Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword to the English Edition
- Foreword to the First Edition
- Translator's Acknowledgments
- Translator's Note
- Translator's Introduction
- Introduction
- Part I Abstract Thinking versus Concrete Sensation: The Opposition between Culture and Nature in Modernity
- Part II “Concrete Thought” as the Precondition of a Culture of Ethics, Politics, and Economics in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 3 The Interpretation of “Antiquity” from the Perspective of Modern Rationality
- Chapter 4 The Epistemological Foundations of a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 5 Abstract Consciousness versus Concrete Thought: Overcoming the Opposition between Feeling and Reason in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 6 The Soul in a Philosophy of Consciousness and in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 7 The Different Forms of Volition and Their Dependence upon Cognition
- Chapter 8 The Aesthetic, Ethical, and Political Significance of a Culture of Feelings in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 9 Theory and Practice: Plato's and Aristotle's Grounding of Political Theory in a Theory of Man
- Chapter 10 Evolutionary and Biological Conditions for Self-Preservation and Rational Conditions for Man's Self-Realization: An Appeal for a New Evaluation of Rationality
- Conclusion: A Comparison of Two Fundamental Forms of European Rationality
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 6 - The Soul in a Philosophy of Consciousness and in a Philosophy of Discrimination
from Part II - “Concrete Thought” as the Precondition of a Culture of Ethics, Politics, and Economics in Plato and Aristotle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword to the English Edition
- Foreword to the First Edition
- Translator's Acknowledgments
- Translator's Note
- Translator's Introduction
- Introduction
- Part I Abstract Thinking versus Concrete Sensation: The Opposition between Culture and Nature in Modernity
- Part II “Concrete Thought” as the Precondition of a Culture of Ethics, Politics, and Economics in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 3 The Interpretation of “Antiquity” from the Perspective of Modern Rationality
- Chapter 4 The Epistemological Foundations of a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 5 Abstract Consciousness versus Concrete Thought: Overcoming the Opposition between Feeling and Reason in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 6 The Soul in a Philosophy of Consciousness and in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 7 The Different Forms of Volition and Their Dependence upon Cognition
- Chapter 8 The Aesthetic, Ethical, and Political Significance of a Culture of Feelings in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 9 Theory and Practice: Plato's and Aristotle's Grounding of Political Theory in a Theory of Man
- Chapter 10 Evolutionary and Biological Conditions for Self-Preservation and Rational Conditions for Man's Self-Realization: An Appeal for a New Evaluation of Rationality
- Conclusion: A Comparison of Two Fundamental Forms of European Rationality
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Reason, Feeling, and the Will and Their Interaction in Action
If, in contrast to modern philosophy of consciousness, one does not set out from consciousness and the certitude of the “I think” as the fundament of cognition, but, instead, recognizes this fundament in the act of discrimination, a completely different picture of our different psychic activities emerges. For Plato, these activities do not simply represent different states, “modifications” of a consciousness that underlies all of them in the same uniform way. Rather, they represent either different types of discrimination or complex activities built up on the foundation of one or more acts of discrimination — activities of the one soul of man. In this way, a fundamentally different possibility of understanding the unity of the plurality of forms of activity and of defining the unity of personality, the continuity of the human “I” or self, and the specific individuality of a particular human being opens up.
Moreover, this approach also provides us a rational and pragmatic way of overcoming the radical division of human intellect into a rational conscious calculative reason and a subjective and unconscious emotional faculty. When we speak of thought in the sense of consciousness, we mean a faculty that is not itself perception, feeling, and volition, but rather, a faculty that only becomes conscious of these acts and takes a stance toward them.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Modernity and PlatoTwo Paradigms of Rationality, pp. 277 - 287Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012