Aristotelian Conception of Soul
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Desember 05, 2017 |
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To ask what a human being is is to ask what the nature of a human being is. What makes human beings the kinds of things they are? What makes them distinctive? What sets them apart from other kinds of thing?
Generally, people fall into one of the following three “camps” on the question of the soul (by soul, I mean the immaterial aspect of the human being which thinks, feels, and wills), namely:
1) Materialistic Monists – A person is their body; the soul is reducible to the material or simply doesn’t exist.
2) Descartesian Dualists – A person is their soul; the soul is a separable, non-material substance that inhabits the body.
3) Aristotelian Animalists – A person is their body and their soul; the soul is the non-material form of the body, unified with the body.
In this paper, I will show that the third position, which avoids the pitfalls of both materialism and dualism, the Aristotelian Animalists, is that of the most plausible.
Soul as Form of the Body
Aristotle wrote in De Anima that the soul is: “(a) the source or origin of movement, it is (b) the end, it is (c) the essence of the whole living body.” For Aristotle, there are different kinds of souls (plant, animal, and human) with varying degrees of biological and cognitive activity. The human soul is the animating form of the matter of the human animal, the actuating “breath” of what a body is and does. Aristotle thus distinguishes the soul from the material body, but not as a ghost from a machine. Unlike Plato, Aristotle concluded that the soul is “inseparable from its body,” although the highest faculty of the soul—the mind—is “immortal and eternal.”
According to Aristotle a living creature is ‘substance’. It contains Body = matter, and Soul = form. The soul (psyche) is the structure of the body - its function and organization. This was the word Greeks gave to the animator, the living force in a living being. For Aristotle the psyche controlled reproduction, movement and perception.
In contrast Aristotle regarded reason (nous) as the highest form of rationality. He believed that the ‘unmoved mover’ of the universe was a cosmic nous.
Aristotle thought that the soul is the Form of the body. The soul is simply the sum total of the operations of a human being.
The Stagyrite believed that there exists a hierarchy of living things – plants only have a vegetative soul, animals are above plants because they have appetites, humans are above animals because it has the power of reason.
Distinction between Body and Soul
Aristotle tries to explain his understanding of the distinction between the body and the soul using the analogy of an axe. If an axe were a living thing then its body would be made of wood and metal. However, its soul would be the thing which made it an axe i.e. its capacity to chop. If it lost its ability to chop it would cease to be an axe – it would simply be wood and metal.
Another illustration he uses is the eye. If the eye were an animal, sight would have to be its soul. When the eye no longer sees then it is an eye in name only.
Likewise, a dead animal is only an animal in name only – it has the same body but it has lost its soul.
What is important for Aristotle is the end purpose of something – an axe chops, an eye sees, an animal is animated…etc. This is what is meant by ‘teleology’ from the Greek teleo meaning end.
For Aristotle, the body and soul are not two separate elements but are one thing. The body and the soul are not, as Plato would have it, two distinct entities, but are different parts or aspects of the same thing.
The Problem: Mortal or Immortal
Aristotle does not allow for the possibility of the immortality of the soul. The soul is simply the Form of the body, and is not capable of existing without the body. The soul is that which makes a person a person rather than just a lump of meat! Without the body the soul cannot exist. The soul dies along with the body.
Aristotle appears to make one exception – reason (nous). However, he is not clear about how this reason survives death or whether or not it is personal.
Conclusion
For Aristotle there is no clear evidence such as Plato's Realm. Instead he appeals to our senses, claiming that it through them that we experience reality. However, we are still left with the problem that there is no clear evidence that our senses are reliable. A religious person might argue that we know the world through faith and revelation.
Aristotle does not adequately explain how God as a thinking force could be responsible for causing movement. On the one hand he stresses that real knowledge beings with the senses but the concept of something being moved just through thought is not what most of us experience.
Aristotle's earthy notion of the soul was picked up by scholastic philosophers, most notably Thomas Aquinas. In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas agreed with Aristotle that “it belongs to the notion of a soul to be the form of a body,” and that although a human soul’s rationality points to its subsistence after death, the disembodied soul is a form without matter, and therefore incomplete. Death does not result in the final liberation and fulfillment of the soul, but a dislodging of the body’s essence, our being “not wholly at rest.”
The position of the Aristotelian Animalists seems to be the most coherent and plausible than the others: Materialistic Monists and Cartesian Dualists, since it leaves us with the fewest problems and has the most explanatory power.
