The Soul and its Instrumental Body

The Soul and its Instrumental Body
Author: A.P. Bos
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2003-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004247637

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Aristotle's definition of the soul should be interpreted as: 'the soul is the entelechy of a natural body that serves as its instrument'. The theory of a fine-corporeal body makes it much easier to understand Aristotle's position between Plato and the Stoics . This correction puts paid to all theories about a development in Aristotle's thought.

The Soul and Its Instrumental Body

The Soul and Its Instrumental Body
Author: A. P. Bos
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9789004130166

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Aristotle's definition of the soul should be interpreted as: 'the soul is the entelechy of a natural body that serves as its instrument'. The theory of a fine-corporeal body makes it much easier to understand Aristotle's position between Plato and the Stoics . This correction puts paid to all theories about a development in Aristotle's thought.

Aristotle, On the Life-Bearing Spirit (De spiritu)

Aristotle, On the Life-Bearing Spirit (De spiritu)
Author: Abraham Paulus Bos
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2008-01-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047432681

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In contrast to what is often thought, the work De spiritu is entirely Aristotelian. It provides an indispensable part of Aristotle’s philosophy of living nature. In this work he is the first Greek to argue that the most fundamental vital principle is not breath but vital heat. This vital heat forms a unity with the soul, as its instrumental body (sôma organikon). The treatise is mainly a debate with Plato's Timaeus. This new book consists of an Introduction, a Translation, and an extensive Commentary on the text of De spiritu. The main value of this book is to show convincingly that Aristotle’s theory of soul and biology have been misconstrued since 200 AD due to the intervention of Alexander of Aphrodisias.

The Powers of Aristotle's Soul

The Powers of Aristotle's Soul
Author: Thomas Kjeller Johansen
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2012-10-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191633011

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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.

Plutarch in the Religious and Philosophical Discourse of Late Antiquity

Plutarch in the Religious and Philosophical Discourse of Late Antiquity
Author: Fernando Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2012
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004234748

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Either as insider or as sensitive observer, Plutarch provides us with exceptional evidence to reconstruct the spiritual and intellectual atmosphere of the first centuries CE. This collection of articles sheds important light on the religious and philosophical discourse of Late Antiquity.

The Subtle Body

The Subtle Body
Author: Simon Cox
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2021-12-21
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 019758103X

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"How does the soul relate to the body? Through the ages many religions and intellectual movements have posed answers to this question. Many have gravitated to the notion of the subtle body, positing some kind of subtle entity that is neither soul nor body, but some mixture of the two. This book traces the history of this idea from the late Roman empire to the present day, touching on how philosophers, wizards, scholars, occultists, psychologists, and mystics have engaged with the idea over the past two thousand years. The book begins in the late Roman Empire, moving chronologically through the Renaissance, British project of colonial Indology, development of Theosophy and occultism in the 19th century through to the Euro-American counterculture of the 1960's and 70's"--

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness
Author: C. D. C. Reeve
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2012-03-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674065476

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The notion of practical wisdom is one of Aristotle's greatest inventions. It has inspired philosophers as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Thompson, and John McDowell. Now a leading scholar of ancient philosophy offers a challenge to received accounts of practical wisdom by situating it in the larger context of Aristotle's views on knowledge and reality. That happiness is the end pursued by practical wisdom is commonly agreed. What is disputed is whether happiness is to be found in the practical life of political action, in which we exhibit courage, temperance, and other virtues of character, or in the contemplative life, where theoretical wisdom is the essential virtue. C. D. C. Reeve argues that the dichotomy is bogus, that these lives are in fact parts of a single life, which is the best human one. In support of this view, he develops innovative accounts of many of the central notions in Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology, including matter and form, scientific knowledge, dialectic, educatedness, perception, understanding, political science, practical truth, deliberation, and deliberate choice. These accounts are based directly on freshly translated passages from many of Aristotle's writings. Action, Contemplation, and Happiness is an accessible essay not just on practical wisdom but on Aristotle's philosophy as a whole.

