# About the Meaning of Φ ντασμα in Aristotle

Justin Winzenrieth

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Justin Winzenrieth. About the Meaning of Φ ντασμα in Aristotle. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science, 2025, 10.1515/apeiron-2024-0038. hal-05001927

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Justin Winzenrieth*

# About the Meaning of Φάντασμα in Aristotle

https://doi.org/10.1515/apeiron-2024-0038

Received April 16, 2024; accepted March 4, 2025; published online March 19, 2025

**Abstract:** I argue that Aristotle's concept of φάντασμα should neither be equated with the notion of “mental image” nor understood as referring primarily to physiological processes. What Aristotle means by φάντασμα should be understood in the light of a pre-philosophical linguistic background in which the term refers to apparitions of objects that are suspected of not being real, such as ghosts. A φάντασμα in Aristotle is a content of which one is aware by a process which, although quasi-perceptual in nature, is known by the subject or by a third party to differ from perception.

**Keywords:** Aristotle; imagination; phantasia; representation; perception

## 1 Introduction: Image, Content, or Motion?

Aristotle's notion of φαντασία is central to his theory of soul and of animal life, even if φαντασία does not qualify as a part of the soul on his view.<fnref n="1" /> As Aristotle is deeply committed to the claim that animals have no rational capacity and rely exclusively on perception for cognition, φαντασία is the key notion that allows his theory to account for animal behaviour whenever it presupposes something that goes beyond immediate perception, such as memories or expectations. Aristotle repeatedly acknowledges its importance, stating that “animals live according to their φαντασίαις and memories” (*Metaphysica* A.1, 980ᵇ²⁵, about animals that are incapable of learning; see also *De anima* II.3, 415ᵃ¹⁰–¹¹) or that the only form of universal cognition

<footnote n="1">1 Given that (1) capacities are individuated by their objects, (2) φαντασία shares its objects with perception (αἰσθησις), and (3) φαντασία is causally dependent upon perception whereas perception occurs even in animals that do not have φαντασία, φαντασία cannot be construed as separate with regard to the perceptual part. See Corcilius and Gregorić (2010) for the conditions to be met to qualify as a part of the soul according to Aristotle's theory.</footnote>

<footnote>*Corresponding author: Justin Winzenrieth, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Philosophisches Seminar, Tübingen, Germany, E-mail: winzenrieth@phare.normalesup.org. https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1772-6326</footnote>
they enjoy is restricted to their “φαντασία and memory of particulars” (*Ethica
Nicomachea* VII.5, 1147<sup>b4–5</sup>).<sup>2</sup>

This makes the absence of a definitive treatment of φαντασία (comparable, say, to
the extensive account of perception in *De anima*) in the texts of Aristotle which we now
have at our disposal all the more disappointing. The text that comes closest to a proper
treatment is the third chapter of the third book of *De anima*. The chapter distinguishes
φαντασία from other related concepts (perception, belief) and even provides a sort of
definition, but explaining what Aristotle means by φαντασία is by no means its main
goal. The causal account of φαντασία with which it ends (429<sup>b10–430a9</sup>) only comes after
a number of twists and turns during which Aristotle seems to be grappling with various
ways of using the same term that differ widely from his own understanding of it, and
which modern readers often have difficulties delineating and articulating.

The issue has been aggravated by subsequent historical developments. Whereas our
concept of perception, for instance, is still close enough to Aristotle's *αἰσθησις* for us to
feel comfortable with his claim that there are five sense modalities, Aristotle's φαντασία
has no immediate counterpart in everyday modern English, certainly not one with
similar morphological connections (e.g. with φαίνεσθαι, "to appear"). Finding an
adequate translation has proven challenging:<sup>3</sup> scholarship tends to waver between the
traditional rendering, "imagination,"<sup>4</sup> and a more modern one, "representation" or
"presentation".<sup>5</sup> Neither is fully satisfactory: the latter does not normally refer to a
capacity, the former conveys, among others, connotations of innovation and fantasy that
are foreign to Aristotle's notion.<sup>6</sup> As a result, both the content of Aristotle's concept and
its unity have been questioned for decades.<sup>7</sup>

<footnote n="2">2 Memory (μνήνη), being a special way of envisaging a product of φαντασία, should not be construed as a radically distinct capacity in these statements.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3 Φαντασία has accordingly received an entry in the French “dictionnaire des intraduisibles”: Lab-
arrière (2004).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 “Imagination” is the translation favoured throughout the ROT (Barnes 1984). It is a direct continuation of imperial and medieval Latin usage, in which *imaginatio* (from *imaginor*) and *imago* (which originally means “likeness”) are the common renderings for φαντασία and φάντασμα, whereas Cicero had used *uisus* (*Academicus primus* 40.15: “... quam ille φαντασίαν, nos uisum appellemus licet”) and Quintilian *uisio* (*Institutio oratoria* VI.2.29: “... quas φαντασίας Graeci uocant (nos sane uisiones appellemus)”).</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5 For instance in Corcilius (2017), where “*Vorstellung*” is systematically employed (and not “*Phan-
tasie*” despite its Greek origin) after a preliminary warning about the impossibility of finding a
suitable translation (lxxxv–vi). Beare also uses “the faculty of presentation” in the original Oxford
translation (see *De insomniis* 1, 459<sup>a15</sup> in Beare and Ross 1908).</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6 See White (1985), 484, for a summary of the inadequacies of “imagination” as a translation of φαντασία in Aristotle.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7 Schofield (1978), 105–106, famously attacked φαντασία as used by Aristotle as “a loose-knit, family concept”.</footnote>
What has especially stirred up debates has been the claim, first put forward in modern days by Nussbaum,<fnref n="8" /> that φαντασία necessarily plays an “interpretative” role in the process of desire-formation in animals. The main tenet of the various “interpretative” theories of φαντασία that have subsequently been developed is the existence of a division of labour between perception and φαντασία in desire-formation, according to which perception is responsible for the animal’s mere grasp of the object of desire, while φαντασία would then be required for the animal to be able to envisage this object as worth pursuing or fleeing, thus leading to the formation of a desire (όρεξις) about it. Any such theory clashes head-on with the account of φαντασία offered in *De anima* III.3, according to which φαντασία is only an after-effect of perceptual activity and cannot have any special power that perception does not already have.<fnref n="9" /> As the textual evidence in favour of the “interpretative” view is flimsy even in *De motu animalium*,<fnref n="10" /> I shall in what follows rely exclusively for my understanding of φαντασία as an Aristotelian technical notion on the evidence from *De anima* III.3.

The present paper is not intended to pursue this controversy about the alleged “interpretative” role attributed by some to φαντασία or to offer a comprehensive account of φαντασία in Aristotle. Its purpose is only to shed new light on some of the difficulties that surround Aristotle’s notion by examining its relationship with its quasi-twin, the concept of φάντασμα, which is equally difficult to translate and, I argue, has often been misunderstood. The scope of the paper is limited to Aristotle’s use of φαντασία and φάντασμα in the explanation of non-intellectual phenomena.<fnref n="11" />

<footnote n="8">8 Her innovative approach of φαντασία is developed in the fifth “interpretive” essay of her dissertation on Aristotle’s *De motu animalium*, published in 1978 (revised edition: Nussbaum (1985), 221–269). Furley (1978) had defended a similar position some time before, acknowledging his debt towards Nussbaum’s work (which had not been published yet).</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9 The theory of φαντασία that can be extracted from *De anima* III.3 is often presented as a standard or “basic conception” (Moss 2012, 51; “*Minimalauffassung*,” Corcilius 2011, 298; “canonical theory,” Wedin 1988, 23), the question being whether one should go beyond its strict boundaries.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">10 It is essentially limited to two passages in *De motu animalium*: (1) 9, 702B17–19, where φαντασία is famously presented, within the desire-formation sequence, as “preparing” (παρασκευάζει) desire, and (2) 11, 703B10–11. I agree with Rapp (2020), 46–53, that there are in both cases contextual reasons explaining why φαντασία is mentioned as the key capacity in desire-formation, and that Aristotle nowhere intends to deny that perceiving an object is sufficient for an animal to form a desire about it, as *De anima* II.3, 414B1–6 and III.11, 433B31–434B5 clearly imply.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11 Although both notions play an major role in Aristotle’s theory of thought, I shall leave aside intellectual cases: φαντασία does not presuppose the exercise or even the presence of a capacity for thinking according to Aristotle, its account does not and should not rely on an account of thought. The evidence to be gathered from Aristotle’s explanations of non-intellectual phenomena suffices to solve a number of exegetical conundra, which focusing on the intricacies of Aristotle’s notoriously difficult and controversial views about thought would perhaps only aggravate.</footnote>
Their couple is especially central to Aristotle's theories of remembering and dreaming in the two relevant treatises in his so-called *Parva naturalia*, namely *De memoria et reminiscentia* and *De insomniis*. As with *De motu animalium* (6, 700ᵇ²¹–22), both treatises contain unmistakable references to *De anima* III whenever the technical notion of φαντασία is employed, suggesting that the three texts are meant to offer a coherent doctrine.<fnref n="12" /> Still, the ways φαντασία features in *De memoria et reminiscentia* and in *De insomniis* contrast with its uses in *De anima* III.3 and *De motu animalium* in significant respects. To begin with, the word φάντασμα barely appears in the latter two, whereas it features prominently in Aristotle's definition of both memories ("the possession of a φάντασμα as a likeness of that of which it is a φάντασμα", *De memoria et reminiscentia* 1, 451ᵃ¹⁵–¹⁶) and dreams ("a φάντασμα that results from the motion of αἰσθήματα when one is asleep, insofar as one is asleep," *De insomniis* 3, 462ª²⁹–³¹). As neither memories nor dreams are central to Aristotle's theory of perception (and perhaps of φαντασία), the difference between φαντασία and φάντασμα sometimes goes by unregistered.<fnref n="13" />

One immediate difference is that φαντασία can refer either to a capacity ("φαντασία is not found in some animals, for instance bees," *De anima* III.3, 428ᵃ¹⁰) or to its actual instances ("some φαντασίαι remain in the sense-organs even after the objects of perception are gone," *De anima* III.2, 425ᵇ¹⁵), whereas φάντασμα always refers to a particular instance. The rest is much more controversial.

The interpretation to which I will subsequently refer as the “traditional view” regarding Aristotle’s notion of φάντασμα is composed of the following claims. (1) Φάντασμα is in Aristotle a technical term tied to his own theory of φαντασία: being a product of φαντασία is part of its meaning.<fnref n="14" /> (2) Α φάντασμα is the mental content of

<footnote n="12">12 *De memoria* 1, 449ᵇ³⁰–³¹ repeats from *De anima* III.7, 431ᵃ¹⁶–¹⁷ the catchphrase “no thought without φαντάσματα,” *De insomniis* 1, 459ᵃ¹⁴–¹⁸ quotes almost *verbatim* the final definition of φαντασία in *De anima* III.3, 429ᵃ¹–².</footnote>

<footnote n="13">13 To be fair, Aristotle seems, at times, to use the two almost interchangeably (compare *De anima* I.1, 403ᵇ⁹, “is thought possible without φαντασία?”, with III.7, 431ᵃ¹⁷, “thought cannot occur without a φάντασμα”; see also Moss (2012), 50 n. 8). Even Alexander of Aphrodisias gets caught up in this web, as he seemingly substitutes the one for the other when quoting Aristotle’s definition of memory while commenting on the opening lines of the *Metaphysics* (In Met., 3.15–16: ἑστι δὲ μνήμη ἐξις φαντάσματος ὡς εἰκόνος οὖ ἑστι φαντασία; compare with *De memoria* 1, 415ᵃ¹⁵–¹⁶). More recently, Lorenz (2006) describes φαντασία as “a cognitive capacity that enables both humans and non-human animals to apprehend objects of desire” (114) and, in spite of his marked interest for Aristotle’s theory of memory, never explains how he understands φάντασμα.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14 So Watson (1988), 29, who gives “the image which results from *phantasia*” as a gloss for φάντασμα. Much the same claim is also made on morphological grounds (the suffix -μα often indicates that the noun refers to the product of the action expressed by the corresponding verb) by Corcilius (2014), 73 (“*der Ausdruck phantasma bezeichnet schon rein sprachlich das Resultat der Tätigkeit der phantasia als dem Vermögen zur Bildung von phantasmata*”), who, however, rejects the translation “image”.</footnote>
which the subject is aware in a determinate φαντασία, what one is mentally pre-
sented with during an instance of φαντασία.<fnref n="15" /> In modern-day parlance, φάντασμα
roughly translates “representational content”. (3) The most adequate renderings for
φαντασία and φάντασμα are respectively “imagination” and “image”.<fnref n="16" /> It is then
often claimed that each and every φάντασμα, being an image, possesses a repre-
sentational content.<fnref n="17" />

