Alexander of Aphrodisias and His Doctrine of the Soul

Alexander of Aphrodisias and His Doctrine of the Soul

Author: Eckhard Kessler

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789004207028

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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.


Alexander Aphrodisiensis, "De anima libri mantissa"

Alexander Aphrodisiensis,

Author: Alexander Aphrodisiensis

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-09-05

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 3110978997

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R. W. Sharples provides a new edition, with introduction and commentary in English, of the Greek text. The Mantissa is a collection of short discussions, transmitted as a supplement to the treatise On the Soul by the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (c.200 AD). The collection includes discussion of a range of topics, among them the nature of soul and intellect, theories of how seeing takes place, issues in ethics, and the nature of fate. The text is based upon a new collation of the principal manuscript, the ninth century Venetus Marcianus graecus 258, and the apparatus corrects Bruns' misreportings of the principal manuscript and of the others that he used. Account has also been taken of the medieval Arabic and Latin versions of some of the sections which circulated independently, notably On Intellect which had a substantial influence on medieval philosophy. The introduction is chiefly concerned with the manuscripts and the relation between them. The commentary is based on the notes to the editor's English translation of the work (London: Duckworth and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); however, the commentary also takes into account more recent work on the collection by various scholars.


Alexander of Aphrodisias: On the Soul

Alexander of Aphrodisias: On the Soul

Author:

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-04-22

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1472501721

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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.


The Renaissance of Plotinus

The Renaissance of Plotinus

Author: Anna Corrias

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 1000080102

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Plotinus (204/5–270 C.E.) is a central figure in the history of Western philosophy. However, during the Middle Ages he was almost unknown. None of the treatises constituting his Enneads were translated, and ancient translations were lost. Although scholars had indirect access to his philosophy through the works of Proclus, St. Augustine, and Macrobius, among others, it was not until 1492 with the publication of the first Latin translation of the Enneads by the humanist philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) that Plotinus was reborn to the Western world. Ficino’s translation was accompanied by a long commentary in which he examined the close relationship between metaphysics and anthropology that informed Plotinus’s philosophy. Focusing on Ficino’s interpretation of Plotinus’s view of the soul and of human nature, this book excavates a fundamental chapter in the history of Platonic scholarship, one which was to inform later readings of the Enneads up until the nineteenth century. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in the history of Western philosophy, intellectual history, and book history.


Ancient Greek Medicine in Questions and Answers

Ancient Greek Medicine in Questions and Answers

Author: Michiel Meeusen

Publisher: Studies in Ancient Medicine

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9789004437654

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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.


Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times

Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times

Author: William V. Harris

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-09-04

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 9004379509

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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.


Nutrition and Nutritive Soul in Aristotle and Aristotelianism

Nutrition and Nutritive Soul in Aristotle and Aristotelianism

Author: Giouli Korobili

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-12-07

Total Pages: 494

ISBN-13: 311069056X

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This volume is a detailed study of the concept of the nutritive capacity of the soul and its actual manifestation in living bodies (plants, animals, humans) in Aristotle and Aristotelianism. Aristotle’s innovative analysis of the nutritive faculty has laid the intellectual foundation for the increasing appreciation of nutrition as a prerequisite for the maintenance of life and health that can be observed in the history of Greek thought. According to Aristotle, apart from nutrition, the nutritive part of the soul is also responsible for or interacts with many other bodily functions or mechanisms, such as digestion, growth, reproduction, sleep, and the innate heat. After Aristotle, these concepts were used and further developed by a great number of Peripatetic philosophers, commentators on Aristotle and Arabic thinkers until early modern times. This volume is the first of its kind to provide an in-depth survey of the development of this rather philosophical concept from Aristotle to early modern thinkers. It is of key interest to scholars working on classical, medieval and early modern psycho-physiological accounts of living things, historians and philosophers of science, biologists with interests in the history of science, and, generally, students of the history of philosophy and science.


Alexander of Aphrodisias and his Doctrine of the Soul

Alexander of Aphrodisias and his Doctrine of the Soul

Author: Eckhard Keßler

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-06-22

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 9004210199

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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.