Table Of ContentABSTRACT
Title of Document: ACTION, PERCEPTION, AND THE LIVING BODY:
ARISTOTLE ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL
FOUNDATIONS OF MORAL PSYCHOLOGY
Michael Phillip Russo, Ph.D. 2009
Directed By: Rachel Singpurwalla, Department of Philosophy
In this dissertation I show that Aristotle’s moral psychology is grounded in his natural
philosophy of the living body. Moral psychology studies the ways in which agency
and moral responsibility are rooted in the functional structure of the psyche. For
Aristotle, the psyche – that is, the soul (psychê) – is unified with the living body, and
its functional structure is integrated with the dispositional propensities of the body’s
material constituents. On account of this, “the soul neither does anything nor has
anything done to it without the body...” (DA I.1, 403a 5) Accordingly, Aristotle
considers it an “absurdity” of the accounts of his predecessors that “they attach the
soul to the body and set it into it, determining no further what the cause of this is or
what the condition of the body is…” (DA I.3, 407b 14) However, most contemporary
interpretations of Aristotle’s moral psychology suffer from essentially this same
problem: they interpret Aristotle’s explanation of, say, voluntary action or lack of
self-restraint (akrasia) in entirely psychological terms, and say nothing about the
physiological processes that Aristotle takes to partially constitute, and to critically
influence, these phenomena. Here I address this imbalance by exploring Aristotle’s
view of the somatic dimension of moral psychology. More specifically, I examine
Aristotle’s so-called “hylomorphism” – the view that a living thing’s body and soul
are its material and its form (respectively) – and his account of the physiological
functions underlying “incidental perception” (roughly, “seeing as” or perceiving
particulars under a description), voluntary action, practical reasoning and its role in
moving us to act, lack of self-restraint, and moral development.
ACTION, PERCEPTION, AND THE LIVING BODY:
ARISTOTLE ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS
OF MORAL PSYCHOLOGY
By
Michael Phillip Russo
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2009
Advisory Committee:
Rachel Singpurwalla, Chair
Suheil Bushrui
Samuel Kerstein
Allen Stairs
Lars Svenonius
© Copyright by
Michael Phillip Russo
2009
“[O]ne must ask what purpose and what obvious utility the Aristotelian
philosophy has for us. We answer that it is to ascend to the common principle
of all things and to be aware that this is the one goodness itself, incorporeal,
indivisible, uncircumscribed, infinite and of infinite power.”
Ammonius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, 6, 9
ii
Dedication
For three true teachers –
James Roddy, Daniel Kolak, and Suheil Bushrui
And my “second selves” –
Sarene Appelbaum, James Madaio, and Hope May
iii
Acknowledgements
I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere and unutterable gratitude
for the heritage of wisdom that has been made available to us all by sages and
scholars such as Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Marcus
Aurelius, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Simplicius, Homer, Guatama
Buddha, Shantideva, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Al-Ghazali, William James,
Theophan the Recluse, Kallistos Ware, Joseph Campbell, Jiddu Krishnamurti, G. I.
Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspesnsky, Shunryu Suzuki, Alan Wallace, Robert Thurman, Elaine
Pagels, Joe Sachs, as well as countless others who have labored, through whatever
means, in the pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful.
I thank the members of my dissertation committee for their efforts in working through
this dissertation. I am particularly grateful to Lars Svenonius for standing by this
project for many years. Additionally, I am thankful for many Aristotelian
conversations with James Celarier and regret that he did not survive to see this
dissertation’s completion. I also thank James Lesher for helpful comments on a few
early drafts of some of what is presented here. I must also thank a number of friends
and colleagues who have indirectly contributed in a variety of ways to the process of
completing this dissertation: Jim Berry, Sihen Beshah, Bill Boos, Chris Cherniak,
David DeGrazia and the philosophy department at GWU, Nancy Hall, Tanna Lewis,
Mehrdad Massoudi, and Evan and Sheila Rotner.