The traditional view has been met with resistance. Caston (2021), for one, has
recently challenged simultaneously (A) any attempt at translating φάντασμα by
means of “image”-terms and (B) the claim that a φάντασμα is the content of
awareness occurring to the subject in a φαντασία, arguing that both lead to the same
disastrous result of committing Aristotle to a form of indirect realism.<fnref n="18" /> Note,
however, that if A plausibly goes along with B, the reverse is not true: a content-
interpretation of the concept of φάντασμα does not entail an “imaginistic” under-
standing of it. Building on several passages where Aristotle relies on physiological
aspects of the experiencing of φαντάσματα involved in memories and dreams, Caston
argues that any interpretation that makes Aristotelian φαντάσματα contents of
awareness necessarily entails the frightful thesis that experiencing φαντάσματα
involves being aware of what goes on, physiologically speaking, in one’s sense-
organs. There would be only one remedy: the notion that φαντάσματα are contents of
any awareness should be abandoned in favour of a strictly physiological interpre-
tation of the concept.<fnref n="19" /> On Caston’s “physiological view,” when a φάντασμα occurs in
the perceptual system, the subject is presented with some mental content without
being aware of the underlying physiological process, i.e. the φάντασμα as such.

The claim that φαντάσματα are contents of awareness, which is part of the
traditional view, fits nicely with the observation that Aristotle frequently speaks of
φαντάσματα as being objects of cognition. It also allows for a clear-cut contrast
between φαντασία and φάντασμα, the latter being either the susceptibility to having
mental representations or a particular representation generated on its basis and the
former the content of such a representation. Insistence on the rendering “image” (or

<footnote n="15">15 See e.g. Modrak (1986) for a particularly clear statement of the assumption that φάντασμα refers to what she calls the “sensory content” of a φαντασία.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16 These translations, in spite of their being regularly denounced (see e.g. Lefebvre 1997), still have some prestigious proponents (among which Johansen 2012; Shields 2016).</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17 For example by Johansen (2012), 199, who construes deliberately picturing a mental image as a representation of a real object as a paradigmatic case of what it means to have a φάντασμα.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18 Similar worries have previously been voiced, among others, by Osborne (2000) and Corcilius (2014), who both insist on the physiological nature of φαντάσματα.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">19 *Phantasmata* are the content-bearing representations that underlie such experiences: they are changes in the body that bear content in virtue of their physical magnitudes and the power they have to affect the central organ in determinate ways.” Caston (2021), 197.</footnote>
“representation,” for that matter), however, may be in tension with this construal of the distinction, given that an “image” usually refers to something that has representational content itself. The view also leads to a precarious situation when passages where Aristotle provide physiological descriptions of the coming-to-be of φαντάσματα are taken into account:<fnref n="20" /> as stressed by Caston, the assumption that φαντάσματα are potential or actual contents of awareness may then result in the prima facie implausible claim that cognizing a φάντασμα means for the subject to be aware of the physiological process her perceptual system is undergoing. By contrast, adopting a strictly physiological interpretation of φάντασμα in Aristotle certainly avoids this result. It deprives, however, Aristotle’s lexicon of a word to pick out the content of which one is aware in a given instance of φαντασία,<fnref n="21" /> whereas his theories of memory and dream-interpretation crucially depend on a description of the way in which the subject envisages this content. The view also struggles to make the sense of the primary textual basis for the traditional view, as passages where Aristotle speaks of a φάντασμα “appearing” or “being perceived” would have to be given a strictly physiological paraphrase. Both views agree on the initial claim that φάντασμα is a piece of Aristotle’s philosophical jargon that is part and parcel of his theory of φαντασία.

Two questions must here be kept apart. I/ Is a φάντασμα the content of awareness in a given φαντασία or its underlying physiological process (if not yet something else)? II/ Is it appropriate to translate φάντασμα by means of “imaginistic” vocabulary? I claim (a) that Aristotle’s technical term φάντασμα is to be construed against a pre-existing linguistic background (and not, for example, as a neologism derived from φαντασία), and that both Aristotle’s and this pre-existing usage have the word refer to what manifests itself in a given apparition (φάντασμα means roughly τὸ φαινόμενον, “what appears”), so that a φάντασμα is necessarily something of which one is aware. I also claim (b) that, despite several passages in Aristotle where the term is associated with words such as εἶδωλον, ζῷον or εἰκών, it is quite misleading to translate φάντασμα (“mental” image”). As a translation for φάντασμα “image” is somewhat ambiguous, especially when associated with cognitive terms: “seeing” or “having a (mental) image” may either imply that the subject having the image is aware that what she is presented with has some representational content (when deliberately picturing a tree, one is aware that one’s mental picture of a tree is not a real tree but is standing for one), or have no such implication, in which case (“mental” image” operates in much the same way as “mental representation”, providing a

<footnote n="20">20 So e.g. Moss (2012), 49–50 who claims both that (a) a φάντασμα is a physiological motion and that (b) one becomes aware of it when it reaches the central sense-organ.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">21 Φανταστόν is not an option for Aristotle given that on his view φαντασία does not as a capacity have any special object that perception does not already have: see Wedin (1988), 61–63.</footnote>
third-person description regarding the state the subject finds herself in. In the first case, I argue that the translation is wrong: φάντασμα picks out the content of a quasi-perceptual representation experienced by a subject, who may or may not envisage this content as bearing some relationship with something else (for instance with past objects of perception, in the case of remembering). The subject need not envisage her representations as representations in order to have them, even though having a representation necessarily entails being aware of its content. In the second case, the translation is infelicitous to say the least, as it does not capture the distinction made in Aristotle's Greek between what presents quasi-perceptual contents of awareness to the subject (φαντασία) and these contents of awareness themselves (φάντασμα). In both cases, such translations become disastrous for the various passages where Aristotle draws analogies between φαντάσματα and actual images (such as reflections and paintings), which will be analyzed below. The interpretation I defend agrees with Caston against the traditional view<sup>22</sup> on the denial of any intrinsic representational aspect to Aristotle's φάντασμα and with the traditional view against Caston on the claim that one is always aware of the φάντασμα one experiences.

## 2 Tragic φαντάσματα

It has seldom been noted that φάντασμα is not a word that Aristotle (or any of his fellow members of the Academy or of the Lyceum) coined. The word φαντασία is first attested in Plato's *Republic* (II, 382e10)<sup>23</sup> and must have been, in Aristotle's days, a very theoretically loaded term, especially in the wake of Plato's *Sophist*. This is arguably not the case with φάντασμα. Several occurrences of the word φάντασμα before Plato have been preserved. All three belong to tragic plays, they all have to do with preternatural manifestations, especially of deceased individuals.

(1) In Aeschylus' *Septem*, Eteocles, before meeting his brother on the battlefield, observes that his dreams had already warned him about the fatal outcome of the conflict. We do not know what exactly these dreams are supposed to be, their content had probably been mentioned in the previous play in the cycle which is now lost. Eteocles uses the word φάντασμα to refer to what he has foreseen in his past dreams: ἄγαν δ' ἀληθεῖς ἐνυπνίων φαντασμάτων / ὄψεις,

<footnote n="22">22 Or at least against a common misunderstanding facilitated by the traditional view.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">23 There is no earlier attestation in the surviving Greek literature (Rees 1962, 3). I very much doubt, however, that Plato coined the substantive φαντασία, deriving it from φαντάζω, in this very passage from the *Republic* (*pace* Watson 1988, 1), where nothing suggests that the word is expected to sound unusual.</footnote>
πατρώιων χρημάτων δατήριοι (710–11), “there was too much truth in these specters I saw in my dreams that were dividing up my father’s possessions”.<fnref n="24" />

(2) In Euripides’ *Hecuba*, the plot’s main driving forces are at the outset (a) the request made by Achilles’ ghost, demanding the sacrifice of Hecuba’ daughter Polyxena, and (b) the murder of another of her children, her son Polydorus, by his host king Polymestor. Hecuba, being already aware of the former, learns about the latter during the first scenes, whereby the audience is informed of both. The play opens with Polydorus’ ghost narrating his fate before leaving the stage to make way for his mother. At this exact point, Polydorus’ ghost presents Hecuba as being “scared by [his] φάντασμα” (φάντασμα δειμαίνουσ’ ἐμόν, 54). One could take this comment to mean that Hecuba, who is getting out of Agamemnon’s tent, is supposed to catch a glimpse of the ghost, but this would not sit well with the fact that Hecuba, in her speech, does not make any mention of a ghost, suggesting instead that only the audience is supposed to have seen it.<fnref n="25" /> What is troubling Hecuba are rather her dreams, as she will now explain: she has had visions of her son’s death, but still wants to believe him to be alive. The φάντασμα in the ghost’s comment is therefore much more likely to be Polydorus’ apparition in his mother’s dreams.

(3) In the following scene in the same play, Hecuba laments the request made by Achilles’ ghost, which she also describes as a φάντασμα: ἦλθ’ ὑπέρ ἄκρας τύμβου κορυφᾶς / φάντασμ’ Ἀχιλέως, (93–4), “the ghost of Achilles has come at the top of his grave”. Although it takes place after the person’s death, this epiphany has occurred publicly. The word φάντασμα does not refer here to something that is privately revealed to someone in her dreams, but to a preternatural apparition that has been witnessed by sailors (109–119).

This is all elevated speech, but the way the word φάντασμα is used is not tied up with any specific piece of philosophical reasoning. Rather, these three occurrences point to the existence of a pre-Aristotelian ordinary meaning of the word: one speaks of a φάντασμα whenever there is an appearance or manifestation of some person or object that does not exist or no longer exists (especially when the person is now dead). As the thing or person that “appears” in this process is known or suspected by its audience to be not completely real (Eteocles and Hecuba are retrospectively

<footnote n="24">24 All translations are mine. I have not always done justice to the literary qualities of the primary texts.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">25 Gregory (1999), 49–50.</footnote>
aware that they have been dreaming, Achilles is known by the sailors to have already
died), its existence is, so to speak, presumed to be exhausted by its apparition.<fnref n="26" /> As a
result, such “appearances” may be true or false, and one can believe them or refuse to
do so. Believing them might amount to mistaking them for the real thing, it can also
involve an awareness of this distinction and be about their relationship to the real
thing. *Hecuba’s* sailors believe what they see to be really expressing Achilles’ post-
humous will and it is decided that his wish should be granted, whereas *Hecuba*, when
the play begins, still refuses to believe that her son has been murdered, despite her
dreams.

I take it that the philosophical potential of the concept did not escape Aristotle.
Once the connection with the peculiarities of such ghost stories is severed, what we
have here is a word that captures special quasi-perceptual situations in which
something is experienced by a subject without being real or even assumed to be real.

3 De anima III.3 and Its Contexts

The puzzling way in which the topic of φαντασία is introduced in *De anima* III.3 has long been noticed.<fnref n="27" /> Aristotle’s aim is, at first, to dispel a mistake that has confounded his predecessors for too long, that of failing to distinguish thought from perception. As a result, they have been incapable of explaining how errors come to be (427b2–4): whereas perception, or at least some part of it, is always true due to its being a causal process, some types of thought, such as discursive thinking (διάνοια) and belief (δόξα), enjoy no such immunity to errors. Aristotle introduces φαντασία at this very point, almost as an after-thought, pointing out that it differs from both perception and thought (427b14).

