The Soul
Difficult reading! Many undefined technical terms. Don’t give up too fast! You may want to put the reading questions next to your text. Turn to the question when one of the indicated passages comes up.
After a first run, go to the study questions you find further down.
Reading
Questions:
Q: 412a13: Aristotle enumerates three traits that characterize life. What are they? Do they hold of everything we call life today? (Viruses?).
Q: 412a18-412a21 and 412a27 introduce opaque definitions of soul. Think about the technical terms: substance, form, potentially. Substance is actuality. Individual living beings are substances. Substances have form and matter. Living beings are units of body and soul. What might count as their form, and on account of which function(s)? And what might count as their matter, and on account of which role?
RE the difference between ‘actuality’ and ‘potentiality’: In our everyday way of speaking: What is it for someone to have ‘potential’? What do we say when we utter “actually”, perhaps in answering the question: “are you busy right now?” - by saying: “actually I’m not!”
Q: 412b6-9: If soul and body relate like wax and impression, what prevents the two from being one? Does it make sense to see in the wax and the impression in it two different beings, different like this apple and this orange, or the fruit and the peel? If not, why does this not make sense for the relation of body and soul?
Q: 412b17: Living bodies “have in themselves a source of movement and rest”. Try to come up with an idea what it is for a being to be self-moving (have a source of movement in itself), as distinguished from a being that is not self-moving? (You may find some help by going back in our Reader to Physics 192b14).
Q: 413a20: How does Aristotle link life and having a soul? Are all the different performances listed at 413a20 soul-functions? Which ones do not look as if they belonged to the soul? Do those functions, which seem to qualify as ‘soul’, have something in common? What could it be?
Q: 413a23: What are movements that establish that a living being is alive? Which ones are specific to plants, which ones do plants lack? Why does Aristotle not just say that plants grow and decay, and instead emphasizes their potentiality to do that? What kind of a distinction could he have in mind by distinguishing the potentiality of plants from the actuality of that plant?
Q: 413a25-35: What is the only potentiality of soul in plants? Do all plants realize this potentiality?
Q: 413b1-27; 414a31-414b19: 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? The same question in a different version: Concerning soul functions, what is it we have, and other animals and plants don’t have? What is it, animals have, but plants don’t have?
Q: 414a13: Aristotle’s says the soul is the form, and implies that the body the matter of a living being. Think of the form as an active principle. What could the activity of the soul in a body be and mean for the living being?
The Soul, Kinds of Soul, Subdivisions.
412a13: What are the essential processes and functions of life? Can you think of forms of life hat do not have them? Would you define life differently?
413a21: Which of the functions mentioned here are sufficient for life, as we understand it? What might the other functions be there for? Can these other functions obtain independently? Do you find relations of presupposition between them? (413a32; 415a1-12)
413a24: Think of different kinds of movement. Think of an example of change tat is not also movement in space. What kind of movement do you find in decay and growth? Characterize that movement by its medium (the medium of spatial movement is space).
Using Book II, Chapters 2 and 3, make a list of the different ‘movements’ found in different kinds of living beings.
Make a list of the soul faculties characteristic of and united in plants, non-human animals, and human animals.
414a16-27: Summary of soul-body
relations. Make a list of the theses contained in this paragraph. Why are body
and soul neither independent substance nor real parts?
414a31: In which way are faculties
of the soul potentialities, and not ‘actualities?
415a23-415b8: What is the relation
between nutrition and reproduction for living beings? Does Aristotle say that
individuals are there for the species? What does that imply?
415b10: Note the three things that
the soul brings about, and of which the soul is the first principle (i.e. as
the most basic explanatory device).
416b14: How does Aristotle
distinguish self-preservation from reproduction?
There seems to be a hierarchy of different kinds of beings in terms of soul functions or faculties. What might be Aristotle’s reasons for placing humans on top?
Intellect, Reason in
Action: (Book III. Chapters 3 & 4)
429a22: Intellect. Its main function? 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?
429b6-9 (with 403a7, 408b18): 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. 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?
(Not in the assigned chapters, but helpful for our discussion):
433a18: The two sources of movement.
433b5-12: the opposition between reasons and wants. How do the two play into motivation ands the reasons for action?
Study
Questions:
What is it to be a soul? (412a19; 412a27; 414a13).
How is the soul related to the body? (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; 416b14; 415b23).
Faculties and functions of the soul (412a12; 413a20-414a14; 414a31-414b19; 415a15-415b2; curious minds may also look at unassigned Nicomachean Ethics Book I. chapter 13.)
Try to define the specific function each one of the functions. Think about features that distinguish those faculties, in particular for the triad ‘appetitive soul function, perceptive soul function, intellectual soul functions. How do the different functions serve purposes that contribute to the life of the living being? What are those purposes?