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essays on aristotle s de anima print isbn 019823600x 1995 amélie oksenberg rorty martha c nussbaum contents 1 introduction 5 a the text of aristotle s de anima 5 i the manuscript tradition 5 ii the tradition of commentary 7 iii unity of the treatise 8 iv relationship to other parts of the corpus 10 b de anima its agenda and its recent interpreters 11 i the agenda of de anima 11 ii the directions of recent interpretations 16 2 is an aristotelian philosophy of mind still credible a draft 18 3 changing aristotle s mind 30 i aristotle s problems explanation nature and change 31 ii perceiving is an enmattered form 35 a anti-reductionism 36 b material embodiment 38 iii why we don t have to junk aristotle 50 iv aristotle and theodicy or aquinas separated souls change their mind 55 v goodbye to oz 59 4 hylomorphism and functionalism 61 appendix matter and definitions in metaph z11 76 5 living bodies 78 i 80 ii 88 iii 91 6 on aristotle s conception of the soul 96 7 psuch versus the mind 110

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amélie oksenberg rorty martha c nussbaum introduction 110 i the psuch 110 ii the mind 114 iii some comparisons 117 final embarrassed postscript 126 8 explaining various forms of living 129 i introduction 129 ii teleological and non-teleological definitions and explanations 131 iii functionalism 135 iv aristotelian matter 138 v final remarks 141 9 aspects of the relationship between aristotle s psychology and his zoology 146 i 148 ii 157 10 dialectic motion and perception de anima book 169 i aristotelian dialectic 170 ii the soul as origin of motion 171 iii soul as a harmonia 178 iv an aporia for aristotle 179 iv like is known by like perception and motion 181 v conclusion 182 11 de anima 2 2-4 and the meaning of life 184 12 intentionality and physiological processes aristotle s theory of senseperception 194 i 194 ii 209 iii 226 13 aristotle on the sense of touch 227 introduction 228 i the sense of touch organ and objects 229 ii animal variations and intersubjectivity 235 a the problem 235 b touch in animals behavioural economies 237 2

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a the text of aristotle s de anima iii touch and tangible reality 244 14 aristotle on the imagination 250 introduction 250 i phantasia and phainetai 257 ii phantasia and phantasma 266 iii in confinio intellectus et sensus 273 conclusion 278 additional note 1991 279 15 the cognitive role of phantasia in aristotle 280 i problems with a unified concept of phantasia 280 ii phantasia as synthesizer 284 iii thought and the objects of sense-perception 288 16 aristotle on memory and the self 297 17 nous poitikos survey of earlier interpretations 313 i earliest interpretations 313 ii medieval conceptions 314 iii most recent interpretations 323 18 what does the maker mind make 330 i the question 330 ii some answers 330 iii more questions and answers 331 iv still more questions 335 v different answers to our initial question 339 19 aristotle on thinking 346 i 347 ii 351 iii 352 iv 354 v 359 vi 363 20 desire and the good in de anima 367 i the mover of movement and the aims of animals 369 ii the negative arguments 372 3

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amélie oksenberg rorty martha c nussbaum iii aristotle s settled account of the mover 374 iv the role of the good as the object of desire 380 v deliberative phantasia and measurement by one 382 vi conclusion 385 bibliography 387 i editions translations and commentaries 387 a de anima 387 b other works by aristotle 388 ii ancient and medieval commentaries 389 iii secondary literature 390 additional essay 1995 408 remarks on de anima 2 7-8 408 appendix cf n 29 421 notes 422 4

