Author : Eckhard Kessler
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 23,27 MB
Release : 2011
Category : Soul
ISBN : 9789004207028
Following Alexander of Aphrodisias through the Aristotelian tradition from the second to the sixteenth century, this book discovers an almost forgotten leading figure in the fervently disputed development of psychology and natural philosophy in early modern times.
Author : Eckhard Keßler
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 108 pages
File Size : 47,76 MB
Release : 2011-06-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9004210199
This book describes the doctrine and impact of Alexander of Aphrodisias, the second-century commentator on Aristotle, through the centuries and up to his sixteenth-century role as the clandestine prompter of a new philosophy of nature. In the millennium after his death, Alexander first served the Neo-Platonic schools as their authority on Aristotle, and in the Arabic centuries subsequently served as Averroes’ exemplary exponent of the doctrine of the mortality of the soul. For this reason, the Latin Scholastics deemed his work unworthy of being translated. This changed only in the late Middle Ages, when Alexander emerged as the only Aristotelian alternative to Averroes. When in 1495 his account of Aristotle’s psychology was translated and published, his principles of a natural philosophy, which were exempt from metaphysics and based on sense perception, eventually became accessible. The prompt reception and widespread endorsement of Alexander’s teaching testify to his impact throughout the sixteenth century. Originally published as Volume XVI, No. 1 (2011) of Brill's journal Early Science and Medicine.
Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 343 pages
File Size : 18,60 MB
Release : 2020-08-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9004436383
This volume offers a collection of papers about the notions of fate, providence, and free will, as developed and debated in philosophy and religion in the early Imperial age (ca. 31 BCE-250 CE).
Author : William V. Harris
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 10,55 MB
Release : 2018-09-04
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9004379509
Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times attempts to blaze a trail for the cross-disciplinary humanistic study of pain and pleasure, with literature scholars, historians and philosophers all setting out to understand how the Greeks and Romans experienced, managed and reasoned about the sensations and experiences they felt as painful or pleasurable. The book is intended to provoke discussion of a wide range of problems in the cultural history of antiquity. It addresses both the physicality of erôs and illness, and physiological and philosophical doctrines, especially hedonism and anti-hedonism in their various forms. Fine points of terminology (Greek is predictably rich in this area) receive careful attention. Authors in question run from Homer to (among others) the Hippocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Seneca, Plutarch, Galen and the Aristotle-commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias.
Author : Michiel Meeusen
Publisher : Studies in Ancient Medicine
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 50,64 MB
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004437654
This volume provides a set of in-depth case studies about the role of questions and answers (Q&A) in ancient Greek medical writing from its Hippocratic beginnings up to, and including, Late Antiquity.
Author :
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 46,41 MB
Release : 2014-04-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1472501721
Around 200 AD, the greatest defender and interpreter of Aristotle within his school, Alexander of Aphrodisias, composed his own book On the Soul, partly following the pattern of Aristotle's. In the first half, translated in this volume, he discusses the soul as the form of the body, and the idea of parts or powers that constitute the soul of living things, including the two lowest powers: nutrition and perception. In the second half, translated in Part II, he discusses perception, representation, desire, understanding and - a notion emphasised by the Stoics - the governing part of the soul. He takes the soul to consist of these powers, which supervene on the mixture of the body's elemental ingredients, just as inanimate powers like buoyancy or lightness can supervene on other qualities. They are new, emergent causal powers of the living thing, which do not belong to the constituent ingredients of the body in themselves. Through his notion of emergence, he seeks to steer between the Platonic dualism of soul and body and the extreme materialism of his Stoic rivals. This volume contains the first English translation of the work, as well as a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography.
Author : Ursula Coope
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 44,32 MB
Release : 2020-04-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0192558285
The Neoplatonists have a perfectionist view of freedom: an entity is free to the extent that it succeeds in making itself good. Free entities are wholly in control of themselves—they are self-determining, self-constituting, and self-knowing. Neoplatonist philosophers argue that such freedom is only possible for non-bodily things. The human soul is free insofar as it rises above bodily things and engages in intellection, but when it turns its desires to bodily things, it is drawn under the sway of fate and becomes enslaved. Ursula Coope discusses this notion of freedom and its relation to questions about responsibility. She explains the important role of notions of self-reflexivity in Neoplatonist accounts of both freedom and responsibility. In Part I, Coope sets out the puzzles Neoplatonist philosophers face about freedom and responsibility and explains how these puzzles arise from earlier discussions. Part II explores the metaphysical underpinnings of the Neoplatonist notion of freedom (concentrating especially on the views of Plotinus and Proclus). In what sense, if any, is the ultimate first principle of everything (the One) free? If everything else is under this ultimate first principle, how can anything other than the One be free? What is the connection between freedom and nonbodiliness? Finally, Coope considers in Part III questions about responsibility, arising from this perfectionist view of freedom. Why are human beings responsible for their behaviour, in a way that other animals are not? If we are enslaved when we act viciously, how can we be to blame for our vicious actions and choices?
