The Traditional Interpretation Refuted :: Philosophy Literature Papers

The Traditional Interpretation RefutedThe psychology of Aristotle has never been understood in a historically correct way. A impertinent interpretation of the De anima will be proposed in which this work can be seen as compatible with the psychology that can be reconstructed from the fragments of Aristotles mazed dialogues and the De motu animalium and other biological works (in which the nonions of pneuma and vital heat play a crucial role) and the doxographical data gathered from ancient writers besides the commentators. In De anima, II, 412b5, where psych is defined as the freshman entelecheia of a natural body that is organikon, the words natural body should not be taken to mean the body of a living plant, animal or gracious existence scarce if to stand for elementary body. And the qualification organikon should not be understood as equipped with organs (as it always has) but in the sense of serving as an instrument to the soul. This instrumental body that is inseparab ly connected with the soul is the seat of desire (orexis), which physically influences the parts of the obvious body. Besides those two corrections there are the words ta mer in 412b18 that should be taken as meaning not parts of the body but parts of the soul. Aristotle is arguing there that even those parts of the soul that are not yet actualized in the embryo of a new living being can be said to be not without body.Do we really go Aristotles psychology? This question may sound strange at first, since we feed a famous book by Aristotle which is called On the soul and we hold quite a bit of information about a befuddled dialogue, the Eudemus, which was also subtitled On the soul. Yet I propose to argue that Aristotles psychology has remained unknown up till now. And this is because since the third century AD the textual matter of his extant work De anima has been interpreted in a way that runs completely counter to Aristotles intentions. What has been held to be Aristotles p sychology is the result of the interpretation of his work rank forward by Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century AD.(1) The stake is comparable with the imaginary situation that Platos oeuvre had been lost except for his Parmenides and that we only possessed the information of Plotinus for a reconstruction of Platos thought.To make a persuade case for this revolutionary theory, I will argue three propositions.