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1 introduction a the text of aristotle s de anima martha c nussbaum i the manuscript tradition like most other works of aristotle the de anima survives in a relatively large number of manuscripts but none of these is earlier than the tenth century ad fragments of the earlier tradition can in some cases be recovered from citations in the ancient commentators see section ii below but it must be remembered that their work itself survives only in manuscripts of the same age as the aristotle manuscripts so there is a good deal of room for error to creep in the extant manuscripts have probably not been sufficiently described and analysed there seems to be room for a new critical edition but in so far as it is possible to say anything without having done the work oneself and having done comparable work only on the de motu animalium which has a somewhat different manuscript tradition though related in several important cases i shall try to give a brief sketch of the situation the earliest manuscript in which the work survives is e parisinus graecus 1853 a manuscript that has long been regarded as an extremely valuable source for the works of aristotle that it contains the presentation of de anima in e has one peculiar feature the second book of the treatise is not in the same hand as the first and third there are signs that the original second book scraps of which remain was torn out and a new version inserted moreover the new version does not seem to derive from the same manuscript family as the other books for its readings are said to mark it as belonging to the other major family one should however bear in mind that the only other exemplar of the e family that has been said to have independent authority l vaticanus graecus 253 contains only the third book of the treatise therefore the basis for ross s claims about the filiation of the readings in the second book in e his symbol for the version of book 2 in e should be further scrutinized 1 in any case one can agree with ross that it was certainly misleading to designate the entire manuscript by the single letter e as förster did failing to alert the reader to the problem posed by the two hands end p.1 1 see ross in aristotle 1961a introduction.

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martha c nussbaum some editors have treated e as a paradigm dismissing all the other manuscripts as less valuable r d hicks for example writes the text of the de anima rests mainly on the authority of a single good manuscript cod parisiensis 1853 better known by the symbol e 2 this practice of looking for a single authority can only lead to confusion what one needs to do first of all is to look at all the extant manuscripts that have any claim at all to independence and to produce an exacting analysis of their relationships as was done for example in exemplary fashion by r kassel in his work on aristotle s rhetoric 3 this task clearly has not yet been completed for the de anima in the case of the rhetoric kassel showed convincingly enough the unreliability of ross s work both collations and analysis near the end of his career and his de anima work though the most complete account of the manuscripts we have is likely to be marred in similar ways if we may judge however from what ross and earlier editors such as förster do report then there are quite a few manuscripts other than e that make independent contributions to the establishments of the text all these with the exception of l which is close to e are said to form a single large family whose archetype does not survive this family appears to fall in turn into two subfamilies ross holds that the el family is of equal importance with the other family and that the two subfamilies within the other family are of equal importance with one 4 another in addition one relatively late manuscript p vaticanus graecus 1339 seems to contain readings from both families additional insight into the text can be gained by examining the paraphrases lemmata and citations in the ancient commentaries which sometimes can be shown to preserve readings deriving from some independent tradition otherwise lost to us caution is required both because the manuscript traditions of these authors are themselves complex and because a commentator may combine readings from more than one manuscript much the same is true of the literal latin translation of william of moerbeke used by thomas aquinas as the basis for his commentary since the text of the de anima is unusually corrupt above all in the third book which is in as bad a condition as any extant work of aristotle any text one uses will be bound to contain a fairly large number not only of difficult judgement-calls but also of conjectural emendations the most ambitious and invasive surgical enterprise was that of torstrik who claimed that aristotle wrote two different versions of book 3 which had somehow become conflated he attempted to pull them apart and to reconstruct the originals 5 most scholars have not been convinced by torstrik s arguments but all endeavour in various ways to clear up the problems in book 3 the philosopher/scholar should be 2 3 hicks in aristotle 1907 p lxxxiii aristotle 1976 reviewed by nussbaum 1981 for an account of this manuscript see nussbaum 1975 1976 aristotle 1862 4 5 6

