Aristotle · Philosophy
Aristotle’s theory of the soul as the form of the living body - neither a separate spirit nor reducible to matter - and his account of perception and the faculties of life.
In his work On the Soul (De Anima), Aristotle asked one of philosophy’s deepest questions: what is the soul (psyche) - the principle of life, what distinguishes living things from non-living? His answer was original and profound, and quite different from the popular idea of the soul as a separate spirit. The soul, for Aristotle, is the form of the living body - the organisation, capacities, and functioning that make a body a living thing of its kind, able to do what living things of that kind do (grow, perceive, move, think). The soul is not a separate substance or spirit that inhabits the body, but the form and actuality of the living body - what makes the living body alive and able to function as the kind of living thing it is. The soul is the life of the living body, its form and functioning, not a separate thing within it.
Aristotle’s theory of the soul charts a profound middle way between two extremes: the view that the soul is a separate spirit (dualism, as in Plato, where the soul is a separate immaterial substance temporarily inhabiting the body) and the view that life is nothing but matter (crude materialism, reducing life to mere physical stuff). Against dualism, Aristotle denied that the soul is a separate substance inhabiting the body; the soul is the form and functioning of the living body, not a separate spirit within it, and (for most of its functions) cannot exist separately from the body any more than cutting can exist apart from an axe or seeing apart from an eye. Against crude materialism, Aristotle denied that life is nothing but matter; the soul is the form and organisation of the living body, not mere matter - the living body is not just physical stuff but matter organised and actualised by the form (soul) that makes it a living, functioning thing. The soul is the form of the living body - neither a separate spirit nor mere matter, but the form, organisation, and functioning that make the material body a living thing. This is Aristotle’s profound middle way: the soul as the form of the living body, transcending both dualism and crude materialism.
Aristotle gave a profound account of perception - how the senses grasp the world - that grounds his empiricism and his theory of knowledge. In perception, Aristotle argued, the sense organ receives the form of the perceived object without its matter - as wax receives the imprint of a seal without the seal’s material. The eye, in seeing, receives the form (the visible features) of the seen object; the ear, in hearing, receives the form (the sound) of the heard object; and so for each sense. Perception is the reception of the sensible form of the object by the appropriate sense, without the object’s matter. And perception is the foundation of knowledge: for Aristotle, all knowledge begins with perception - we come to know the world through the senses, and the intellect works on the materials provided by perception. ‘There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses.’ Aristotle’s account of perception - the reception of sensible form by the senses, the foundation of knowledge in perception - grounds his characteristic empiricism: the view that knowledge begins with and is grounded in sense perception of the world.
This is the opening of the lesson. The rest — the dialogue, the primary source, and the recall — is in the app.
You learned that Aristotle held the soul to be the form of the living body, not a separate substance, and gave an account of the faculties of life and perception. Explain his theory of the soul in your own words.
Leads to Gilbert Ryle.
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