Interpreting Aristotle’s De Anima (“On the Soul”) with Heidegger et al
Details
VIA ZOOM: Interpreting Aristotle's De Anima ("On the Soul") with Heidegger et al
Welcome to the next Meetup topic that Jen and Philip will be presenting.
We will be doing a live read of the complete text of Aristotle's "De Anima", which is also sometimes translated under the title "On the Soul".
As we do our live read of this complete text, we will occasionally stop to learn about some of the ways that other philosophers have interpreted Aristotle's "De Anima".
Note: We'll be joined by additional participants from the Toronto Philosophy Meetup at these meetings –
https://www.meetup.com/The-Toronto-Philosophy-Meetup/
Martin Heidegger wrote many books about Aristotle and we will be reading several excerpts from Heidegger's writings. Heidegger's interpretation is a phenomenological interpretation. Philip would be happy to recommend good books about Phenomenology to anyone who wants to acquire some familiarity with this important philosophical movement before reading the Heidegger works. Just ask!
We will also be reading some books which situate Aristotle within current debates in Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness Studies. Amazingly, even after 2500 years Aristotle's theory of the mind is still holding up pretty well when compared to its 21st century rivals!
"The Undivided Self: Aristotle and the 'Mind-Body Problem'" by David Charles is a great book. It gives a very subtle and nuanced interpretation of Aristotle's "De Anima" and also does a great job situating Aristotle within current debates in Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness Studies. There is a very good chance that we will read this book within the context of this meetup (unless Philip manages to find and even better book on this topic).
Aristotle has been misinterpreted and appropriated by many other philosophers for the last 2500 years. Medieval Theologians in the Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions kept Aristotle's views alive by making them central to their contemporary debates. And while we should be grateful for that, we must also accept that they distorted Aristotle as they appropriated his views for their own rather different philosophical and theological needs. A lot of what we think of as Aristotelean terminology is actually terminology that is only appropriate in the context of medieval debates that happened in Latin and Arabic and not in Aristotle's original ancient Greek.
We will try as much as we possibly can to try to get in touch with what Aristotle actually wrote in ancient Greek all those years ago. To this end, we will be using 2 translations which try to avoid the misleading Latin and Arabic terminology and try instead to translate from ancient Greek directly into current English. These 2 translation are:
1. "Aristotle's 'On the Soul' and 'On Memory and Recollection'" translated by Joe Sachs
[Amazon.ca Link](https://www.amazon.ca/Soul-Memory-Recollection-Aristotle/dp/1888009179/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2UY0BWN0K5NZ2&keywords=9781888009170&qid=1680828895&s=books&sprefix=978-1888009170%2Cstripbooks%2C741&sr=1-1)
[Amazon.com Link](https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Memory-Recollection-Aristotle/dp/1888009179)
2. "Aristotle DeAnima" translated by C.D.C. Reeve
[Amazon.ca Link](https://www.amazon.ca/Anima-Aristotle/dp/1624666191/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1XK2N9958AR1R&keywords=de+anima+reeve&qid=1680829133&s=books&sprefix=de+anima+ree%2Cstripbooks%2C1078&sr=1-2)
[Amazon.com Link](https://www.amazon.com/Anima-New-Hackett-Aristotle/dp/1624666191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2KIEBXKG6ZM3U&keywords=de+anima+reeve&qid=1680829095&s=books&sprefix=de+anima+reeve%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C918&sr=1-1)
Please try to get both of these translations, but at the very least do try to get one or the other. The live readings will be done from the Sachs translation, so if you only have the Reeve it might be a bit harder to follow.