Revisión de la clave de la psicología de Franz Brentano: el intelecto agente // Review of the key of Franz Brentano’s psychology: the agent intellect

This chapter situates Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of film in its historical context through analysing its key insights—the reciprocal and embodied nature of film spectatorship—in the light of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century philosophy and psychology, charting Merleau-Ponty’s indebtedness to thinkers as diverse as Henri Bergson, Max Wertheimer, Hugo Münsterberg, Rudolf Arnheim, Victor Freeburg, Sergei Eisenstein, and Siegfried Kracauer. The historical Bergson is differentiated from the Deleuzian Bergson we ordinarily encounter in film studies, and Merleau-Ponty’s fondness for gestalt models of perception is outlined with reference to the competing ‘persistence of vision’ theory of film viewing. The chapter ends with a consideration of some of the ways in which James Joyce could have encountered early phenomenology, through the work of the aforementioned philosophers and psychologists and the ideas of Gabriel Marcel, Franz Brentano, William James, and Edmund Husserl.

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THEMISTIUS AGAINST PORPHYRY (?) ON ‘WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER’

The Classical Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0009838821000446 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-7

Author(s):

Robert Roreitner

Keyword(s):

De Anima ◽

Arabic Translation ◽

Alexander Of Aphrodisias ◽

Agent Intellect ◽

The One

Abstract This article sheds new light on Themistius’ argument in what is philosophically the most original (and historically the most influential) section of his extant work, namely On Aristotle's On the Soul 100.16–109.3: here, Themistius offers a systematic interpretation of Aristotle's ‘agent’ intellect and its ‘potential’ and ‘passive’ counterparts. A solution to two textual difficulties at 101.36–102.2 is proposed, supported by the Arabic translation. This allows us to see that Themistius engages at length with a Platonizing reading of the enigmatic final lines of De anima III.5, where Aristotle explains ‘why we do not remember’ (without specifying when and what). This Platonizing reading (probably inspired by Aristotle's early dialogue Eudemus) can be safely identified with the one developed in a fragmentary text extant only in Arabic under the title Porphyry's treatise On the soul. While Themistius rejects this reading, he turns out to be heavily influenced by the author's interpretation of the ‘agent’, ‘potential’ and ‘passive’ intellect. These findings offer us a new glimpse into Themistius’ philosophical programme: he is searching for an alternative to both the austere (and, by Themistius’ lights, distorted) Aristotelianism of Alexander of Aphrodisias and the all too Platonizing reading of Aristotle adopted by thinkers such as Porphyry.

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