Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword to the English Edition
- Foreword to the First Edition
- Translator's Acknowledgments
- Translator's Note
- Translator's Introduction
- Introduction
- Part I Abstract Thinking versus Concrete Sensation: The Opposition between Culture and Nature in Modernity
- Part II “Concrete Thought” as the Precondition of a Culture of Ethics, Politics, and Economics in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 3 The Interpretation of “Antiquity” from the Perspective of Modern Rationality
- Chapter 4 The Epistemological Foundations of a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 5 Abstract Consciousness versus Concrete Thought: Overcoming the Opposition between Feeling and Reason in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 6 The Soul in a Philosophy of Consciousness and in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 7 The Different Forms of Volition and Their Dependence upon Cognition
- Chapter 8 The Aesthetic, Ethical, and Political Significance of a Culture of Feelings in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 9 Theory and Practice: Plato's and Aristotle's Grounding of Political Theory in a Theory of Man
- Chapter 10 Evolutionary and Biological Conditions for Self-Preservation and Rational Conditions for Man's Self-Realization: An Appeal for a New Evaluation of Rationality
- Conclusion: A Comparison of Two Fundamental Forms of European Rationality
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 7 - The Different Forms of Volition and Their Dependence upon Cognition
from Part II - “Concrete Thought” as the Precondition of a Culture of Ethics, Politics, and Economics in Plato and Aristotle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword to the English Edition
- Foreword to the First Edition
- Translator's Acknowledgments
- Translator's Note
- Translator's Introduction
- Introduction
- Part I Abstract Thinking versus Concrete Sensation: The Opposition between Culture and Nature in Modernity
- Part II “Concrete Thought” as the Precondition of a Culture of Ethics, Politics, and Economics in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 3 The Interpretation of “Antiquity” from the Perspective of Modern Rationality
- Chapter 4 The Epistemological Foundations of a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 5 Abstract Consciousness versus Concrete Thought: Overcoming the Opposition between Feeling and Reason in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 6 The Soul in a Philosophy of Consciousness and in a Philosophy of Discrimination
- Chapter 7 The Different Forms of Volition and Their Dependence upon Cognition
- Chapter 8 The Aesthetic, Ethical, and Political Significance of a Culture of Feelings in Plato and Aristotle
- Chapter 9 Theory and Practice: Plato's and Aristotle's Grounding of Political Theory in a Theory of Man
- Chapter 10 Evolutionary and Biological Conditions for Self-Preservation and Rational Conditions for Man's Self-Realization: An Appeal for a New Evaluation of Rationality
- Conclusion: A Comparison of Two Fundamental Forms of European Rationality
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Independent “Free” Will in the Stoa
This introduction to the Platonic and Aristotelian doctrine of knowledge and the position accorded to feeling in their psychological theory already shows see that striving and the will presuppose a complex interaction between different psychic acts. According to this view, desire or volition is neither an absolute nor an original principle in itself that could be contrasted with cognition and would be in competition with the latter in some manner. The contrasting view holds that one can only explain why action at times only arises when the will dominates over thought, and at times only when thought dominates over the will, and now and again through the harmonious interaction of both, through postulating competition between them qua independent agents.
Contrary to the view that this opposition is a fundamental problem of modern philosophy, it was, in fact, already formulated within the philosophical systems of Hellenism and of the Stoa. It can be understood both in the ancient Stoa and in early modernity only in the context of a doctrine which sets out from the premise that consciousness or the evident representation [Repräsentation] of given representations [Vorstellungen] is the primary act in the cognitive process that grounds a unity. In the ancient Stoa, this fundamental doctrine is discussed under the concept of “oikeiôsis” (“self-appropriation”) and is intended to justify how it is possible to explain the unity and the harmony of the “drives” and aspirations of the prerational behavior of the subject with the conscious, rational actions of this same subject.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Modernity and PlatoTwo Paradigms of Rationality, pp. 288 - 332Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012