Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born in Macedon, in what is now northern Greece, but spent most of his adult life in Athens. His life in Athens divides into two periods, first as a member of Plato’s Academy (367–347) and later as director of his own school, the Lyceum (334–323). The intervening years were spent mainly in Assos and Lesbos, and briefly back in Macedon. His years away from Athens were predominantly taken up with biological research and writing. Judged on the basis of their content, Aristotle’s most important psychological writings probably belong to his second residence in Athens, and so to his most mature period. His principal work in psychology, De Anima, reflects in different ways his pervasive interest in biological taxonomy and his most sophisticated physical and metaphysical theory.
Because of the long tradition of exposition which has developed around Aristotle’s De Anima, the interpretation of even its most central theses is sometimes disputed. Moreover, because of its evident affinities with some prominent approaches in contemporary philosophy of mind, Aristotle’s psychology has received renewed interest and has incited intense interpretative dispute in recent decades. Consequently, this entry proceeds on two levels. The main article recounts the principal and distinctive claims of Aristotle’s psychology, avoiding so far as possible exegetical controversy and critical commentary. At the end of appropriate sections of the main article, readers are invited to explore problematic or advanced features of Aristotle’s theories by following the appropriate links.
[size=30]1. Aristotle’s Psychological Writings
Aristotle investigates psychological phenomena primarily in
De Anima and a loosely related collection of short works called the
Parva Naturalia, whose most noteworthy pieces are
De Sensu and
De Memoria. He also touches upon psychological topics, often only incidentally, in his ethical, political, and metaphysical treatises, as well as in his scientific writings, especially
De Motu Animalium. The works in the
Parva Naturalia are, in comparison with
De Anima, empirically oriented, investigating, as Aristotle says, “the phenomena common to soul and body” (
De Sensu 1, 436a6–8). This contrasts with
De Anima, which introduces as a question for consideration “whether all affections are common to what has the soul or whether there is some affection peculiar to the soul itself” (
De Anima i 1, 402a3–5). That is, in
De Anima Aristotle wants to know whether all psychological states are also material states of the body. “This,” he remarks, “it is necessary to grasp, but not easy” (
De Anima i 1, 402a5). In this way,
De Animaproceeds at a higher level of abstraction than the
Parva Naturalia. It is generally more theoretical, more self-conscious about method, and more alert to general philosophical questions about perception, thinking, and soul-body relations.
In both
De Anima and the
Parva Naturalia, Aristotle assumes something which may strike some of his modern readers as odd. He takes psychology to be the branch of science which investigates the soul and its properties, but he thinks of the soul as a general principle of life, with the result that Aristotle’s psychology studies all living beings, and not merely those he regards as having minds, human beings. So, in
De Anima, he takes it as his task to provide an account of the life activities of plants and animals, along side those of humans (
De Anima ii 11, 423a20–6, cf. ii 1, 412a13; cf.
De Generatione Animalium ii 3, 736b13;
De Partibus Animalium iv 5, 681a12). In comparison with the modern discipline of Psychology, then, Aristotle’s psychology is broad in scope. He even devotes attention to the question of the nature of life itself, a subject which falls outside the purview of psychology in most contemporary contexts. On Aristotle’s approach, psychology studies the soul (
psuchê in Greek, or
anima in Latin); so it naturally investigates all ensouled or animate beings.
There is, however, one telling point of contact between Aristotle’s investigations into the soul and the contemporary discipline of Psychology: in each case, different questions yield different directions and methods of inquiry, with the result that it is sometimes hard to appreciate how so many variegated enterprises, though conducted under one and the same rubric, could really belong to any one coordinated discipline. Someone studying methods of Freudian psychoanalysis will not, after all, have any immediate overlap of either interest or method with a brain physiologist or a behavioral geneticist. In a similar way, Aristotle seems reluctant to regard an inquiry into the soul as belonging exclusively to natural science, which is for him the branch of theoretical science devoted to investigating beings capable of undergoing change. (He contrasts “physics”, that is, natural science, with both mathematics and “first philosophy” along these lines;
Meta. vi 1 1025b27–30, 1026a18; xi 7 1064a16–19, b1–3.) On the one hand, he insists that because various psychological states, including anger, joy, courage, pity, loving, and hating, all involve the body in central and obvious ways, the study of soul “is already in the province of the natural scientist” (
De Anima i 1 403a16–28). At the same time, however, he insists that the mind or intellect (
nous) may not be enmeshed in the body in the same way as these sorts of states, and so denies that the study of soul falls in its entirety to the natural scientist (
Meta. vi 1 1026a4–6;
De Partibus Animalium i 1 645a33-b10). This is presumably why in the opening chapter of
De AnimaAristotle reports a deep and authentic perplexity about the best method for investigating psychological matters (
De Anima i 1 402a16–22). If different sciences employ different methods and the study of soul is bifurcated so that it belongs to no one science, there will indeed be a genuine difficulty about how best to proceed in any inquiry concerning it. It seems fair to say that these sorts of quandaries have not left us altogether. Although purely naturalistic approaches to philosophy of mind have found staunch champions in contemporary times, it would nevertheless be safe to say that much of the discipline continues to employ traditional
a priorimethods; some branches of cognitive science seem an admixture of both. In any case, in view of the difficulties concerning the soul he enumerates, Aristotle evinces an appropriate modesty when undertaking its investigation: “Grasping anything trustworthy concerning the soul is completely and in every way among the most difficult of affairs” (
De Anima i 1 402a10–11)[/size]
Aristotle's Psychology
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