Philosophy 430 Paper 3

De Anima: Aristotle and the Nature of the Soul

In chapter I of Book I of De Anima, Aristotle notes different ways that different
'students of nature' can give an account of something. These different manners seem to
correspond to Aristotle's distinction between matter and form such that one student will
focus upon the matter or material aspect of thing in question whereas the other one, a
'dialectician,' will focus upon the manner in which that material is organized and for what
end it has been organized. Hence, for example, the first student would describe a house
by referring to what it is made out of whereas the dialectician would say that "it is the
form in these [stones, for instance] for the sake of [providing shelter]" (DA 403b5-7). Or,
Aristotle notes, perhaps the true student of nature will neglect neither. Now, Aristotle
himself considered humans to be 'rational animals.' This is our essence or definition
which also points to our innate purpose (exercising rationality) but on Aristotle's account,
we do not have this nature via the matter from which we are composed but rather from
our form which gives us our definition and grounds our final cause. Hence, for Aristotle,
it seems to be the case that a real student of nature must go about defining human nature
with reference to our form or soul, rather than the matter from which we are made. At
the same time, however, Aristotle also believes that the soul is the actualization of a body
from which it cannot be (wholly) separated and therefore the soul should be studied
through the body. Hence, it appears that studying the physical body of a human is a way
to gain insight into its soul and thus its nature. Thus, both matter and form are important.
It is evident that of his numerous categories, Aristotle would consider the soul to
be a substance. Aristotle notes that he uses the term 'substance' in three different ways: 1)


it can be used to refer to the matter which underlies bodies, or 2) to the form which
organizes that matter into a specific thing, hence making it a 'this,' or 3) to the composite
of form and matter that results when these two are combined together (DA 412a5-11).
Aristotle then goes on to argue that a soul "must be substance as the form of a natural
body that is potentially alive" (DA 403b5-7). In other words, a soul is the form which a
living thing has that actualizes that thing's potential for life. Hence, it falls under
Aristotle's second definition of substance. It is also clear that of his four predicables, the
predicable of definition would best refer to the soul. This is the predicable which signifies
the essence of something and hence, I believe that this predicable best corresponds to the
soul because the soul, as the form of a living thing, is that which gives that thing its
essential nature and properties, hence making it a specific 'this.' Thus, for example, the
essence of a human being is being a 'rational animal' and it is through the soul of a human
that a bit of matter is organized into such a being, thus making it a human by giving it the
essential features of humans. It is through this process that that composite substance falls
under the genus which it then will (e.g. animals) and that it will gain the distinctive
properties which flow from the relevant definition (e.g. capable of grammar) but these are
the results of ensoulment, not what the soul actually is. Finally, of Aristotle's four causes,
the soul should clearly be classified as a formal cause. As stated above, Aristotle defines
a soul as "the form of a natural body that is potentially alive" and goes on to identify
souls with actuality: it is through a soul that a bit of matter which has the potential for life
has that potentiality actualized because the soul imparts to that matter the organization
which is necessary for this capacity (i.e. this 'first' actuality) (DA 412a20-23).
Herein comes Aristotle's distinction between first actuality and second actuality.


Aristotle states that "Actuality is spoken of in two ways-one corresponding to [the state
of] knowing and the other to attending to [what one knows]" (DA 412a22-25). The
basic idea here seems to be that one has a potentiality for doing something when one has
the ability to gain the knowledge or trait in question; then, upon gaining that knowledge
or trait, one has it as a first actuality as it remains passive and then as a second actuality
as it is actually used. Thus, the first actuality of an axe would be its sitting there, nice and
sharp and ready to cut and its second actuality would be it actually being in the process of
chopping wood as that latent power is actually utilized. For humans (and other living
things), Aristotle seems to associate first actuality with sleeping and second actuality with
being awake (DA 412a22-230). What this seems to mean more broadly is that a human
being's first actuality would be having the capacity for various activities such as speaking
and performing math problems and the second actuality would be actually utilizing these
capacities, i.e. actually speaking and performing calculations.
Aristotle says of natural bodies this: "What seems to be substances most of all are
bodies and especially natural bodies, since these are the sources of the others" (DA
412a11-15). Aristotle here seems to be using the term 'substance' in its composite sense
and the reference here to 'the others' sets these bodies into contrast with 'artifacts' or
human made objects such as tools. Aristotle also says that "[t]he sort of natural body that
is potentially alive is an organic one" (DA 412b1) and Aristotle also says that "by 'life' I
mean self-nourishment, growth, and decay" (DA 412a15). Hence, for Aristotle, a natural
organic body is a composite substance of matter and form that results in a thing which is
not human made and which is potentially capable of growth and decay.
For Aristotle, to say that a body is potentially alive seems to indicate that it is


