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Aristoteles De Anima On Soul

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Title: Aristoteles De Anima On Soul


1
AristotelesDe Anima (On Soul)
  • The Nature of Living Things
  • (Human Beings Included)

2
The De Anima
  • The subject of Aristoteles De Anima (or Peri
    Psukhe) is soul, this being conceived
    simultaneously as
  • the thing that makes us human beings human beings
    and
  • the thing that makes living things in general
    living things
  • In a way, then, this work contains both
    Aristoteles philosophy of manas this sort of
    thing was called well into the 20th centuryand
    the foundations of his biology
  • For Aristoteles, theres absolutely nothing
    supernatural about soul soul is present in every
    living thing, from the most primitive of plants
    and animals all the way up to us soul is
    indeed the very nature living things

3
The De Anima
  • This is why, at the very beginning of Book I,
    Aristoteles says this
  • The study ofsoulcontributes greatly to the
    advance of truth in general, and, above all, to
    our understanding of nature, for the soul is in
    some sense the principle or source of animal
    life (402a4-5)
  • Though he doesnt present his own conception of
    soul until the beginning of Book II, Ive
    presented it right at the beginning of my
    discussion of the De Anima in the Study Guide,
    because knowing where Aristoteles is headed in
    this book does a great deal to help one to
    understand the discussions even in the first
    chapter of Book I, so first, a brief review of
    what I say there.

4
The De Anima
  • On Aristoteles view
  • Soul is simply the complex of powers (i.e.,
    faculties, or in other words, abilities and
    capacities) possessed by living organisms
  • The power of self-nourishment, growth, and
    reproduction
  • The power of desire (the capacity to feel hunger
    and thirst, etc.)
  • The power of sensation (including at least the
    power of touch)
  • The power of movement (i.e., the power of
    locomotion)
  • The power of imagination (including the power of
    memory)
  • The power of thought (including the powers of
    understanding, judgment, and reason)
  • These arent powers soul has these are the
    powers of which soul consists
  • So to say it once more on Aristoteles view,
    soul just is this complex of vital powers, and
    they are its parts or components

5
The De Anima
  • Furthermore, according to Aristoteles
  • Though the parts of soul might be spoken of as
    souls (in the plural), and though Aristoteles
    himself often speaks in this way, in every other
    sense, soul is onethe one set of vital powers
  • Of which every human being has all, and
  • Of which every non-human animal and every plant
    has just some
  • Being a set of powers, soul never came to be and
    never will cease to be, but it cant be said to
    be immortal, because it isnt a living thing (and
    while were on the subject only the gods are
    immortal according to Aristoteles you and I are
    not)
  • While we have soul, we arent souls were living
    things things of flesh and blood alive for a
    time, just as a marble is a bit of glass that can
    roll any which way for just as longprecisely as
    longas it keeps its spherical shape

6
The De AnimaBook I
  • In the first chapter of Book I, Aristoteles
    begins by
  • Talking about the dignity, the usefulness, and
    the difficulty of the study of soul,
  • Making a few remarks about his aim and about the
    question of just what methods hell have to use,
    and
  • Enumerating the problems his investigation will
    need to solve
  • Once hes laid out those problems he turns, in
    chapters 2-5 of Book I (which werent assigned),
    to a discussion of the views of at least some of
    his predecessors on the subject of soula
    discussion thats not at all easy to follow even
    for readers with a good sense of the relevant
    history

7
The De AnimaBook I
  • So for now, lets just look at that list of
    problems
  • In which of the summa genera does soul lie? Is it
    a substance? Or is it an attribute of some
    sortsay a quality or a quantity?
  • Is soul divisible or without parts? If it has
    parts, are these alike or do they differ, and if
    so, how? Specifically or generically?
  • Can soul be defined in a single, unambiguous
    formula or not?
  • If what exists isnt many souls, but many parts
    of one soul, which should we investigate first?
    The whole or the parts?
  • Also, should we examine the various parts of soul
    first, or the activities they underlie, and if
    the latter, then shouldnt we really begin with
    these activities objects?
  • Are the affections of soul all affections of the
    complex of body and soul, or are any peculiar to
    soul by itself? (Can soul exist apart from body,
    and how are we to define souls affections?)

8
The De AnimaBook II
  • In Book II, Aristoteles makes his usual fresh
    start, and, in nine pages flat, both answers
    nearly all of his questions and fleshes his
    answers out with concepts that derive from the
    core of his metaphysics
  • First, Aristoteles general answers to his
    questions
  • Soul is substancespecifically, the form of a
    living thing (i)
  • Soul does have parts (or forms), and they differ
    in such a way that one cannot define them in one
    unambiguous formula (ii-iii)
  • The right way to proceed, then, is to begin with
    the parts (or forms) of soul and to seek
    definitions of these (iii, end)
  • But this means going back to the activities,
    and prior to them, to their objects (iv,
    beginning)
  • Unless mind is an exception, soul is inseparable
    from body (i-ii)

9
The De AnimaBook II
  • And now for the details.
  • Soul is first defined (in chapter i) as
  • A substance in the sense of the form of a natural
    body having life potentially within it
    (412a19-20) this already implies that its one
  • The first grade of actuality of a natural body
    having life potentially in it (412a27-28)
  • The first grade of actuality of a natural,
    organized body (412b5)
  • The essential whatness of a natural, organized
    body (412b12)
  • These definitions all apply to soul in its
    full extent (412b10)
  • Next, it is defined (in chapter ii) as
  • An actuality or formulable essence of something
    that possesses a potentiality of being besouled
    (414a26-27) this means the definition must
    include a specification of the kind or character
    of the body that possesses soul, and that means
    that our study is a part of physics (cf.
    403a24-403b19)
  • But this means (chapter iii) that if we wish to
    give the most adequate definition of soul
    (415a12)

10
The De AnimaBook II
  • We must seek in the case of each of its forms
    for the most appropriate definition (415a13)
  • And this, then, is what Aristoteles proceeds to
    try to do in chapters iv-xii of Book II and
    chapters i-v of Book III, chapters devoted to
    detailed analyses of each of the parts or forms
    of soul.
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