Evening Lecture
Aristotle on Perceptual Content. The Place of Perception in Aristotle's Theory of Mind
On Monday, March 7th., 6-8 pm, TOPOI’s Research Group Mapping Body and Soul invited Prof. Victor Caston,
a world leading scholar on Ancient Philosophy and Professor of Philosophy and Classical Studies at the
University of Michigan, to give an evening lecture entitled Aristotle on Perceptual Content. The Place of
Perception in Aristotle's Theory of Mind. In this lecture, Prof. Caston raised the question whether, for Aristotle,
there is full intentional content already at the level of perception, prior to the intervention of phantasia. He
convincingly argued that there, in fact, is. The lecture was very well attended by more than 40 guests and
followed by a lively discussion.
Workshop
Alexander of Aphrodisias’ De Anima
On Tuesday, March 8th, TOPOI’s Research Group Mapping Body and Soul organized a one-day workshop on
Alexander of Aphrodisias treatise De Anima. Alexander of Aphrodisias, antiquities most influential and faithful
Aristotelian was appointed Professor at the imperial chair of Aristotelian Philosophy and director of the
Aristotelian School in Athens. His treatise De Anima is a systematic restatement and a philosophical defense of
Aristotle's core doctrines on the soul, especially the crucial Aristotelian claim that the soul is neither a body nor
separate from the body, but rather something of the body (Alex. de An, 2,24, cf. Arist. de An II 2, 414a19-21).
Victor Caston works on the first complete English translation and commentary of Alexander’s important treatise
for the Ancient Commentators Project (ed. Richard Sorabji). He has just finished the first part which was the
topic of the four sessions of the workshop. In the first session Prof. Caston presented general issues from his
introduction to the whole work on Alexander’s Naturalism, on Supervenience, Emergentism, and Alexander’s
Theory of Perception. In the remaining three session, these topics were taken up and discussed with a view on
specific sections of Alexander’s text, in turn introduced by short comments (20 – 30 min.) by international
scholars working on Alexander: Miira Tuominen (Helsinki), George Karamanolis (Kreta / Stipendiat der
Humboldt Stiftung), and Jakub Krajczynski (TOPOI’s Mapping Body and Soul). Prof. Voctor Caston was
positively impressed by the constructive atmosphere of the discussion and will mention TOPOI and the
workshop in the published work.