¹ Freudenthal, J., Ueber den Begriff des Wortes ΦANTA∑IA bei Aristoteles (Göttingen, 1863);Google Scholar Hamlyn, D. W., Aristotle's De Anima (Oxford, 1968);Google Scholar Schofield, M., ‘Aristotleon the Imagination’, Aristotle on mind and the senses, edd. Lloyd, G. E. R. and Owen, G. E. L. (Cambridge, 1978), p. 129. Schofield says in the same essay (p. 103): ‘it would be a triumph of generosity over justice to pretend that he (Aristotle) manages to combine his different approaches to φαντ ασ⋯ α with an absolutely clear head’, and that just in De Anima 3. 3.Google Scholar

² See Ross's commentary ad loc. for the reasons for diverging from the MS. reading.

³ Freudenthal, op. cit. p. 8, thought that κα⋯ φαντασέαέ should be removed because it contradicts other statements on animal phantasia in Aristotle.

⁴ See Nussbaum, Martha C., Aristotle'sDe Motu Animalium (Princeton, 1978), esp. pp. 236–7.Google Scholar

⁵ So Freudenthal (op. cit. p. 8) refers to this passage among others as an illustration of how Aristotle contradicts himself by calling phantasia ‘eine Art des Denkens’. The emphasis in Schofleld's essay is also wrong: see pp. 105, 125, 127 and 128, where he talks of Aristotle beginning by treating phantasia ‘as a form of thinking’.

⁶ Schofield (op. cit. p. 120) says: ‘He had once defined φαντασία as a sort of weak perception, in the early Rhetoric; but that approach had been abandoned by the time of the De Anima’. This is misleading. Rh. 1370a 28 says that phantasia is αϊσθησίς τις τις ⋯σθεν⋯ς. It is something like aisthēsis, aisthēsis tis, like it a movement, but a secondary rather than a primary movement. This approach is common to the Rhetoric, Parva Naturalia, and De Anima.

⁷ The usual understanding of κα⋯ ***έευ ταύτης οὐκ ἒστιν ὑπ⋯ληψις is ‘and without phantasia etc.’: see the translations of Theiler and Hamlyn, and Ross's paraphrase. Schofield takes the phrase in the same sense, and refers (op. cit. p. 125) to Aristotle's ‘favourite thesis about the indispensability of φαντασ⋯ α to thinking in the more restricted formulation…’. ὑπ⋯ληψις is taken as doing duty for δι⋯νοια. No one will deny that phantasia is indispensable to thinking (see 403a9, 432a 13), and it makes no substantial difference to what follows in the text on the distinction between ὑπ⋯ληψις and phantasia whether one takes ταύτης as referring to phantasia, the traditional interpretation, or δι⋯νοια as I suggest. (It is, of course, open to someone to argue that Aristotle could not possibly have used such Greek as he does on my interpretation, but I would like to see that proved, if possible.) Taking it as I suggest would improve the sequence of thought, particularly if one agrees that Aristotle is concerned both with attacking Plato's view and with asserting that the (or some) irrational animals also possess phantasia. It also avoids the rather awkward substitution of ὐπ⋯ληψις for διάνοια, even though I am not claiming that the substitution is impossible. See Bonitz for the last two terms.

⁸ Ross says ad loc. That ‘most of the MSS. have ⋯ αὐτ⋯ ν⋯03B7;σις, while the second hands of C and U, and Simplicius’ lemma, have ⋯ αὐτ⋯ φαντασ⋯α. There can be little doubt that these are rival attempts to interpret; the sentence reads better without either ν⋯ησις or φαντασ⋯α. Freudenthal (op. cit. p. 10) had retained ν⋯ησις on the grounds of the evidence, as do Hamlyn and Theiler in their translations, and Schofield (op. cit. p. 139, note 88), all reading the word as predicate, and interpreting that ’phantasia is not the same noēsis as ὑπ⋯ληψις’.

