Originally published in 1907, this book contains the ancient Greek text of Aristotle's De Anima, his treatise on the differing souls of living things. An English translation is provided on each facing page, and Hicks supplies a very detailed commentary on each line at the end of the book, as well as a summary of each section. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Greek philosophy and the history of classical scholarship.

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. (shrink)

The most important things in this seminal paper are (a) showing that the first part of the chapter is only setting up the aporia and does not provide the solution; (b) showing that the rest of the chapter provides the material for resolving the aporia; (c) showing that the question is not about how we perceive that we perceive, but how we can distinguish between seeing and hearing—how we are aware that we are seeing rather than hearing; (c) showing that (...) this is reducible to how we are aware that a colour is not a sound, and how we perceive the unity of objects that present themselves under more than one sense-modality. Hence the remainder of De anima 3.2 presents both the materials for the solution (actuality of sense and sensed object are one thing) and the solution (there is a common perceiver who receives the input from several senses and can unite them and also differentiate). De anima 3.2 is not about perceiving that we perceive, nor about reflexive self-awareness. The problems of interpretation and of the unity of the chapter are resolved once we see that the topic is how we can tell the difference between input from different sense modalities, how we distinguish between white things and sweet things, or between seeing and hearing, and how we perceive objects as a unity when they present themselves to separate senses. (shrink)

In 1974, Winfried Fauser published his edition of Radulphus Brito’s commentary on the third book of Aristotle’s De anima. This contribution continues his project by providing an edition of Brito’s commentary on the first book and the first third of the second book. An analysis of this part of the commentary shows that Brito developed some original views that had an impact on the fourteenth-century commentary tradition.

Hicks' edition of the De Anima contains valuable commentary from Hicks as well as useful summaries of the views of earlier commentators.

Saint Thomas Aquinas explains that, according to the method followed by the Philosopher in metaphysics, it is convenient in science to treat first the determinations in the most common and general fashion in order to attend later to what is proper to each species. And it is in these sense that, according to Aquinas, the De Anima studies the most general and common affairs of the animated realities in order to treat later, in other books, about what is proper (...) of the animated in particular. (shrink)

This is a close scrutiny of "De Anima II 5", led by two questions. First, what can be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotle's theory of perception? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: (i) that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver (...) becoming like the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary alteration of the type exemplified when fire heats the surrounding air, (ii) that this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim (i) is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim (ii) is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any underlying material realisation for perceiving. The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actuality is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exemplifies one of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge and in an embryo's first acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction of suitably refined meanings of 'alteration' allows Aristotle to explain perception and learning within the framework of his physics, which by definition is the study of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from "Physics" III 1-3 and "De Generatione et Corruptione" I, to the task of accounting for the cognitive accuracy of (proper object) perception and second potentiality knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective truth. Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation, and to Aristotle's cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted earlier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it. (shrink)

Book synopsis: For the Pre-Socratic philosophers the soul was the source of movement and sensation, while for Plato it was the seat of being, metaphysically distinct from the body that it was forced temporarily to inhabit. Plato's student Aristotle was determined to test the truth of both these beliefs against the emerging sciences of logic and biology. His examination of the huge variety of living organisms - the enormous range of their behaviour, their powers and their perceptual sophistication - convinced (...) him of the inadequacy both of a materialist reduction and of a Platonic sublimation of the soul. In De Anima, he sought to set out his theory of the soul as the ultimate reality of embodied form and produced both a masterpiece of philosophical insight and a psychology of perennially fascinating subtlety. (shrink)

Bringing together a group of outstanding new essays on Aristotle's De Anima, this book covers topics such as the relation between soul and body, sense-perception, imagination, memory, desire, and thought, which present the philosophical substance of Aristotle's views to the modern reader. The contributors write with philosophical subtlety and wide-ranging scholarship, locating their interpretations firmly within the context of Aristotle's thought as a whole.u.

