By way of introduction, Aristotle poses this concrete question: to what extent does νοῦς belong or not belong to the concrete being of human beings? He asks whether there is an ἴδιον πάθος τῆς ψυχῆς; whether νοῦς constitutes the being of living things, such that this determination characterizes the being of living things as proper to such a being; whether νοῦς is as μέρος ψυχῆς χωριστόν.252 Aristotle answers this question on the basis of the evidence. The evidence says that a living thing as a being in the world, insofar as it is encountered by the world, is also encountered with a view to its corporeality, that everything aims at the living thing in its full being-there. He shows this in relation to the being of human beings, that which is determined by νοῦς. The νοεῖν of human beings is not pure. The supposing of something that I do not actually have there is grounded in φαντασία; it is only possible on the basis of makingpresent, and making-present is, as such, nothing other than the retrieval of that which was at one time present, the retrieval of a past present. Φαντασία is not necessarily recollection—that is a special making-present. Recollection is a making-present within which lies the knowing of the having-once-experienced of that which is retrieved. In this way, the νοῦς of human beings is related to φαντασία, and so is related to the αἴσθησις and the πάσχειν of the σῶμα.
We are now concerned with the question of how Aristotle characterizes the peculiar interlacing of the being of the human being, in its full being-there, with the σῶμα. This question determines the type of treatment to which the πάθη as such are subjected. The type of analysis of the πάθη that is carried out in the Rhetoric is one that makes the εἶδος of the πάθη visible without acknowledging their peculiarity: that as κινήσεις τοῦ σώματος they look the way that they do, they are a kind of occurring to a living thing, and so an occurring that also lays claim to corporeality.
Initially, Aristotle leaves open the question as to whether there is an ἴδιον πάθος of the soul as such. Instead, he goes beyond that to show that all πάθη are μετὰ σώματος.253 He shows this in two ways: all being-angry about . . . , being-kind to . . . , fear for . . . , and so on, in a certain sense also concerns the body.254 The peculiar fact appears, that we are concerned with παθήματα, with occurrences, situations in the world, that are very powerful; and that we, nevertheless, are not gripped by fear because of them. Sometimes the opposite is shown; we are excited by altogether weak provocations.255 Therefore, our being gripped by such and such a πάθος does not come exclusively from what befalls us, but the γένεσις of πάθη is also given by corporeality. The γένεσις of πάθη is still more clearly shown by the fact that we are sometimes gripped by fear without something fearsome meeting us,256 so that to a certain degree the
252. De an. Α 1, 403 a 8 sqq.
253. De an. Α 1, 403 a 16 sq.: ἔοικε δὲ καὶ τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς πάθη πάντα εἶναι μετὰ σώματος.
254. De an. Α 1, 403 a 18 sq.: ἅμα γὰρ τούτοις πάσχει τὸ σῶμα.
255. De an. Α 1, 403 a 19 sqq.: σημεῖον δὲ τὸ ποτὲ μὲν ἰσχυρῶν καὶ ἐναργῶν παθημάτων συμβαινόντων μηδὲν παροξύνεσθαι ἢ φοβεῖσθαι, ἐνίοτε δ’ ὑπὸ μικρῶν καὶ ἀμαυρῶν κινεῖσθαι.
256. De an. Α 1, 403 a 22 sqq.: ἔτι δὲ τοῦτο μᾶλλον φανερόν· μηθενὸς γὰρ φοβεροῦ συμβαίνοντος ἐν τοῖς πάθεσι γίγνονται τοῖς τοῦ φοβουμένου.