Week 3: The Soul

Reading Questions:

Q: What is the realm of being the soul belongs to, and what does that imply for our souls? (402a6)

Q: Of what is the soul supposed to be the ‘first principle?’ (402a6), and what does it mean to be ‘the first principle of something? [Consider: plants also have a soul]

Q: What are the features of the soul, which seem to require that the soul be ‘with body?’ Which features might be able to obtain in a soul that is not embodied? (403a6, 403a16).

Q: Aristotle offers a material and a formal account of anger (403a30-33). What are they?

Q: Name ‘movements’ of the soul (408a34)

Q: Aristotle says that in some cases it is better to say that the man performs the movement we ascribe to the soul, and that here it is not necessarily the case that the soul is moved. What is his reason? (408b3; 408b17)

Q: Aristotle enumerates three traits that characterize a body as living body. What are they? (412a13) Do they hold of everything we call life today? (Think of viruses).

Q and observation: For the opaque definitions of soul in Book II., Chapter1, compare the study question below. But read and pay attention to 412a21 and 412a27.

Q: Living bodies “have in themselves a source of movement and rest” (412b17). Try to say, what it is for a being to have a source of movement (an ‘out of which’) in itself, as distinguished from things that are not self-moving but are changing according to internal principles (Physics 192b14).

Q: What are the movements that are sufficient for diagnosing that a living being is alive? (413a23)

Q: What is the only potentiality of soul in plants? (413a25-35)

Q: In a hierarchy of soul elements, plants, non-human animals and human beings have souls that distinguish their kinds of life. What soul elements or combinations of soul elements do each of these realms have? (413b1-27; 414a31-414b19).

Q: What is Aristotle’s reason for classifying the soul as form? 414a13).

Q: Why aren’t there beings, which have only perception, but not the other soul-based faculties – or only thought and nutrition, but not perception? (415a)

Q: What do nourishment and reproduction have in common? (415a24; 416a21; 416b14)

Q: In which ways is the soul an efficient cause, a final cause, and a formal cause? (415b9-12)

Q: What is ‘intellect?’ (429a22)

Q: What could Aristotle mean when he says: “that part of the soul called intellect is actually none of existing things before it thinks?” (429a23)

Q: Aristotle seems to think that the intellect is not tied to the body in the same way affects and perceptions are. Try to conceptualize that distinctness of intellect from body. (429b6-9). If it does not mean that there is a thinking part of the soul that can be unembodied, what else can this distinctness consist in?

Q: “Given that the intellect is simple and unaffected and has nothing in common with anything else” (429b23) – what does that mean, and what are the consequences? (Consider that whatever is a compound is such that the functions of one part depend on the functions of the other part, as in form and matter for the compound ‘individual substance; also consider what it means to be able to be active without being affected by anything)

Q: Thinking is the activity of the intellect. What, then, does Aristotle say in: “Actual knowledge is identical with its object?” (431a1)

Study Questions:

I. What is a Soul? (412a19; 412a27; 414a13)

How is the soul related to the body? (403a5-403b4; 412b17)

Can either of them exist without the other? (403a16-18; 408b18).

What roles does the body play for the soul – what roles does the soul play for the body? (415b8-415b28; 416b14415b23)

II. Faculties and parts of the soul (412a12; 413a20-414a14; 414a31-414b19; 415a15-415b2)

Make a list of soul-based faculties, or parts of the soul as mentioned in our chapters of De Anima. Try to define the specific function each one has for the life of the individual living substance whose soul that is. Think about features that distinguish those faculties, in particular for the triad ‘appetitive soul/soul element, perceptive soul element, intellectual soul element. Do the different divisions serve purposes that contribute to the life of the living being? What are they?

III. Thinking and Intellect: (403a7; 408b18-30)

What is it to think, as distinct from desiring, perceiving, feeling? Try to imagine a purpose for the intellect? In which way is the intellect said to be different from the other faculties of the soul? Does thinking involve more than just the use of the intellect?