Aristotle’s

De Anima:

“On the Soul”

Friday, March 4th, 2016

The Project

– “Psychology” : the study of the soul.

– Naturally a part of biology for Aristotle

– The soul is identified with the form of a living thing

– Organizes his study into three parts

– 1. Problems surrounding understanding the soul

– 2. Attempts at a Definition

– 3. Hierarchy of parts and types of the soul

Knowledge of the Soul

– For Aristotle, knowledge of the soul is one of the finer and more honorable

types of knowing.

– Why? Because the soul is a sort of principle of animals. (402a6) It is more exact and

concerned with more wonderful things (402a2)

– But knowledge of the soul is difficult to determine. We want to know what the soul is

– its substance. But (as noted above) “different things…have different principles”.

(402a20)

– Difficult to reach any conviction about the soul because people think we need a

single line of inquiry. If not single, then where to divide? Where to start? (402a10)

What is the soul?

– So how do we figure out what the soul is?

– First: determine the soul’s genus. I.e., under what category does the soul fall? Is it “a

this and a substance, or a quality, or a quantity…” or something else? Is it potential or

actual? Is it divisible or indivisible? How do different souls differ in different species?

– Should we inquire into the whole soul or its parts?

– Should we try to know what-it-is in order to know its coincidental properties?

– Or should we know its coincidental properties in order to know what-it-is? (402b20)

What is distinctive about the

soul?

– Aristotle suggests “Understanding.” Why?

– Because in other cases (like anger or confidence or perception), the body seems to

be needed for the soul to be affected or act.

– But maybe the soul requires a body!

– An argument: Suppose all affections of the soul require a body (as they seem to), if

so,

then clearly affections are forms that involve matter.”

Who should study the soul?

– As a result, study of the soul would be for students of nature.

– As opposed to whom? – Dialecticians.

– “The student of nature describes the matter, whereas the dialectician

describes the form and the account” (403b)

– Aristotle then asks: “is the <real> student of nature more properly the one

who mentions both form and matter?

– What do you think?

Conclusion of Book I

– The affections of the soul, as such, are inseparable from the natural matter of

animals (unlike surface and line).

– This is significant! It means Aristotle’s conception of life requires more than

mere geometrical or material exposition.

– But we haven’t yet received a complete picture of what the soul is. Aristotle

returns to this in Book II.

Book II

What is the soul?

Substance?

– Every living natural body is a [compound] substance. The soul cannot be a body, since

the body <is substance> as subject and matter.

– So the soul must be substance as the form of a natural body that is potentially alive. But

for some matter to be a substance it must be an actual thing, not merely a potential

thing, so the soul is the actuality of this sort of body (a living one). (412a17-22)

– It follows from this that the question “are the soul and body one thing [or two things?”

because, like some wax and the seal made with it, “the actuality <and what it actualizes>

are fully one.”(412b8)

– But it’s still unclear how / in what way the soul is the actuality of the body.

“Oh Come On!” How

can you possibly

know that it’s Yorick

without a proper

forensic

reconstruction?”

Determining “What-it-isness”…

Method

– Aristotle returns to the method he spoke of in the Physics – just as we did with bodies

and causes in general: “Since what is perspicuous and better known from the point of

view of reason emerges from what is less perspicuous but more evident, we must start

again and apply this approach to the soul.” (413a10-15)

– “If an eye were an animal…sight would be its soul” (412b19-20).

– Apply this principle to the whole body. An animal is a soul + body.

– Therefore, the soul is not separable from the body.

Living: What Distinguishes

Things With Souls

– Living is what distinguishes things with souls from things without souls. How does

Aristotle define ‘living’? – whatever has any ONE (or more) of the properties he lists:

understanding, perception, locomotion, nourishment, decay, growth.

– So plants are alive. Because they have the ‘nutritive’ part of the soul.

– Perception is what makes things animals.

– Understanding seems to be a different kind of soul – because it can be separated

in some way.

– Therefore, a soul is not a body, but requires a body – but not just any old body.

– A thing’s actuality naturally comes to be in what has potentiality for it (414a25).

The “proper sort” of body:

– Aristotle’s predecessors were wrong to

try to fit the soul into a body without

determining the “proper sort of body”.

– A soul can only come to be in the

proper matter and therefore requires

the proper sort of body.

Differing potentials

– Some things with souls have all the potentialities (ways a soul can be), some only have some, and some only have one. (414a30)

– Plants: only nutritive part.

– Animals: have nutritive and perception parts.

– Some things have the locomotive parts (presumably animals have this).

– Human beings (and any thinking thing!) have the thinking part / intellect.

– As a result of the plurality of potentialities, it is “ridiculous” to give a common account that isn’t distinctive of any being. Doesn’t this sound like a criticism of Plato’s account of Forms?

– So we must ask what the soul of each particular kind of thing is.

Parts of the Soul

– Next, Aristotle asks in what order we should

investigate the parts of the soul. What is it?

Nutritive

– Nutritive first – because it is the most widely shared. The one that makes all living

things alive.

– Its functions: generation and the use of nourishment.

– Side note: The soul is the cause in three of the four ways Aristotle

distinguishes: it is the source of motion, what something is for, and is the

substance (i.e., form) of ensouled bodies. (415b10)

– The soul nourishes; the ensouled body is nourished, and it is nourished by

nourishment.

Perception

– Perception next – it occurs in being moved and affected.

– Why do we not perceive the senses themselves? The perceptive part is <what it

is> by merely potential, not actual, <perceiving>, and so it does not perceive

<without an external object> (417a5-10).

– We speak of perceiving in two ways: (1) as potential and (2) as actual.

– Two types of potentiality: ‘being affected’ and ‘being altered’.

– “actual perception is of particulars, while knowledge is of universals.”

(417b21)

– Universals for Aristotle are “in a way, in the soul itself”.

Book III

The Intellect – Being Human…

The Intellect

– Finally, the part ‘by which the soul has knowledge and intelligence’ (429a10)

– The intellect has a purely potential nature. I.e., it’s not actually any of the

things that there are, before it understands. As a result, it can’t be “mixed with

the body” since then it would acquire qualities of the body in the way that

perception does (because of what the perceptual organs are made of).

– Unreasonable for the intellect to be mixed with the body – for then it would

have some organ when in fact, it has none (429a25).

– So Plato is right, “except that it is the intellectual soul, not the whole soul, which is—

potentially, not actually—the forms.” (429a29)

What moves you?

Desire

– The part of the soul that moves us is called ‘desire’. (433b)

– There are two types of movers: the unmoved mover and the moved mover.

– “The unmoved mover is the good achievable in action, and the moved mover is the desiring part; for the thing that is moved is moved insofar as it desires, and desire, insofar as it is actual, is a sort of motion.” (433b15-20)

– The thing moved is the animal.

– An animal moves itself insofar as it has desire. Desire requires appearance which is either rational or perceptual.

– Desire lacks deliberation, the intellect is what reasons for some goal and is concerned with action.

– The part that has knowledge stays at rest and is not moved.

Questions?