Christopher Shields presents a new translation and commentary of Aristotle's De Anima, a work of interest to philosophers at all levels, as well as psychologists and students interested in the nature of life and living systems. The volume provides a full translation of the complete work, together with a comprehensive commentary. While sensitive to philological and textual matters, the commentary addresses itself to the philosophical reader who wishes to understand and assess Aristotle's accounts of the soul and body; perception; (...) thinking; action; and the character of living systems. It aims to present controversial aspects of the text in a neutral, fair-minded manner, so that readers can come to be equipped to form their own judgments. (shrink)

t. 1. Texto inédito de los doce primeros capítulos. Facsímil de la segunda versión suareciana (Lyon 1621).

The Oxford Classical texts, of Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxeniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus critics at the foot of each page. There are now over 100 volumes, representing the greater part of classical Greek and Latin literature.

Aristotle, De Anima: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary. By Shields Christopher.

This essay constructs a picture of the meaning of life based on De Anima 2. 2-4. It shows that there are organisms that preserve their form through the exercise of identifiable functions. For an individual to be a short, living thing is for it to be one of these naturally species-preserving organisms. For an individual living thing to be actually living is for it to be able to perform one of the psychic or living functions appropriate to its species.

Este artigo apresenta uma comparação conceitual entre a obra De anima, de Aristóteles, e a concepção das faculdades da alma no Kitáb al-Nafs – edição árabe – (Livro da Alma, De anima), de Ibn Sina (Avicena), com o intuito de mostrar similitudes e in#uências de Aristóteles sobre o pensamento de Ibn Sina, nessa temática. Destaca, ainda, como e a época em que o estagirita foi recebido em terras do Islã, indicando o seu primeiro receptor, o &lósofo Al-Kindi, assim (...) como, de modo pormenorizado, uma comparação sobre a de&nição de alma dada pelos dois &lósofos, e as três espécies de alma, com ênfase para o conceito de alma racional. Apresenta, também, a estrutura de cada uma das obras. (shrink)

Theodore Metochites’ Aristotelian paraphrases (c. 1312), covering all 40 books of the Stagirite’s extant works on natural philosophy, constitute one of the major achievements of late Byzantine learning. This volume offers the first critical edition of Metochites’ paraphrases of the three books of the De anima, accompanied by an introduction and an English translation with an apparatus of parallel passages in Aristotle’s ancient commentators. The first part of the introduction presents and evaluates the sources for the text, consisting of (...) thirteen Greek manuscripts, a 15th-century Greek epitome and a 16th-century Latin translation. The genealogical relationships between these are established on the basis of separative and conjunctive errors, identified, inter alia, through critical discussions of more than 300 passages. The second part of the introduction discusses the nature, purpose and sources of the paraphrases as well as several linguistic questions with implications for editing and translating the text. The third part of the introduction sets out the principles of this edition and translation. (shrink)

Aristoteles’ Traktat De anima untersucht die Natur der Seele. Unter ›Seele‹ ist dabei jedoch nicht das subjektive Zentrum unseres mentalen Lebens zu verstehen, sondern dasjenige Prinzip, dessen Vorhandensein lebendige von leblosen Körpern unterscheidet. Es umfasst alle Formen des Lebendigen, also pflanzliches, tierisches und menschliches Leben. Ziel der Schrift ist es, die Seele zu definieren, d.h. zu erklären, was es für diese Formen des Lebendigen jeweils heißt, lebendig zu sein. Diskutiert werden: der vegetative Selbsterhalt, Wahrnehmung, menschliches Denken sowie die Ortsbewegung (...) der Lebewesen. De anima gehört zu den faszinierendsten, philosophisch lohnendsten, aber auch schwierigeren Schriften des Aristoteles. Die zweisprachige Studienausgabe bietet eine vollständige Neu­übersetzung. Benutzt wird die Edition des griechischen Textes von Aurelius Förster (Budapest 1912), von der sich die heutzutage sehr verbreitete Ausgabe von W. D. Ross textkritisch hat leiten lassen (OCT 1956 und 1971). Sie ist auch durch die späteren Ausgaben von Siwek (Rom 1965) und Jannone (Paris 1966) nicht ersetzt. Eine Einleitung führt in die Grundlagen und Voraussetzungen der aristotelischen Seelenlehre ein und gibt einen Überblick über den Gedankengang der Schrift. Der Kommentarteil ist so knapp wie möglich gehalten. Im Anhang sind ein Glossar und ein Verzeichnis der Abweichungen von der Ausgabe von Ross beigefügt. (shrink)