Author : Andrea Falcon
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 17,92 MB
Release : 2011-12-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1139502522
This book is a full study of the remaining evidence for Xenarchus of Seleucia, one of the earliest interpreters of Aristotle. Andrea Falcon places the evidence in its context, the revival of interest in Aristotle's philosophy that took place in the first century BCE. Xenarchus is often presented as a rebel, challenging Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition. Falcon argues that there is more to Xenarchus and his philosophical activity than an opposition to Aristotle; he was a creative philosopher, and his views are best understood as an attempt to revise and update Aristotle's philosophy. By looking at how Xenarchus negotiated different aspects of Aristotle's philosophy, this book highlights elements of rupture as well as strands of continuity within the Aristotelian tradition.
Author : Mark Edwards
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 18,3 MB
Release : 2019-03-13
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1315520192
In studies of early Christian thought, ‘philosophy’ is often a synonym for ‘Platonism’, or at most for ‘Platonism and Stoicism’. Nevertheless, it was Aristotle who, from the sixth century AD to the Italian Renaissance, was the dominant Greek voice in Christian, Muslim and Jewish philosophy. Aristotle and Early Christian Thought is the first book in English to give a synoptic account of the slow appropriation of Aristotelian thought in the Christian world from the second to the sixth century. Concentrating on the great theological topics – creation, the soul, the Trinity, and Christology – it makes full use of modern scholarship on the Peripatetic tradition after Aristotle, explaining the significance of Neoplatonism as a mediator of Aristotelian logic. While stressing the fidelity of Christian thinkers to biblical presuppositions which were not shared by the Greek schools, it also describes their attempts to overcome the pagan objections to biblical teachings by a consistent use of Aristotelian principles, and it follows their application of these principles to matters which lay outside the purview of Aristotle himself. This volume offers a valuable study not only for students of Christian theology in its formative years, but also for anyone seeking an introduction to the thought of Aristotle and its developments in Late Antiquity.
Author : Gad Freudenthal
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 235 pages
File Size : 50,53 MB
Release : 1999-01-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198238645
Gad Freudenthal offers an original new account of one of Aristotle's central doctrines, his theory of material substance. Freudenthal argues that Aristotle's concept of heat is a crucial but hitherto ignored part of this account. Aristotle's 'canonical', four-element theory of matter fails to explain the coming-to-be of material substances (the way matter becomes organized) and their persistence (why substances do not disintegrate into their components). Interpreters have highlighted Aristotle's claim that soul is the active cause of the coming-to-be and persistence of living beings. On the basis of dispersed remarks in Aristotle's writings Freudenthal argues that Aristotle in parallel also draws on a comprehensive 'naturalistic' theory, which accounts for material persistence through the concepts of heat, specifically vital heat, and connate pneuma. This theory, which bears also on the higher soul-functions, is central in Aristotle's understanding of the relationship betweenmatter and form, body and soul. Dr Freudenthal aims not only to recover this theory and to highlight its explanatory roles, but also to make suggestions concerning its origin in Presocratic thought and in Aristotle's own early theology. He further offers a brief review of how later ages came to grips with the difficulties inherent in the received version of Aristotle's matter theory. This book is an important contribution to the proper understanding of a central Aristotelian doctrine, which straddles 'chemistry', biology, the theory of soul, and metaphysics. 'This bold and vigorous study contributes greatly to the growing body of work on the essential connections between Aristotle's biology and central issues in his metaphysics and psychology . . . Comprehensive and lucidly argued, this book is strongly recommended for all university and college libraries.' Choice 'The book offers a new and refreshing description of Aristotle's system and demonstrates that withoutunderstanding the basics of Aristotle's biology, his conception of the structure of the physical world cannot be fully understood. The book is carefully and thoughtfully outlined and very well written. For quite a while I have not read a book that contributed so much to my understanding of Aristotle.' Early Science and Medicine