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1 introduction a the text of aristotle s de anima especially attentive to the critical apparatus when working on de anima and should think with more than usual care about the alternatives that have been proposed using if possible more than one edition end p.2 ii the tradition of commentary the de anima was the focus of intense work in the ancient aristotelian traditions theophrastus evidently discussed the work and a portion of his discussion concerning the intellect is preserved in themistius alexander of aphrodisias 2nd3rd c ad wrote about the de anima in two works of his own his de anima of which book 1 is probably genuine book 2 called the mantissa more dubious and the aporiai kai luseis or puzzles and solutions 6 both works especially the latter are of considerable philosophical interest alexander writes as an acute aristotelian not committed to any other school and he is a very probing interpreter in addition his citations and lemmata are a valuable textual source themistius 4th c ad wrote a paraphrase of aristotle s treatise his practice is not to amplify or comment a great deal but to give in different words the sense of the original occasionally however he supplements his paraphrase with material drawn from other aristotelian sources for example the de motu animalium used in paraphrasing 3 10 because he remains relatively close to the text his work can sometimes be useful in confronting textual problems simplicius and philoponus 5th-6th c ad wrote the two most extensive commentaries on the work that survive from antiquity 7 both are neoplatonists the former however a pagan and the latter a christian they were not allies but antagonists on central questions of cosmology and metaphysics both are influenced in their interpretations by their other philosophical and religious views but both are also close readers of the text and highly intelligent interpreters their suggestions should always be taken seriously once again citations and lemmata are a valuable source for the text a contemporary author priscianus lydus wrote a metaphrasis in theophrastum that is sometimes also consulted for textual material 8 the next commentary known to us is by one sophonias probably written in the thirteenth century ad or before to judge from the date of the oldest manuscript as fabricius quoted by trendelenburg says in latin who this sophonias was and when he lived we can t say 9 the paraphrase is worth examining in working on the text though it has less philosophical interest than the other works that have been mentioned 6 7 alexander 1887 simplicius 1882 philoponus 1897 8 9 see the introductions of ross and hicks and the edition by bywater 1886 trendelenburg quoted in aristotle 1907 for the original latin remark see j a fabricius 17901809 vii 236 i am grateful to leofranc holford-strevens for the reference 7

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martha c nussbaum also produced in the thirteenth century is one of the very greatest commentaries on the work by thomas aquinas aquinas who could not read greek worked here as elsewhere from an allegedly literal latin version produced for him by william of moerbeke whose knowledge of greek though renowned in his day is not all it might be and whose principle of supplying a latin word for every word of the greek even for conjunctions and particles that have no single-word equivalent in latin produces a latin syntax that is frequently unintelligible but sometimes used with caution william s versions can help us to reconstruct a part of the ancient manuscript tradition 10 aquinas commentary itself is very insightful so too are the extensive remarks about aristotelian soul-body issues contained in the summa theologiae see the discussion in putnam and nussbaum from this time on aristotle s de anima was continually discussed within the philosophical traditions of europe meanwhile in the arab world the treatise was also available and was the subject of much discussion especially in the work of avicenna and averroës who focused above all on the doctrine of the intellect see brentano but the arabic tradition in this case does not contribute vital information about the text itself among later work one might mention the edition by j pacius frankfurt 1596 and the commentary by j zabarella venice 1605 modern work on the text was pioneered by i bekker s berlin academy edition of 1831 which with all its notorious deficiencies in both collation and judgement still provided a solid basis for further work the editions of torstrik 1862 biehl 1884 and förster 1912 and textual criticism by bonitz and bywater took things further 11 the massive edition translation and commentary by r d hicks 1907 is useful as a commentary but not very helpful on textual matters the french edition translation and commentary by g rodier 1900 does little textual work reprinting biehl s apparatus with little revision and the interpretations proposed can be eccentric but the volume is especially useful for its inclusion of many pertinent citations from the ancient commentators w d ross edited the work for the oxford classical texts in 1956 and again in 1961 with a relatively brief commentary the bibliography mentions other recent commentaries and translations in various languages iii unity of the treatise the fact that the de anima like other aristotelian works did not receive its present form until around 30 bc with the edition of andronicus of rhodes 12 means that its original form must remain in doubt in the case of some of aristotle s other works we have some not terribly clear information about their state in a 10 11 for a close study of william s skills and practices as translator see nussbaum 1975 see also the comments of ross in aristotle 1961a 12 on andronicus see plezia 1946 8

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1 introduction a the text of aristotle s de anima catalogue of works that can be traced back to either the alexandrian librarian hermippus or the peripatetic scholarch ariston of ceos 13 but in this catalogue de anima is present only in a piece which according to the convincing arguments of paul moraux is itself post-andronican inserted to fill a gap in the original text here it is listed among other works dealing with nature such as physics de gen et corr de caelo and the biological works but the metaphysics is included in the group also at most this may be an indication of the order in andronicus edition in the catalogue of ptolemy which probably derives from andronicus edition de anima is listed in the middle of an exclusively physical psychological and biological group even if we can glean from this a bit of information about andronicus ordering of the works it means that we have no knowledge of what de anima looked like before his edition and of whether or not it was a unitary work 14 well-embedded cross-references to a peri psuchs in other genuine aristotelian works give evidence that there was such an aristotelian title possibly in aristotle s lifetime since the cross-references are often of dubious authenticity but they do not enlighten us much about the precise contents or the ordering of the parts especially in the messy terrain of book 3 15 on account of this uncertain situation it has been possible for interpreters to question in rather radical ways the compositional unity of the work especially once it was recognized that chronological development might be a salient feature of aristotle s work for a time in recent decades scholars found attractive the hypothesis of f nuyens that aristotle s writing on soul and body fell into three distinct periods i a period of faithful platonist dualism represented allegedly by the eudemus a dialogue ii a middle period of instrumental dualism in which aristotle still holds that the soul and the body are distinct substances but views the body as a help rather than a hindrance a tool for the soul a view allegedly present in some of the biological works the parva naturalia and the de motu and finally iii a period of hylomorphism in which the soul is held to be the form of the body de anima 16 nuyens placed the de anima as a whole in the final period but ross noting the fact that tool language is used of soul-body relations with a cross-reference to the de motu in 3 10 433b18-30 made one alteration to nuyens s general scheme which on the whole he accepted he concluded that the material in book 3 must represent the second rather than the third period in consequence he concluded that book 3 was on the question of the origin of the ancient catalogues see moraux 1951 düring 1956 keaney 1963 nussbaum 1975 14 the earlier lists show that in many respects the corpus did not have the form andronicus gave it but consisted frequently of smaller units such as an on motion in three books presumably the central books of the physics 15 the de motu animalium does however appear to refer back to the contents of da 3 9-11 under the description peri psuchs just as 3 10 refers forwards to the de motu 16 nuyens 1948 13 9

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martha c nussbaum composed before books 1 and 2 he also believed it to be unfinished remarking that aristotle left the manuscript of the third book less carefully prepared for publication than that of the earlier books 17 nuyens s rigid schema has by now been generally rejected material from a dialogue cannot be straightforwardly used as evidence of what aristotle himself thought and one can show that tool organon language need not be incompatible with a hylomorphic theory of soul and body on aristotle s hylomorphic view particular materials are not essential parts of what the psuch itself is they are at most necessary for performing the functions towards which psuch is organized thus it is rather natural for aristotle to speak of bodily parts as tool-like even though they are not separate from but rather constitutive of the organization that is psuch tool language abounds in clearly hylomorphic discussions indeed one need go no further than the final definition of psuch in de anima 2.1 the showcase for nuyens s third period for psuch is said to be the entelecheia of a sma phusikon organikon a natural tool-like body or body equipped with useful tool-like parts this definition is immediately followed by the comment wherefore one must not ask whether the soul and the body are one any more than whether the wax and its shape are one or in general the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter 412b5-8 in other words tool language is closely linked to the strongest statement aristotle makes about the hylomorphic unity of soul and body this means that the strongest argument that has recently been advanced for the disunity of the treatise is weak indeed none the less it is still perfectly clear that book 3 is internally a mess and that the current sequence of topics may not represent aristotle s own finished work and/or arrangement either because the work remains incompletely finished or because of some subsequent damage iv relationship to other parts of the corpus the de anima has complex links with other works such as the metaphysics the physics the parva naturalia the de motu animalium the various biological treatises the ethical works and even on the emotions the rhetoric in some cases one may feel that two treatments of a single topic are incompatible in ways that do suggest revision over time i have argued as much for the two treatments of action in de anima 3 9-11 and the de motu animalium 18 on the other hand it frequently seems preferable to view putative differences as differences of emphasis in connection with aristotle s focus on a particular set of problems 19 aristotle himself gives an example of this in 3 10 where he defers the detailed discussion of the physiology of motion for another treatise summarizing prospectively arguments of the de motu animalium suggesting in a general way that it is in the treatises that we call the parva naturalia called by him the functions 17 18 ross in aristotle 1961a introduction see nussbaum 1983 19 for a good treatment of this question see kahn 1966 10

