Phantasiai — the plural of phantasia, denoting discrete sensory representations or appearances produced by the faculty of imagination — occupies a contested and generative position across the depth-psychology corpus. The term operates on at least two distinct theoretical registers. In the Aristotelian tradition, as Hendrik Lorenz demonstrates with sustained precision, phantasiai are understood as preserved sensory affections, changes arising from perceptual activity that persist after the original stimulus has passed. They serve as the cognitive bridge between perception and desire-formation, functioning as necessary conditions for purposive locomotion in animals capable of it: desire that underwrites goal-directed movement requires a suitable phantasia. Lorenz carefully distinguishes perceptual phantasia, available to all sentient animals, from rational phantasia, which involves reasoning and is restricted to humans. In the Stoic tradition, as treated by Hadot, Inwood, and Sorabji, phantasiai assume a different valence: they are impressions that strike the soul prior to assent, and their management — whether through withholding judgment, cultivating correct presentations, or examining their propositional content — constitutes the central practical task of Stoic ethics. The tension between these two traditions is irreducible: for Aristotle, phantasiai are primarily motivational mediators embedded in a naturalistic psychology; for the Stoics, they are the first site of cognitive and ethical intervention. Nussbaum and Sorabji trace the therapeutic and moral dimensions of this contrast.
‘Affections suitably prepare the organic parts, desire [sc. suitably prepares] affections, phantasia [sc. suitably prepares] desire; and phantasia arises through thought or through perception’
Lorenz identifies the De Motu Animalium ‘chain of movers’ passage as the locus classicus for Aristotle’s thesis that phantasia is a necessary intermediate between perception and desire in the production of purposive locomotion.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
I shall use the same word, and also (I regret to say) the plural phantasiai, to refer to sensory representations.
Lorenz establishes his terminological commitment to using ‘phantasiai’ to denote the products — sensory representations — of the faculty of phantasia, distinguishing the capacity from its exercises.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
He thinks of phantasiai as changes or affections that occur as a result of the activity of perception.
Lorenz articulates Aristotle’s core naturalistic account of phantasiai as kinetic residues of perceptual activity, grounding their role in the physiology of animal soul.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
The visualizations in question are phantasiai. Aristotle rather naturally extends this idea and claims that visualizing is required, not only for grasping an object of thought in the first place, but also for subsequent acts of remembering.
Lorenz argues that phantasiai are necessary not only for desire and locomotion but for all acts of intellectual memory, demonstrating their indispensability across Aristotle’s psychology.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
‘Every phantasia is either such as to involve reasoning or perceptual. In the latter, then, the other animals share also’ (De Anima 3.10, 433b 29–30).
Lorenz foregrounds Aristotle’s division of phantasia into rational and perceptual kinds, with perceptual phantasia being the form available to non-human animals and sufficient to support desire and locomotion.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
Forming a desire that can support, and account for, goal-directed locomotion requires having some suitable phantasia.
Lorenz presents his refined thesis that phantasia is specifically required for locomotion-supporting desire, not for all forms of desire, sharpening the scope of Aristotle’s claim.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
Phantasiai only come in later, in section (3), when Aristotle turns to thought, apparently intending a contrast to what precedes: ‘But to the thinking soul, phantasiai serve as percepts.’
Lorenz observes that phantasiai serve the rational soul as perceptions serve the animal soul, indicating their mediating cognitive status in Aristotle’s account of thinking.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
In both passages, Aristotle proposes to account for animal locomotion in terms of cognition and desire… he credits all or almost all non-human animals with phantasia and at the same time denies them the capacity for thinking.
Lorenz shows that phantasia, distinct from thinking, is Aristotle’s cognitive mechanism for explaining animal locomotion in beings that lack rational deliberation.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
Marc Aurèle a souvent tendance à confondre jugement et représentation (phantasia), c’est-à-dire à identifier la représentation avec le discours intérieur qui en énonce le contenu et la valeur.
