Nous and Phantasia in Aristotle’s on the Soul
Date
2013Author
Christodoulou, Ioannis S.Publisher
Athens Institute for Education and ResearchSource
Atiner’s Conference paper seriesVolume
phi2013-0481Pages
5-14Google Scholar check
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Aristotle’s On the Soul, is one of the most intriguing philosophical treatises in the history of Western Philosophy. Despite Aristotle’s well known capacity in dealing with difficult philosophical problems, one cannot help but realise that Aristotle’s original ideas on the subject matter of imagination, cause more philosophical problems, than the ones Aristotle is expected to solve with his treatise. In the present paper, I am trying to clarify what kind of meaning, if any, is expected to be found in imagination, according to Aristotle’s handling of the subject. In De Anima, there are several definitions of imagination, which, in certain occasions, do not seem to be fitting each other. When Aristotle first mentions “noein” in De Anima, he correlates noein with imagination. Aristotle might be using the word “phantasia” with the meaning of “image”. In that case, the “noein” could be supposed to exist as an image or not without some image. If this is so, then we might be obliged to accept that the image in question brings with it some kind of meaning. The question is: what kind of meaning is this? Is it a meaning accompanied by an image, or an image with a certain meaning? I am giving an answer to this question by making use of Aristotle’s several mentions of imagination in De Anima. At the end, I am coming to the conclusion that imagination may have a wider sense than Aristotle scholars, along with Aristotle himself, are willing to admit.