Desire and cognition in Aristotle’s theory of the voluntary movements of animal locomotion

Abstract

Two of the main controversies that have occupied specialists who dedicate themselves to the study of Aristotle’s theory of animal locomotion are the controversy about the form of the cognition through which an animal apprehends an object as an object of desire, and the controversy about the function of cognition in Aristotle’s explanation of the voluntary locomotion of animals. In this article, I present an interpretation about the ways in which desire and cognition are articulated in Aristotle’s theory according to which an animal apprehends an object as an object of desire through an incidental perception of this object and, contrary to what most seem to think, this perception does not have the same function in the production of these movements. If what is said here is correct, in some cases this perception is responsible for the generation and the orientation of a desire, but in other cases it is only responsible for its orientation.

Keywords: Aristotle, voluntary, movement.