Hadot identifies a characteristic Stoic tension in Marcus Aurelius between phantasia as raw impression and as already-interpreted judgment, with the command ‘Efface les représentations’ placed alongside ‘Supprime ton jugement.’
, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 2002thesis
Marc Aurèle parle d’un enchaînement de représentations, alors qu’il s’agit d’un syllogisme… ces phantasiai logikai, de ces représentations abstraites auxquelles nous avons fait allusion plus haut.
Hadot documents Marcus Aurelius’s extension of phantasia to include abstract, logical representations — phantasiai logikai — produced by intellectual operations, complicating the standard perceptual account.
, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 1995supporting
If desire in fact requires phantasia, as it seems to do according to De Anima 3.10–11, then it turns out that animals of all kinds must have phantasia.
Lorenz traces the implication of Aristotle’s linking desire to pleasure and pain: if all animals feel pleasure and therefore desire, and desire requires phantasia, all animals must possess phantasia.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
Perception and, in particular, phantasia, as he conceives of them, can, or anyhow are meant to be able to, account for an animal’s ability to envisage prospects that are suitable to its circumstances.
Lorenz argues that Aristotle’s theory of phantasia, in concert with perception, is designed to explain the situation-sensitive prospective envisaging that underlies appropriate animal motivation.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
For animals which are capable of locomotion, what imparts locomotion to them is the capacity for desire acting in concert with the capacity for phantasia.
Lorenz establishes the joint sufficiency of desire and phantasia — not either alone — as the proximate cause of animal locomotion in Aristotle’s account.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
It is possible for an animal to be capable of desire without being capable of phantasia.
Lorenz presents the counterintuitive Aristotelian thesis that some animals can desire without phantasia, restricting phantasia’s necessity to locomotion-generating rather than all desire.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
Origen De Principiis 3.1.2: phantasiai . . . hormēn prokaloumenai.
Inwood cites the ancient formula linking phantasiai to impulse (hormē) in Stoic psychology, establishing presentations as the initiating cause of motivated action.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985supporting
‘We have given you a certain portion of ourself, this power of pursuit and avoidance, of desire and aversion, and put it simply, the power to use appearances (phantasiai)’ (1.1.12).
Nussbaum cites Epictetus’s formulation in which the rational faculty is defined precisely as the capacity to use phantasiai, making the right employment of appearances the constitutive mark of human rationality.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994supporting
Aspasius affirmed that ‘certain emotions are generated simply by impressions [phantasiai],’ that is, they arise ‘as a result of perception (aisthesis) when something appears pleasant or painful’; hence they are prior to any supposition.
Konstan documents Aspasius’s peripatetic critique of the judgment-centered account of emotion, arguing that some emotions are generated directly by phantasiai, prior to and independent of propositional supposition.
, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006supporting
Phantasia benefits from his generous notion of what can be perceived through the senses. Phantasia can thus apprehend, not only perceptual…
Lorenz shows that the range of phantasia in Aristotle is as wide as the range of perception, enabling it to represent not just simple sensibles but the full richness of perceptually accessible objects.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
‘Memory also of intelligibles does not occur without a phantasia’ (450a 12–13).
Lorenz cites Aristotle’s De Memoria claim that even intellectual memory requires phantasia, establishing that phantasiai are structurally indispensable across the full range of cognitive acts.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
The appearances (visa) entertained by the mind…
Sorabji gestures toward Epictetus’s account of initial appearances (phantasiai rendered as visa) as the site of involuntary proto-emotional response, distinct from full assented emotion.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000aside
Aristotle’s theory of human psychology not only leaves room for, but in fact requires, a conception of non-rational cognition that is applicable to ordinarily developed, adult human beings.
Lorenz argues that phantasia-based non-rational cognition is not a marginal or backup system in Aristotle but a permanent, co-operative element of adult human psychology alongside rational deliberation.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006aside