Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

234 Aristotle and his schoolsaid to act on (cf. the use of . The only terminological point we can make is thata number of passages assign an important role to dianoia, and it may be thatthis is Aristotle’s favourite term for intellectual activity on the borderlinesbetween sense-perception and thinking; one sometimes gets the impressionthat it refers to a particular kind of thinking, a sort of attention, in any casea directed and concentrated intellectual activity (or the capacity to this). 93In this connection, it may be worth referring to a dispute between two Germanstudents of Aristotle’s psychology in the second half of the nineteenthcentury, namely Clemens Bäumker and Joseph Neuhäuser. Bäumker, inhis monograph on Aristotle’s physiology of sense perception, argued thatAristotle adopted a fourth ‘part of the soul’ in between perception and intellect, for which was supposed to be the technical term; 94and Bäumker did so on the strength of a number of passages I have alsodiscussed above. Neuhäuser, however, rejected Bäumker’s view by pointingto a number of passages in which the verb dianoeisthai seems to be used asa general, non-specific term for any intellectual activity, including that ofnous. 95 Although there is no evidence that Aristotle really regarded ‘lower’intellectual capacities as constituting a separate ‘part’ of the soul, it must beconceded that especially in passages where he adopts a gradualist point ofview, dianoia seems to be the appropriate term, and it may be that Aristotleassociates this term more closely with activities of the sensitive part of thesoul, and thus with bodily influences, than other terms such as logos, nous,sunesis, phronēsis, doxa and hupolēpsis. There is, indeed, abundant evidencethat in the border area between sense-perception and thinking, where elusivefaculties such as ‘incidental perception’ (the perception that that whitething over there is the son of Diares), ‘common sense’ and imagination areat work, Aristotle is not always clear whether we are dealing with operationsof the sensitive or the intellectual part of the soul. 96 The passage on recollection(an intellectual activity restricted to human beings but taking place inphysical material) from Mem. 453 a 14ff. provided a good illustration of thispoint.93 Cf. Div. somn. 464 a 22, where a failure to exercise this capacity is described.94 Bäumker (1877) 7 with n. 2.95 Neuhäuser (1878a) 10ff. See also Neuhäuser’s review of Bäumker’s monograph (1878b).96 For incidental perception see Cashdollar (1973). The question whether the judgement of images is asensitive or an intellectual activity presents itself very strongly in On Dreams, where sometimes onesense (sight) corrects the other (touch), as in 460 b 21–2, but sometimes also an intellectual facultyis at work (as in 460 b 18–19), and sometimes it is unclear which faculty is judging (461 b 3ff.; 461 b25; 462 a 4, 6). For a discussion of this difficulty see van der Eijk (1994) 50ff.