The Aristotle's De Anima AND DESIGN OF THE POWERS OF THE SOUL IN Kitab al-Nafis (BOOK OF THE SOUL, animals) of Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

Abstract

Philosophers usually attribute to modernity the invention of concepts like 'subject', 'object' and 'subjectivity' and they understand them in contrast to Scholastic and Aristotelian philosophies. The present paper suggests the presence of a proto-theory of subjectivity in Aristotle. The Aristotelian theory of subjectivity is grounded principally on four doctrines. First, we can recognize the presence of a 'perspective' and of a 'point of view' in the Aristotelian epistemology. The second relevant aspect is the concept of determination of the object of knowledge, which is in Aristotelian philosophy the notion of 'prosthesis'. The third doctrine lies on the distinction between 'what is more known to us' (gnorimoteron emin) and 'what is more known by nature' (gnorimoteron te physei). The last doctrine concerns the 'second nature' of the subject and the habits of knowledge acquired by experience, which explain why knowing subjects have different cognitions of the same object according to their own previous experience.