Les prédecesseurs d'Aristote sur la chaleur, le souffle et l'âme

Aristotle and his predecessors on heat, pneuma and soul

Conference

 

Prague, June 12–14, 2014

Charles University

Aristotle's hylomorphic theory of living things and its attending assumptions have been much debated in recent decades. It is generally recognized that Aristotle’s psychology is the source for his unified theory of living beings and their life processes. His psychology is thus based also on certain »physiological« assumptions. The sources and contexts for the physiological aspects of Aristotle’s psychology are manifold, but seldom the object of philosophical reflection. In this conference, we propose to focus upon two particular, and particularly difficult, physiological components of Aristotle’s psychology: the concepts of innate heat and connate pneuma. The purpose of the conference is to further study these concepts, both within the larger history of the metaphysics of the body, and in history of ancient medical theory of life and the soul. 

Hynek Bartoš (Charles University, Prague) and Colin Guthrie King (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): Introduction

Gábor Betegh (Central European University, Budapest): Fire, heat and motive force in early Greek philosophy and medicine

Shaul Tor (King's College London): Parmenides: hot metempsychosis and the physiology of divinisation

Simon Trépanier (University of Edinburgh): Empedocles on fire and the transmigrating soul

Antonia Kakavelaki (University of Athens): Diogenes of Apollonia, Hippocratic thought, and Aristotelian pneuma

Richard King (Universität Bern): The Hippocratic On Nutrition

James Lennox (University of Pittsburgh): Why animals must keep their cool: Aristotle on the need for respiration (and other forms of cooling)

Tiberiu Popa (Butler University): Aristotle on the powers of thermic equilibrium

Jessica Gelber (Syracuse University): Heat and cold as nature’s tools

Patricio Fernandez/Jorge Mittelmann (Universidad de los Andes, Chile): ἡ κίνησις τῆς τέχνης: Crafts and souls as principles of change

Klaus Corcilius (University of Berkeley): Basic animal action and internal heat

Malcolm Wilson (University of Oregon): The mediating role of the Meteorologica between celestial and terrestrial life

Karel Thein (Charles University, Prague): On the “nature” in connate pneuma and the first body (GA 2.3, 736b29- 737a7)

Robert Roreitner (Charles University, Prague): Perceptual pneuma in Aristotle: What happens between the individual senses and the central organ?

Patrick J. Macfarlane (Providence College): The Pathological Role of Pneuma in Aristotle

Pavel Gregorić (University of Zagreb): The pneumatic theory of De spiritu

Orly Lewis (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): Heat in De spiritu: Embryology and physiology