De Anima (On the Soul)

by Aristotle, Hugh Lawson-Tancred (Translator)

Overview

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.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140444711
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/02/1987
Series:	Penguin Classics Series
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	272,903
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.58(d)
Lexile:	1270L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Aristotle was born in 384BC. For twenty years he studied at Athens at the Academy of Plato, on whose death in 347 he left, and some time later became tutor to Alexander the Great. On Alexander's succession to the throne of Macedonia in 336, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his school and research institute, the Lyceum. After Alexander's death he was driven out of Athens and fled to Chalcis in Euboea where he died in 322. His writings profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy.

Hugh Lawson-Tancred was born in 1955 and educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. He is a Departmental Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Birkbeck College in the University of London. He has published extensively on Aristotle and Plato and is currently engaged in research in computational linguistics. He translates widely from the Slavonic and Scandinavian languages. His translations of Aristotle's The Art of Rhetoric and De Anima are also published in Penguin Classics. He is married with a daughter and two sons and lives in North London and Somerset.

Table of Contents

De Anima (On the Soul)Foreword

Introduction
I. Entelechism
II. The Life of Aristotle
III. The Philosophical Background
IV. The Development and Scope of Entelechism
V. Perception, Imagination and Desire
VI. Intellect
VII. Entelechism in the Modern Debate
VIII. Conclusion
IX. The Translation
Glossary

On the Soul

Book I

The Traditional Background

Chapter One: The Scope of the Work
Chapter Two: Some Earlier Theories
Chapter Three: Comments on Earlier Views I
Chapter Four: Comments on Earlier Views II
Chapter Five: General Remarks

Book II

The Nature of the Soul
Chapter One: Soul as Form
Chapter Two: The Psychic Hierarchy I
Chapter Three: The Psychic Hierarchy II
Nutrition
Chapter Four: Methodological Remarks; Nutrition
Sense-perception
Chapter Five: Sensation
Chapter Six: The Types of Sense-object
Chapter Seven: Sight
Chapter Eight: Hearing
Chapter Nine: Smell
Chapter Ten: Taste
Chapter Eleven: Touch
Chapter Twelve: Perception as the Reception of Form without Matter

Book III

Sense-perception

Chapter One: General Problems of Perception I
Chapter Two: General Problems of Perception II
Imagination
Chapter Three: Imagination
Intellect
Chapter Four: Intellect
Chapter Five: Intellect; Active and Passive
Chapter Six: Intellect; Simple and Complex
Chapter Seven: Appendix to Sense and Mind
Chapter Eight: SUmmary of Account of Sense-perception and Thought
Motivation
Chapter Nine: Motivation; The Division of the Soul
Chapter Ten: Motivation
Chapter Eleven: Appendix to Motivation

Appendix: Animal Survival
Chapter Thirteen: The Teleological Context I
Chapter Fourteen: The Teleological Context II

Notes
Bibliography