Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

De Anima (On the Soul)

4/5 ( ratings)

'The soul is, so to speak, the first principle of living things. We seek to contemplate and know its nature and substance'

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.

Hugh Lawson-Tancred's masterly translation makes De Anima fully accessible to modern readers. In his introduction, he places Aristotle's theories at the heart of contemporary debates on the philosophy of life and being.

Language: English

Pages: 254

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Penguin Books

Release: July 29, 2004

ISBN: 0140444718

ISBN 13: 9780140444711

De Anima (On the Soul)

4/5 ( ratings)

'The soul is, so to speak, the first principle of living things. We seek to contemplate and know its nature and substance'

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.

Hugh Lawson-Tancred's masterly translation makes De Anima fully accessible to modern readers. In his introduction, he places Aristotle's theories at the heart of contemporary debates on the philosophy of life and being.

Language: English

Pages: 254

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Penguin Books

Release: July 29, 2004

ISBN: 0140444718

ISBN 13: 9780140444711

More books from Aristotle

Politics

3.9/5 ( ratings)

The Nicomachean Ethics

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Metaphysics

Physics

3.9/5 ( ratings)

The Art of Rhetoric

3.9/5 ( ratings)

The Complete Works: The Revised Oxford Translation, Vol. 1

4.4/5 ( ratings)

The Basic Works of Aristotle

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Poetics

3.7/5 ( ratings)

The Politics and The Constitution of Athens

The Metaphysics

3.8/5 ( ratings)

On the Heavens

Classical Literary Criticism: Poetics/Ars Poetica/On the Sublime

3.9/5 ( ratings)

On Interpretation

3.7/5 ( ratings)

A New Aristotle Reader

3.6/5 ( ratings)

50 obras maestras que debes leer antes de morir: vol. 1

Aristotle: Poetics. Longinus: On the Sublime. Demetrius: On Style

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Categories/De Interpretatione

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Ten Great Works of Philosophy

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?