It is difficult indeed to understand why φαντασία is introduced at this point if one
assumes that Aristotle is already operating with his own technical notion. Aristotle,
however, must have known very well that he was not the first one to invest φαντασία
with a special philosophical meaning. The Stranger in Plato's *Sophist* defines δόξα
and φαντασία jointly (264a1–7).<fnref n="28" /> according to his stipulations, whenever the soul
reaches, after internal discussion (διάνοια), a resting point and pronounces some-
thing to be true or false, this state is called δόξα; whenever the conclusion is reached
by means of perception (δι' αἰσθήσεως), it is called φαντασία. There are strong echoes

<footnote n="26">26 “We should consequently expect φάντασμα to mean ‘appearance’, ‘apparition’, ‘guise’, ‘presentation,’ often with the strong implication of unreality.” Schofield (1978), 117.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">27 Prompting Caston (1996), 20, to characterize the chapter as “serpentine”. See also Labarrière (1997).</footnote>

<footnote n="28">28 See Dixsaut (2000), 57–59, for a detailed analysis of the passage.</footnote>
of the same concept of δόξα in other dialogues of the same period, for instance in the *Theaetetus*, where δόξα is already described as a silent statement made to oneself (189e4–190a7), or in the *Philebus* (38e1–5). The Stranger's concept of φαντασία, on the other hand, remains an outlier in Plato.<fnref n="29" /> Even in the *Sophist*, the distinction between δόξα and φαντασία is not completely clear, what is meant by the clause δι' αἰσθήσεως is not explained any further (does any perceptual input whatsoever make the resulting state a φαντασία instead of a δόξα?).<fnref n="30" /> The Stranger does not use his concept of φαντασία again after 264b, suggesting that the finer points of the distinction do not matter a great deal to him after all. Instead, he decides to call any kind of belief a δόξα.

The introduction of φαντασία in *De anima* III.3 offers clear echoes of the main concepts in the Stranger's definitions. Aristotle sets out to distinguish perceiving and "reasoning" (φρονεῖν, 427ᵇ⁷), pointing out the differences between various kinds of thinking. Whereas the first item is always called αἰσθησις throughout, the umbrella-term for thinking switches to νοεῖν (b⁹) and finally to διανοεῖσθαι (b¹³; διάνοια, b¹⁵), thusiterating the opposition found in the *Sophist*. It is only at this point that φαντασία enters the stage.

Although the clause is introduced by means of the particle γάρ, the argumen-
tative purpose of the claim that φαντασία is different from both perception and
διάνοια (b¹⁴–¹⁵), in which φαντασία makes its first appearance in the chapter, is not
immediately clear. One would expect it to offer support for a thesis that would have
been just expressed in what precedes, but it is hard to identify a suitable claim there:
this status of φαντασία does not seem to support the previous claims that διανοεῖσθαι
may only occur in animals that have λόγος (b¹³–¹⁴) or that διανοεῖσθαι may be false
(in contradistinction to perception, b¹²–¹³). It is worth pointing out, however, that the
previous sentence is also introduced by means of the same particle (ή μὲν γὰρ
αἰσθησις ..., b¹¹): this opens up the possibility that both occurrences of the particle
γάρ could perform in parallel the function of supporting the same claim.<fnref n="31" /> This
previous claim would, then, be the thesis (T) that thinking should not be identified
with perception (οὐδὲ τοῦτό ἐστι ταὐτὸ τῷ αἰσθάνεσθαι, b¹¹; see also b⁶–⁷). It would
receive two different justifications: (1) διάνοια is sometimes false and requires

<footnote n="29">29 The word φαντασία occurs otherwise in *Resp*. II (see above) and several times in the *Theaetetus* (e.g. 152c1) as a sort of substantive for the φαίνεται-locution (*φαίνεται* τινι + infinitive: “it appears to X that ...,” implying that, although one is really experiencing something, one’s impression could be mistaken). This usage, which is also found in Aristotle (*De caelo* I.14, 297ᵇ³¹), does not correspond to the technical meaning defined in the *Sophist*, insofar as having a φαντασία that *p* in this sense does not entail having reached the belief that *p*.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">30 “Although the definition clearly indicates that *phantasia* is some kind of combination of belief and sensation, it does not indicate what kind of combination it is.” Silverman (1991), 124.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">31 Denniston (1954), 64–65.</footnote>
reason, perception does not (ᵇ¹²–¹⁴); (2) φαντασία is different from both perception and thought (ᵇ¹⁴–¹⁵). What kind of support is being offered for (T) in (2) depends, obviously, on what φαντασία is taken to mean in that context.

Placing the *Sophist* in the background is helpful here. In Plato's dialogue, φαντασία, far from being clearly demarcated from perception and thought, is presented as a sort of intermixing of both ("φαίνεται" δὲ ὁ λέγομεν σύμμειξις αἰσθήσεως καὶ δόξης, 264b1–2, reactivating the connection between φαντασία as just defined by the Stranger and the φαίνεται-locution). Aristotle is going to attack this very phrase in what follows (428ᵃ²⁴–²⁶), and the next section of the chapter (until 428ᵇ¹⁰) reads like an aggressive attack against any such theory of φαντασία that fails to separate it from both perception and thought.<fnref n="32" />

Still, it is difficult to imagine that Aristotle would devote so much energy to fighting against a concept that, at the end of the day, barely features in the *Sophist*. Aristotle's various arguments in *De anima* III.3 suggest that he has a much larger target in mind, one that radiates in various dialogues of Plato. Among the three descriptions of φαντασία quoted side-by-side in the polemical section of the chapter in 428ᵃ²⁴–26, two are directly inspired by the *Sophist* (δόξα δι' αἰσθήσεως: cf. 264a4; συμπλοκή δόξης καὶ αἰσθήσεως: cf. 264b2), but the remaining one (and the first one to be mentioned), δόξα μετ' αἰσθήσεως, originates in the *Timaeus* (28a2).<fnref n="33" /> Strikingly enough, although the phrase is used in the *Timaeus* to describe one of the main modes of cognition, it is never associated with the word φαντασία in the dialogue. Similarly, one of Aristotle's examples of a situation captured by the φαίνεται-locution is that of having trouble seeing something and having the impression, without being quite sure, that it is a human being (428ᵃ¹²–¹⁴). The example is strongly reminiscent of a situation described with much greater detail in the *Philebus*, whereby one sees a human figure from afar and wonders whether it is a human being or a statue (38c2–d11). The description of one's thinking process in such a situation provided in the *Philebus* makes explicit use of every main feature of the *Sophist*'s account: what happens is an inner dialogue within one's soul prompted by perception, which culminates in one's affirming or denying a proposition, i.e. in a δόξα.<fnref n="34" /> Let us call this

<footnote n="32">32 “It is therefore clear, says Aristotle, that *phantasia* cannot be what Plato said it was.” Watson (1988, 24).</footnote>

<footnote n="33">33 The *Timaeus* passage follows the introduction of the distinction between thought (voûc) and true belief (δόξα ἀληθῆς, 51bff.) and looks like a revised version of the image of the divided line in the *Republic*: there are now three types of “beings” (the models, the matrix and the products in the matrix) and two corresponding types of cognition (thought for models, “belief joined with perception” for products in the matrix – the latter requiring material affections in the subject of cognition).</footnote>

<footnote n="34">34 Interpreters often acknowledge that Socrates' example in the *Philebus* is a paradigmatic case of what the Stranger in the *Sophist* would call φαντασία even if the word is not used in the *Philebus*, see e.g. Watson (1988), 7–8, or Delcomminette (2006), 367.</footnote>
theory of φαντασία that Aristotle sees at work behind all these passages in Plato the
“Academic” theory.

Aristotle does not take his own understanding of φαντασία for granted at the outset
of *De anima* III.3 but goes at considerable length to dispel a different notion bearing the
same name that threatens to disturb his own. My suggestion is that we still find our-
selves in a gray area when φαντασία enters the stage in 427ᵇ¹⁴. The “Academic” theory
uses φαντασία to refer to beliefs as co-products of perception and thought. Such
φαντασίαι can be true and false, they obviously have a role to play in the explanation of
error. Even if the “Academic” theory does not amount to conflating perception and
thought as crudely as Aristotle takes, for instance, Empedocles to have done, it still
presupposes that the two must typically come together for errors to occur, as if
perception were polluting thought and leading it astray. I suggest that this background
of an “Academic” theory accounts for the way φαντασία is introduced in *De anima* III.3
in the context of a discussion of how errors come about. Identifying thinking, or even the
types of thinking that cannot be mistaken, with perception, as Empedocles did, is a non-
starter when it comes to explaining errors. Claiming that errors occur when perception
mingles with thinking, i.e. having an “Academic” theory of φαντασία that describes
ordinary beliefs as involving both perception and thinking, will not do either. With the
“Academic” context, claim (2), i.e. “φαντασία is different from both perception and
thought,” becomes relevant for thesis (T), i.e. “perception is not identical with thought,”
given the existence of theories that have perception and thought “mingle” in φαντασία.

To move from the “Academic” theory to his own technical notion of φαντασία,
Aristotle uses several arguments that are based on ordinary speech. As the “Aca-
demic” theory has a tendency to generalize the usage of φαντασία to cover any kind
of belief or impression whatsoever as long as perception is involved, Aristotle points
out that the φαίνεται-locution with which the noun is morphologically associated is
only linguistically appropriate in situations in which one’s perception is known to be
impeded (428ᵃ¹²–¹⁴: *λέγομεν ... ὅτι φαίνεται*), and that it would not be appropriate
in situations where one clearly sees something and acquires the corresponding
belief.

The first and only occurrence of the word φάντασμα in the chapter belongs to a
similar context.

Εἰ δή ἐστιν ἡ φαντασία καθ' ἤν λέγομεν φάντασμά τι ἡμῖν γίγνεσθαι καὶ μὴ εἶ τι κατὰ μεταφορὰν
λέγομεν, μία τίς ἐστι τοῦτων δύναμις ἡ ἕξις καθ' ἃς κρίνομεν καὶ ἀληθεύομεν ἡ ψευδόμεθα.
Τοιαῦται δ' εἰσὶν αἰσθησις, δόξα, ἐπιστήμη, νοῦς.

If, then, φαντασία is that on the basis of which we say that a φάντασμα occurs to us and unless we are speaking metaphorically, φαντασία is one of the capacities or states on the basis of which we discriminate and issue truths and falsehoods. Perception, belief, knowledge and thinking are such. (De anima III.3, 428ᵃ¹–⁵)
Although the transmission of the text does not present significant variant readings, the main clause has regularly been challenged on the grounds that Aristotle cannot mean to claim that φαντασία is a genuine cognitive capacity, starting with Tendlenburg (1833), 475.<fnref n="35" /> The passage is often read as an indication that Aristotle intends at this point to switch to his own understanding of φαντασία, for the reason that it rests on the explicit connection of φαντασία with the coming-to-be of a φάντασμα: Modrak (1987), 82, sees in this connection a “nominal definition” of φαντασία, Corcilius (2014), 72, a “stipulation” of how the word is to be used. It would be strange, however, for Aristotle to presuppose that his audience is already familiar with what he means by φάντασμα, especially if he has a special technical meaning of his own for it. The word φάντασμα does not occur again in the chapter, Aristotle’s final account of φαντασία remains remarkably silent about the topic.

There is a special use of φάντασμα in Plato's *Sophist*. It has, however, little relevance for *De anima* III.3: the Stranger uses φάντασμα to single out a species of products of imitative arts. Images (εἴδωλα – the Stranger's lexicon is borrowed from visual arts but is meant to have a much wider extension) are divided into likenesses (εικόνες) and φαντάσματα, according to whether their intrinsic properties (such as their inner proportions) reproduce those of their model or merely seem to do so (236a4-c8). By contrast with what happens in Aristotle, the notion of φάντασμα is never connected with that of φαντασία,<fnref n="36" /> even if it seems obvious enough that, based on the Stranger's definitions, a φάντασμα aims at deceiving by creating an erroneous belief based on perception, that is, that the end of every artifact of the φάντασμα-type is to generate a false φαντασία.

