The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford Philosophical Monographs)

240 Pages·2006·1.76 MB·English

by  Hendrik Lorenz

THE BRUTE WITHIN
OXFORD PHILOSOPHICAL MONOGRAPHS
Editorial Committee
Anita Avramides, R. S. Crisp,
Michael Rosen, Christopher Shields, Ralph C. S. Walker
other titles in the series include
Kant’s Empirical Realism
Paul Abela
Against Equality of Opportunity
Matt Cavanagh
Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind
William Child
Metaphor and Moral Experience
A. E. Denham
Semantic Powers
Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian Philosophy
Jonardon Ganeri
Kant’s Theory of Imagination
Bridging Gaps in Judgement and Experience
Sarah L. Gibbons
Of Liberty and Necessity
James A. Harris
The Grounds of Ethical Judgement
New Transcendental Arguments in Moral Philosophy
Christian Illies
Projective Probability
James Logue
Understanding Pictures
Dominic Lopes
Wittgenstein, Finitism, and the Foundations of Mathematics
Mathieu Marion
Truth and the End of Inquiry
A Peircean Account of Truth
C. J. Misak
The Good and the True
Michael Morris
Hegel’s Idea of Freedom
Alan Patten
Nietzsche and Metaphysics
Peter Poellner
The Ontology of Mind
Events, Processes, and States
Helen Steward
Things that Happen Because They Should
A Teleological Approach to Action
Rowland Stout
The Brute Within
Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle
HENDRIK LORENZ
CLARENDON PRESS ● OXFORD
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
© Hendrik Lorenz 2006
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lorenz, Hendrik.
The brute within : appetitive desire in Plato and Aristotle / Hendrik Lorenz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Plato. 2. Aristotle. 3. Soul. 4. Desire. I. Title.
B395. L66 2006 128(cid:1).3—dc22 2005034938
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk
ISBN 0–19–929063–6 978–0–19–929063–5
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To Evin
Fashion a single kind of multicoloured brute with a ring of many heads that it
can grow and change at will—some from gentle, some from savage animals.
Then fashion another kind, that of a lion, and another of a human being. But
make the first much the largest and the other second to it in size. Now join
the three of them into one, so that they somehow grow together naturally.
Then, fashion around them the image of one of them, that of a human being,
so that anyone who sees only the outer covering and not what’s within will
think it’s a single creature, a human being.
(Plato, Republic9, 588 C 7–E 1)
Appetite is like a brute animal, and spirit perverts rulers even when they are
the best of men.
(Aristotle,Politics3.16, 1287a30–2)
Acknowledgements
I started work on the topic of this book as a graduate student at Oxford in 1996.
The bulk of the book was written at Princeton between 2002 and 2004. In the
course of thinking and writing about Plato’s and Aristotle’s psychological theories,
I have been helped by many individuals. Michael Frede was the most wonderful
thesis adviser I could have wished for, and has over the years remained a source of
invaluable advice, encouragement, and inspiration. Others who have significantly
contributed to the process of working out the overall interpretation that underlies
the book include Susanne Bobzien, Lesley Brown, Myles Burnyeat, David
Charles, Alan Code, John Cooper, Gail Fine, Christopher Gill, Terence Irwin,
Thomas Johansen, Benjamin Morison, Jozef Müller, Christof Rapp, David
Sedley, and Matthew Strohl. Lesley Brown, John Cooper, Corinne Gartner,
Alexander Nehamas, and Jessica Moss read various versions of the book’s type-
script and supplied me with comments that helped me greatly in preparing it for
publication. The Department of Philosophy at Princeton provided a supportive
and highly conducive environment, and a full year of academic leave in 2003–4
accelerated the book’s completion. Finally, Corinne Gartner helped by checking
the book’s references and by preparing the Index Locorum.
Some of the material presented in this book has already been published
elsewhere. Earlier versions of parts of Chapters 2 and 4 have appeared as ‘Desire
and reason in Plato’s Republic’ in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy XXVII
(2004), 83–116. A few pages of Chapter 3 have appeared in an essay called ‘The
analysis of the soul in Plato’s Republic’, in Gerasimos Santas (ed.), The Blackwell
Companion to Plato’s Republic(Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). Much of Chapter 10 has
appeared, in German, as ‘Die Bewegung der Lebewesen bei Aristoteles’, in Klaus
. .
Corcilius and Christof Rapp (eds.), Beiträge zur Anstotelischen Handlungstheone
(Stuttgart: Steiner, 2006) Thanks are due to Oxford University Press, Blackwell
Publishing, and Steiner-Verlag for their permission to reprint this material.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Introduction 1
PART ONE: APPETITE AND REASON IN
PLATO’S REPUBLIC
Introduction 9
1. Parts of the Soul 13
2. The Argument for Tripartition 18
3. Partition 35
4. The Simple Picture 41
PART TWO: BELIEF AND APPEARANCE IN PLATO
Introduction 55
5. Imitation and the Soul 59
6. Belief and Reason 74
7. Below Belief and Reason 95
PART THREE: PHANTASIA AND NON-RATIONAL
DESIRE IN ARISTOTLE
Introduction 113
8. Preliminaries 119
9. Phantasia, Desire, and Locomotion 124
10. Desire without phantasia 138
11. The Workings of phantasia 148
12. Phantasiaand Practical Thought 174
13. Reason and Non-rational Desire 186
Conclusion 202
Bibliography 208
General Index 215
Index Locorum 221