Essays on Aristotle's De Anima

433 Pages·1995·2.85 MB·English

by  Martha C. Nussbaum

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 Psuchē versus the Mind ................................................................................................... 110
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty & Martha C. Nussbaum
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 110
I. The Psuchē ..................................................................................................................... 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 Sense Perception
................................................................................................................................................ 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
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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 poiētikos: 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
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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

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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.
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 Hicks in Aristotle (1907), p. lxxxiii.
3 Aristotle (1976), reviewed by Nussbaum (1981).
4 For an account of this manuscript, see Nussbaum (1975, 1976).
5 Aristotle (1862).
6
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 (2nd-
3rd 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 Alexander (1887)
7 Simplicius (1882), Philoponus (1897).
8 See the Introductions of Ross and Hicks, and the edition by Bywater (1886).
9 Trendelenburg, quoted in Aristotle (1907). For the original Latin remark see J. A. Fabricius (1790-
1809), vii. 236. I am grateful to Leofranc Holford-Strevens for the reference.
7
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 For a close study of William's skills and practices as translator, see Nussbaum (1975).
11 See also the comments of Ross in Aristotle (1961a).
12 On Andronicus, see Plezia (1946).
8
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 Psuchēs 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

13 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 Psuchēs, just as 3. 10 refers forwards to the De Motu.
16 Nuyens (1948).
9
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 psuchē itself is; they are at most necessary
for performing the functions towards which psuchē 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 psuchē. Tool
language abounds in clearly hylomorphic discussions. Indeed, one need go no
further than the final definition of psuchē in De Anima 2.1, the showcase for Nuyens's
'third period'; for psuchē is said to be the entelecheia of a sōma 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 Ross in Aristotle (1961a), introduction.
18 See Nussbaum (1983)
19 For a good treatment of this question, see Kahn (1966).
10