Free Downloads De Anima (Penguin Classics)
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.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Series: Penguin Classics
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (June 2, 1987)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0140444718
ISBN-13: 978-0140444711
Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #168,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #46 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Philosophy > Epistemology #119 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Epistemology #307 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Greek & Roman
Aristotle's short but profoundly influential work, De Anima, is set within arich supporting text authored by Hugh Lawson-Tancred, the Penquin edition'stranslator and editor, that absorbs almost three-fourths of this volume.Besides his lengthy introduction, the editor provides a useful glossaryof translations, summaries before each chapter, copious endnotes, and ashort bibliography, but no index.Unlike more widely read, fully formed, straightforward books by Aristotle,such as Politics and Ethics, De Anima asserts cryptic ideas and advancesviewpoints that seem quite strange today. The editor's Introduction addressessuch potential impediments for the Aristotelean neophyte and amplifiesproblematic issues of interest to philosophers of any acquaintance. Aristotle'ssubject is a general "principle of life" intrinsic to all plants and animals,not any contemporary notion about the soul (psyche) suggested by its Englishtitle, On The Soul. Aristotle's soul includes his psychology and topics suchas sensation and thought. Lawson-Tancred argues that Aristotle is indifferentto the issue preoccupying epistomologists and psychologists during recentcenturies, Descartes's division of subjectivity into the body and mind. He claimsthat Aristotle is concerned with general features of life, not with purely humanissues like consciousness. In discounting consciousness, Aristotle concurs withanti-Cartesian positivists, but Lawson-Tancred argues that when Aristotlesays the soul is substance, he really means it, contradicting physicalistcontentions that it is an epiphenomenon or a list of special attributes.Aristotle's soul is substance, but Aristotle rejects reducing the soul'sproperties to the body's material.Teleology is explanation implicating final causes, e.g., things fulfillpurposes for which they were created. Scientists reject creation andultimate purpose, and censure Aristotle for his teleological explanations.Regarding the soul, however, Aristotle suggests that to understand biologicalphenomena, the arrangement of material and its relationship to functions itperforms is key. Recent rethinking about Aristotle's functionalism hasreinvigorated his status in modern biology. Theologians generally view Aristotle'swork favorably, especially his emphasis on built-in purpose and final causes.Lawson-Tancred recounts Aristotle's powerful influence on intellectual historyfrom his immediate successors, to assimilation in the neo-Platonic West, throughincorporation by Islamic and Christian theologians, connections that madeDe Anima so important for over 2000 years.Lawson-Tancred also discusses Aristotle's personal history and intellectualdevelopment; his mentor, Plato, and their mutual influence; ideas ofother philosophers that Aristotle encountered, and De Anima in contextof his other works. He concludes by criticizing the interpretations ofAristotle by the philosophers Brentano and Wilkes. Lawson-Tancred helpsthe reader to understand many ideas, but two essential concepts Aristotledeveloped elsewhere are prerequisite to understanding De Anima:entelechy (entelecheia) and substance (ousia). Substance or essence is thefundamental reality of existence. Form, Matter, and their compositeare types of substances. Matter is the inanimate, elemental substrate ofwhich things are composed, e.g., earth made into a statue. Form is thestructure and function outlined by a formula (logos), e.g., a statue artfullyshaped to resemble a woman. Things exist either in actuality (puttingto use) or potentiality (unexploited capacity). Form is actuality;Matter is potentiality. Aristotle's theory is that Form combines withMatter following the the Form's plan to actualize potential. Entelechyis the possession of this intrinsic goal that is realized when Form andMatter combine. Thus, Aristotle's teleological approach is called "Entelechism."Aristotle uses entelechy repeatedly to describe the soul, as the followingsummary of De Anima shows.In Book I, Aristotle describes his subject: the soul, "the firstprinciple of living things," and considers its relation to intellect,emotion, etc. He comments on other philosophers's works: whetherthe soul is material, and what kind; its characteristic features(it moves, senses, and lacks body); how it produces bodily movement;etc. He criticizes theories that the soul is quantity or harmony orparticipates in the whole universe. He concludes that the soul lacksmotion and is not material nor made of elements. Instead, the soulcomprises several faculties: e.g., cognition, appetite.Book II begins with an important formulation: the soul is the "form ofthe living body which potentially has life" (the organism's first actuality).Having a soul distinguishes living from inanimate objects. The soul'snutritive faculty is essential for all organisms, but animals have thefaculty of sensation, separating them from plants. Thus begins a hierarchyof faculties from nutrition to intellect. In sensation, the sense organand sense-object, like the soul and body, participate in the Form/Matterrelationship. The sense organ receives the object's Form, not its matter,in Aristotle's words, "as the wax takes the sign from the ring without theiron and gold." He discusses each of the five senses, and makes a famousdistinction among perceptual elements (special, common, incidental).Aristotle concludes discussing sensation in Book III by proposing functionsof the perceptive faculty that integrate individual senses. Imagination,a faculty producing imagery, mediates between sensation and intellect.Aristotle's remarks about intellect are among his most renowned, fecund,and difficult. He describes the intellectual faculty, which includes thinkingand supposition, with the same physiological approach of his sensory theory.The organ of thought receives the Form of the thought-object to realize thinking.He calls the intellect a repository of Forms and distinguishes the active fromthe passive intellect, providing inspiration for Thomas Aquinas's psychology.Aristotle concludes with a discussion of motivation, i.e., what puts theorganism into action.No other work contains a psychological theory like that presented in De Anima,excepting Aquinas's derivative. Its resemblance to attribute (behaviorist)theories of the mind cannot obscure Aristotle's radically different foundation.His Form-Matter and Actuality-Potentiality concepts are not explanatory, onlya framework for inquiry. Its relevance, as Lawson-Tancred notes, to modernpsychology depends upon identifying an empirical approach to Aristotle's Form.Aristotle's proposal that life has, or is, a principle provides an alternativepoint of departure for scientists who find contemporary materialist dogma lackingdirection. De Anima, one of the most important books ever written, and longneglected by scientific psychology, still puts life in an eternal debate.
The treatise itself is arduous but worthwhile reading, and very interesting. However, it is less psychological and more proto-biological or metaphysical than I anticipated; lots on potentiality and actuality and movement, etc. There are some very cool insights in general, and especially on the relationship between taste and touch, motivation, and the hierarchy of faculties in the soul. Reading it is obviously key to any broader understanding of Aristotle. But reviewing a classic text like this is very beyond the pointâI'm just saying this stuff to give you an idea of what's in here. It's not the best place to start with Aristotle (see: Ethics), even though it appears to be short.So then, the edition. Lawson-Tancred's introduction is 117 pages â longer than the treatise itself! â and not very useful or interesting, unless you are interested in specific interpretational disputes. Similarly, his notes were a bit smarmy and nitpicky and perhaps too heavily interpretive, in a seemingly shallow way. I didn't much like his translation either, which is prone to using really weird words (congeries?). Overall I would recommend just about any other translation you can find.
Good translation and ancillary materials (if a bit dated). This would work well for an undergraduate course in ancient philosophy.
Needed it for school, came fast.
This book is something that everyone who is interested in truth and beauty should read. Every other philisophical writing is a mere foot note to this book and this particular edition is so accurate that it doesn't leave you wondering why.
Animé nu novo fundo de hentai de sexo - Quente manga fotos 1: Meninas sexy animé nu meninas, sexy animé, quente hentai, manga sexo fotos, porno, nu, poses sensuais (Portuguese Edition) De Anima (Penguin Classics) Top 50 Pokemon Colouring Book: Birthday, Gift, Red, Blue, Yellow, Gift, Ash,Gotta catch'em all, Pokedex, Birthday, present, Ash, Pocket monsters, Creature, games, animé, cartoon, drawing Penguin Classics Beyond Good And Evil (Penguin Modern Classics) The Penguin Classics New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs Penguin Coloring Book For Adults: A Stress Relief Adult Coloring Book Of 40 Penguin Designs in a Variety of Intricate Patterns (Animal Coloring Books for Adults) (Volume 10) Penguin Coloring Book For Adults: Penguin Coloring Book containing Penguins filled with intricate and stress relieving patterns (Coloring Books for Adults) (Volume 6) Penguin English Library Howards End (The Penguin English Library) Short Stories in Spanish: New Penguin Parallel Text (New Penguin Parallel Texts) (Spanish and English Edition) Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (Penguin Classics) Design as Art (Penguin Modern Classics) My Bondage and My Freedom (Penguin Classics) Two Lives of Charlemagne (Penguin Classics) The Letters of the Younger Pliny (Penguin Classics) The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (Penguin Classics) The Age of Alexander (Penguin Classics) Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent: Abridged Edition (Penguin Classics) The Marsh Arabs (Penguin Classics) The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English: Seventh Edition (Penguin Classics) The Bible (Penguin Classics)
