Aristotle is considered by many to be the founder of 'faculty
psychology'--the attempt to explain a variety of psychological
phenomena by reference to a few inborn capacities. In The Powers of
Aristotle's Soul, Thomas Kjeller Johansen investigates his main work
on psychology, the De Anima, from this perspective. He shows how
Aristotle conceives of the soul's capacities and how he uses them to
account for the souls of living beings. Johansen offers an original
account of how Aristotle defines the capacities in relation to their
activities and proper objects, and considers the relationship of the
body to the definition of the soul's capacities. Against the
background of Aristotle's theory of science, Johansen argues that the
capacities of the soul serve as causal principles in the explanation
of the various life forms. He develops detailed readings of
Aristotle's treatment of nutrition, perception, and intellect, which
show the soul's various roles as formal, final and efficient causes,
and argues that the so-called 'agent' intellect falls outside the
scope of Aristotle's natural scientific approach to the soul. Other
psychological activities, various kinds of perception (including
'perceiving that we perceive'), memory, imagination, are accounted for
in their explanatory dependency on the basic capacities. The ability
to move spatially is similarly explained as derivative from the
perceptual or intellectual capacities. Johansen claims that these
capacities together with the nutritive may be understood as 'parts' of
the soul, as they are basic to the definition and explanation of the
various kinds of soul. Finally, he considers how the account of the
capacities in the De Anima is adopted and adapted in Aristotle's
biological and minor psychological works.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191633010
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Oxford University Press Academic UK
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter