Desire

In both perception and thinking, animal souls are in some ways active and in some ways passive. Although both mind and the sensory faculty receive their correlative forms when perceiving or thinking, neither is wholly passive in its defining activity. Perception involves discrimination, while thinking involves selective attending and abstraction, both activities, in the sense that each requires more than mere passive receptivity. Still, the sorts of activity required for cognition and perception do not explain in any obvious way another central fact about human beings and other animals: animals propel themselves through space in pursuit of objects they desire. Even in his first characterizations of soul in De Anima, Aristotle is alive to the widely held conviction that the soul is implicated in motion (De Animai 2, 405b11; i 5 409b19–24). Of course, this is a natural connection for him to make, given that every animate being, that is, every being with a soul, has within it a principle of motion and rest. So, it seems deeply characteristic of living systems that they are able to move themselves in ways likely to result in their survival and flourishing. Animals move themselves, however, in a distinctive way: animals desire things, with the result that desire is centrally implicated in all manner of animal action. Why did ostrich run from the tiger? Because, one says easily, it desired to survive and so engaged in avoidance behavior. Why did the human being drive to the opera and sit quietly in her seat? Because, it seems, she desired to hear the music and to observe the spectacle.
In these, as in countless other cases, the explanation of animal action, human and non-human alike, easily and unreflectively appeals to desire. This is why Aristotle does not end his De Animawith a discussion of mind. Instead, after discussing mind, he notes that all animals are capable of locomotion, only to deny that any one of the faculties of the soul so far considered (viz. nutrition, perception, or mind) can account for desire-initiated movement. Although he had initially identified only these three faculties of soul (De Anima ii 2, 413b12), Aristotle now notes that something must explain the fact that animals engage in goal-directed behavior in order to achieve their conscious and unconscious goals. The wanted explanation cannot, he urges, be found somehow in the nutritive faculty, since plants, as living beings, have that power of soul, but do not move themselves around in pursuit of their goals; nor is it due to perception, since even some animals have this faculty without ever moving themselves at all, in any way (Aristotle evidently has in mind sponges, oysters, and certain testacea, Historia Animalium i 1, 487b6–9; viii 1 588b12; Partibus Animalium iv 5, 681b34, 683c8); nor again can it be a product of mind, since insofar as it is contemplative, mind does not focus upon objects likely to issue in directives for action, and insofar as it does commend action, mind is not of itself sufficient to engender motion, but instead relies upon appetite (De Anima iii 9, 432b14–33a5). Indeed, using the same form of reasoning, that a faculty cannot account for purposive action if its activity is insufficient to initiate motion, Aristotle initially concludes that even desire itself (orexis) cannot be responsible for action. After all, continent people, unlike those who are completely and virtuously moderate, have depraved desires but do not, precisely because they are continent, ever act upon them (De Anima iii 9 433a6–8; cf. Nicomachean Ethics i 13, 1102b26). So their desires are insufficient for action. Consequently, he concludes, desire alone, considered as a single faculty, cannot explain purposive action, at least not completely.
Ultimately, though, Aristotle does come to the conclusion that there is a faculty of desire (orektikon) whose occupation it is to initiate animal motion. (Perhaps his initial reservations pertained only to one species of desire considered in isolation.) In any case, he says plainly: “It is manifest, therefore, that what is called desire is the sort of faculty in the soul which initiates movement” (De Anima iii 10, 433a31–b1). He understands this conclusion, however, in tandem with another which also serves as a qualification of his earlier finding that mind cannot be the source of motion. He holds, in fact, that it is reasonable to posit two faculties implicated in animal movement: desire and practical reason (De Anima iii 10, 433a17–19), though they do not work in isolation from one another. Rather, practical reason, broadly construed to incorporate the kind of image-processing present in non-human animals, is a source of movement when it focuses upon an object of desire as something desirable. So, practical reason and desire act corporately as the sources of purposive motion in all animals, both human and non-human (De Anima iii 10, 433a9–16), even though, ultimately, it is desire whose objects prick practical intellect and set it in motion (De Anima iii 10, 433a17–2). For this reason, Aristotle concludes, there is a faculty of desire whose activities and objects are primarily, if not autonomously or discretely, responsible for initiating end-directed motion in animals. What animals seek in action is some object of desire which is or seems to them to be good.
Aristotle displays some hesitation in his discussion of desire and its relation to practical reason in the aetiology of animal action. Some have consequently concluded that his treatment can be regarded as at best inchoate or, worse, as positively befuddled. There seem to be no grounds for any such harsh assessment, however. Equally likely is that Aristotle is simply sensitive to the complexities involved in any approach to the intertwining issues in the philosophy of action. Unlike some later Humeans, he evidently appreciates that the data and phenomena in this domain are unstable, wobbling and retreating at the approach of taxonomizing theory. The antecedents of action, he rightly concludes, involve some sort of faculty of desire; but he is reluctant to conclude that desire is the sole or sufficient faculty implicated in the explanation of purposive behavior. In some way, he concludes, practical reason and imagination have indispensable roles to play as well.

Desire

Desire :: تعاليق

Desire