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1 introduction b de anima its agenda and its recent interpreters common to body and soul that he will have more to say about the concrete physiology of the life-processes end p.6 b de anima its agenda and its recent interpreters i the agenda of de anima the scope of de anima is much broader than that of either contemporary philosophy of mind or contemporary philosophical psychology it is a metaphysical inquiry into the ontology of psuch and of nous 20 it is philosophical psychology a general analysis of the activities of psuch it is philosophical bio-psychology an investigation of the teleologically organized functions that are common to living bodies it has sometimes been classified with metaphysics in a group of works on natural philosophy and sometimes more narrowly with the physical and biological treatises aristotle begins his philosophical psychology by attempting to analyse and arbitrate the opinions of his predecessors typically his principled courtesy leads him to a set of distinctions that are intended to reformulate their questions and preoccupations he proposes to resolve their controversies about the definition of psuch its cognitive and motive powers and the ontological status of nous by aristotle s lights psychology is not strictly speaking an independent science with its own method and subject-matter he allocates the inquiry into the nature of the soul to the phusikos concerned with the principle of living things arch tn zion 402a7 ff 403a27-8 every scientific inquiry involves some separation a logical abstraction of the logos from the subject-matter under investigation those sorts of investigations that do not separate the logos of the thing from the thing itself carpentry or medical practice for instance do not strictly speaking fall within the domain of natural science 403b10 ff most investigations also involve another kind of separation distinguishing aspects attributes or parts of a complex substances these are sometimes analytically separable from one another and from the immediate material cause of the substance without being capable of existing separately sometimes they are separable both analytically and in fact if there are any functions of the soul that are capable of existing independently of the functions of the body in fact as well as in thought they will fall within the province of the metaphysician ho prtos philosophos 403b15 according to aristotle the natural philosopher phusikos who studies human psychology must specify both the physical conditions and the central cognitions logos that characterize psychological activities and affections 403b7 ff the affections of the soul path ts psuchs for instance are enmattered logoi tapath logoi enhuloi eisin they involve both cognition and the body meta smatos 403a25 20 because it carries many post-cartesian connotations mind is not a felicitous translation of aristotle s nous 11

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martha c nussbaum explaining affections of the soul path therefore requires the co-operation of two specialists the phusikos gives an analysis of the physical condition of the body a state and movement but he must absorb the work of the dialektikos who specifies the central cognitions the logos and the end houheneka that are constitutively associated with each affect 403a26 403b9 ff in one sense the physical and the cognitive accounts are separable from one another and in another sense they are not that they are separable in thought is evident from the fact that they are the subject of two distinct types of inquiry one of which is broadly speaking physiological and the other cognitive that they are not separable in being or in fact is evident from aristotle s claim that explanations of such affections of the soul ts psuchs path as anger are incomplete unless they include both accounts 403a25 ff anger involves the boiling of the blood around the heart and the person must think himself unjustly injured to the extent of having a desire for revenge along with the pleasurable expectation of revenge 403a31 rh 1378a31 ff if the boiling of the blood around his heart had simply been caused by a feverish illness without his having the accompanying thoughts the person would not be angry aristotle suggests that if we want to understand the connection between the material and the cognitive causes of an affect we must turn to its final cause the end designated in its logos drawing an analogy with the description of the essence of a house he says the logos of a house is a shelter against destruction one [presumably the phusikos describes this as stones bricks timber another [presumably the dialektikos will say it is a form eidos in that material with that purpose or end heneka tndi 403b4 ff the end of anger revenge for an unjust injury is so to say fuelled by the pathos associated with the boiling of the blood the conjunction of these causes is required for the phusikos s explanation of the physical motions that are taken in revenge 21 although aristotle introduces the co-operative conjunction of the material the formal and the final causes as explanations of the affections of the soul it is reasonable to suppose that he might extend this kind of analysis for at least some of its activities for instance for nutrition and growth it is a difficult and disputed question whether or how the co-operation among the causal dimensions of explanation is also required for those activities of the soul which like perception desire and some kinds of locomotion we call intentional 433b19 roughly speaking we can distinguish three general positions concerning the materiality of psuch 21 because the rhetoric s account of the affects is given by the dialektikos it does not refer to their material causes because it is not primarily concerned with the motivational force of the affects de a anima makes only the briefest reference to the ways they involve pleasure and pain 431 10-14 despite the ellipsis of the de anima s account and the suppresion of the material causes in the rhetoric the two stories are in general compatible 12

