This second edition maintains the succinct yet greatly informative nature of the original, while incorporating the three decades’ worth of material that has been written on the subject since the original publication. In the preface to the work, O. calls the second edition ‘basically the same book’, but with ‘“minor” corrections and … an extensively updated bibliography and an updating [sic] ch. VII’, which treat the last 20 years of progress on the subject (p. 5), and it perfectly lives up to this description. The first six chapters are indeed nearly identical to their counterparts in the first edition, and thus I will dwell at greater length upon the material that is unique to the second edition, following a brief summary of those first six chapters (for a full review of the original see C. Gill, CR 38 [1988], 427).

The introduction poses two questions that O. intends to answer, namely the relevance of Plato's and Aristotle's concepts of psyche and nous to modern discussions of the mind, and, if there is any relevance, the usefulness that this relevance might have in those discussions. The first chapter outlines various definitions of the ‘mental’ in modernity and ends on the question of where Plato falls among these various definitions. A close reading of relevant passages from the Platonic corpus, aimed towards charting the progression of his ideas on the soul across time, occupies the second chapter. The third chapter briefly defines the dualism that Plato employs in his treatment of the soul, and the fourth compares Plato's dualism with that of Descartes. The ancient ideas described in the earlier chapters are in the fifth chapter compared to modern ideas in the mind–body debate, in order to demonstrate the relevance that the ancients’ ideas still have to this day. The sixth chapter concludes that closer study of the complex ideas of the ancients, which is largely disregarded in this specific conversation, would make significant contributions to the modern debate (p. 108).

The seventh chapter, ‘Recent Work on Plato's and Aristotle's Psychology’, is the point at which the second edition differs significantly from the first, in that it takes up discussion of these topics, starting from the time when the first edition of this volume was published. The section of this chapter that deals with Plato focuses on the progression of Plato's ideas concerning the nature of the soul and, as O. points out, ‘to some extent, the picture which was drawn in the first edition (1987) of this volume has been confirmed by subsequent scholarship’ (p. 127). The section on Aristotle is likewise concerned with his ideas on the nature of the soul, here specifically with how we ought to characterise Aristotle's hylomorphism. A survey of the various positions espoused by Aristotelian scholarship on this matter leads O. to conclude that the Aristotelian soul is neither ‘a substance in the full sense’ nor ‘a non-physical substance’ but ‘a very special unique attribute: a substantival attribute’ (p. 149). This chapter not only provides a thought-provoking discussion of the topics that it treats, but it lives up to its promise of bringing the discussion of these topics up to date, with an overwhelming majority of cited sources having been published after the first edition of this work.

This chapter is followed by the updated bibliography. In addition to being four times longer than that of the first edition, it is now (very usefully) subdivided into sections: ‘Background’, ‘Plato’ and ‘Aristotle’. The indexes are likewise substantially updated in the second edition: a one-page index of names and a two-page index of subjects in the original are now two and six pages long, respectively. Other aspects of what O. calls the work's ‘new, more reader-friendly, layout’ (p. 5) are the conversion of the original's endnotes into footnotes, and a much more deeply subdivided table of contents, both of which make the book's ideas far easier to interact with.

Though the book is undoubtedly easier to navigate than its predecessor, the method of inclusion of the more recent material did not feel ideal. Knowing from the start that the updated material was almost entirely restricted to a new chapter, which followed the concluding chapter of the original, left me unsure if the material in the early chapters would eventually be contradicted by the new material. O. does, of course, eventually address this (‘This [chapter] has the unavoidable consequence that I sometimes have to return to certain hotly debated areas already dealt with in earlier chapters’, p. 109), and, as I have mentioned above, the original conclusions of the Plato discussion have largely been confirmed by subsequent scholarship, but I was not made explicitly aware of any of this until I had completed the original material and reached that final chapter.

This sole concern of mine, of course, does not take away from the argumentation of the book, which still very much holds up to this day. To have addressed my qualm would have required the book to have been entirely rewritten, which is contrary to O.’s expressed purpose of addressing the continued demand for the long sold-out original work (p. 5). With all things accounted for, the new material in the second edition makes a positive contribution to the first, and this book will continue to be very useful for anybody working in the field of Plato's and Aristotle's psychology.