Desire and the Good in De Anima
Henry S. Richardson
In Nussbaum and Rorty, eds., Essays on Aristotle's De Anima. Clarendon, 1992.

"The crucial place Aristotle accords the senses of hearing, smell, and sight in these passages [De Sensu etc.] stems from the fact that since they operate through an outside medium they give the animal an 'advance awareness' (proaisthesis: 436b21) of objects that might sustain or threaten it." (RICHARDSON-1992b, p. 385) [PSA: compare to prohairesis?]

"[I]t is true that both nous and orexis are involved in every case of movement, even in the cases of the akratic and the continent (433a22-26). The difference between these cases has to do with whether the end is understood correctly; for while (intuitive) nous cannot err, phantasia can (433a26-27). But in either case, what matters is that it is the object of desire, the orekton, that moves the animal, whether this is the true good or the apparent good (433a27-29)." (RICHARDSON-1992b, p. 392)

"[W]e must examine further Aristotle's statements that the orekton is the good and that our apprehension of it can be correct or incorrect.... Aristotle gets beyond this impasse by having independent grounds for describing the content of the object of desire, namely in terms of the good of an animal of the kind in question. We may leave aside whether these grounds are metaphysical, biological, ethical, or (in the case of humans, at least) all of the above. What matters is that on this view, an objective account of the good of each type of animal can be developed. Furthermore, it must be developed in terms that look to the essential constitution of the animal as a whole, rather than reducing it to the animal's various particular desires, taken severally." (RICHARDSON-1992b, p. 394)

"Although it is true that non-reasoning animals lack any general supposition (hupolepsis katholou) about the good, that is just because such animals lack general suppositions altogether (Metaphysics 981a7ff; EN 1147b3-5). Yet Aristotle's natural teleology gives us a way to understand the good of an organism and the place of pleasure and survival in its good without having to suppose that the animal has any general suppositions about it." (RICHARDSON-1992b, p. 395)

"Aristotle explains the role of deliberative phantasia as follows (434a7-10): 'Deliberative phantasia is found in the reasoning animals, for it is already a function of calculative reasoning [to consider] whether to do one thing or another; and it is necessary to measure by one, for the greater is pursued. Consequently [a reasoning animal] is able to make one [phantasma] out of many phantasmata'.... Aristotle's description of deliberative phantasia suggests one way that the good may be integrated into this interpretation, although only for humans, namely via a *strong* form of commensurability, in which the highest good serves as the standard in every case.... Aristotle is here concerned to explain the difference, which has shown up throughout his account of animal movement, between those animals whose discernment is confined to phantasia and those that combine phantasia with the kind of discursive thinking he goes on to explain in the remainder of ch. 11. At a minimum, he is saying, rational deliberation will involve comparing alternatives in terms of the more and the less." (RICHARDSON-1992b, pp. 396-397) [PSA: That is, the more and the less in relation to helping achieve the highest good.]

"[W]hile deliberative phantasia needed to cope with conflicting desires, the only detailed explanation of such conflicts that Aristotle offers in these chapters concerns the divergence between short-term and long-term perspectives (433b5-10)." (RICHARDSON-1992b, pp. 397-398)

"Human deliberative capacities mark a departure not because they introduce a new relation to the good, but because they involve abilities to make explicit comparisons and to follow inferences in a way that allows agents to deal rationally with conflicts among different aspects of their good." (RICHARDSON-1992b, p. 399)

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