The definition of φάντασμα in the *Sophist* remains close to the way the word is used in Attic tragedies. There is a common core: a φάντασμα is in both cases a thing that purports to be something that it is not. This cannot be exactly what Aristotle has in mind in *De anima* III.3, given that this φαντασία that generates a φάντασμα is said to result in either truth or falsity (although Aristotle is going to claim that φαντασία is

<footnote n="35">35 Bywater (1888), 56, has proposed to insert something along the lines of ζητώμεν εἰ before the beginning of the main clause, μία τίς ἐστι ... (a3) so as to turn it into a question (“which capacity among these ones should we take φαντασία to be?”). Ross (1956) achieves the same result by inserting ἄρα there, and so does Corcilius (2017) by means of punctuation only (see also Corcilius 2020, 318 n.48). The transmitted text has been defended especially by Schofield (2011), 123 n.11: “Aristotle thinks he has by this stage in the chapter said enough about *phantasia* to show that it is a capacity or disposition in virtue of which we judge, i.e. achieve truth or falsehood”.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">36 The connection is almost made in 260c8-9, as pointed out by Notomi (1999), 252, where the Stranger states that it results from the thesis that not-being is that everything will be full of “images, likenesses and φαντασία”. There is some mischief on the part of Plato here, as one would expect φάντασμα instead of φαντασία. The latter seems to mean, as in *Resp.* II, “deceiving appearance”, which I take to have been its ordinary meaning at the time.</footnote>
usually false, 428ª12). What, then, does Aristotle mean by φάντασμα in *De anima* III.3, and how does it help him get closer to the notion of φαντασία he intends to deploy?

One common way of tackling these questions is to assume that φάντασμα already has its full-blown technical sense (whatever that is) here and that restricting φαντασία to cases where a φάντασμα is involved enables Aristotle to depart from a much broader notion of φαντασία he wants to reject. I offer a slightly different answer. I agree that the passage is meant to clarify what Aristotle means by φαντασία, its purpose is to distinguish it from what I have been calling the “Academic” notion of φαντασία which is meant to apply to virtually any perception-based belief. I very much doubt, however, that Aristotle’s way of achieving this goal is to parachute a concept of his own making.

One of Aristotle's main strategies against the “Academic” theory of φαντασία is to drive a wedge between its jargon and ordinary speech. The φαίνεται-locution, Aristotle points out, is normally used to refer to what one has the impression of perceiving if and only if the speaker wants to indicate that she is unsure about the objects of her perception, especially due to suboptimal or suspicious perceptual conditions. “Χ φαίνεται μοι, appears to me” usually means something along the lines of “I think I’m seeing X but I might be wrong”, being aware of some special optical conditions. Under normal circumstances, it is not an appropriate way to report one’s perceptual experience. By contrast, the “Academic” theory, Aristotle claims (relying on a *Theaetetus*-style equivalence whereby “I have a φαντασία that ...” is tantamount to “it appears to me that ...”), would have us generalize the use of the φαίνεται-locution to express practically any belief whatsoever as long as it bears some connection to perception. To be sure, proponents of such a theory may have valid reasons to discard perception as a way of acquiring knowledge. Aristotle, however, is content with pointing out that the way they speak is not the way people normally speak.

The one and only appearance of φάντασμα in *De anima* III.3 can be read along the same lines as another way of opposing the “Academic” theory to ordinary speech.<fnref n="37" /> Modern readers of Aristotle may not be terribly familiar with any “ordinary” meaning of φάντασμα and believe the word to be a purely technical term. Yet the evidence offered above suggests that Aristotle’s contemporaries are already familiar with the word and that its usage does not necessarily imply an intricate theory of perception and belief. One speaks of a φάντασμα, i.e. of a presumably misleading “apparition,” when one encounters something that goes well beyond everyday perception, such as a ghost. By contrast, the “Academic” theory, Aristotle claims (using once again an equivalence between “having a φαντασία” and “seeing or

<footnote n="37">³⁷ As Schofield (1978), 119, puts it, in this passage “φάντασμα again does duty simply as the noun corresponding to the cautious, sceptical and non-committal φαίνεται”.</footnote>
perceiving a φάντασμα”), would have us speak of a φάντασμα about any object of perception.

This is where Aristotle draws the line: his theory of φαντασία will not depart from ordinary speech in its use of φάντασμα or the φαίνεται-locution. Something needs to really “appear” for the experience to be a genuine case of φαντασία. Aristotle claims, on this basis, that φαντασία is a cognitive capacity or state,<fnref n="38" /> because φαντασία is now made responsible for our access to these special objects that anyone would call φαντάσματα. It will, of course, turn out later in the chapter that φαντασία shares its objects with perception and is causally dependent upon perception for their cognition (428ᵇ¹¹–13), so that there is no reason to posit it as a distinct cognitive capacity. That, however, cannot be presupposed in 428ᵃ¹–5, so that the fact that φαντασία gives access to φαντάσματα remains, at this point, a valid reason to envisage it as a cognitive capacity.

## 4 Dreams

The isolated use of the word φάντασμα in De anima III.3 is thus, as I read it, non-technical in that (a) it relies on ordinary intuitions about its meanings, and in that (b) it occurs in a context where the concept of φαντασία is still open for discussion, so that the word cannot yet mean “object” or “product” of a genuine full-blown Aristotelian φαντασία. The passage is still too terse to yield any definitive result. The decisive piece of evidence in favour of a non-technical meaning for φάντασμα in Aristotle is provided by his scientific study of dreams.

The investigation begins in De insomniis 1 with a question about the psychic capacity responsible for dreams, which could be either the perceptual or the intellectual part of the soul (458ᵃ³³–ᵇ²). Aristotle toys with his audience for a while,<fnref n="39" /> showing that dreams should not be ascribed to either of them, before eventually pulling φαντασία out of his hat (starting from 458ᵇ²⁹ and once and for all in 459ᵃ⁹–²²). Before that, however, Aristotle feels already perfectly comfortable describing dreams as φαντάσματα throughout the entire discussion. It might well be that this usage is partly intended as a stepping-stone towards the eventual attribution of dreams to φαντασία and to the perceptual part of the soul. Still, if one assumes that

<footnote n="38">38 Note that the transmitted text in 428ᵃ¹–5 (even without turning the sentence into a question) does not commit Aristotle to the thesis that φαντασία is radically distinct from more established cognitive capacities, such as perception. All that the sentence says it that φαντασία has to belong to the broad set of cognitive capacities.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">39 The claim that dreams are not “perceived by means of perception” (οὐκ ἄρα γε τῇ αἰσθήσει τὸ ἐνύπνιον αἰσθανόμεθα, 458ᵇ⁹) must be intended to raise a few eyebrows. What Aristotle means is nonetheless crystal clear: dreaming should not be identified with perceiving simpliciter.</footnote>
the word φάντασμα carries with itself the full-blown Aristotelian theory of φαντασία, it just would not make sense for Aristotle, having just asked whether dreams are to be attributed to the perceptual part or not, to casually assume that dreams are products of φαντασία (if this is what being a φάντασμα amounts to) while still exploring alternative options. Describing dreams as a φαντάσματα would immediately entail that they must be attributed to the perceptual part in virtue of its connection with φαντασία. Aristotle would be giving away his answer much too soon.

Dreams are first called φαντάσματα in the course of an argument that purports to show that dreams should not be ascribed to the capacity for thought. The argument makes no use of the connection between φάντασμα and φαντασία, it rests on the observation that one can, when dreaming, think about different things than what one is presented with, just as one can think about something different when perceiving (hearing a talk sometimes does not prevent me from wondering about lunch). The phenomenon is expressed by the phrase “having other things in mind along with one’s φαντάσματα” (παρὰ τα φαντάσματα ἄλλα ἐννοῦμεν, 458ᵇ¹⁸). The identification of these φαντάσματα with what Aristotle calls dreams, ἐνύπνια, is secured by the fact that a similar phrase, παρὰ τὸ ἐνύπνιον ἐννοῦμεν ἄλλο τι, has just been used (ᵇ¹⁵) to describe the same situation.

Some clarification about Aristotle's concept of ἐνύπνιον is here required. In modern-day English, the concept of “dream” usually includes not only our quasi-perceptual nocturnal experiences, but also our concomitant mental reactions and thoughts: if I dream of a scary monster chasing me, my thinking about ways to escape is part of that dream. This is not the case with the Greek ἐνύπνιον: an ἐνύπνιον is limited to what one “sees” during sleep, one's thoughts about it are not part of it.<fnref n="40" /> The same goes for the other main Greek word for “dream,” ὄναρ, which originally refers to the figure that visits the sleeper at night,<fnref n="41" /> and not to her global nocturnal experience. This is why ἐνύπνιον, a word that is obviously derived from the corresponding adjective, is regularly associated with vision words in Greek literature of the classical period.<fnref n="42" /> Even Aristotle continues to associate ἐνύπνιον with the verb ὁράω,<fnref n="43" /> although he has no intention of claiming that dreams involve one sense-

<footnote n="40">40 See also Gallop (1990), 6–8, or Gregorić and Fink (2022), 9.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">41 *Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos* III, s.v. ὄναρ, 706–7. Aristotle, however, displays a systematic preference for ἐνύπνιον and its cognates (*ἐνυπνιάζω* is used exclusively throughout *De insomniis*) over ὄνειρος and the like, probably because he wants to avoid the mythical and literary connotations of the latter.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">42 Some examples: ἐνυπνίων φαντασμάτων ὄψεις, Aeschylus, *Septem*, 710–1; ὦ νυκτὸς ὄψις ἐμφανής ἐνυπνίων, *Persae*, 518; ἐμαθον ἐνύπνιον ὁμμάτων / ἐμῶν ὄψιν, Euripides, *Hecuba*, 703; ἡ ὄψις τοῦ ἐνυπνίου, Herodotus, II.139, 1314.</footnote>

<footnote n="43">43 Among others: ἐωράκασιν ἐνύπνια, *De insomniis* 1, 458ᵇ²⁰; τῶν ἰδόντων τὸ ἐνύπνιον, *De divinatione per somnum* 2, 464ᵇ³–⁴; ἰδεῖν ἐνύπνιον, *Historia animalium*. IV.10, 537ᵇ¹⁸.</footnote>
modality only.<fnref n="44" /> While we say that we see something in a dream, Aristotle and his contemporaries would say that they see an ἐνύπνιον.

It is legitimate for Aristotle to call an ἐνύπνιον a φάντασμα at this stage of the argument only if it does not already presuppose any theory about what dreams, ἐνύπνια,<fnref n="45" /> are and how they come to be. This is not the case if φάντασμα is assumed to mean “product of φαντασία”. The condition is only met if φάντασμα is assumed to remain close enough in its meaning to the usage observed in tragic plays: understood in this way, the term only emphasizes that what one sees when dreaming is presumably not a real object, without adding any further commitment regarding its nature or causal origin.

Let us go back to the argument in *De insomniis* 1. Aristotle has started by claiming that what he calls an ἐνύπνιον cannot be grasped by means of δόξα, because δόξα is not self-sufficient as a capacity and requires a prior cognitive capacity, such as perception, that presents it with its object (458ᵇ¹⁰–¹⁵). Δόξα, however, is not the only kind of activity of which the intellectual part is capable. Two types of such activities are said to be liable to occur in the course of a dream (ᵇ¹⁵–¹⁶): one can form a belief about the ἐνύπνιον one sees (“this is a horse”, according to Aristotle’s example), one can also entertain thoughts (ἐννοεῖν) about something else entirely. Thus, the intellectual part is able to be active about a different object at the same time as the ἐνύπνιον is being cognized or quasi-cognized.

