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Zusatztext . . .a significant contribution to our understanding of capacities and the soul in Aristotle and to our overall understanding of the De Anima. [Johansen's] interpretations are always carefully developed and show an excellent grasp of Aristotle's entire corpus . . . I would recommend this work for all scholars working on Aristotle or on ancient understandings of powers or the soul. It may also prove of interest for those in contemporary philosophy who areworking on the notion of powers. Informationen zum Autor Thomas Kjeller Johansen studied Philosophy and Classics at Cambridge, before taking up lectureships at Bristol, Edinburgh and Oxford. He has held a British Academy Research Readership, a membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a fellowship at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington DC. He is the author of Plato's Natural Philosophy (CUP, 2004), Aristotle on the Sense-Organs (CUP, 1998), and the translator of Plato,Timaeus and Critias (Penguin Classics, 2008). Klappentext Thomas Kjeller Johansen presents a new account of Aristotle's major work on psychology, the De Anima. He argues that Aristotle explains a variety of psychological phenomena--including perception, intellect, memory, and imagination--by reference to the soul's capacities, and considers how Aristotle adopts and adapts this theory in his later works. Zusammenfassung 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 offersan 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 causalprinciples 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 forin 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 tothe 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. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1 Circumscribing the soul; 2 Towards a scientific definition of the soul; 3 Parts and unity in the definition of the soul; 4 The definition of dunamis; 5 The priority of the objects over the capacities of the soul; 6 The importance of nutrition; 7 The soul as an efficient cause; 8 The matter of the soul's activities; 9 The perceptual capacity extended; 10 Phantasia; 11 The intellect and the limits of naturalism; 12 The locomotive capacity; 13 The descent from definition: The capacities of the soul applied; 14 The capacities in the Parts and lives of animals...
