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Chapter 11 - Aristotle’s Theory of Animal Agency and the Problem of Self-Motion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2021

Sophia M. Connell
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
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Summary

The chapter offers a brief discussion of Aristotle’s theory of animal self-motion and the conception of animal agency this theory implies. I start with a description of the philosophical problem Aristotle faces in accounting for animal self-motion. His solution to that problem, I argue, lies in a biological conception of the soul as the unmoved mover of the animal’s self-motions. His theory, I further argue, includes a biological account of desire as a process that may be described as a homeostatic mechanism of self-preservation on the level of perceivers. I then turn to the resulting conception of animal agency. Here I argue that Aristotle regards animals as self-movers insofar as they appropriate, and redirect, the energy they receive from the environment for their own purposes and in accordance with how they perceive things in the world. An Aristotelian account of the causation of an episode of animal self-motion will thus have to include reference to how things appear to the animal. I end the chapter with a brief discussion of the relation of Aristotle’s biological account of animal self-motion to his account of (rational) human self-motion.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Guide to Further Reading

Nussbaum, M. 1978/1985. Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium: Text with Translation, Commentary and Interpretive Essays by Martha Craven Nussbaum (Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Corcilius, K. and Primavesi, O. 2018. Aristoteles. De Motu Animalium. Über die Bewegung der Lebewesen, Historisch-kritische Edition des griechischen Textes mit philologischem Kommentar von O. Primavesi. Deutsche Übersetzung, philosophische Einleitung und erklärende Anmerkungen von K. Corcilius (Hamburg: Meiner, Philosophische Bibliothek).Google Scholar
Primavesi, O and Rapp, C. 2020. Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium, Proceedings of the XIX. Symposium Aristotelicum (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Morel, P. M. 2013. Aristote: Le Mouvement des Animaux, suivi de la Locomotion des Animaux. Traduction et Présentation par Pierre-Marie Morel (Paris: Vrin).Google Scholar
Lorenz, H. 2006. The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Gill, M. L. and Lennox, J. G. 1994. Self-Motion. From Aristotle to Newton (Princeton University Press); wherein: Freeland, C. A. 1994a. “Aristotle on Perception, Appetition, and Self-motion,” pp. 3563, offers an interesting account of Aristotle’s conception of animal self-motion.Google Scholar

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