This intellectual activity, once again, is not part of the ἐνύπνιον, it is only prompted by its “seeing”. One could still try to maintain that none of this prevents our thinking capacity from being responsible for the ἐνύπνιον one sees, provided that the same capacity can be simultaneously active with regard to two different objects. This option is ruled out, however, by means of an analogy with ordinary perception, which often leads in the same way to thoughts about different things (ᵇ¹⁶–¹⁷): what triggers this kind of thinking when one is awake is perception, the ἐνύπνιον plays the same role when one is asleep. As a result, if there is to be any identity between the activities for which the intellectual part is responsible when perceiving and when dreaming, it cannot be responsible for the coming-to-be of the ἐνύπνιον. The argument does not rely at any point on any connection between φάντασμα and φαντασία, the reader remains in complete darkness regarding the capacity responsible for generating one’s dream.

Aristotle’s final definition of dreams continues to characterize them as φαντάσματα. At no point in the text does Aristotle signal that he is switching from his

<footnote n="44">44 See *De divinatione per somnum* 1, 463ᵃ¹²–¹⁶, where dreams involving quasi-perceptions of sounds, flavors, and tangibles are evoked.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">45 For the sake of brevity, I will keep on using the English "dream" for the Greek "ἐνύπνιον", with the restricted meaning "dream-apparition" I have just described</footnote>
initial notion of φάντασμα to something else, suggesting that the meaning of the term φάντασμα in this context in which it is connected with technical notions such as αἴσθημα and φαντασία is not envisaged by Aristotle as departing from ordinary usage. This observation runs counter to the thesis that an Aristotelian φάντασμα is a strictly physiological process, as ordinary φάντασματα are things that are “seen” and of which one is aware.<fnref n="46" />

*Definition of dreams:* a dream is “the φάντασμα originating in the motion of αἰσθήματα, when it occurs in sleep, insofar as one is asleep” (τὸ φάντασμα τὸ ἀπὸ τῆς κινήσεως τῶν αἰσθήματων, ὅταν ἐν τῷ καθεύδειν ἦ, ἦ καθεύδει, *De insomniis* 3, 462ᵃ29–31)

Moreover, the definition includes a causal component (ἀπὸ + genitive expressing causal origin) indicating that dream-φαντάσματα result from a motion of αἰσθήματα. This causal component seems redundant if one assumes that being a product of φαντασία is part of the meaning of φάντασμα in the definition and that every instance of φαντασία has an αἰσθημα as its cause.

Again, there is some controversy concerning the meaning of the term αἰσθημα: even if it is generally agreed that it refers to something that results from perceptual activity, it can be understood as referring to something strictly physiological (a physical motion or state in the sense-organs or in the blood they contain brought about by perception) or to something of which the subject is necessarily aware. One further passage in *De insomniis* 2, 406ᵇ2–3, has often been adduced in the debate, as Aristotle seems there prima facie to say that the αἰσθήματα that persist after the external sense-objects have ceased to cause perception are themselves perceptible (ἀπελθόντος τοῦ θύραθεν αἰσθητοῦ ἐμμένει τὰ αἰσθήματα *αἰσθητὰ ὄντα*).<fnref n="47" /> On a physiological reading, the claim is alarming: if one believes that every perception involves the formation of an αἰσθημα (the sense-object must have an effect on its perceiver if it is to be perceived), claiming that every αἰσθημα is perceptible seems to lead to the introduction of a second and superfluous object of perception (every time I see something red, I would also be aware of something happening in my eye), or,

<footnote n="46">46 *Pace* e.g. Moss (2012), 51–52, who, understanding φαντάσματα as being primarily physiological motions, speaks of “undetected” φαντάσματα that have no yet reached the central organ of perception. I do not deny that some physiological process needs to take place within the perceptual system for the subject to be presented with a φάντασμα and that there may be antecedent stages leading to the formation of the relevant physiological process that are not themselves associated with any mental event or state.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">47 Everson (1997), 177, for instance, extracts from the passage the thesis that every αἰσθημα is necessarily something that one perceives, whereas Wedin (1988), 38, insists that Aristotle cannot mean to say αἰσθήματα count as proper sense-objects, so that the claim must “bear the sense that we are somehow aware of perceptual states without their being standard objects of perception”.</footnote>
perhaps even more worryingly, to the claim that the awareness of the αἰσθημα is the
basis for the perception of the proper αἰσθητόν.<fnref n="48" />

Fortunately, the passage does not commit Aristotle to any such view, the
αἰσθήματα in question are only said to be perceptible (and sometimes actually
perceived) in the absence of the external objects the perception of which has caused
their formation. The passage does not entail the thesis that an αἰσθημα must be
perceived for perception to occur, but only that some αἰσθήματα may be perceived in
possibly exceptional circumstances. The sentence is backward-looking, and one of
Aristotle's standard examples for perceptible αἰσθήματα in what precedes is the
residual visual impression left behind by one's looking at the sun (459b7–18). The
point of the example is not that, when I look at the sun, I also perceive that my retina
is being affected (although it will be damaged if I look at the sun for too long and I am
likely to notice it then): one's seeing the sun, as with any normal object of vision, does
not necessarily involve perceiving the αἰσθημα it results in, the latter is not consti-
tutive of the former. That being said, the bright spot one sometimes keeps on seeing
afterwards still deserves to be called an αἰσθημα, inasmuch as it is a direct outcome of
the perceptual process,<fnref n="49" /> and it is clearly something that one perceives.

One could worry about having both φάντασμα and αἰσθημα refer to contents of
awareness that are grasped by means of the perceptual capacity and result from
one's having engaged in perceiving previously, as the two notions now seem to
compete for the same conceptual spot. Aristotle himself does not always draw an air-
tight distinction between the two, as he is willing to describe dreams as being
αἰσθήματα "in a certain way" in De somno et vigilia 2, 456a26. His preferred usage,
when dealing with a content of awareness that results from earlier perceptual

<footnote n="48">48 Compare with the “largely uncontroversial account” initially offered in Moss (2012), 51 and n. 10, inspired by Everson (1997), where it is claimed that the subject must “become aware” of the αἰσθημα, i.e. the “change or movement in [the subject’s] perceptual system” produced by the object, in order to “perceive the external object.” Moss immediately adds that this αἰσθημα “is not the object of one’s perception”, which is the external object. According to such an account, then, perceiving involves, in addition to the awareness of the external object, a second awareness directed at a physiological change in one’s perceptual system. This immediately creates two major difficulties: (1) there seems to be two competing simultaneous objects of perception, whereas Aristotle’s theory seems to presuppose that perception according to each sense-modality only has an external object; (2) the claim that the subject is necessarily “aware” of the physiological changes happening in her perceptual system when perceiving sounds implausible (I do not typically feel anything in my eyes, veins or heart when I am looking at an external object).</footnote>

<footnote n="49">49 There is one occurrence of the word αἰσθημα before Aristotle in Euripides, *Iphigenia in Aulis* 1243, where it refers to a vague sort of awareness of evils to come in infants that does not have anything to do with perception in the strict sense. There is no trace of any philosophical usage of the word before Aristotle, I therefore assume that Aristotle is investing it with a brand-new sense, “effect in the subject’s perceptual system caused by the sense-object when perceived”.</footnote>
activity, seems to be to reserve αἰσθημα for immediate effects of perception, whereas
φάντασμα applies to cases in which what “appears” is much more distant from what
one has been perceiving, both in terms of content and with respect to the causal
sequence. What one sees when dreaming is sometimes quite far-fetched and does not
always bear an obvious relationship with what one has perceived during the day,
which corresponds to the fact that a lot can happen between the first imparting of the
motion to the sense-organs and its resurfacing at night.

Therefore, even if they sometimes converge, the terms αἰσθημα and φάντασμα
have fundamentally different meanings. An αἰσθημα is defined by its causal ancestry:
it is an immediate effect brought upon the perceptual system by the sense-object
when it is perceived. This usually goes unnoticed, apart from marginal cases (e.g.
remanent bright spots), what the subject becomes aware of in perception is the sense-
object. By contrast, a φάντασμα is necessarily something of which one is aware when
it comes to be in one's perceptual system, although its reality and nature may be
questioned by the subject. It is not defined by its causal ancestry: Aristotle claims
that a dream-φάντασμα normally results from daytime perception but does not
completely rule out (at least on conceptual grounds) that some people may excep-
tionally receive dreams from gods.<fnref n="50" /> Such dreams would obviously have a special
causal origin, they would nonetheless remain φαντάσματα.

This explains why Aristotle's final definition of dreams as φαντάσματα includes
αισθήματα as their causal antecedents. Dreams occur because one's perceptual
system has been previously affected, i.e. because some sense-objects have previously
caused αισθήματα when they were being perceived. These αισθήματα need not be
noticed for perception to occur, and they will typically not survive in one's perceptual
system for very long. Some, however, will persist in some form and be a part of
physiological chain reactions in the perceptual system that will result in dreams. The
final definition of dreams highlights this causal relation because it is not included in
the notion of φάντασμα as such.

5 Reflections and Paintings

I have argued that the connection with ordinary speech which Aristotle intends to
maintain entails that a φάντασμα should necessarily be grasped by the subject to
whom it occurs. This awareness is expressed by means of different verbal forms in
Aristotle. The word φάντασμα can operate either as the subject of a manifestation
process, expressed by verbs such as φαίνεσθαι (*De insomniis* 3, 462<sup>b</sup>8), ἐπελθεῖν (*De
memoria et reminiscentia* 2, 453<sup>b</sup>9) or γίγνεσθαι (*De anima* III.3, 428<sup>a</sup>2; *De insomniis* 2,

<footnote n="50">50 *De divinatione per somnun*, 462<sup>b</sup>22 – 24.</footnote>
460ᵇ¹⁷), or as the object of some cognitive activity, especially in the case of dreams and memories, expressed by verbs that are usually attached to either sense-perception or thought (αισθάνεσθαι: *De insomniis* 1, 458ᵇ⁹; *De memoria et reminiscentia* 1, 450ᵇ¹⁴, ᵇ¹⁸; θεωρεῖν: *De memoria et reminiscentia* 1, 450ᵇ¹⁸; ἰδεῖν: *De insomniis* 1, 458ᵇ²⁰, *De divinatione per somnum* 2, 464ᵃ³–⁴, *Historia animalium* IV.10, 537ᵇ¹⁸).<fnref n="51" /> Some of these verbs present a strong visual component, which might seem to support the traditional rendering “image”. The fact that a φάντασμα is not necessarily exclusively or primarily visual does not present a significant obstacle, as Aristotle himself highlights the connection between φαντασία and φῶς (*De anima* III.3, 429ᵃ²–⁴) even though φαντασία ranges across all sense-modalities.<fnref n="52" />

An “image”, however, is not just any kind of visual content. To qualify as an image, an object usually needs (1) to be perceptible by means of sight and (2) to depict or represent something else (no matter whether this relationship is thought of in terms of resemblance, denotation, etc.). “Seeing an image” as an image entails envisaging it as possessing a representational content on the basis of some of its visual properties:<fnref n="53" /> I see the image *I*, which is a perceptible object, and I grasp that *I* represents some content *C*. *C* is not something I perceive, it need not even be something that ever existed. Any talk of my seeing *C* in this context is necessarily derivative on my seeing *I*. Without its content, an image is just an ordinary object of vision. As a result, one may fail to grasp the representational content of an image (one might, say, fail to spot the man or the guitar in Braque’s *Man with a guitar* and find it to be an abstract painting) or misidentify it.<fnref n="54" />

<footnote n="51">51 Aristotle's wavering between verbs denoting sense-perception and verbs denoting intellectual activity is especially striking in *De memoria* 1. Part of the issue is arguably that memories, although they are, strictly speaking, neither sense-perceptions nor thoughts, present significant similarities with both (e.g. they can occur in the absence of their objects in the external environment, just like thoughts; they are directed at sense-objects, just like perceptions). Aristotle's usual neutral term, γνωρίζειν, would probably not do either due to the possibility of erroneous memories.</footnote>

<footnote n="52">52 At any rate, dreams do (cf. *supra*). I see no reason for Aristotle to reject the obvious fact that one can, for instance, hear someone's voice in one's head (for instance when remembering a song) just as well as one can picture someone's face. This may be more difficult for sense-objects for which human beings are poorly equipped, such as smells.</footnote>

<footnote n="53">53 If I have looked at a wall with a figurative fresco and failed to identify that something is represented, I take it that I will be entitled to say that I have not “seen” the fresco (even if I have seen the wall on which it is painted): “seeing an image” often implies both perceiving the visual object and grasping its representational content.</footnote>

<footnote n="54">54 Such cases are to be kept distinct from cases in which the subject seeing the image is faced with a feeling of immediacy and ceases to be aware, in a way, that there is an image standing in front of her, as if its representational content were directly present. The latter is liable to happen when depiction conventions are perfectly familiar, for instance when watching a Hollywood movie.</footnote>
I very much doubt that the notion of φάντασμα involves any such representa-
tional content. There is no threat of failure to access any representational content in
the case of a basic φάντασμα: one either sees one's child in one's dream, hallucina-
tion, or daydreaming – or one does not see it. Only the analyst might wonder,
retrospectively, if what the patient reports having seen stands for her child.

