| Abstract |
Aristotle is not the first to use the word phantasia, though being the one who discovers it philosophically according to the well-known proposition by K. Kastoriadis. Thus, Aristotle adopts the word phantasia, which we find in platonic texts from the dialogue Republic onwards, but redefines it and turns it into a technical term.
For Plato phantasia was not something innovative, at least not as defined by Eleatic Stranger in the Sophist, but constituted a combination of sense - perception (αἴσθησις) and opinion (δόξα), and was a privilege of man. On contrary, in his primary psychological treatise On the Soul (De Anima) Aristotle places phantasia in a new domain between sense - perception (αἴσθησις) and thought (νοῦς) emphasizing its distinctness from these faculties. For him, phantasia differs from sense - perception mainly because it can still function even when the senses are not active, as, for example, during sleep. Phantasia and thought, on the other hand, differ fundamentally because phantasia is usually false while the products of thought are for Aristotle always true. In this way, Aristotle creates a revolution on an ontological level, as beyond sensible (αἰσθητόν) and intelligible (νοητόν) object he introduces the concept of the imaginable one, and names it phantasma (φάντασμα). Moreover, Aristotle as distances himself from the platonic consideration of phantasia and disconnecting it from opinion (δόξα), which only man possesses, he secures the access of other living beings to it, at least of those that move and can feel desire.
In his treatise On the Soul (De Anima), apart from the demarcation of phantasia, Aristotle formulates what is considered by the later philosophical tradition as the core definition of the term. According to this, phantasia is mainly and primarily a movement (κίνησις) that derives from sense perception (αἴσθησις) depending on it as to the cause and the content. Thus, phantasia for Aristotle is activated through sense - perception and saves the content of fugitive sentiments. Moreover, thanks to its immanence, it supplies the memory and the dreams, a topic that Aristotle analyses in detail in the respective Little Physical Treatises (Parva Naturalia). A crucial point is that the Aristotelian phantasia, though created through sense - perception is not always a simple copy of it, but can instead differentiate itself. In this way, errors in the perceptual process can be explained, that is cases in which the subject perceives of beings/creatures as different from what they are. So Aristotle solves the problem of error, which his predecessors failed to explain successfully.
However, the Aristotelian phantasia does not have these roles only. It also constitutes the necessary condition for every mental act, as the soul, according to Aristotle, thinks what it thinks through phantasmata. Thinking (νόησις) does not have direct access to what is perceived through the senses (αἰσθητά) but perceives of them through phantasmata. The intentionality of the latter explains how we can access beings that are not within our perceptual field but can still form the content of our mental states. Thanks to its referentiality, our phantasia can, furthermore, contribute to the creation of language, that is, to the conversion of sounds to words, to the connection between the signified and the signifier.
Finally, for Aristotle, due to its relation to thinking, phantasia leads beings into action. In the field of action Aristotle calls for phantasia to explain the action of living creatures, rational and non rational, as well as the creation of desire in them. Even the act in the moral field, which concerns human beings only, can be explained thanks to the function of phantasia, which allows the subject to perceive something as good (φαινόμενον ἀγαθόν), and therefore as worth doing.
The many and so different roles that phantasia is asked to play in the framework of Aristotle’s theory on the soul and action, make it difficult to consider phantasia coherently. This matter has particularly troubled the scholars. Perhaps, of course, the search for coherence is not the primary objective. Aristotle himself refers to phantasia as if having in mind different kinds of it. This view, initially implied, is clearly stated in the last part of the treatise On the Soul. There, though having completed the thematic discourse on phantasia and having stated that the issue is closed, Aristotle unexpectedly talks about two types of phantasia, the perceptive (αἰσθητική) and the calculative one (λογιστικὴ). Which reasons forced him to the point of talking about calculative phantasia or as he will later say, about deliberative (βουλευτική) phantasia? It is reasonable to assume that Aristotle finds himself in the middle of a discussion on thought and in a while he will explain the locomotion. At this point a conception of phantasia which simply saves and reproduces the objects of sense perception cannot explain all the roles attributed to it. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize a superior kind of phantasia which borders with thought and can also take on the works of calculation.
Independently of the recognition or not of the coherence in Aristotle’s account of phantasia, this remains in any case revolutionary. Even if he did not reach the point of assigning a creative role to phantasia, a basic element in today’s understanding of the concept, Aristotle was the one who brought forward to the philosophical forestage the possibility of the existence of the non-being.
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Η φαντασία στον Αριστοτέλη : ορισμός και ρόλος στην αριστοτελική φιλοσοφία
