Classes
Well, so far classes can't be considered to be too bad. In fact, some of the most enjoyable aspects of them are the professors, and our impersonations of them. One of my roommates is particularly good at our Philosophical Anthropology professor: Paul Moyaert. But anyways, I will just comment briefly on what I find to be most gratifying about classes: reading philosophers that I really haven't before. Well, yes, I have read Kant and Hegel, but never this much. And Nietzsche I only ever read a few aphorisms. And Freud, well, never touched him before. Averroes and Avicenna as well. And well, Aquinas, again, only a little. John Dewey I've also never read before.
I think that I am most fascinated by Freud right now. Psychoanalysis is interesting, but what is most captivating is his understanding of time. Perhaps I will have a post just about that...it would be good to spend some more time (pun intended) researching it. But we'll see. Anyways, so yes. That's class. Only a few more weeks left and then Christmas. And then, exams.
Thesis
This is the title of this blogpost. I'm moving along and discovering more and more, but that means I'm beginning to realize how much I have to cover, just to be able to get at the problem. I've narrowed down the sections in the de Anima, so that's good. But once again, the problem arises: the amount of reading needed. Here we go. This time I have two articles that I am going to be outlining for you. And well, next time, there may be more, or I might just do it one by one. Bird by bird, buddy. Bird by bird.
Article One: Rosen, S. H. “Thought and Touch: A Note on Aristotle’s ‘De Anima,’” in Phronesis, Vol. 6., No. 2, (1961), p. 127-137.
Throughout the history of philosophy, there has been a fundamental link in explaining the nature of thought between thinking and sense-perceiving. “Every human effort to transcend (whether partially or altogether) the body is conditioned, to one degree or another, by its corporeal beginning.” Different senses have taken primacy, either sight, hearing, or touch, mainly, have struggled as the primary metaphor. Different traditions have generally emphasized the same one throughout the tradition, but it is not necessarily about totality of use but analogous metaphor.
The argument in this paper will be that in Aristotle’s de Anima, there is a fundamentally analogy between thought and touch; it will also seek to rise the problems with this way of thinking about thinking. Aristotle is rejecting Platonic notions, which rest on sight as the metaphor, and emphasizing the ‘grasping’ of a thing. But there is a fundamental problem in philosophy that is also part of the problem here: do we see-touch things, or do we make them? Rosen argues that even to grasp something, one must be able to first see it (theorin). In explaining Aristotle, he writes, “The logos of thinking results from the grasping by nous of the eidos of the entity, just as the perception of a thing grasps its eidos in a material imprint, as the signet is imprinted onto wax.” In this, like must know like, and there is an alteration that takes place in the psyché. I believe this is where Rosen will go wrong in his critique of Aristotle, holding a literalist interpretation and not a functionalist one. But that’s for later…
The psyché grasps things in the their ‘whatness,’ and Aristotle compares this to the hand (432a1). Rosen delineates a few more of the Aristotelean notions of touch — its basicity, its immediacy. But he makes another mistake in claiming that for Aristotle ‘sight’ was another form of ‘touch.’ Aristotle clearly was battling against these notions in Book I of the de Anima. But to continue on, the touching of the mind, like physical touching, is of particulars, from which we somehow abstract universals. To think, one must have sense-perceptions.
How does the psyché think or grasp itself? And this is where Rosen’s literalist interpretation begins to plague him. For the psyché to be malleable enough to hold to the principle ‘like knows like,’ it must have no eidos of its own, in order to grasp and conform to the eidoi it encounters. So in a sense, the psyché can never grasp itself, and consequently it cannot be a unity. In fact, the last few pages of the article are so obscured by the literalist fallacy, it is hard to gain anything truly remarkable from them. Is that a bit harsh? He does have a brief criticism, which I would actually want to turn around into a strength using contemporary Phenomenoloy: “[The psyché’s] unlimited power of self-transformation depends upon the other, just as the power to transform itself depends upon its unity (in some sense of the word).” And in not being able to understand the psyché, we move into the city and social life, so as to understand ourselves.
Article Two: Sisko, John E. “Taste, Touch, and Temperance in ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ 3.10,” in The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 53, No. 1, May 2003, p. 135-140. This paper aims at establishing a consistent link between Aristotle’s account of temperance in the Nicomachean Ethics with his treatment of the senses in the biological works. Presuming the following, (1) moral virtues are non-relative over their specificities, being grounded in some “universal and necessary feature of human life,” and (2) Aristotle believes some familiarity with psychology is necessary to dialectically study ethics, we will investigate what Aristotle has to say about temperance.
In Nicomachean Ethics 3.10, the discussion of temperance is narrowed is scope to “the pleasures that all animals share in,” that are most basic — tactile pleasures. The standard view separates touch from the other senses taxonomically, and so this separation is what enables the uniqueness and basicity of touch.
But there are difficulties with this view: the problem of taste being a sense of touch. How then could it be separated out from touch? In the psychological accounts, Aristotle links taste and touch apart from the distal senses, so that the ethical and psychological theories are consistent? Analogously looking at Aristotle’s discussion of the commonality of blood, it is revealed that understanding “most common” should regard functionality, not taxonomy.
Regarding the functionality, it seems that touch and not taste plays the more functional role to pleasures, and so temperance is held to be compatible with the psychological works as governing over the correct discern when it comes to tactile pleasures, the most common of all.
Life
So, life. Life here is interesting. It seems to be passing quickly by, but I am excited still. I have my rhythm, but I think that I will need to start exploring more and more -- socially and geographically. I've made some good friends with two guys in particular, outside of my roommates. But one of them is a medical student and is going to be doing his internship soon in Brussels. And that will be both sad and good. Where does one go to meet people? I've met a few people in classes, but we haven't really gotten into conversations. Everyone is really different, and there are social groups it seems, but it is hard to tell with the internationality and everyone coming from different social milieu. One of these days I'll figure it out. I hope.
Anyways, that is life. Or parts of it. Hope this hasn't been too far off the normal. I will now close with a brand new section, and something that I really hope takes off...
New Tradition
Alright, and I want to end this blogpost by establishing a new tradition for this blog. Since I am trying to read through Plato and Aristotle this year, I will be putting up a quote each day for one of them (maybe sometimes both), with a little commentary. So let's get this thing started:
"Hermogenes: 'Why do you say that, Socrates?' Socrates: 'Because I've got a whole swarm of wisdom in my mind!'"This quote is from the Cratylus, in which Socrates is investigating the appropriateness of names. Not finished with it yet, but it is a lesson in Greek etymology. And also, what Socrates says here is hilarious. Just saying.
No comments:
Post a Comment