Volume 7, Issue 2, Spring 2003
Readings of Ancient Greek Philosophy: In Memory of Seth Benardete
Richard L. Velkley
Pages 189-198
Prelude to First Philosophy
Seth Benardete on De Anima
Benardete reads Aristotle as Socratic dialectician writing in treatise form. The sciences of various subject matters appear at first separate (like Platonic eide) but they contain diverging accounts of being, nature, and the soul, which demand to be put together by the reader. De Anima abstracts from the soul as such in order to treat the soul “precisely.” This places limits on the unfolding of problems in phantasia and the heterogeneity of mind and being. As prelude to first philosophy, De Anima raises but does not answer the question: how are the being of thinking and the being of beings related?