Download Phi 260: History of Philosophy I and more Lecture notes History in PDF only on Docsity! Phi 260: History of Philosophy I Prof. Brandon C. Look University of Kentucky Spring 2007 Aristotle’s De Anima I. The Nature of the Soul What is the soul? According to Aristotle, it is a “sort of principle of animals.” (402a7) But what sort of principle? As we saw in the Physics, substances are composites of matter and form. In De Anima, Aristotle appeals not only to this account of substance, but also to an understanding of form and matter as actuality and potentiality. And he goes on to claim that the “soul (psuchē) … must be substance as the form (eidos) of a natural body (sōma) that is potentially alive.” (412a20) In other words, the soul is the form of the body of a living substance. (Those things are said to be living that engage in self-nourishment, growth, and decay. (412a15)) In a later passage (417a22ff), Aristotle further distinguishes between different kinds of actuality and potentiality; he claims that, for example, there are different senses in which one can be said to be a knower: (a) insofar as one is a human being (that is, one has a general innate capacity/potentiality); (b) insofar as one has some bit of grammatical knowledge (i.e. one has actual knowledge which gives one the capacity or potential to act in a certain way); or (c) insofar as one is actively attending something in thought (that is, one’s knowledge is fully actual because one is using employing it at the time). In Aristotelian jargon, these correspond to the following: (a) First potentiality (b) Second potentiality = First actuality (c) Second actuality Therefore, according to Aristotle, “the soul is the first actuality of a natural body that is potentially alive.” (412a27) In other words, the soul contributes to the body a certain kind of capacity to act in certain ways. But this view has the consequence that “the soul is not separable from the body.” (413a4) Or, as he puts it later, the soul “requires a body; for it is not a body, but it belongs to a body, and for that reason it is present in a body, and in this sort of body.” (414a21- 22) So, here we have another important point of disagreement with Plato, who held that the soul is separable from the body. (In De Anima III.4-5, however, Aristotle brings up what has come to be known as the “active intellect”, and some have suggested that this can exist apart from the body. It does, for example, in the case of god.) II. The Functions of the Soul In De Anima II.2, Aristotle begins his discussion of the different functions of souls, which leads to his account of the hierarchy of souls. (1) Nutritive soul. All living beings have “an internal potentiality and principle through which they both grow and decay in contrary directions. For they grow up and down and in all directions alike, not just up rather than down; they are continually nourished, and they stay alive as long as they can absorb nutrition.” (413a28) That is, this is basic and common to all forms of life.