⁹ I take ‘the metaphorical sense’ to be ‘mere show’. See Freudenthal p. 18, Theiler ad loc., and Nussbaum, op. cit. pp. 252 ff.

¹⁰ I do not accept Ross's emendation at 428a 3, which turns a statement into a question. But I do not agree with Schofield either, who says (op. cit. p. 128) ‘in concentrating on its propensity to give true or false views of facts, Aristotle seems clearly to count φαντασ⋯α like sense perception, as a faculty of judgement - contrary to what the discussion at 427b 16–24 might have led one to expect’. Freudenthal (op. cit. p. 18) had made the same mistake before him: he refers to 428a 12, 18, and 428b 17, 25 f. for phantasia's relation to truth and falsehood, and regards it as a faculty of judgement, citing Mot. Anim. 700b 19 In fact, phantasia is veridical or misleading as corresponding to perceptions which are true or false, but it is not true or false in the sense of expressing a judgement. It is involved in the process of supplying materials on which the mind builds judgements: it is only in this sense, I will argue, that it is to be looked for among the potentialities or dispositions in virtue of which we are enabled to judge and arrive at truth or falsity, and only in this sense is it κριτικ⋯λ, connected with judgement.

¹¹ See again Ross's commentary ad loc.

¹² At 428a 15 I take Theiler's reading and rendering: τ⋯ τε ⋯ληθ⋯ς κ⋯ψεςυδές.

¹³ I retain the MS. reading in 428 a 22–4.

¹⁴ A useful way of approaching Plato's notion of phantasia is to read, first, the Sophist, particularly 260e-264a, where it is defined, and then the Theaetetus, especially 152a-186e, where the notion is deployed in a discussion of our knowledge of the sensible world, followed by Philebus 38b-40a and Timaeus 27d-29 and 52. The word does not occur in the last two dialogues, but the same process is obviously being referred to. In the Sophist it is said that when assertion or denial occurs in the soul in the course of silent thinking it is called doxa, and when doxa occurs, not independently, but by means of aisthēsis, d*** aisthēse014Ds, this is called phantasia (264 a), referred to a few lines later as σύμμειξις αἰσθ⋯σεως κα⋯ δόξης. In the Timaeus we are told that the sensible world is δ⋯ξ*** μετ’ αἰδ⋯ξης (27 d) or περιληπτ⋯ν (52a).

¹⁵ Ross in the introduction to his commentary, p. 39: ‘In the main… he regards it not as a valuable faculty but as a disability’. Hamlyn's views we have already seen. Even Schofield's emphasis on phantasia as a capacity for having non-paradigmatic sensory experiences tends to take from the importance of phantasia in Aristotle's scheme.

¹⁶ Ross (Commentary, p. 303), following Torstrik, suggests that an early editor strung these scraps from the Master together so that none of his words should be lost to posterity.

¹⁷ The problem of whether or not to delete τ*** κοιν*** in 431b5 does not affect our understanding of the passage.

¹⁸ See note 10 above.

¹⁹ Reading οὐδ⋯ τἆλλα with Theiler.

²⁰ See Pol. 1253a 1 ff. on language and its contribution to human society.

²¹ The dilemma which Aristotle has constructed is discussed by Lycos, K. in Mind, n.s. 63, no. 292 (1964), 496 ff.,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hamlyn ad loc. See also Schofield, op. cit. pp. 112–15. My criticism of Aristotle here is suggested by a reading of the Metaphrasis of Priscianus Lydus, which contains views of Theophrastus on phantasia: see Supplementum Aristotelicum I. 2, ed. Bywater, I. (Berlin, 1886), p. 25, lines 25 ff.Google Scholar

²² I have had the opportunity of reading a paper by Allan Silverman on aisthësis in Aristotle, and wish to thank him here for the enlightenment which I derived from it.

²³ See Gulley, N., Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1962), pp. 161 f.Google Scholar