The soul is an explanatory principle of Aristotle’s natural science, accounting both for the fact that living things are alive as well as for the diverse natural attributes that belong to them by virtue of being alive. I argue that the explanatory role of the soul in Aristotle’s natural science must be understood in light of his view, stated in a controversial passage from Parts of Animals (645b14–20), that the soul of a living thing is a “complex activity” of its (...) organic body. This paper explores the role of this “complex activity” model of soul in Aristotle’s study of soul in De Anima. I argue, first, that the model has its origins in De Anima II.4, where Aristotle argues that living things do all they do by nature for the sake of a single, teleologically primary end. I argue further that Aristotle uses this model to account for the psychological attributes naturally present in living things, including their capacities for vital activities like nutrition, reproduction, and perception, and that this is the task to which Aristotle devotes the obscure final chapters of De Anima III. (shrink)

Como é que três eminentes Jesuítas comentadores de Aristóteles poderiam ler o método concebido por Inácio de Loyola nos Exercícios Espirituais, denominado “aplicação dos sentidos” externos? A resposta a esta hipotética questão, absolutamente inédita, será dada em três passos. Começando com a doutrina dos sentidos e tocando na passagem da ontologia para a semiótica, atender-‑se-‑á ao aparecimento do mundo – mediante uma segunda passagem, da psicologia para a cosmologia – em que o lugar do ser humano, entendido no espaço de (...) uma antropologia criatural, nos conduz a uma nova perceção das relações entre imaginação e espiritualidade mundana, na aceção de “incarnada”. (shrink)

This edition of Zeraḥyah's Hebrew translation of _De Anima_, Aristotle's monograph on the soul, is of major importance for the history of transmission of Aristotle's text in the Middle Ages. Zeraḥyah's translation is based on the same lost Arabic translation as Averroes' long commentary, and the solution which it provides for the question of the authorship of this lost Arabic translation thus also holds good for Averroes' text.

Aristoteles’ Traktat De anima befasst sich mit der Natur der Seele. Die verhältnismäßig kurze Schrift – sie umfasst nicht mehr als 33 Seiten in der Bekker-Ausgabe – teilt sich in drei mehr oder weniger gleichlange ›Bücher‹. Sie gehört neben der Metaphysik zu den besonders häufig kommentierten Schriften des Aristoteles.

In the 12th century the "Book of the Soul" by the philosopher Avicenna was translated from Arabic into Latin. It had an immense success among scholastic writers and deeply influenced the structure and content of many psychological works of the Middle Ages. The reception of Avicenna's book is the story of cultural contact at an imipressively high intellectural level. The present volume investigates this successful reception using two approaches. The first is chronological, tracing the stages by which Avicenna's work was (...) accepted and adapted by Latin scholars. The second is doctrinal, analyzing the fortunes of key doctrines. The sense of the original Arabic text of Avicenna is kept in mind throughout and the degree to which his original Latin interpreters succeeded in conveying it is evaluated. (shrink)

Christopher Shields presents a new translation and commentary of Aristotle's De Anima, a work of interest to philosophers at all levels, as well as psychologists and students interested in the nature of life and living systems. The volume provides a full translation of the complete work, together with a comprehensive commentary. While sensitive to philological and textual matters, the commentary addresses itself to the philosophical reader who wishes to understand and assess Aristotle's accounts of the soul and body; perception; (...) thinking; action; and the character of living systems. It aims to present controversial aspects of the text in a neutral, fair-minded manner, so that readers can come to be equipped to form their own judgments. (shrink)

Comparing the passage of Aristotle’s treatise De anima, III, 8, 431b.21-24 and Ecclesiastes 3: 10-11, the author reveals a similar epistemological image: the universe is in the soul of the cognizing subject, for it embraces all existing things in the process of perception and cognition of the world.