Still, proponents of the “image” rendering will insist, Aristotle himself is prone to using what are, surely, some of the most “imaginistic” Greek substantives, εἶδωλον and εἰκών, as analogous, perhaps even interchangeable with φάντασμα.<fnref n="55" /> Let us have a closer look at the relevant passages in order to assess whether Aristotle’s own understanding of φαντάσματα requires them to have some intrinsic representational content.

5.1 De insomniis 3, 461<sup>a</sup>14–30

In the course of his study of dreams, Aristotle compares dream-φαντάσματα with water-reflections twice.<fnref n="56" /> The text offers in both cases a particularly elaborate analogy between the production of dreams and the coming-to-be of reflections.

Ἐστε καθάπερ ἐν ὑγρῷ, ἑὰν σφόδρα κινὴ τις, ὅτε μὲν οὐθὲν φαίνεται εἶδωλον, ὅτε δὲ φαίνεται μὲν, διεστραμμένον δὲ πάμπαν, ὥστε φαίνεσθαι ἀλλοῖον ἡ οἰόν ἐστιν, ἡρεμήσαντος δὲ καθαρὰ καὶ φανερὰ, οὐτω καὶ ἐν τῷ καθεύδειν τὰ φαντάσματα καὶ ἀὶ ὕπόλοιποι κινήσεις ἀι συμβαίνουσαι ἀπὸ τῶν αἰσθημάτων ὅτε μὲν ὑπὸ μείζονος οὖσης τῆς εἰρημένης κινήσεως ἀφανίζονται πάμπαν, ὅτε δὲ τεταραγμέναι φαίνονται ἀι ὄψεις καὶ τερατώδεις, καὶ οὐκ εἰρόμενα τὰ ἐνύπνια, οἶον τοῖς μελαγχολικοῖς καὶ πυρέττουσι καὶ οἰνωμένοις πάντα γὰρ τὰ τοιαῦτα πάθη πνευματώδη ὄντα πολλὴν ποιεῖ κίνησιν καὶ ταραχήν. Καθισταμένου δὲ καὶ διακρινομένου τοῦ αἶματος ἐν τοῖς ἑναίμοις, σωζομένη τῶν αἰσθημάτων ἡ κίνησις ἀρ' ἐκάστου τῶν αἰσθητηρίων εἰρόμενα τε ποιεῖ τὰ ἐνύπνια, καὶ φαίνεσθαί τι καὶ δοκεῖν διὰ μὲν τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς ὄψεως κατα- φερόμενα ὄρᾶν, διὰ δὲ τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀκοῆς ἀκούειν, ὁμοιοτρόπως δὲ καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων αἰσθητηρίων.

As a result, (I) as with liquid bodies, (I.1) when they are agitated, (I.1.a) at times no image (εἶδωλον) appears, and (I.1.b) at times one appears, but so completely distorted that the thing appears to be a different sort of thing than what it actually is, whereas (I.2) when the liquid body has settled, the images (εἶδωλα) are pure and clear, (II) in the case of sleep, the φαντάσματα,

<footnote n="55">55 See Johansen (2012), 199 (“There are … passages in Aristotle that strongly suggest that images are central to his understanding of *phantasia* and passages where he sees a particularly strong connection between *phantasia* and vision. … The representation of images provides the model, then, for *phantasia* in these various contexts. … Against the background of Aristotle himself privileging visual images in his account of *phantasia*, it is not unreasonable to continue using the traditional translation ‘imagination’.”) or Radovic (2021).</footnote>

<footnote n="56">56 The second instance is explicitly tied to the first: καθάπερ καὶ πρότερον εἴπομεν, *De divinatione per somnum* 2, 464ᵇ⁹–10.</footnote>
i.e. the remnant motions that originate in the after-effects of perception, (II.1.a) at times disappear completely due to a motion that is more powerful than the one we have mentioned, and (II.1.b) at times disturbed and monstrous visions appear and one's dreams are not coherent, as it happens to people that suffer from melancholy, fever or inebriety (for all of these affections, being full of spirit, produce a considerable disturbing motion), whereas (II.2) when the blood has settled and has been filtered (in the case of blooded animals), as the motion of the after-effects of perception is preserved, coherent dreams follow, something appears, and one believes that one is seeing what has come down from sight, that one is hearing what has come down from hearing, and similarly with what has come down from the other sense-organs. (De insomniis 3, 461a14–30)

Φαντάσματα and εἴδωλα result here from transmission processes that involve an external sense-object as their main cause along with a transmission medium.<fnref n="57" /> The state of the medium is the key factor the analogy is meant to underline. Under certain conditions the medium will halt the transmission process altogether or alter its product, while if the medium is undisturbed the product will bear a close or possibly total resemblance to the sense-object from which it results.

The analogy does not rest at any point on the assumption that φαντάσματα or εἴδωλα have any representational content of which the subject apprehending them needs to be aware. The term εἴδωλον refers here to reflections that occur on the surface of liquid bodies. More precisely, εἴδωλον does not pick out the optical process of reflection, but what appears in such situations at the surface of a mirror or of a body of water. Its semantic value is similar to that of φάντασμα, with the additional nuance that an εἴδωλον is typically presumed to be, not the thing it purports to be, but a copy of it, most of all an intentionally deceiving one.<fnref n="58" /> The analogy is meant to pick out the various relationships that are liable to obtain between the outcome of a reproduction process and its initial model. The comparison between model and copy it involves is not part of the experience of dreaming. Similarly, a child is likely to share some of its parents' properties in virtue of the causal process of which it is the outcome, and one may on this basis look for family resemblances in its facial features when looking at it. Yet a child does not have its parents as its representational content: successfully seeing a child does not necessarily involve comparing it with its parents and discerning its inherited traits. Even though an ἐνύπνιον may be a perfect

<footnote n="57">57 The exact nature of the material basis for perceptual remnants and φαντάσματα is debated, although these motions seem to be located in the blood in one's sense-organs in De insomniis 3, 416ᵇ¹⁸ – see Roreitner (2020) for a synopsis of the discussion.</footnote>

<footnote n="58">58 Archaic usage is, once again, helpful, cf. Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos II, s.v. εἴδωλον, 423–4: “Bilderscheinung, Abbild, das jem. gleicht, ohne ‘dieser selbst’ zu sein,” especially “Ersatz (künstl. Doppelgänger) für e. best. (lebende) Pers. in best. Sit.; vom Gott verursacht, hergestellt als Mittel zum Zweck, wobei nur die täuschende Ähnlichkeit, nicht die Einzelheiten wichtig”.</footnote>
replica of some past sense-object, seeing the ἐνύπνιον, i.e. dreaming, does not entail
that one is envisaging the ἐνύπνιον as reproducing some of the properties of its
cause.

5.2 De divinatione per somnum 2, 464<sup>b5</sup>–16

The same analogy is put to good use again in *De divinatione per somnum* with a
different purpose. Having already explained how dreams come to be, Aristotle now
adopts the point of view of someone who is attempting to trace back either her own
dreams (after having woken up) or someone else's to the original sense-objects that
have triggered them. This activity is said to require a special skill.

Τεχνικώτατος δ' ἐστὶ κριτής ἐνυπνίων ὅστις δύναται τὰς ὁμοιότητας θεωρεῖν· τὰς γὰρ εὐθυο-
νειρίας κρίνειν παντός ἐστιν. Λέγω δὲ τὰς ὁμοιότητας, ὅτι παραπλήσια συμβαίνει τὰ
φαντάσματα τοῖς ἐν τοῖς ὕδασιν εἰδώλοις, καθάπερ καὶ πρότερον εἴπομεν. Ἐκεῖ δέ, ἂν πολλὴ
γίγνηται ἡ κίνησις, οὐδὲν ὁμοία γίνεται ἡ ἔμφασις καὶ τὰ εἶδωλα τοῖς ἀληθινοῖς. Δεινὸς δὴ τὰς
ἐμφάσεις κρίνειν εὖ ἂν ὁ δυνάμενος ταχὺ διαισθάνεσθαι καὶ συνορᾶν τὰ διαπεφορημένα καὶ
διεστραμμένα τῶν εἰδώλων, ὅτι ἐστὶν ἀνθρώπου ἤ ἤπου ἤ ὀτουδήποτε, κάκεῖ δὴ ὁμίως τί
δύναται τὸ ἐνύπνιον τοῦτο. Η γὰρ κίνησις ἐκκόπτει τὴν εὐθυονειρίαν.

Whoever is able to spot resemblances is a particularly good interpreter of dreams (for anybody
can interpret immediate dreams). I speak of resemblances because the φαντάσματα occur
similarly to water-reflections, as we said before. In the latter case, whenever a great motion
occurs, the reflected impression and the φαντάσματα that come to be do not resemble the real
things. Thus, whoever is able to visually identify and piece together images that have been
splintered and scattered, seeing that it is an image of a human being, of a horse, or of any other
thing, will be skilled at interpreting such reflected impressions. Likewise, in the case of dreams,
any such person will be skilled at grasping the meaning of a given dream, for the motion
destroys the dream's immediacy. (*De divinatione per somnum* 2, 464<sup>b5</sup>–16)

The passage deals with the activity of “interpreting” (κρίνειν) dreams and under-
standing “what they mean” (τί δύναται).<fnref n="59" /> In *Homer*<fnref n="60" /> and even in *Prometheus
vinctus* (485–6), this activity corresponds to a selection process by which an authority

<footnote n="59">59 Other instances of the question “τί δύναται” with the signification “what does it mean?” are collected in Eijk (1994), 335, the closest parallel being Aristophanes, *Plutus*, 842–3 (τὸ τριβώνιον δὲ τί δύναται πρὸς τῶν θεῶν, / ὃ φέρει μετὰ σοῦ τὸ παιδάριον τουτί; φράσον; “but what do these old raggedy clothes mean, by the gods – the ones your boy here is carrying after you? please explain,” the answer being that they are going to be given to Zeus). See also for this meaning of the verb Herodotus, IV.110.3 (τὰς δὲ Ἀμαζόνας καλέσουσι οἱ Σκύθαι Οιόρπατα, δύναται δὲ τὸ οὐνομα τοῦτο κατὰ Ἑλάδα γλῶσσαν ἀνδροκτόνοι· οἰὸρ γὰρ καλέουσι ἄνδρα, τὸ δὲ πατὰ κτείνειν; “the Scyths call the Amazons *Oiorpata*, and this word means in the Greek language “killers of men,” for their word for man is *oior* and for killing *pata*”), Aristotle, *Politics* V.11, 1313b25 and more generally *LSJ*, s.v. δύνάμα, II.3.</footnote>

<footnote n="60">60 Kessels (1978), 25–35.</footnote>
figure judges whether a given dream is “true” or “false”, i.e. whether the events it depicts will really take place or not. The general underlying assumption is that every dream is a vision of things liable to happen and is consequently to be evaluated as a prediction of the future. This attitude persists in Aristotle, who sometimes speaks of the “realization” of a dream (τὸ ἀποβῆναι τὸ ἐνύπνιον: *De divinatione per somnum* 463b8, 10, 22) whenever its prediction becomes true. During the classical period, however, the meaning of this κρίσις is observed to have evolved. What a dream predicts is no longer assumed to be obvious, one might for instance wonder what one’s dreaming of an eagle being devoured by a hawk (Aeschylus, *Persae*, 226), of a stalk eaten by a wolf (Euripides, *Hecuba*, 87–89), or of an olive-tree crown that encircles the world (Herodotus, VII.19), is supposed to predict. Before deciding whether a given dream is “true” or “false” as a prediction, it now seems necessary to understand “what it means”, i.e. which future events it might be predicting. Having become much more complex, the activity of interpreting dreams may call for professional assistance.

The verb κρίνειν thus refers in the passage to the activity by means of which one reconstructs the vision of the future encapsulated in a dream, which Aristotle assimilates to identifying the sensory experiences from which it results. In some cases, this presents little to no difficulty: some dreams are so close to everyday experience that their “meaning”, i.e. what they predict, is obvious, it would be laughable to turn to a professional to make sense of them. This is what, I take it, Aristotle has in mind when he speaks of a dream being εὐθυόνειρος.<fnref n="61" /> The analogy with reflections is meant to enlighten the way the “interpretation” process takes place when faced with more complicated dreams. It builds on the previous passage where disturbances and disruptions destroying the “immediate” character of a dream or weakening its “resemblance” to the original sense-object were accounted for. The “interpretation” of such distorted dreams requires a special ability to spot whichever connections have survived these disturbances, similar to the ability to piece together what is being reflected in a kaleidoscope.

<footnote n="61">61 The adjective is extremely rare and only occurs in a handful of other places in Aristotle (De divinatione per somnum 463a25, b16, 464a27; *Ethica Eudemia* VIII.2, 1248a40). Its meaning escapes a number of scholars (e.g. Eijk 1994, 333–334, in his otherwise commendable commentary, takes it to refer to the coherence of the sequence of events within one’s dreams). Centuries later, the professional dream-interpreter Artemidorus still distinguishes between ἐνύπνιον, a dream which represents present events, from ὄνειρος, a dream which represents things lying in the future (*Oneirocritica*, I.1–2). Although the former may be of interest to one’s doctor, the professional interpreter only deals with a subspecies of ὄνειρος. This is because an ὄνειρος that is θεωρηματικός has a transparent an obvious meaning, whereas one that is ἀλληγορικός makes use of a network of symbols and connections that only a skilled professional can decipher. I take the θεωρηματικός case to be practically identical to what Aristotle means by εὐθυονειρία.</footnote>
Again, the analogy focuses on potential resemblances between φαντάσματα and εἶδωλα on the one hand and the original sense-objects that have triggered the transmission process on the other. Tracing back φαντάσματα in this way is part of a retrospective attempt at making sense of dreams. That dreams are outcomes of such transmission processes is the reason why professional dream-interpreters are able to do what they do; their error when they believe that they offer predictions lies in believing that the starting-points of the transmission processes somehow lie ahead in the future. The analogy does not assume that the φάντασμα that is the dream possesses any representational content. The dreamer does not have to perform the work the interpreter does to see that which she sees when dreaming: she just sees a weird centaur, which the interpreter will then try to trace back, for instance, to a past or future encounter with a horse or a relative.

## 5.3 De memoria et reminiscentia 1, 450ᵇ¹⁸–451ᵃ²

Aristotle’s final definition of memory in *De memoria et reminiscentia* connects the notion of φάντασμα with the pictorial notion of εἰκών: a memory (μνήμη, an actual memory, not the capacity for remembering or its object) is “the possession of a φάντασμα as a *likeness* of that of which it is a φάντασμα” (*φαντάσματος, ὡς εἰκόνος οὖ φάντασμα, ἔξις, 451ᵃ¹⁵–¹⁶*). The word εἰκών normally refers to a painting or to a type of painting and not to a mental item. It is not part of Aristotle’s usual toolkit, its use in the definition of memory is to be understood in the light of an earlier analogy that compares the act of looking at a picture in a specific way with that of “possessing” a φάντασμα in a specific way.

The analogy is supposed to provide an answer to an *aporia* about memory (450ᵇ¹¹–¹⁵): if a memory is like a wax-seal produced in perceiving, does it have the imprint itself as its object or that which produced the imprint? In other words, does one remember the very thing that was perceived earlier or only its impact upon one’s perceptual system? One would like, presumably, to answer that we remember the thing itself, and not its mere trace. The issue is that that very thing is no longer available when we remember it, all that now persists is its trace. The analogy is meant to explain how the trace grants us access to the thing itself.

Πῶς οὖν τὸ μὴ παρὸν μνημονεύσει; Εἶπ γὰρ ἀν καὶ ὁρᾶν τὸ μὴ παρὸν καὶ ἀκούειν. Ἡ ἔστιν ὡς ἐνδέχεται καὶ συμβαίνει τοῦτο; Οἶον γὰρ τὸ ἐν πίνακι γεγραμμένον ζῶον καὶ ζῶόν ἐστι καὶ εἰκών, καὶ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ ἐν ταὐτ’ ἐστὶν ἄμφω, τὸ μέντοι εἶναι οὐ ταὐτὸν ἀμφοῖν, καὶ ἔστι θεωρεῖν καὶ ὡς ζῶον καὶ ὡς εἰκόνα, οὐτω καὶ τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν φάντασμα δεῖ ὑπολαβεῖν καὶ αὐτό τι καθ’ αὐτὸ εἶναι καὶ ἄλλου φάντασμα. Ἠι μὲν οὖν καθ’ αὐτό, θεώρημα ἢ φάντασμά ἐστιν, ἥ δ’ ἄλλου, οἶον εἰκών, καὶ μνημόνευμα. ὁστε καὶ ὅταν ἐνεργῇ ἡ κίνησις αὐτοῦ, ἀν μὲν ἢ καθ’ αὐτό ἐστι, ταὐτὴ αἰσθάνηται ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ, οἶον νόημά τι ἢ φάντασμα φαίνεται ἐπελθεῖν· ἀν δ’ ἦ ἄλλου καὶ ὥσπερ
ἐν τῇ γραφῇ ὡς εἰκόνα θεωρεῖ καί, μὴ ἐωρακὼς τὸν Κορίσκον, ὡς Κορίσκου, ἐνταῦθά τε ἄλλο τὸ πάθος τῆς θεωρίας ταύτης καὶ ὅταν ὡς ζῷον γεγραμμένον θεωρῇ· τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τὸ μὲν γίγνεται ὥσπερ νόημα μόνον, τὸ δ' ὡς ἐκεῖ, ὅτι εἰκών, μνημόνευμα.

How, then, are we able to remember that which is not present? It would amount to seeing and hearing that which is not present! Or is there a way in which this is possible and actually happens? For, (I) just as (I.1) the image drawn up on the canvass is both an image and a likeness (and the very same thing is both of these), even though their being is not the same in both cases, and (I.2) as one can envisage it both as an image and as a likeness, (II) in the same way one must assume (II.1) that the φάντασμα in us is both something in itself and a φάντασμα of something else: insofar, then, as it is in itself, it is an object of contemplation or a [mere] apparition, but insofar as it is of something else, as with a likeness, it is an object of memory. (II.2) As a result, when its motion is active, insofar as the soul perceives it as it is in itself, it appears to occur as an object or thought or as a [mere] apparition. But when [the soul perceives it] as being of something else, as one, in the painting's case, envisages it as a likeness and, without having just seen<sup>62</sup> Coriscus, as a likeness of Coriscus, in that case one experiences something different compared to what happens when one envisages it as a [mere] painting: within the soul, the one occurs only as an object of thought, while the other occurs, just as in the painting's case, because it is a likeness, as an object of memory. (De memoria et reminiscentia 1, 450<sup>b18</sup>-451<sup>a2</sup>)<sup>63</sup>

Aristotle is comparing (I) an item from the domain of artistic productions, namely a painting (ζῶον),<sup>64</sup> with (II) an item from the psychic realm, namely a φάντασμα. Both present (1) a duality of aspects, which in turn gives rises to (2) two possible attitudes towards them when they are cognitively accessed.

(I) A painting always represents something (Aristotle only considers figurative painting). (I.1) That which it represents is sometimes a mere figment of the painter's imagination, but it can also be something that really exists, in the case of a portrait of a historical figure or of a *veduta* of a landscape. If, then, the painting faithfully represents some real perceptible object, it qualifies as a “likeness” (εἰκών): this is

<footnote n="62">62 The perfect ἐωρακώς can hardly mean that one is supposed to have never encountered Coriscus before, one would hardly be able to recognize him in his likeness in that case.</footnote>

<footnote n="63">63 I have made a few minor changes to the way Ross (1955) edits or punctuates the text. The most notable ones are that I keep the transmitted φάντασμα and θεώρημα in the text in <sup>b25</sup> (following the manuscripts) and opt for ταῦτ' (with ἄμφω) instead of τοῦτ' in <sup>b22</sup>.</footnote>

<footnote n="64">64 The word ζῶον is sometimes taken to mean “animal” in this passage (for instance by Ross 1906), but the analogy becomes much weaker if the text is translated in this way. It is difficult to say that a picture and the “animal” it depicts are one and the same thing, whereas the φάντασμα on the other side of the analogy has a clear unity, whether it is taken καθ' αὐτό or ἄλλου. Even if one were to grant that a φάντασμα has a representational content, the analogy should hold between the “animal” and what the φάντασμα represents, not between the “animal” and the φάντασμα “in itself”. The general analogy has accordingly often been misconstrued, as if what Aristotle had in mind were a contrast between the representational content of a painting and its material or visual properties. The mistake has been denounced by Everson (1997), 196–7, with which Labarrière (2000), 279, and Lorenz (2006), 158–9, among others, have since then expressed agreement.</footnote>
the type of ζῶον Aristotle has in mind from the beginning of the analogy. When a painting is a likeness, the painting and the likeness are not, of course, two different objects, even though being a painting is not identical with being a likeness (many paintings are not likenesses in this sense). (I.2) Any painting can be envisaged either as a mere picture, if the viewer does not hold any special belief about the existence of that which it depicts, or as a likeness. In the latter case, the viewer takes the depicted content to be a real past or present object and assumes that the painting provides genuine information about it by reproducing some of its visual features. This alternative is valid whether the painting really is a likeness or not, so that two distinct errors might ensue: one might fail to recognize a likeness as a likeness, or one might believe a mere painting to be a likeness.

(II) The counterpart of a painting (ζῶον) within the analogy is a φάντασμα, the counterpart of a likeness (εἰκών) is a μνημόνευμα,<fnref n="65" /> a φάντασμα that reproduces the perceptual features of a sense-object that has been previously perceived.<fnref n="66" /> (II.1) Α φάντασμα may or may not be a φάντασμα of something else (ἄλλου). If it is, it is no longer a random fleeting mental content, it qualifies as a μνημόνευμα.

One may wonder about what it means for a φάντασμα to be “of something else”. Caston (2021) distinguishes here between what he calls a “referential” reading of the genitive attribute ἄλλου, according to which it picks out the fact that the φάντασμα in question refers or even “holds true” of some real object, and a “causal reading,” according to which it highlights the fact that the φάντασμα in question results from a certain cause. He argues in favour of the latter because he believes that the content generated in the φάντασμα, not the φάντασμα itself, is what reproduces features of the sense-object that is being remembered.

If there is any truth to the reconstruction sketched above, some version of the referential reading must be true – but one that does not ascribe intrinsic representational content to φαντάσματα. Taking one's cue from the painting-side of the analogy, the idea must be that a φάντασμα of the μνημόνευμα-type offers to the subject some cognitive access to an object that has been perceived in the past, and not just some random content. Paintings that qualify as likenesses achieve this in virtue of having a real object as their representational content, φαντάσματα of the μνημόνευμα-type

<footnote n="65">65 Α μνημόνευμα is distinct from a memory (μνήμη) insofar as the latter involves a μνημόνευμα being recognized as such. Aristotle is going to draw attention in what follows (451a3–5) to the fact that not every μνημόνευμα is recognized as such when it is generated: one sometimes does not believe it to stand in any actual relationship with the objects of one’s past perceptual experience, mistaking what would actually be remembering (if it were recognized as such) for daydreaming.</footnote>

<footnote n="66">66 Every φάντασμα results from an object which the subject has perceived according to Aristotle's theory of φαντασία, but not every φάντασμα remains identical to this sense-object (e.g. some dreams or hallucinations do not).</footnote>
achieve the same result in virtue of being “of some other object”. When Euripides’ Hecuba speaks of a φάντασμ΄ Αχιλλέως, I take it that it is part of what she means that what has appeared above the grave is really representing Achilleus and expressing his will, and that it does not result from an optical illusion or some other trick. Read along these lines, the genitive attribute ἄλλου expresses the fact that the relevant φάντασμα offers an apparition of a (past) real object, reproducing its perceptual features.

