Aristotle's De Anima
A Critical Commentary

Aristotle's De Anima was the first systematic philosophical account of the soul and its faculties.

Ronald Polansky (Author)

9780521862745, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 September 2007

598 pages
23.4 x 15.9 x 4 cm, 0.928 kg

'Reading Polansky's commentary is a satisfying venture, regardless of whether or not one agrees with the author's insights. His careful arguments, the richness of his secondary sources, and his pedagogical style invite thought and further research. Polansky's commentary will remain a necessary book to be consulted by the researcher of the De Anima.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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.

Introduction
1. The De Anima and self-knowledge
2. Study of soul in relation to physics
3. The cognitive faculties and physics
4. Aristotle's procedures and the quest for thoroughness
5. Background assumptions for study of the soul
6. The truth and interest of the De Anima
7. The text of the De Anima
Book 1: 1. The nobility and difficulty of study of soul. Its connection with body
2. The predecessors' use of soul to account for motion and perception
3. Criticism of predecessors' way of accounting for motion
4. Criticism of the harmonia view as an account of motion
5. Criticism of predecessors' way of accounting for cognition
Book 2: 1. Definition of soul
2. What is life?
3. How powers of soul are distributed and united in the soul
4. The nutritive faculty, its object and subfaculties
5. Clarification of being affected, living as saving, and the first definition of sense
6. The three sorts of sensible objects
7. Vision, its medium, and object
8. Hearing, sound, and voice
9. Smell and odor
10. Taste is a contact sense. The tasteable
11. Touch, the tangibles, and sense as a mean
12. Definition of sense and whether sensibles affect non-perceiving bodies
Book 3: 1. In the world as it is there can be but the five senses
2. What allows for perceiving that we perceive? Sense comes together in a common power so that the five senses are subfaculties of a central sense faculty
3. Distinguishing sense and thought. What is phantasia?
4. What is mind as that capable of thinking all things
5. What enables thinking to occur
6. The sorts of intelligible objects
7. Phantasia has a role in all thinking
8. The mind can think all things
9. There is a capacity for progressive motion
10. The desiderative capacity is the primary cause of progressive motion
11. Even the simplest animals have indefinite phantasia and calculative phantasia fits the account of progressive motion
12. The necessary order of the faculties of the soul
13. The sort of body requisite to support the order of the faculties of soul
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]