Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Aristotle on Happiness, Virtue, and Wisdom.Bryan C. Reece - 2023 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Aristotle thinks that happiness is an activity---it consists in doing something---rather than a feeling. It is the best activity of which humans are capable and is spread out over the course of a life. But what kind of activity is it? Some of his remarks indicate that it is a single best kind of activity, intellectual contemplation. Other evidence suggests that it is an overarching activity that has various virtuous activities, ethical and intellectual, as parts. At stake are questions about (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Aristotle on Divine and Human Contemplation.Bryan C. Reece - 2020 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 7:131–160.
    Aristotle’s theory of human happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics explicitly depends on the claim that contemplation (theôria) is peculiar to human beings, whether it is our function or only part of it. But there is a notorious problem: Aristotle says that divine beings also contemplate. Various solutions have been proposed, but each has difficulties. Drawing on an analysis of what divine contemplation involves according to Aristotle, I identify an assumption common to all of these proposals and argue for rejecting it. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • (1 other version)When and Why Understanding Needs Phantasmata: A Moderate Interpretation of Aristotle’s De Memoria and De Anima on the Role of Images in Intellectual Activities.Caleb Cohoe - 2016 - Phronesis: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy 61 (3):337-372.
    I examine the passages where Aristotle maintains that intellectual activity employs φαντάσματα (images) and argue that he requires awareness of the relevant images. This, together with Aristotle’s claims about the universality of understanding, gives us reason to reject the interpretation of Michael Wedin and Victor Caston, on which φαντάσματα serve as the material basis for thinking. I develop a new interpretation by unpacking the comparison Aristotle makes to the role of diagrams in doing geometry. In theoretical understanding of mathematical and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Living without a Soul: Why God and the Heavenly Movers Fall Outside of Aristotle’s Psychology.Caleb Cohoe - 2020 - Phronesis 65 (3):281-323.
    I argue that the science of the soul only covers sublunary living things. Aristotle cannot properly ascribe ψυχή to unmoved movers since they do not have any capacities that are distinct from their activities or any matter to be structured. Heavenly bodies do not have souls in the way that mortal living things do, because their matter is not subject to alteration or generation. These beings do not fit into the hierarchy of soul powers that Aristotle relies on to provide (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Colloquium 1: Theophrastus on Intellect in Aristotle’s De Anima.Bryan C. Reece - 2024 - Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 38 (1):1-27.
    Aristotle’s cryptic De Anima III 5 has precipitated an enormous volume of commentary, especially about the identity of what has come to be known as active intellect and how it relates to potential intellect. Some take active intellect to be the prime mover of Metaphysics Λ, others a hypostatic or cosmic principle (for example, an ideal Intellect, intellect associated with the tenth celestial sphere, etc.), and others a faculty, potentiality, or power of the human soul that is distinct in function, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)When and Why Understanding Needs Phantasmata: A Moderate Interpretation of Aristotle’s De Memoria and De Anima on the Role of Images in Intellectual Activities.Caleb Cohoe - 2016 - Phronesis 61 (3):337-372.
    I offer a new interpretation of the passages where Aristotle maintains that intellectual activity employs φαντάσµατα (images). In theoretical understanding of mathematical and natural beings, we usually need to consciously employ appropriate φαντάσµατα in order to grasp explanatory connections. Aristotle does not, however, commit himself to thinking that images are required for exercising all theoretical understanding: understanding immaterial things, in particular, may not involve φαντάσµατα. Thus the connection that Aristotle makes between images and understanding does not rule out the possibility (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Why the View of Intellect in De Anima I 4 Isn’t Aristotle’s Own.Caleb Cohoe - 2018 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (2):241-254.
    In De Anima I 4, Aristotle describes the intellect (nous) as a sort of substance, separate and incorruptible. Myles Burnyeat and Lloyd Gerson take this as proof that, for Aristotle, the intellect is a separate eternal entity, not a power belonging to individual humans. Against this reading, I show that this passage does not express Aristotle’s own views, but dialectically examines a reputable position (endoxon) about the intellect that seems to show that it can be subject to change. The passage’s (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation