Aristotle's definition of soul and the programme of the de anima

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy

Volumn 22, Issue , 2002, Pages 83-139

  Menn, Stephen ^a  

^a MCGILL UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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EID: 60949473110     PISSN: 02657651     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book Series    
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References (18)

1. So Deborah Modrak: 'According to Aristotle, ancient dualism took several forms: one form was materialistic in that the separate psychical substance was identified with a material element; the other was dualist in the modern sense, i.e., the psychical substance was incorporeal. Aristotle is sharply critical of all two-substance views as well as materialist monism' (Aristotle: The Power of Perception (Chicago, 1987), 83 n. 1).
2. Against R. Wardy, The Chain of Change (Cambridge, 1990), 222 n.: 'But of course if in an un-Aristotelian spirit one distinguishes between soul and ensouled body, then it no longer makes any sense to say that the soul undergoes alteration. So if Aristotle does allow himself to say this, it must be because he is characteristically thinking in terms of an animate in which the individual collectively are the sensitive part of the soul.' It is not un-Aristotelian even in the De anima to distinguish between the soul and the ensouled body, and Physics 7 makes it perfectly clear that the sensitive soul, which is not a body or a sensible thing, undergoes alteration. I do not know why Wardy thinks that 'of course' such a soul could not undergo alteration; Plato certainly thought the soul could be moved by the body, and Physics 7, while criticizing the Timaeus' theory of soul on some points (notably in denying that is a circular motion in the intellectual soul - more on this below), remains close to it on others.
3. As far as I know, the scholars I have mentioned have never discussed the texts on the soul's being moved. The only recent scholar I know who shows any awareness of these texts is Robert Heinaman, in 'Aristotle and the Mind-Body Problem', Phronesis, 37 (1990), 83-102, who briefly discusses some of the texts, pp. 86-7, and rightly concludes that Aristotle has changed his mind between these texts and the De anima.
4. This point is rightly stressed by Charlotte Witt in her article 'Dialectic, Motion, and Perception: De Anima, Book I', in M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty (eds.), Essays on Aristotle's De Anima (Oxford, 1992), 169-83;
5. it is also discussed by M. Tweedale, 'Aristotle's Motionless Soul', Dialogue, 29 (1990), 123-32, by Heinaman, 'Aristotle and the Mind-Body Problem', and otherwise by almost nobody. Many scholars have difficulty in recognizing'this basic fact about De anima 1, and insist on reading as 'naturalistic' criticisms of soul - body dualism w hat are in fact 'anti-naturalistic' criticisms of the thesis that the soul is moved.
6. (against G. E. R. Lloyd, 'Metaphysics Λ 8', in M. Frede and D. Charles (eds.), Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda (Oxford, 2000), 245-73 at 253).
7. M. Frede, 'On Aristotle's Conception of the Soul', in Nussbaum and Rorty, Essays on Aristotle's Deanima, 93-107 at 103-4. Frede speaks of Aristotle's 'rejection of the assumption that the soul is an entity distinct from the body it animates and the proper subject of a class of predicates we ascribe to living things, namely the mental predicates' (p. 103).
8. b19-24
9. (as is pointed out by Heinaman, 'Aristotle and the Mind-Body Problem', 90,
10. and Tweedale, 'Aristotle's Motionless Soul', 130).
11. Aristotle on Perception (Oxford, 1997), 64.
12. I am not sure how many people agree or disagree with Everson on the semantic issue, or indeed how many people are aware of the problem. Nussbaum is aware of it, and apparently agnostic: 'psuchè is said to be the entelecheia of sôma phusikon organikon, a natural tool-like body, or body equipped with useful tool-like parts' (in her 'The Text of Aristotle's De Anima', in Nussbaum and Rorty, Essays on Aristotle's De Anima, 1-6 at 6).
13. Aristotle on Perception, 63-9.
14. It is not totally obvious from this text whether he is thinking about the whole body of an animal or plant, or the parts of its body, or both, but nothing in the context suggests that he is thinking about the parts. In any case, we know, from the other texts we have seen, that the whole body is an and even if the present text is talking about the parts and saying that they are of the soul, it will still imply that the whole too is an of the soul. The point that Everson can be right about the meaning of even though the in the definition of soul is the whole animal body, since the whole body is an of soul, has been made quite rightly by Jonathan Barnes in his review of Everson, Classical Review, NS 49 (1999), 120-2.
15. As Modrak notes, Aristotle, 13.
16. b18-35, marked by Jaeger as a later addition), on his own view not all activities are See my discussion in 'The Origins of Aristotle's Concept of and Ancient Philosophy, 14 (Spring 1994), 73-114.
17. Irving Block ('The Order of Aristotle's Psychological Writings', American Journal of Philology, 82 (1961), 50-77) thinks this makes the Pana naturalia texts likely to be later (because, Block thinks, more philosophically satisfactory) than the De anima; I think it is more likely that the De anima texts are later, and that from the point of view of the De anima the Parva naturalia account remains too close to Plato.
18. This is how Plato describes the activity of in the Theaetetus, Statesman, and Philebus; the texts are gathered and discussed in my 'Collecting the Letters', Phronesis, 43/4 (Nov. 1998), 291-305.