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1 introduction b de anima its agenda and its recent interpreters i any and every psuch is logos enhulos 403a5 ff and every psychological operation involves a particular material change kinsis ts huls such as locomotion growth or change of size ii any and every psuch is logos enhulos realized in some or another type of matter but while psychological functions perception desire phantasia involve material changes there is neither token nor type correlation between such activities and specific material changes nor do psychological functions set constraints on the kind of matter in which they are realized formally identical psychological functions can be realized in radically distinctive types of matter iii any and every psuch is a logos enhulos realized in a physical body sma of a certain kind rather than in matter hul as it might be described by a theoretical physicist for example the psuch of ruminant mammals is expressed in the kind of body that is specific to that type of animal one whose nutritive functions are physically organized in flesh of a certain kind while there are general resemblances or analogies between the psychological functions of distinctive types of animals the full explanation of those functions essentially refers to the specific physiology of a certain type of animal for example animals that eat flying insects must have perceptual systems with a certain kind of physical organization effectively connected to the parts of their bodies that are engaged in locomotion 433b12-31 the co-operation of the causal dimensions of psuch begins with the final cause the preservation and maintenance of a specific form eidos or type of life such as its being a ruminant or a human these two the final and formal causes taken together set constraints on the kind of matter the kind of physical body in which this form of life can be effectively actively realized and this in turn sets further constraints on the details of the material organization of that kind of animal so that it effectively promotes the motions required for leading its kind of life if there are some psychological activities that are not logos enhulos if nous and its activities are not only analytically but substantially separable then not all psychological activity involves organic change still we might speculate that thinking could nevertheless so change the whole person as having realized his highest potentiality that he became visibly kalos kagathos 22 aristotle characterizes psuch as the first actuality entelecheia of a natural body capable of sustaining life sma phusikon metechon zs that is an organism composed a b of organs 412 19-21 412 4-6 it expresses the living thing s defining essence logos b b 412 10 its aitia arch and telos 415 9-18 psuch is as common speech has it the life and soul of an organism engaged in its natural activities an organism does not have life as one of its attributes along with its size and shape rather the life and soul of a certain kind of body consists in its being active in a certain way engaged in those activities that constitute its being the sort of thing it is life is not a 22 i believe that aristotle holds a highly refined version of the third position but it would be inappropriate to argue for this claim here 13

