Aristotle's De Anima: A Guide (Oxford Guides to Philosophy)

Aristotle's De Anima is an extraordinarily influential text in the history of philosophy; it is also one of the earliest works in what we now call psychology.Aristotle explores the psuchê, a distinctively Greek concept that overlaps in certain respects with our modern notions of the mind and the soul, but also applies to plants and non-human animals.The De Anima develops an innovative and challenging account of the relation between the psuchê and the body, and offers thought-provoking analyses of the different capacities of the psuchê, starting with nutrition and reproduction.A general discussion of perception is followed by detailed accounts of the five individual sense modalities, as well as perceptual imagination.After subtly exploring the intellectual capacities that he considers distinctive to human beings (where we find his famous discussion of the "agent intellect") Aristotle gives a sophisticated account of how desire leads to action. In this lively and accessible Oxford Guide,