Appendices
228
Supplementary treatises:82 parva naturalia, small works on biology: Περὶ αἰσθήσεων καὶ αἰσθητῶν; On memory and recollection; On sleep and waking; On life and death; in addition: On the self-motion of living beings: Περὶ ζῴων κινήσεως; genuinely Aristotelian, as Jaeger has shown.83
84. (Relates to p. 155f.)
De anima Β 2, 413a21ff: ἄψυχον versus μψυχον, "unsouled" versus "ensouled": the latter is distinguished by the presence of τὸ ζῆν. Life is the very mode of Being of that which is living. ζῆν is a basic ontological concept. The soul is also to be understood in this sense. We say something is living where we find that: it moves in a oriented way, i.e., in a way oriented by perception; it moves itself and can stop itself; it was young and ages; it takes in nourishment and grows; etc. A physical body moves in only one direction. Plants, in contrast, extend themselves, through growth, in all directions simultaneously. The basic determination of such a living thing is the capacity of θρεπτικόν (413b5): "it can feed" and thereby is in communication with the beings around it. To this is added αἰσθητικόν (417a6), the possibility of orienting oneself, even if only as touching and grasping out for something. What is alive, and also stands in a determinate communication with something, is such that it has a world, as we would say today. Many living beings are tied to a certain place, others can move about. And their motion is different than the change of place to which lifeless things are subject: κίνησις πορευτική (cf. 432b14), to move oneself toward something which matters to life in one way or another; an oriented motion in the respective surrounding world.
Bound up with the phenomenon of κινεῖν is the phenomenon of κρίνειν, "distinguishing" in the sense of a formal orientation in general. κρίνειν: αἴσθησις and νοῦς. κινεῖν and κρίνειν constitute life.
De anima Γ 9ff.: every motion is motion ἐνεκά τινος: the motion, as a conation, proceeds toward the ὀρεκτόν (433a18), the "desired." Question: how is this ὀρεκτόν, the "desirable," made accessible, and what are the basic modes of conation? φεύγειν and διώκειν (cf. 432b28f.), on the one hand, to "make for" something, to pursue an object, and on the other hand, to "avoid" it. With the living being, what is, formally speaking, the mover itself, the ἀρχή κινήσεως? Aristotle shows that the point of departure for the motion is not the pure and simple observation of a desirable object. This object is not grasped through αἴσθησις but, instead, through ὄρεξις: the "conation" has the function of disclosing. Only on the basis of the ὀρεκτόν is there deliberation, Kκρίνειν, διάνοια. It is not the case that the living being first observes things disinterestedly, merely looks about in a neutral attitude, and then moves toward something; on the contrary, ὄρεξις is fundamental. The ἀρχή the unity of κρίνειν and κινεῖν; that is the principle of motion for living beings. αἴσθησις for animals, νοῦς for humans. The αἴσθησις of animals is not a theoretical capacity; on the contrary, it exists in a context of pursuit and flight.
De anima Β 6: the.general structure of αἴσθησις threefold (418a9ff.): 1. αἴσθησις ἰδία, 2. αἴσθησις κοινή, 3. αἴσθησις κατὰ συμβεβηκός. Regarding
82. See above, p. 154.
83. See above, p. 154, n. 162.