Readings:
1. Lectures on Philosophical Theories of Person, Manuscript
2. The Human Soul as an Individual Substance: Plato and Aristotle, http://inters.org/soul
Generally, people fall into one of the following three “camps” on the question of the soul (by soul, I mean the immaterial aspect of the human being which thinks, feels, and wills), namely:
1) Materialistic Monists – A person is their body; the soul is reducible to the material or simply doesn’t exist.
2) Descartesian Dualists – A person is their soul; the soul is a separable, non-material substance that inhabits the body.
3) Aristotelian Animalists – A person is their body and their soul; the soul is the non-material form of the body, unified with the body.
In this paper, I will show that the third position, which avoids the pitfalls of both materialism and dualism, the Aristotelian Animalists, is that of the most plausible.
Soul as Form of the Body
Aristotle wrote in De Anima that the soul is: “(a) the source or origin of movement, it is (b) the end, it is (c) the essence of the whole living body.” For Aristotle, there are different kinds of souls (plant, animal, and human) with varying degrees of biological and cognitive activity. The human soul is the animating form of the matter of the human animal, the actuating “breath” of what a body is and does. Aristotle thus distinguishes the soul from the material body, but not as a ghost from a machine. Unlike Plato, Aristotle concluded that the soul is “inseparable from its body,” although the highest faculty of the soul—the mind—is “immortal and eternal.”
According to Aristotle a living creature is ‘substance’. It contains Body = matter, and Soul = form. The soul (psyche) is the structure of the body - its function and organization. This was the word Greeks gave to the animator, the living force in a living being. For Aristotle the psyche controlled reproduction, movement and perception.
In contrast Aristotle regarded reason (nous) as the highest form of rationality. He believed that the ‘unmoved mover’ of the universe was a cosmic nous.
Aristotle thought that the soul is the Form of the body. The soul is simply the sum total of the operations of a human being.
The Stagyrite believed that there exists a hierarchy of living things – plants only have a vegetative soul, animals are above plants because they have appetites, humans are above animals because it has the power of reason.
Distinction between Body and Soul
Aristotle tries to explain his understanding of the distinction between the body and the soul using the analogy of an axe. If an axe were a living thing then its body would be made of wood and metal. However, its soul would be the thing which made it an axe i.e. its capacity to chop. If it lost its ability to chop it would cease to be an axe – it would simply be wood and metal.
Another illustration he uses is the eye. If the eye were an animal, sight would have to be its soul. When the eye no longer sees then it is an eye in name only.
Likewise, a dead animal is only an animal in name only – it has the same body but it has lost its soul.
What is important for Aristotle is the end purpose of something – an axe chops, an eye sees, an animal is animated…etc. This is what is meant by ‘teleology’ from the Greek teleo meaning end.
For Aristotle, the body and soul are not two separate elements but are one thing. The body and the soul are not, as Plato would have it, two distinct entities, but are different parts or aspects of the same thing.
The Problem: Mortal or Immortal
Aristotle does not allow for the possibility of the immortality of the soul. The soul is simply the Form of the body, and is not capable of existing without the body. The soul is that which makes a person a person rather than just a lump of meat! Without the body the soul cannot exist. The soul dies along with the body.
Aristotle appears to make one exception – reason (nous). However, he is not clear about how this reason survives death or whether or not it is personal.
Conclusion
For Aristotle there is no clear evidence such as Plato's Realm. Instead he appeals to our senses, claiming that it through them that we experience reality. However, we are still left with the problem that there is no clear evidence that our senses are reliable. A religious person might argue that we know the world through faith and revelation.
Aristotle does not adequately explain how God as a thinking force could be responsible for causing movement. On the one hand he stresses that real knowledge beings with the senses but the concept of something being moved just through thought is not what most of us experience.
Aristotle's earthy notion of the soul was picked up by scholastic philosophers, most notably Thomas Aquinas. In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas agreed with Aristotle that “it belongs to the notion of a soul to be the form of a body,” and that although a human soul’s rationality points to its subsistence after death, the disembodied soul is a form without matter, and therefore incomplete. Death does not result in the final liberation and fulfillment of the soul, but a dislodging of the body’s essence, our being “not wholly at rest.”
The position of the Aristotelian Animalists seems to be the most coherent and plausible than the others: Materialistic Monists and Cartesian Dualists, since it leaves us with the fewest problems and has the most explanatory power.
Readings:
1. Lectures on Philosophical Theories of Person, Manuscript
2. The Human Soul as an Individual Substance: Plato and Aristotle, http://inters.org/soul
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