Aristotle is considered by many to be the founder of "faculty
psychology"--the attempt to explain a variety of psychological
phenomena by reference to a few inborn capacities. In The Powers of
Aristotle's Soul, Thomas Kjeller Johansen investigates his main
work on psychology, the De Anima, from this perspective. He shows
how Aristotle conceives of the soul's capacities and how he uses
them to account for the souls of living beings. Johansen offers an
original account of how Aristotle defines the capacities in
relation to their activities and proper objects, and considers the
relationship of the body to the definition of the soul's
capacities. Against the background of Aristotle's theory of
science, Johansen argues that the capacities of the soul serve as
causal principles in the explanation of the various life forms. He
develops detailed readings of Aristotle's treatment of nutrition,
perception, and intellect, which show the soul's various roles as
formal, final and efficient causes, and argues that the so-called
'agent' intellect falls outside the scope of Aristotle's natural
scientific approach to the soul. Other psychological activities,
various kinds of perception (including "perceiving that we
perceive"), memory, imagination, are accounted for in their
explanatory dependency on the basic capacities. The ability to move
spatially is similarly explained as derivative from the perceptual
or intellectual capacities. Johansen claims that these capacities
together with the nutritive may be understood as "parts" of the
soul, as they are basic to the definition and explanation of the
various kinds of soul. Finally, he considers how the account of the
capacities in the De Anima is adopted and adapted in Aristotle's
biological and minor psychological works.
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