Text and Idea of Aristotle's Science of Living Things

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Text and Idea of Aristotle’s Science of Living Things (TIDA) pursues two objectives, one philosophical, the other philological, both of which can only be achieved in tandem: subjecting Aristotle’s treatise on the soul, the De Anima (DA), and related treatises, to a new and comprehensive philosophical interpretation, while making available the original Greek texts in a way that complies with the standards of contemporary textual criticism. Philosophically, the aim is to replace the interpretive approach that governed philosophical discussions around the DA for the past 5 decades with a more coherent and philosophically more informative interpretation. According to the received approach, the argument of the DA falls into the domain of ‘philosophy of mind’. This assumption, fruitful though it was for our understanding of many of the DA's arguments, obfuscates the main aim and purpose of the treatise. TIDA shows how the DA is not concerned with the philosophy of mind as such, but with defining the first principle of the science of living things; we show how the DA divides explanatory labour with the other treatises pertaining to that science, and – most importantly – what the resulting scientific theory of living things has to say about the issues of the philosophy of mind. Philologically, the goal is to produce reliable critical editions of the relevant texts, print and digital, which we – astounding as it might seem – still do not possess. As the constitution of the texts will depend on the philosophical evaluation of alternative manuscript readings, only the closest collaboration between textual critics and philosophers will yield progress. There is reason to expect improved original texts and a genuinely new and more informative perspective on Aristotle on the mind. In effect, TIDA consists in a five-year interdisciplinary research team, designed to give future philosophical and philological work on Aristotle’s science of living things a new and lasting foundation.