Darryl J. Murphy

The Deficiencies of the Materialist Reading of Aristotle's Psychology: a Critique of Contemporary Interpretations of Aristotle's De Anima Darryl J. Murphy

This book offers a concise introduction to the dense tradition of scholarship that has grown up around Aristotle¿s psychological philosophy, specifically that found in Aristotle's De Anima. The book presents a general overview of the materialist interpretations of Aristotle's notion of soul offered by a few of the most influential commentators in recent decades: Barnes, Sorabji, Nussbaum, and various others all of whom exercise considerable influence over current scholarship in the area, and over the teaching of Aristotle in today¿s undergraduate classrooms. The central contention of the work is that, despite its long history, the materialist interpretation of Aristotle¿s notion of soul and his psychology in general suffers insuperable inconsistencies with the text of De Anima itself and the Aristotelian corpus at large. The Deficiencies of the Materialist Reading of Aristotle¿s Psychology seeks to reinvigorate the non-materialist tradition of scholarship in the area by presenting a picture of its current front runners that is succinct, accessible, and points to the various facets of Aristotle¿s psychology that the materialist approach in general fails to account for adequately.