Merely Living Animals in Aristotle
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1981-9471.v9i1p115-134Keywords:
Ancient Philosophy, Aristotle, biology, lifeAbstract
In Parts of Animals II.10, 655b37-656a8, Aristotle tacitly identifies a group of animals which partake of “living only”. This paper is an attempt to understand the nature of this group. It is argued that it is possible to make sense of this designation (i.e. “merely living animals”) if we consider that some animals, which are solely endowed with the contact senses, do nothing more than mere immediate nutrition by their perceptive nature and have no other action. It is concluded that some of Aristotle’s merely living animals would be certain kinds of sponge, certain sea anemones and the ascidians among testaceaDownloads
References
Balme, D. 1987. Aristotle’s use of Division and Differentiae. in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology. Ed. A. Gotthelf and J.
G. Lennox. Cambridge: 69 – 89. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511552564.008
Balme, D. 1991. Aristotle. History of Animals. Books VII-X. Cambridge.
Code, A. 1997. Animal and Childhood Cognition in Aristotle’s Biology and the Scala Naturae”. in Aristotelische Biologie. Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, eds. W. Kullmann and S. Föllinger, Stuttgart: 287 – 323.
Gotthelf, A. 1989. The Place of the Good in Aristotle’s Natural Teleology. in Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 4. eds. J.J. Cleary and D.C. Shartin. Lanham, Md.: 113 – 139.
Johansen, T.K., 1997. Aristotle on the Sense-Organs.http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511518461.
Labarrière, J.-L. 2004. Langage, vie politique et mouvement des animaux. Paris.
Lennox, J.G. 2001a. Divide and Explain: The Posterior Analytics in Practice. in Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology, Cambridge : 7 – 38. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511552564.009
Lennox, J.G.2001b. Aristotle. On the Parts of Animals. Oxford.
Leunissen, M. 2010. Explanation and Teleology. in: Aristotle’s Science of Nature. Cambridge. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511762499
Lloyd, G.E.R. 1996. “Fuzzy Natures?. in: Aristotelian Explorations. Cambridge : 67 – 82.
Morel, P.-M. 2007. De la matière à l’action. Aristote et le problème du vivant. Paris.
Pellegrin, P. 2010. Aristote. Parties des Animaux. Paris.
Polansky, R. 2007. Aristotle’s De Anima. Cambridge. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511551017
Ross, D. 1955. Aristotle. Parva Naturalia. Oxford.
Sprague, R.K. 1991. Plants as Aristotelian Substances. Illinois Classical Studies 16(1/2): 221 – 229.
Voultsiadou E. and Vafidis D. 2007. Marine invertebrate diversity in Aristotle’s Zoology. Contributions to Zoology 76 (2): 103 – 120.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC By 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).