Monteils-Laeng, Laetitia
Aristotle and the Discovery of Desire
- 2013.
70
In the last pages of On the Soul, Aristotle explores the conception of desire unified around a single psychic faculty, the desirous soul. For the rationally mature man, desire ( orexis) can be both rational and irrational. Furthermore, it's not the desire which gives to itself its own object. What does Aristotle invent with desire? A new faculty able to compete with reason? Or just a modus operandi bringing together some inclinations which are different or even mixed? Specific attention to the concept of boulèsis (wish) allows for the clarification of the problem of Aristotelian desire.