ANCIENT PHILOSOPHICAL

ANTECEDENTS

ARISTOTLE

Presented by:

Fernand C. Jimeno
Biography
Born in 384 BC in Stagira, Greece
Enrolled in Platos Academy at 17 years old
Tutored Alexander the Great in 338 BC
Founded his own school, The Lyceum, in
Athens in 335 BC
Died in 322 B.C. after he left Athens and
fled to Chalcis
Philosophica
l The four
Assumptions causes
Material Formal Efficient Final
The actual physical The structure or The actual force that The ultimate purpose
properties or makeup design of a being brings something into of being
of a thing being
Philosophica
l
Assumptions
For Aristotle, things are made
up of form and matter, but the
two were inseparable.
Soul-Body
Relation
Matter
Body (flesh and bones)

Form
Soul
Aristotles
Psychological Parva Naturalia
Writings (Little Physical Treatises)

On Memory
On Dreams

De Anima
(on the Soul)
The Psyche, as form, is never
separate from the organism, but
was merely a function of it.
Hierarchy of psyches or
functions
Mind/Thinking Humans only

Imagination
Motion
Perception Both humans and animals

Humans, animals, and

Nutrition plants
Nutrition

for the nutritive soul is found along with all

the others and is the most primitive and
widely distributed power of soul, being
indeed that one in virtue of which all are
said to have life.

-De Anima, book 2, part 4

Perception

'Common sensibles' are movement,

rest, number, figure, magnitude;
these are not peculiar to any one
sense, but are common to all.

-De Anima, book 2, part 6

Imagination

Aristotle distinguished imagination from

perception on the grounds that:

1. Imagination produces images where there is no

perception (such as dreams)
2. Imagination is lacking in some lower animals, even
though they have perception
3. Perception is always true, while imagination can be
false
Remembering/Recollect
ion
Remembering involved objects previously
reacted to with an awareness of the time
relationships between past and present.

Recollecting involved an active search into the

past.
Mind/Thinking

Thus that in the soul which is called

mind (by mind I mean that whereby
the soul thinks and judges) is, before
it thinks, not actually any real thing.

-De Anima, book 3, part 4

Mind/Thinking

The thinking part of the soul must therefore be,

while impassible, capable of receiving the form
of an object; that is, must be potentially identical
in character with its object without being the
object. Mind must be related to what is
thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.

-De Anima, book 3, part 4

 Thank
you!
Aristotle. (ca. 350 BC). De anima (J. A. Smith, Trans.)

Lundin, Robert, Theories and Systems of Psychology (5th ed.),

University of the South, USA

Shields, Christopher, "Aristotle's Psychology", The Stanford

Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Edward N.
Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/aristotle-
psychology/>.