Nowadays, the theory of emotions and related moral-psychological phenomena has become one of the most flourishing fields of philosophy. One of the milestones in the development of this branch of philosophy was the emergence of ‘cognitive’ accounts of emotions, that is, the view that emotions are crucially connected with cognitive activities such as beliefs, judgments, memory, and anticipation, and that emotions themselves can be understood as expressing evaluative judgments. In philosophy, such ideas derive, to a considerable extent, from interpretations of Aristotle, for he seems to have been the first to lay bare systematically the connections between our attitudes towards certain objects and the individuation of different types of emotions. In the seminar, we will read and discuss selected passages from Aristotle’s De Anima, Rhetoric, Nicomachean Ethics, and Poetics.
- المعلم: Christof Rapp
- المعلم: Reier Helle
- المعلم: Andreas Anagnostopoulos
- المعلم: Reier Helle
- المعلم: Laura Castelli
Ancient Greek philosophers generally believed that animate things are distinct from inanimate things in virtue of having a soul. However, what is a soul? What sorts of things have souls? Do souls have parts? Are souls distinct from bodies, and if so, how can they interact? In this course we will study how Aristotle answered these questions in his central psychological work, On the Soul (De Anima). Among the topics we will explore are: the relation between Aristotle’s theory of scientific inquiry and definition in the Posterior Analytics and his practice of inquiring into and defining the soul in De Anima; the role that his criticism of earlier Greek theories of soul plays in the development of his own account of the soul; his so called ‘hylomorphic’ theory of the soul-body relation; the soul’s causal role in the life processes of nutrition, perception, imagination, intellectual cognition, and action. Our main focus will be on the primary text (in English translation), but we will also read and discuss at least one piece of secondary literature each week. Knowledge of ancient Greek is not required.
- المعلم: Jason Carter
- المعلم: Christof Rapp
- المعلم: Katharina Epstein
- المعلم: Marcel Ohrenschall
- المعلم: Christof Rapp
