The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts ARISTOTLE’S IMAGINATION AND THE BIRTH OF NAMELESS THINGS A Dissertation in Philosophy by Melodie Velasco Stenger © 2016 Melodie Velasco Stenger Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2016 The dissertation of Melodie Velasco Stenger was reviewed and approved* by the following: Christopher P. Long Dean of Arts and Letters, Michigan State University Special Member Mark Sentesy Assistant Professor of Philosophy Committee Chair and Dissertation Adviser Vincent Colapietro Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy Christopher Moore Assistant Professor of Philosophy Thomas O. Beebee Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Comparative Literature and German Amy Allen Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy Head of the Department of Philosophy *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ii Abstract Aristotle’s investigation of the soul in the De Anima challenges his understanding of nature and the natural, complicating his distinctions between naturalistic and logical methodologies, between perceptible and intelligible, and between physics and metaphysics. At the heart of each of these distinctions is his understanding of phantasia. By attending in the De Anima to what Aristotle says about the imagination, but also to how he uses imagination, this project aspires to sketch out a naturalistic account of phantasia. It takes seriously Aristotle’s suggestion that phantasia is some sort of motion and discloses a unified image of Aristotelian phantasia as the kinēsis by which the intelligible comes to be. Phantasia is the motion by which the entelecheiae of the extended magnitudes of the perceptible realm come to be the analogical ‘perceptible things,’ the phantasmata, of the intelligible realm. This understanding not only attempts to account for phantasia’s seemingly contradictory appearances within the De Anima, but, by means of a metaphoric extension, also considers phantasia’s roles in the Rhetoric, the Poetics, and the De Memoria. Here, the “metaphoric phantasia” of DA III.3 428a is found to be the motion by which the intelligible is “brought before the eyes” and made clear and distinct. It is the motion by which the intelligible becomes perceptible, and is thus the motion by which metaphors themselves come to be. And insofar as such “bringing before the eyes” relies on one’s ability to present the entelecheia of a given thought, metaphoric phantasia can also be uncovered as the motion by which apophantical naming itself occurs. “Metaphoric phantasia” thus makes room for a creative, poetic imagination within Aristotle’s thought, and its link to phantasia per se means that a physics of phantasia is also a physics of language, is an account of how a thing gets to be said as what it is. Phantasia, metaphoric and otherwise, can thus be seen to account for the birth of nameless things. iii Table of Contents List of Abbreviations................................................................................................... vi List of Tables.............................................................................................................. vii List of Figures ........................................................................................................... viii Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................... ix Chapter One: The Unfolding of Entelecheia..................................................................1 Phantasia by way of Entelecheia: Alternate Intelligibility........................................................................4 Phantasia by way of Entelecheia: Living, Ensouled Bodies......................................................................9 Table I.1: Distribution of “Entelecheia” and “Energeia” in Aristotle’s Works..............................10 Aristotle’s Method(s).............................................................................................................................................21 The Naturalist, Intelligible ‘Space,’ and Spatial Intelligibility..............................................................30 Chapter Two: The Appearing of Phantasmata............................................................ 49 First Question: Appearances and Images, Presentations and Representations..........................50 Second Question: Aisthēmata and Noēmata................................................................................................60 Third Question: Truth and Falsity ...................................................................................................................67 Concluding Remarks..............................................................................................................................................80 Chapter Three: The Appearing of Phantasia............................................................... 85 What Sort of Thing Is Phantasia? .....................................................................................................................88 Phantasia as Dunamis............................................................................................................................................94 Table III.1: Polansky’s Summary of Soul’s “Capacities and Subcapacities” ................................ 103 Table III.2: Wedin’s Ingredients of Perception and Imagination .................................................... 105 Kinēsis, Dunamis, Hexis: De Anima II.5......................................................................................................... 112 Figure III.1: First and Second Entelechies, First and Second Dunameis....................................... 117 Figure III.2: First and Second Dunameis, Retranslated....................................................................... 117 Figure III.3: First Dunamis and Entelechy, Second Dunamis and Entelechy.............................. 118 Figure III.4: First Dunamis and Entelechy, Second Dunamis and Entelechy, Condensed ..... 118 Figure III.5: “Speaking of being acted upon and being moved as though they were the same as being-at-work.”................................................................................................................................................ 121 Chapter Four: The Becoming of the Intelligible ........................................................ 137 Phantasia as the Kinēsis of Genesis: Physics III.1..................................................................................... 138 The Perceptible and the Intelligible: De Anima III.8 ............................................................................. 148 Figure IV.1: First and Second Entelechies, First and Second Dunameis....................................... 156 Figure IV.2: First Dunamis and Entelechy, Second Dunamis and Entelechy .............................. 156 Figure IV.3: First Dunamis and Entelechy of Knowledge Dependent on Second Dunamis and Entelechy of Perception ..................................................................................................................................... 157 Phantasia as Genesis: Active or Passive...................................................................................................... 163 Phantasia as Genesis: Active and Passive................................................................................................... 174 Chapter Five: The Saying of Logos............................................................................ 189 Walking Towards Logos: Rational/Deliberative Phantasia............................................................... 194 iv Walking Towards Logos: Phantasmata as ‘Aisthēmata’: De Anima III.7....................................... 201 Table V.1: Comparison of Analogs from III.7’s Key Analogical Passage, Incomplete ............. 206 Table V.2: Comparison of Analogs from III.7’s Key Analogical Passage, Complete................. 213 Phasis and Logos Apophantikos...................................................................................................................... 215 Phanai and Phantasia......................................................................................................................................... 223 Chapter Six: The Birth of Nameless Things ............................................................... 235 Metaphoric Phantasia and “Bringing Before the Eyes” ....................................................................... 237 “Bringing Before the Eyes” and Metaphor ................................................................................................ 249 Figure VI.1: Most’s Reduction of Aristotelian Metaphor Types to Analogical Metaphor...... 251 Figure VI.2: Metaphor Formation, Step One: Ratio Building ............................................................ 252 Figure VI.3: Metaphor Formation, Step Two: Substitution................................................................ 253 Ana-Logos, Kata Logos: Spatial Intelligibility and Nameless Things.............................................. 263 “Something Like the Middle Voice” and The Life of Words ............................................................... 274 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 285 v List of Abbreviations De Anima DA De Caelo DC De Generatione Animalium GA De Generatione