Desperately difficult texts inevitably elicit desperate hermeneutical measures. Aristotle's De Anima, book three, chapter five, is evidently one such text. At least since the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias, scholars have felt compelled to draw some remarkable conclusions regarding Aristotle's brief remarks in this passage regarding intellect. One such claim is that in chapter five, Aristotle introduces a second intellect, the so-called 'agent intellect', an intellect distinct from the 'passive intellect', the supposed focus of discussion up until this passage.1 (...) This view is a direct descendent of the view of Alexander himself, who identified the agent intellect with the divine intellect.2 Even the staunchest defender of such a view is typically at a loss to give a plausible explanation of why the divine intellect pops into and then out of the picture in the intense and closely argued discussion of the human intellect that goes from chapter four through to the end of chapter seven.3 Revolting against an extravagant postulation of entities, Michael Wedin, for example, has argued with considerable subtlety and ingenuity that there is in fact only one intellect discussed in De Anima.4 This unified intellect is fully capable of being integrated into Aristotle's hylomorphic psychology. In order to make his case, though, Wedin is himself forced (1) to discount the importance of some texts and (2) to interpret others in a way that strains credulity. (shrink)

Myles Burnyeat has argued that in De Anima II.5 Aristotle marks out a refined kind of alteration which is to be distinguished from ordinary alteration, change of quality as defined in Physics III.1-3. Aristotle's aim, he says, is to make it clear that perception is an alteration of this refined sort and not an ordinary alteration. Thus, it both supports his own interpretation of Aristotle's view of perception, and refutes the Sorabji interpretation according to which perception is a composite (...) of form and matter where the matter is a material alteration in the body. I argue that Burnyeat's interpretation of II.5 should be rejected for a number of reasons, and offer a new interpretation of the distinctions drawn in the chapter, and the relations between them. I conclude that the chapter provides no evidence against the Sorabji view or for Burnyeat's view. Aristotle's assertion that perception is a refined kind of alteration means that it is the kind of alteration that preserves and is good for the subject of that alteration. There is no inconsistency in the thought that perception is a refined alteration of this sort while it, or its matter, is an ordinary alteration. (shrink)

Book 1 of Aristotle’s De Anima extensively discusses two characteristics of the soul: the soul as the source of motion of the living being, and the soul as the seat of perception and cognition. The following conclusions are drawn on the nature and function of the soul. The soul is not a magnitude and not material; it is a substance and not an attribute; it is a unity, and the principle of unity is not material continuity. The soul is (...) the origin of perception and motion, and of psychological processes such as emotions and desires. An adequate account of how the soul causes perception, motion, and the like must not attribute motion to the soul. (shrink)

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 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. (shrink)

Introduction: why the De anima commentaries? This book will concentrate on interpretations of the De anima in late antiquity, and what we can learn from ...

The physicist defines anger in terms of heart, blood, and heat; the dialectician says it is the desire to inflict pain in retaliation. Both give fairly sure signs for its recognition; but neither can show why these signs must go together and in what they can cohere. Aristotelian physics is presumably a way to avoid such a split, and whatever defects his account of perception or intellection suffers from cannot be traced to it. Phantasia, however, seems to be dialectically distinguished (...) from other faculties of soul and physically defined as a kind of motion; and even if Aristotle could say at what speed it moves, we do not discern in such a definition the ground for its being the link between perception and intellection. The soul is the source of both motion and awareness; and since it cannot be the efficient cause of motion without destroying the possibility of awareness, something in its cognitive capacity must be able to translate the nonmotivating acts of perception or of intellection into causes of motion. That something seems to be again phantasia, which thus comes to light as the soul’s double bond, linking the aesthetic with the noetic and awareness with motion. Phantasia is as inseparable from desire as it is from thought. It is the closest Aristotle comes to acknowledging that self-moving motion is soul. (shrink)