Faculties in Ancient Philosophy

Abstract

The chapter presents the basic ideas operative in the ancient conceptualization of faculties of the soul. Starting with a brief discussion of the Hippocratic methodology for individuating powers of bodies, it soon moves on to describe Plato’s division of the soul into three faculties as an adaption of that methodology. Aristotle’s version of faculty psychology, though in many respects continuing Plato’s project, is presented as different from Plato’s in crucial respects: whereas Plato made the soul the bearer and underlying subject of its faculties, in Aristotle this underlying subject is not the soul, but the living body. After a presentation of some of the basic features of psychic faculties in Stoic and Epicurean thought, the chapter ends with a brief glance on Galen’s critical discussion of faculties.

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