Last and far from least, I must very sincerely thank Rachel Singpurwalla, who made
the completion and concrete realization of this dissertation possible, about which I
will simply point to the words of Socrates in Plato’s Republic VI, 491D1-492A5.
iv
Table of Contents
Dedication..................................................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................iv
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................v
List of Tables .................................................................................................................vi
Introduction: The Practice of Ethical Philosophy........................................................1
0.1 Dissertation Overview ...........................................................................................1
0.2 The Practice of Ethical Philosophy ........................................................................7
Chapter 1: The Physics and Metaphysics of Living Things.......................................16
1.1 The Metaphysics of Psychosomatic Unity............................................................16
1.2 Strata of the Living Thing’s Composition ............................................................21
1.3 A Hierarchy of Powers: Propensities and Capacities ............................................34
1.4 Stratification of Actions and Experiences.............................................................43
Chapter 2: Appearance, Perception, and Voluntary Action......................................53
2.1 Animals, Automata, and Voluntary Action ..........................................................53
2.2 The Particular Circumstances of Voluntary Action ..............................................63
2.3 Appearance and Perception..................................................................................73
2.3.1 Incidental Perception and Perception Management........................................73
2.3.2 Dreams, Recollection, and Putting Together Perceptions...............................92
2.3.3 Phantasia and Incidental Perception ............................................................102
2.3.4 Memory, Association, and Incidental Perception.........................................109
2.3.5 Passions, Appearances, and Judgments .......................................................113
2.4 Conclusion.........................................................................................................117
Chapter 3: Practical Reasoning and the Physiological Causes of Akrasia ..............119
3.1 Introduction: Turning Reasons Into Causes........................................................119
3.2 Eudaimonia – The Overarching Aim and Its Realization....................................121
3.3 Practical Reasoning – Its Origin, Its Object, and Its Efficacy .............................133
3.4 The Practical Syllogism .....................................................................................145
3.5 Akrasia: Its Description and Explanation ...........................................................149
3.6 Aristotle’s Physiological Explanation of Akrasia ...............................................155
Epilogue: Moral Development as Psychosomatic Transformation .........................163
4.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................163
4.2 Moral Development, Biological Development, and Human Development ..........166
4.3 The End of Moral Development.........................................................................172
Bibliography ...............................................................................................................176
I. ANCIENT GREEK SOURCES: EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS.................176
II. SECONDARY LITERATURE AND ADDITIONAL MATERIAL ....................179
v
List of Tables
Table 1: Strata of the Living Thing’s Composition (from the top down) .................. 22
Table 2: Dispositional Propensities and Functional Capacities................................. 35
Table 3: Stratification of Action(s) / Event(s) .......................................................... 44
Table 4: The Akratic’s Alternative Syllogisms ...................................................... 153
vi
Abbreviations and Translations of Aristotle’s Works
Cat. = Categories
DA = De Anima (On the Soul)
DC = De Caelo (On the Heavens)
EE = Eudemian Ethics
GA = On the Generation of Animals
GC = On Generation and Corruption
MA = On the Motion of Animals
Metaph. = Metaphysics
Meteor. = Meteorology
NE = Nicomachean Ethics
PA = On the Parts of Animals
Pol. = Politics
Post. An. = Posterior Analytics
Additional works cited are referred to by their full titles (e.g., On Dreams). Except
where otherwise noted, I follow the translations listed below. For works not included
in this list, except where otherwise noted, translations are taken from the Revised
Oxford Translations in Barnes (1984). Full bibliographic details can be found under
“Ancient Greek Sources: Editions and Translations” in the bibliography at the end of
this dissertation.
DA = Joe Sachs (2001)
EE = H. Rackham (1935)
GA = Arthur L. Peck (1942)
MA = Martha Craven Nussbaum (1978)
Metaph. = Joe Sachs (1999)
NE = Joe Sachs (2002)
PA = Arthur L. Peck (1961)
Phys. = Joe Sachs (1995)
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