28 reviews for:

De Anima

Aristotle

3.7 AVERAGE


Make sure you have your Big Boy Philospher pants on for this one. You're about to embark on an attempt to disentagle epistemology, psychology and (pre-scientific) biology all wadded up in a ball of lecture notes composed originally in Classical Greek.
informative reflective fast-paced

I really liked this edition. The translation made it very easy to follow Aristotles logic. The footnotes were a bit sparser than other Aristotle books I've read, but were still very helpful. I also appreciated the glossary in the back of the book.
I found this work less exciting than the De Caelo and the Physics, and lacks the practical use of the Nichomacean Ethics, so I probably won't be rereading this particular work anytime soon, but this is a very good edition to use if you're approaching it for the first time.
challenging informative inspiring slow-paced
informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

Painful to read. Read excerpts for my philosophy class. Appreciated his bodily focus, at least. Someone finally gets it.

an analysis into the mind, body and soul, thus the very essence of life.

particularly found an interesting response to an argument that i had come across, of the existence of 2 deities which could be resolved with aristotle’s thoughts of the negation of 2 matters of identical states, thus negating the existence of 2 necessary beings and necessitating only 1 necessary being and the rest being contingent. [this seems to be a personal note - ref to logical existence of a deity and thus the contingency argument for this personal note to make sense when i look back]

also, note to self, read further on the section on dreams and the distortion of reality section*
informative slow-paced

"El sentido, por su parte, es la proporción. Los excesos en lo sensible, en fin, producen ya dolor ya destrucción". (97).

"Tampoco inteligir, digo, es lo mismo que percibir sensiblemente: prueba de ello es que la percepción de los sensibles propios es siempre verdadera y se da en todos los animales, mientras que el razonar puede ser también falso y no se da en ningún animal que no esté dotado además de razón". (100).

Leyendo un libro de Historia de la Psicología para un examen leí que, teniendo en cuenta que la Psicología no era una Ciencia en sus inicios sino que procede (como todas las Ciencias, por otra parte) de la Filosofía, este libro de Aristóteles podría considerarse el primer tratado de Psicología de la historia. Así que tuve curiosidad por leerlo. Especialmente porque me gusta mucho la forma de explicarse que tenía Aristóteles. Se acercaba a un objeto (a cualquier objeto, porque este sabio filósofo empirista escribió prácticamente acerca de todo) analizando primero su existencia y la razón de ésta y pasando luego a analizarlo por partes. Muy interesante si se lee en contexto, aunque es cierto que para un lector de hoy en día resulta, cuanto menos paradójica, la aceptación de la existencia de algo llamado alma sin un gran cuestionamiento, especialmente por parte de alguien tan concienzudo en su filosofía como Aristóteles.
informative

I have read several of Aristotle's books, and this turned out to be different than I expected. I thought it would focus on religious beliefs about the soul, but in reality, it focused on the senses and what drives living beings to do things. It was more scientific than religious.

Aristotle's thought processes are extraordinary, and I like how he reviews what his peers and predecessors believed about these things. Of course, he has some assumptions we know are incorrect, but he still uses sound logic to formulate theories on how things work.

This book is essential for those seeking to understand Western thought's evolution.