Images, Phantasms, Eros - Aristotle's De Anima (Philosophy - out of the stacks)

[Aristotle] produces two results of incalculable importance to the history of Western thought...on the one hand, Eros will be envisaged in the same way as sensory activity...and as a result the erotic mechanism, like the progress of cognition, will have to be analyzed in connection with its spiritual characteristics...

p.4

Couliano, Ioan, Eros et magie a la Renaissance, 1984, Flammarion, Paris.
trns. Cook, Margaret, Eros and magic in the Renaissance, U. Chicago, 1987.



De Anima

III IV

...It is necessary then that mind be uncontaminated...in order that it may be in control...for the intrusion of anything foreign hinders and obstructs it.

III VI

For the thinking soul images [φαντασια - phantasia] take the place of direct perceptions; and when it asserts or denies that they are good or bad it avoids or pursues them.  Hence, the soul never thinks without a mental image.

III VIII

When the mind is actively aware it is necessarily aware of it along with an image; for images are sensuous contents except that they contain no matter.

Aristotle, On the Soul, Harvard U. Press, Cambridge, 1957.

Transtromer

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