What unites paintings and φαντάσματα in the analogy is not that they both have intrinsic representational contents as proponents of the “image” rendering would claim, it is that in both cases a special class reproduces features of real objects and may be identified as such. The φαντάσματα involved in memories are copies of their causes, i.e. of the objects the perception of which has generated them. Yet merely “having” or experiencing them does not always entail apprehending their causes as their representational content: I may just be whistling again some ditty without being aware that I have heard it many times before.

(II.2) Actual remembering requires both the occurrence of a μνημόνευμα, a φάντασμα that reproduces the features of an object that has been perceived in the past, and its recognition as such by the subject. This second component is an attitude<fnref n="67" /> on the part of the subject experiencing the φάντασμα: I must grasp that what I am experiencing is something I have experienced before. The verb expressing this specific attitude towards the object in 450ᵇ²⁸ is here no longer an impersonal θεωρεῖν, but αἰσθάνεσθαι with the soul as its grammatical subject, which makes it clear that what we are dealing with is not a standard case of perception. Aristotle continues to use his preferred cognitive verb with an adverbial qualification that relies on the main phrases used to draw the previous distinction (θεωρεῖν ὡς ζῷον vs. θεωρεῖν ὡς εἰκόνα; αἰσθάνεσθαι ἦ καθ' αὐτό ἐστι vs. αἰσθάνεσθαι ἦ ἄλλου). He eventually switches to the language of affections “happening to the soul” towards the end of the passage in 451ᵃ¹. Such attitudes allow φαντάσματα to operate as representations of other objects: when experiencing a φάντασμα in this way, “as the apparition of some other object” (ἔ ἄλλου), one believes that one is acquiring information about a real (past) object in the world by means of one’s (present) φάντασμα.

<footnote n="67">67 The notion of “attitude” I am using is intended to correspond to the phrases “perceiving as ...” (αισθάνεσθαι ἦ ...) or “contemplating as ...” (θεωρεῖν ὡς ...) in Aristotle’s Greek, picking out a mental state oriented towards a content. Aristotle’s theory of memory takes into account experiences of doubts about this content (*De memoria* 1, 451ᵃ²–5), possibly resulting in deliberate attitudinal changes (I may realize that I have been misremembering something after having given it some thought), but does not try to offer a general explanation, let alone a causal one, of the coming-to-be of such attitudes as distinct from the coming-to-be of their content within one’s mind. It is still clear that it cannot always be a matter of rational decision, given that non-rational animals are perfectly capable of having memories (*De memoria* 1, 450ᵃ¹⁴–15).</footnote>
Following this account in *De memoria et reminiscentia* 1, the definition of memories, i.e. acts of remembering, must capture the following conditions: (a) remembering something requires having a φάντασμα; (b) this φάντασμα must faithfully reproduce some object which the subject has previously perceived; (c) the subject must take this φάντασμα to be a faithful reproduction of this past object. If condition (c) is not met, the subject may think that she is just imagining or inventing something, without realizing that she has encountered it before. If condition (b) is not met, the subject may think that she is actually remembering something even though what she is now being presented with is not identical to what she had perceived.

*Definition of memories: a memory (μνήμη) is “the possession of a φάντασμα as a likeness of that of which it is a φάντασμα” (φαντάσματος, ὡς εἰκόνος οὖν φάντασμα, ἔξις, 451ª15–16).*

Condition (a) is captured by the language of a “possession” of a φάντασμα in Aristotle’s definition. Condition (c) is captured by the notion of “likeness” (εἰκών), as having a φάντασμα “as a likeness” is a condensed version of the pictorial analogy in which Aristotle draws the distinction between merely having a φάντασμα and taking a φάντασμα to reproduce the features of some determinate object. The only element that remains in the definition offered to express condition (b) is the relative clause (οὖ φάντασμα, “of that of which it is a φάντασμα”).

Rendering φάντασμα by means of “image” or “representation” in Aristotle’s definition generates difficulties, since memories involve attitudes directed at the content of one’s representations. These translations are rescued by the relative clause. If the definition is translated “having a representation as a likeness of that of which it is a representation”, the last part picks out the content of the representation: being a representation of X means in this context that X is the content of the representation at stake.

Is this what this relative clause οὖ φάντασμα means? According to the interpretation I have been defending, the clause cannot be intended to distinguish between a representation and its content, because φάντασμα already refers to a content of awareness. A sure sign that such translations are mistaken is that they fail to capture a crucial element of Aristotle’s conception of memory. Defining a memory merely as a state in which the content of one’s representation is envisaged as a “depiction” of some past object fails to draw any distinction between cases of actual remembering and cases of misremembering or erroneous memories in which the subject takes her φάντασμα to faithfully represent a real object whereas her φάντασμα does not. Yet these cases are acknowledged as distinct by Aristotle and should not fall under his official definition of memory.

Being “of something” for a φάντασμα in this relative clause need not mean the same thing as being “of something” for a representation or an image. It is a truism that each and every representation or image is “of something” given that it
necessarily has some representational content.<fnref n="68" /> If Aristotle’s definition is to be consistent with his general account of memory in *De memoria et reminiscentia* 1, “to be of something” (τινός) must mean for a φάντασμα that it stands in a special relationship with the object to which the genitive term refers. It will accordingly not be the case that every φάντασμα is a φάντασμα of something, being “of something” will single out the μνημόνευμα-type. My proposal is that οὖ φάντασμα operates along the same lines in Aristotle’s definition of memory as the attribute ἄλλου in the analogy-passage, expressing the fact that the relevant φάντασμα is an apparition of some real (past) object, corresponding to condition (b) above.

As with the analogy about dreams, then, the representational aspect of the mnemonic situations Aristotle is describing stems from the specific attitude one adopts towards one's φάντασμα in these situations: the φάντασμα is envisaged as a product of a specific transmission or reproduction process, it is assumed to bear features that are identical or similar to the cause of the process. In cases of successful dream-interpretation or remembering, the perceiver (or the hired expert) identifies the properties of the φάντασμα that reflect its causal history and is thus able to mediately cognize its cause. These are highly specific activities. Merely experiencing a φάντασμα, which cannot be much more complex than perceiving, requires no such thing.

It is therefore important to keep separate (i) the sense-objects from which perception the φάντασμα results and (ii) what one experiences with the φάντασμα. In the case of a memory-φάντασμα the two are identical and the subject is aware of their being identical if remembering successfully occurs. As a result, it makes sense to follow Aristotle’s lead and to speak of this kind of φάντασμα as “representing” or “being of” the object which had been perceived in the past, given that the subject is using this φάντασμα to gain cognitive access to the past. “Interpreting” a dream is similar, although the distance between the two might be much larger, in that one is still able to trace back the φάντασμα to its cause. When no such effort is made to identify the cause of a given φάντασμα, the pictorial or representational aspect that is part of such experiences disappears. When hallucinating and merely “seeing” a particular φάντασμα, the subject does not envisage this content of her hallucination as granting her some access to other things (even though the hallucination must be, on Aristotle’s view, caused by some past or present perception): the content of one’s hallucination is envisaged exactly as a standard object of perception would be.

<footnote n="68">68 It makes no difference for once whether φάντασμα is assumed to mean “representation” (of which the subject is aware) or “content-bearing physiological motion” (of which the subject is usually not aware as such). Both items are necessarily “of something” in that they always have a representational content, unless one construes with Caston (2021) a special “causal” interpretation of the genitive.</footnote>
Causal ancestry and representation are two different notions. Conflating them becomes especially problematic as soon as cognition is involved. Rendering “contemplating” (θεωρεῖν) a φάντασμα and the likes with “seeing an image” tends to imply that the subject of such a process needs to be aware of two aspects: the “image” which is directly experienced and its representational content which is only accessed by means of the “image”. If one does not grasp the latter, it is a case of cognitive failure. Yet experiencing a φάντασμα does not always entail grasping an alleged representational content. A φάντασμα plays the same role as an object of perception,<fnref n="69" /> successfully experiencing it does not require cognizing anything else over and above it.

# 6 Conclusions

Aristotle’s use of the term φάντασμα is rooted in ancient Greek linguistic practice: it refers to what appears in a quasi-perceptual way in situations that go beyond normal perception, without presupposing any particular explanation of the phenomenon. According to Aristotle’s theory of φαντασία, the subject of perception is presented with a φάντασμα whenever φαντασία occurs as some motions are triggered in the subject’s perceptual system. These motions originate in prior perceptions of sense-objects whose physiological effects on the perceptual system, the relevant αἰσθήματα, have led to the persistence of some similar physiological processes. This physiological feature of remanence in the perceptual system is supposed to explain how the subject of perception may be presented with some perceptual content without being affected by the corresponding sense-objects at the time. Readers of Aristotle should not assume, however, that Aristotle’s theory of φαντασία as a by-product of the activity of sense-perception is implied as soon as they encounter the term φάντασμα, which just picks out the content of awareness in such quasi-sensory situations.

The meaning of φάντασμα in Aristotle comes close to what one could nowadays describe as the content of a mental representation. Translators may, then, feel tempted to take the shortcut of using “(mental) image” or “representation” as its rendering. This little trick is harmless in some contexts, but it becomes devastating as soon as Aristotle focuses on the relationship between a φάντασμα and its causal antecedents or on the complex ways in which subjects may envisage their own φαντάσματα. The notion of “mental representation,” like that of “mental image,” is

<footnote n="69">69 Like thought, φαντασία has the “power of the things” themselves (τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων δύναμιν, *De motu animalium* 7, 701ᵇ¹⁹): that of which we are aware in virtue of it may have the same effects upon us as a body we perceive (e.g. that of making us move towards it or away from it). See also *De anima* III.3, 428ᵇ¹⁴–¹⁸.</footnote>
intentional. In “imaginistic” and “homuncular” language, it conveys the idea that there is an important distinction between what one “sees” with the mind’s eye, namely the “mental image”, and what the image represents: the representation is directly present in the mind, the content is not. Aristotle would certainly agree that picturing a horse does not involve having a literal horse in one’s soul.<fnref n="70" /> However, there is no such duality between a φάντασμα and its content. When one remembers a tune, the φάντασμα is straightforwardly the tune one “hears” or “sings” in one’s head insofar as it “appears”. It is a mental quasi-sense-object that plays a role analogous, not to the modern notion of “mental representation,” but to its content.

The intentionality Aristotle is concerned with whenever he explicitly describes a φάντασμα as a picture happens at the level of the attitude one adopts towards the φάντασμα, and not within the φάντασμα itself. Every φάντασμα bears traces of its causal ancestry in virtue of the way it comes to be (it is in some cases a near-perfect replica of the original sense-object it has as its cause) but experiencing it does not necessarily require envisaging these traces as traces. Such complex attitudes only take place in specific cases, such as dream-interpretation and remembering. Aristotle illustrates them by means of pictorial analogies, not because every φάντασμα is picture-like in that it possesses a representational content, but because, as a copy, a φάντασμα can be envisaged in its relationship with its own model. These intricacies, as well as the force of Aristotle’s pictorial analogies, are obliterated when “image” or “representation” are substituted for φάντασμα: there is nothing tremendously stimulating in comparing an image to a painting or even to a reflection. Conflating the content of a representation with the representation itself makes it near-impossible to talk with some precision about attitudes towards representational content. If philosophical accuracy is to be given priority, I suspect that we should perhaps not settle for these seemingly convenient translations of φάντασμα in Aristotle.<fnref n="71" />

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