Aristotle - Contemporary Perspectives on his Thought

Aristotle - Contemporary Perspectives on his Thought
Author: Demetra Sfendoni-Mentzou
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2018-07-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110566427

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This collection of essays by leading Aristotle scholars worldwide covers a wide range of topics on Aristotle's work from metaphysics, politics, ethics, bioethics, rhetoric, dialectic, aesthetics, history to physics, psychology, biology, medicine, technology. The thorough exploration of the issues investigated deepens our knowledge of the most fundamental concepts, which are crucial for an overall understanding of Aristotle’s work. Moreover, the contributors explore the relevance of Aristotle’s ideas to contemporary issues and provide new perspectives on the study of Aristotle’s thought. The essays of the volume were presented at the plenary sessions of the World Congress "Aristotle 2400 Years," organized by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Aristotle Studies of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, on May 23-28 2016, in commemoration of the 2400th anniversary of Aristotle’s birth. The aim of the congress was to advance scholarship on all aspects of Aristotle’s work, both in philosophy and in the fundamental disciplines of science. The impressive number of 250 papers from 40 countries highlighted the fact that Aristotle’s work continues to exercise an influence on our intellectual lives on a global scale.

Aristotle on God's Life-Generating Power and on Pneuma as Its Vehicle

Aristotle on God's Life-Generating Power and on Pneuma as Its Vehicle
Author: Abraham P. Bos
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2018-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438468296

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Proposes an innovative rethinking of Aristotle’s work as a system that integrates his theology with his doctrine of reproduction and life. In this deep rethinking of Aristotle’s work, Abraham P. Bos argues that scholarship on Aristotle’s philosophy has erred since antiquity in denying the connection between his theology and his doctrine of reproduction and life in the earthly sphere. Beginning with an analysis of God’s role in the Aristotelian system, Bos explores how this relates to other elements of his philosophy, especially to his theory of reproduction. The argument he develops is that in talking about the cosmos, Aristotle rejected Plato’s metaphor of artisanal production by a divine Demiurge in favor of a biotic metaphor based on the transmission of life in reproduction, in which pneuma—not breath as it is often interpreted but the life-bearing spirit in animals and plants—plays a key and sustaining role as the vital principle in all that lives. In making this case, he defends the authenticity of the treatises De Mundo and De Spiritu as Aristotle’s, and demonstrates Aristotle’s works as a unified system that sharply and comprehensively refutes Plato’s, and in particular replaces Plato’s doctrine of the soul with a theory in which the soul is clearly distinguished from the intellect. “Bos offers a fresh, interesting, and important perspective. His interpretation will be very controversial, but if he is right, the standard Anglo-American interpretation of Aristotle will have to change radically.” — Malcolm Wilson, author of Structure and Method in Aristotle’s Meteorologica: A More Disorderly Nature

Was there a Lutheran Metaphysics?

Was there a Lutheran Metaphysics?
Author: Joar Haga
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2012-05-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 364755037X

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Joar Haga traces the Lutheran doctrine of communicatio idiomatum, the exchange of properties between the natures of Christ, as it developed in some important controversies of the 16th and the early 17th Century. Regarding it as the nerve of his soteriology, Luther stressed the intimacy of the two natures in Christ to such a degree that it threatened to end the peaceful relationship between theology and philosophy. At the same time as the Wittenberg reformers broke with certain strains of their philosophical heritage, they would insist that the continuation of Christ's bodily presence was a reality in sacrament and nature (!), irreducible to a sign or to a memory. On the other hand, they did not want to be ignorant of the claims of reason. By rejecting the classic framework for a peaceful coexistence of philosophy and theology on the one hand, and insisting on Christ's bodily reality on the other, the quest for a new concept of how philosophy and theology related was implicitly stated.Earlier research identified two traditions of Lutheran Christology: One train of thought follows Luther in emphasising the difference between philosophy and theology. This can be seen in the Tübingen solutions where Johannes Brenz and Theodor Thumm are the most interesting thinkers. Another train of thought can be found in the conservative pupils of Melanchthon, where Martin Chemnitz and Balthasar Mentzer are the most prominent theologians. This research does not merely group the thinkers within the confines of a tradition, but underlines their individual contributions to an open-ended history.