This study explores Aristotle’s political psychology, focusing on the lessons it teaches regarding the character of human reasoning. Contemporary political science has largely adopted the behavioral-economic model of political psychology. This model offers many insights into the limits of human reasoning, highlighting in particular the errors and biases that shape our choices. However, these insights come at the cost of an overly narrow view of human reasoning. When such a political psychology is applied to public policy and political rhetoric, it offers lessons on how to direct public action by taking advantage of unconscious thought processes, but it fails to teach how leaders might constructively engage human rationality. I argue that Aristotelian political psychology offers a useful corrective, one that can help us better understand both the potential and limitations of political guidance. To gain access to Aristotle’s political psychology, I begin with an overview of several of his psychological works: On the Soul, On the Motion of Animals, and the Nicomachean Ethics. I focus in particular on the concepts Aristotle uses in his study of human choice, and I draw out Aristotle’s unitary understanding of psychology, meaning the interrelated nature of thought and desire, which in turn illuminates the constitutive role that thought plays in shaping the ends of human action. From this theoretical basis, I turn to a more concentrated study of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, exploring first the rhetorical concepts Aristotle introduces in the work, and then delving into the psychology of persuasion. In this study, I explore the ways that rhetoric necessarily engages the audience’s rationality and judgment. A particularly valuable lesson is the way in which rhetoric can draw out overlooked concerns and thereby broaden the audience members’ considerations, all in order to help them reach conclusions they would not by themselves. Returning to contemporary political science, I argue that Aristotle’s conception of political psychology offers us a better understanding of human choice, and he offers guidance on how rhetoric can be used to refine, rather than only exploit, public opinion. / text

In this study, I attempt to identify a distinct role for the imagination in manipulating and organising information states. To this end, I begin with an exegesis of Aristotle's account of phantasia in De Anima. I argue against two established views of the nature of Aristotle's phantasia-the view that phantasia is merely a faculty for apprehending appearances, and the view that it is a special catch all faculty for having "non-paradigmatic sensory experiences". I then continue to argue that for Aristotle, phantasia was a distinct faculty that discriminates between experiences by virtue of recognition. Once I have established the plausibility of such a position, I move from consideration of Aristotle's idea of phantasia to an account of recent evidence provided by cognitive science for distinguishing a capacity for manipulating information which is recognition based, and conceptually distinct from reason, or "theory-driven" thought. To this end, I appeal to evidence concerning the nature of spatial reasoning, and provide an exhaustive account of the "Imagery Debate" as paradigmatic of non-theory driven cognitive capacities. Finally, I provide an account of the mechanisms that underlie the efficacy and domain of non-theory driven thought by appeal to two explanatory resources: Simulation theory, and idea of a "cognitive map".

This paper is a comparative project between a philosopher from the Western tradition, Aristotle, and a philosopher from the Eastern tradition, Sankara. These two philosophers have often been thought to oppose one another in their thoughts, but I will argue that they are similar in several aspects. I will explore connections between Aristotle and Sankara, primarily in their theories of causation. I will argue that a closer examination of both Aristotelian and Advaita Vedanta philosophy, of which Sankara is considered the most prominent thinker, will yield significant similarities that will give new insights into the thoughts of both Aristotle and Sankara.

This thesis discusses questions about the legitimacy and scope of Aristotle's metaphysics as it applies to both living and non-living substances. Resolving such questions is necessary for articulating Aristotle's philosophical anthropology, and understanding the connections between Aristotle's major works. Terence Irwin provides one approach to establishing these connections, so I defend his account of Aristotle's Metaphysics from challenges that Aristotle's metaphysics of living things is mistaken and the scope of what things count as substances. I provide supporting arguments to show how Irwin's interpretation answers the first challenge and speculate how he could answer the second. By supporting Irwin, I hope to show that Irwin's argument, that a common philosophical method unites Aristotle's works, provides strong grounds for constructing Aristotle's philosophical anthropology. / Graduate

The question which seeks the essence of something, (ti ēn einai), according to the argument of this thesis, was fashioned by Aristotle because of ambiguity or 'homonymy' inherent in the nature of universal predicates. However successful the conceptual analysis of universals may be as such, their meaning or significance cannot be fully fixed or determined except as a function of the subjects to which they are applied. The distinction between understanding a universal predicate as such and understanding its application to a particular subject may be roughly expressed as that between the ability to recognize the presence of an attribute in a subject and the knowledge of what the predicate says about the subject. It is in order to transform knowledge of the first kind into knowledge of the second that the 'essence-question' is asked. It is shown that the Aristotelian notion of an essence (to ti ēn einai) is explained through the notions of a subject (ypokeimenon) and of an actuality (energeia). Aristotelian 'essences' express the actuality or activity of a substance conceived from the 'categorical' point of view as the subject of qualities and universal predicates in general. An 'essence', insofar as the term applies to sensible substances, is the being of something as the subject of qualities and material predicates, i.e. universal predicates in general. Entailed is the denial that an essence in Aristotle's sense is constituted by attributes, characteristics, or universal predicates of any sort whatsoever. The argument exploits the distinction drawn by Aristotle on a number of occasions in the Metaphysics between material substrata of a substance and the subjects of qualities. The development of the position hinges on an analysis of matter and form in terms of the relations of potentiality and actuality conceived as contemporaneous modes of existence.

No description available.

Inaug.-Diss.--Berlin, 1864.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- McMaster University, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 332-339). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pennsylvania State University, 2007. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Inaug.-Diss.--Frankfurt am Main. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 273-286.