses would prefer sweepings to gold' ; for food is pleasanter than gold to asses. So the pleasures of creatures different in kind differ in kind, and it is plausible to suppose that those of a single species do not differ. But they vary to no small extent, in the case of men at least ; the same things delight some people and pain others, and are painful and odious to some, and pleasant to and liked by others. This happens, too, in the case of sweet things; the same things do not seem sweet to a...

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