Aristotle's On the Soul

Aristotle's On the Soul aims to uncover the principle of life, what Aristotle calls psuchē (soul). For Aristotle, soul is the form which gives life to a body and causes all its living activities, from breathing to thinking. Aristotle develops a general account of all types of living through examining soul's causal powers. The thirteen new essays in this Critical Guide demonstrate the profound influence of Aristotle's inquiry on biology, psychology and philosophy of mind from antiquity to the present. They deepen our understanding of his key concepts, including form, reason, capacity, and activity. This volume situates Aristotle in his intellectual context and draws judiciously from his other works as well as the history of interpretation to shed light on his intricate views. It also highlights ongoing interpretive debates and Aristotle's continuing relevance. It will prove invaluable for researchers in ancient philosophy and the history of science and ideas.

WHY STUDYING THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY MATTERS

The debate over whether and how philosophers of today may usefully engage with philosophers of the past is nearly as old as the history of philosophy itself. Does the study of the history of philosophy train or corrupt the budding philosopher's mind? Why study the history of philosophy? And, how to study the history of philosophy? I discuss some mainstream approaches to the study of the history of philosophy (with special focus on ancient philosophy), before explicating the one I adopt and commend.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the study of the history of philosophy. In general, there is an enormous difference between those who concern themselves with ancient philosophy, those who concern themselves with medieval philosophy, and the students of the history of modern philosophy. And, across this distinction, there is a great variety of approaches. One should not forget that the historiography of philosophy itself in many ways is a product of history and reflects the historical context in which it is pursued. Nevertheless, what this book is interested in is not the factual question of why historians of philosophy do what they do, but the theoretical question, the question of how one ought to conceive of and explain what they do; though they themselves in this work may not in fact be guided by these assumptions and principles, there must be such principles to the extent that their activity is a rational activity. It is also important to note that philosophers tend to criticize historians of philosophy as being unduly historical and not sufficiently philosophical.

The Historical History of Philosophy and Its Object

This chapter evaluates the historical history of philosophy. Given the very strong philosophical assumptions underlying the early philosophical histories of philosophy, and given in particular the fact that they tended to be written from the point of view of some kind of idealism, it is not surprising that they should have met with some resistance, in particular outside philosophy. Thus, one finds Albert Schwegler criticizing Hegel’s method of treating the history of philosophy, rejecting any kind of philosophical history of philosophy as history. He insists that the systematical study of the history of philosophy is the task of a historian and has to be pursued in precisely the way one studies any other kind of history or history in general. Zeller therefore advocates a purely historical approach to the history of philosophy, a historian’s history of philosophy, and his own monumental work on the history of Greek philosophy is inspired by this conception, just as it, in turn, inspires a lot of work, at least on ancient philosophy of the same kind. The chapter then presents a systematical consideration of the historical history of philosophy.

The Study of Ancient Philosophy

This chapter reflects on the study of ancient philosophy. Ancient philosophy can be studied in many ways. The thoughts of ancient philosophers are of great interest not just as philosophical thoughts; many of them, in one way or another, are also of great historical importance. They help to explain a great many historical facts, not just in the history of philosophy but in many other histories. Or they are reflections of some historical development we may be interested in; again, this may be a development in the history of philosophy or in some other history, even one that at first may seem to have very little to do with philosophy. Thus, there are many approaches to the thought of ancient philosophers, all of which contribute to a better understanding of it. One can pursue each of the many histories in which ancient philosophy, either as a whole or in part, plays a role and try to determine what this role is in a manner appropriate for the history in question. Indeed, one reason why the study of ancient philosophy is so attractive and so lively is that it allows for so many interests and approaches.

The Identification and Representation of Views

This chapter describes the actual work of the historian of philosophy. Ordinarily, the historian is working with a text, or even a number of texts, on the basis of which he will try to reconstruct the thought of a philosopher. This is the standard case in the history of medieval philosophy, and it is almost invariably the case for the historian of modern philosophy. In the case of ancient philosophy, however, the primary aim is not to understand certain texts, but to understand the thought of a philosopher underlying a text, if there is one. The historian has to understand and to explain a philosopher’s taking a view from the point of view of a contemporary historian of philosophy, and this means that he has to identify——to represent——the philosopher’s view not only in terms in which it is intelligible to a modern historian of philosophy, but also in terms in which it is intelligible to the historian’s modern audience. And this raises at least two questions, one concerning the translation this involves and the other concerning the language of the historian.

Searching for the Divine in Plato and Aristotle

To scholars of ancient philosophy, theoria denotes abstract thinking, with both Plato and Aristotle employing the term to signify philosophical contemplation. Yet it is surprising for some to find an earlier, traditional meaning referring to travel to festivals and shrines. In an attempt to dissolve the problem of equivocal reference, Julie Ward's book seeks to illuminate the nature of traditional theoria as ancient festival-attendance as well as the philosophical account developed in Plato and Aristotle. First, she examines the traditional use referring to periodic festivals, including their complex social and political arrangements, then she considers the subsequent use by Plato and Aristotle. Broadly speaking, she discerns a common thread running throughout both uses: namely, the notion of having a visual experience of the sacred or divine. Thus her book aims to illuminate the nature of philosophical theoria described by Plato and Aristotle in light of traditional, festival theoria.

Stoic Logic Allows Understanding a Priori Falsity in the Conditional

An issue to explain in cognitive science is nowadays the case of certain conditionals that people seem to deem as a priori false. Those conditionals appear to be false by virtue of semantics: the meanings of their antecedents and their consequents seem not to admit any link between them. This is a problem because, from the point of view of classical logic, they are not always false; there can be situations in which they are true (as classical logic provides, whenever their antecedents are false, those conditionals in entirety are true). There are contemporary frameworks explaining this phenomenon (e.g., the theory of mental models). However, this paper tries to make the point that the solution might be already in ancient philosophy: in particular, in Chrysippus’ logic. Thus, the paper describes in details (1) why those conditionals are controversial in classical logic and (2) the account that can be given for them from Chrysippus’ philosophy. That account is based mainly on the Stoic idea that the negation of the second clause of a conditional should not be compatible with its first clause.