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martha c nussbaum presupposition of activity rather to be alive is to be actively endogenously engaged in those activities which constitute one s nature aristotle does not draw a sharp distinction between those vital activities which like self-nourishment just keep an organism alive and those that express the nature of the thing that constitute a way of living the view is severe an organism that can survive but not engage in its higher activities is only equivocally all homnums a member of its species 412b15 it is for this reason that the greater part of de anima is devoted to an analysis of the psychological activities of living things are organized to maintain a specific sort of life psychological activities are individuated and identified not only by their contributions to sheer maintenance for survival but also by their contributions to the organism s realizing the potentialities of its species the dunamis of self-nutrition distinguishes living from non-living things it is a precondition for all other capacities that constitute an organism s living 413a21 ff similarly animals are distinguished from other living things by their capacity for sensation but touch is the only sense that all animals have it is moreover a precondition for all other senses 413b4 ff it is for this reason that so much of de anima is devoted to the analysis of these functions as they not only conduce to the sheer survival of an animal but to its wellbeing its fulfilling its potentialities as a specific kind of animal 435b20 because humans are distinguished from other animals by their dianoia by their capacities for thought and reasoning 415a8-11 413b13 there is a question of how if at all thinking and its objects is integrated with other basic human activities and their proper objects unfortunately none of the works in the aristotelian corpus as we have it presents a full discussion of this issue aristotle s account of psuch as the active organizing principle of living bodies sets the agenda for his analyses of the most general principles of organic functioning and of the activities that differentiate animals from other organisms as well as humans from other animals his views generate a set of questions that are addressed in de anima 1 and 2 if each species actualizes its basic vital capacities in a physically distinctive way are there as many kinds of souls each with its distinctive activities as there are species 402b1-3 ff if the soul is the source of motion is it itself moved 408a29 ff how if at all are the senseorgans altered in perception 417a15 ff 425b27 what is the relation between the cause and the proper objects of perception 418a7 ff how are perceptions co-ordinated in the common sense does it have special objects 426b8 ff is phantasia a distinct faculty with special objects and if so what is their relation to the objects of the various sense-organs 427b28 ff how is perception related to opinion 427a17 ff and in what sense is the perception of proper objects always true aisthsis tn idin aei alths 427b12 ff analogously in what sense are desires correct when they are directed to their proper objects altheia homologs echousa ti orexei ti orthi en 1139a24-32 1143b5 in what sense is the object of desire orekton as conceived to be genuinely good the first cause of 14

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1 introduction b de anima its agenda and its recent interpreters motion 433a27-b13 what role does teleology play in these explanations to what extent are the ends of various psychological activities including voluntary motions necessary to explain the causal force of the orekton as known or imagined to be good nous has a special status within the psychological organization of human beings it is characterized as a simple and unaffected kind of substance that cannot perish 408b18 429b22 and as a different kind of soul that can exist separately from the body in the same way that what is everlasting can exist separately from what is perishable 413b24 429a18 ff pure noetic activity in theria does not involve the actualization or fulfilment of any particular part or aspect of the body it is rather the whole man that is perfected or actualized by his thinking en 1178a2-8 the full analysis of the noetic functions of the human psuch brings us to the premisses that guide aristotle s metaphysics of epistemology that there is nothing of which the mind is incapable of thinking 429a17 that in a sense the mind does not exist as an independent entity before it thinks 429a22 that it is in its first actualization as active kat energeian in thought identical with its objects pragmata 429b6-7 430a20 and with the forms eid in mental images phantasmasi noei 431b3 ff a full account of nous and dianoia requires specifying the proper objects of the various forms of cognition sense-perception phantasia desire dianoia and pure thought-thinking itself to what extent is aisthsis noetic or as we would say cognitive how is it possible for a specific kind of organism to know eternal and unchanging things without itself having some eternal separable part or function what is the relation between the kind of human dianoeisthai that depends on phantasia and pure unembodied or divine therein is nous separable from the body in the same way that two substances are separable capable of existing independently of one another or is it separable in the way that geometrical properties are separable abstractible from bodies without being capable of existing separately because the discussion of nous in de anima is so fragmented and apparently incomplete we must turn elsewhere for its fullest analysis since the range of logical works the organon articulate the structure of valid thought they contribute to a philosophical understanding of forms the eid of nous in book 6 of the nicomachean ethics aristotle develops an account of the elements of practical reasoning distinguishing the operations and objects of various types of thinking phronsis logistikon epistm bouleusis and sophia unfortunately he does not give us a full account of their interrelations or their relation to nous taken generally but it is to the metaphysics that we must turn for the most extended treatment of the intellect it is there if anywhere that we can find an account of what aristotle might mean by characterizing nous as a form of forms nous eidos eidn 432a1 ff and by drawing an analogy between psuch and the hand as a tool of for tools organon estin organn another relatively independent line of thought connects de anima with aristotle s ethical works besides being capable of intentional voluntary action at least some 15

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