In epistemology: Aristotle. … thinking in De anima (On the Soul), Aristotle says that the intellect, like everything else, must have two parts: something analogous to matter and something analogous to form. The first is the passive intellect, the second the active intellect, of which Aristotle speaks tersely.
A soul, Aristotle says, is “the actuality of a body that has life,” where life means the capacity for self-sustenance, growth, and reproduction. If one regards a living substance as a composite of matter and form, then the soul is the form of a natural—or, as Aristotle sometimes says, organic—body.
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7:1010:38Aristotle's Theory of Soul - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipFor Aristotle the soul is the first actuality of the body the second actuality of the body is theMoreFor Aristotle the soul is the first actuality of the body the second actuality of the body is the soul acting. Living well so being alive is the first actuality. Living well as the second actuality.
AristotleOn the Soul / AuthorWritten in the 4th century BC, "De Anima (On the Soul)" by Aristotle is a work on biology and explores the nature of life in general and of the soul in particular.
Aristotle defines the soul and explains the activities of living things by laying out three defining capacities of the soul: nutrition, perception, and intellect. He then uses these three fundamental capacities to account for further abilities such as locomotion and imagination (phantasia).
He believed that as bodies die, the soul is continually reborn (metempsychosis) in subsequent bodies. However, Aristotle believed that only one part of the soul was immortal, namely the intellect (logos).
Therefore, according to Aristotle, “the soul is the first actuality of a natural body that is potentially alive.” (412a27) In other words, the soul contributes to the body a certain kind of capacity to act in certain ways.
We must here recall the two senses of 'that for the sake of which', viz. (a) the end to achieve which, and (b) the being in whose interest, anything is or is done. We must maintain, further, that the soul is also the cause of the living body as the original source of local movement.
Aristotle's three parts soul concept further proposed that a sensitive soul could exist in animate forms of life allowing perceptions of the world.
In Aristotle's schema, plants have life, animals have life and perception, and human beings have both characteristics along with rationality (the Greek word for rationality here is logos, a rich term referring to the capacity for discursive language, reason, and other similar traits).
This gives us three corresponding degrees of soul:Nutritive soul (plants)Sensitive soul (all animals)Rational soul (human beings)
They note in reply that in De Anima iii 5 Aristotle uses the sort of language he tends to reserve for the unmoved mover of the Metaphysics xii and Physics viii, and further that De Anima is best regarded as a work of biology with a focus on ensouled material beings, including plants no less than human and non-human animals.
In De Anima iii 5, he introduces an obscure and hotly disputed subject: the active mind or active intellect ( nous poiêtikos ). Controversy surrounds almost every aspect of De Anima iii 5, not least because in it Aristotle characterizes the active mind—a topic mentioned nowhere else in his entire corpus—as ‘separate and unaffected and unmixed, being in its essence actuality’ ( chôristos kai apathês kai amigês, tê (i) ousia (i) energeia ; DA iii 5, 430a17–18) and then also as ‘deathless and everlasting’ ( athanaton kai aidion; DA iii 5, 430a23). This comes as no small surprise to readers of De Anima, because Aristotle had earlier in the same work treated the mind ( nous) as but one faculty ( dunamis) of the soul ( psuchê ), and he had contended that the soul as a whole is not separable from the body ( DA ii 1, 413a3–5).
The first and most consequential fault line, then, concerns whether De Anima iii 5 should be taken as characterizing the human mind or the divine mind. Those who read De Anima iii 5 as pertaining to the human soul are quick to point out that even as Aristotle introduced the inseparability of the soul earlier in the work, in De Anima ii 1, ...