made up of matter which, when combined with a soul, gives it the ability for life. The
key notions here are 'potentiality' and 'actuality' which Aristotle associates with matter
and form respectively: "[m]atter is potentiality, and form is actuality" (DA 412a10). It
is the matter which has the potential for life and the form or soul which actualizes this
potential, resulting in an actual, particular living creature. There are, however, two
problems which I find with Aristotle's account. If Aristotle here is using the word 'body'
to refer to a composite substance, then I fail to see how it can ever have the potential for
life because, insofar as such a body also contains a soul, there will not ever actually be
any 'potential' present since it will always be actualized by the soul. If, however, Aristotle
is instead talking about an underlying prime matter which combines with the soul, then it
seems to be vacuous to speak of this matter as having the 'potential' for life because, by
its very (indeterminate) nature, it has the potential to be anything at all depending upon
whatever kind of particular form it is combined with.
For Aristotle, two things are homonymous with one another if they are referred to
by the same word but have differing definitions. Aristotle thinks of a human being and
the corpse of a human being as being homonymous with one another because even
though we may use the same phrase 'human' to refer to both of them, they in fact differ in
definition. A human being properly speaking is a rational animal which receives this
essence through a soul being combined with matter. A soul however is only the form of
something which is alive: "...the soul is ...the essence and form...of the specific sort of
natural body that has in itself a principle of motion and rest" (DA 412b15-18). A corpse
therefore no longer has a soul and thus lacks the nature of 'rational animal' which a soul
would give to it and therefore is not really a human in the same sense as a living human


is; we merely refer to it using the same word. Aristotle also clearly believed that the
whole soul is not separable from the body because the soul has various affections which
seem to require a body to be realized (DA 403a16-25). or, in other words, the soul just
simply is, in many respects at least, the actualization of a body and thus cannot be
realized without it: "At least some parts [of the soul] are not [separable from the body], if
it is divisible into parts; for the actuality of some [parts of the soul] is [the actuality] of
the parts [of the body] themselves" (DA 413a4-7). Finally, Aristotle would clearly deny
that the soul of a human being could be reincarnated as an eagle. The soul simply is that
form through which a human is a human (i.e. a rational animal) and its essence could not
be so radically changed without completely destroying that soul in question and in effect
merely replacing it with another distinct, non-human soul.
I have deep misgivings about Aristotle's account of the nature of souls which
stems from my misgivings about the nature of Aristotle's distinction between matter and
form in general. It seems to me that Aristotle wants to posit the existence of an
underlying matter which is organized by forms into the sensible things which we perceive
in order to explain how it is that universal properties (realized through the universal
forms) can be instantiated in particulars (different bits of matter) while paying heed to our
notion that it is non-sense to speak of properties which are not actually the properties of
anything. But this forces us to posit the existence of some mysterious underlying 'prime
matter' which on its own conceptually is nothing more than pure potentiality and hence is
really nothing at all. In other words, Aristotle seems to be faced with the same dilemma
that Locke faced when he could not figure out whether or not it made sense to speak of a
substratum within which properties are grounded. Furthermore, Aristotle seems to want


to say that our souls give us our nature by organizing the matter from which we are made
and that this includes giving us our capacity for rationality. However, rationality seems to
be something immaterial in nature and so it is not clear how a soul could give us this
immaterial aspect by organizing physical matter. But if our rationality (i.e. our minds)
just exist off to one side in the immaterial form independently of our physical bodies, this
recapitulates Descartes' mind-body interaction and dualism problem. For that matter, it is
not clear how an immaterial form can interact with matter to organize it either.
In contrast with Aristotle who seemed to hold a more materialistic notion of the
soul as that which organizes a body, Plato seemed to hold the more traditional notion that
a soul is an immaterial entity which is independent of the body and can survive the body's
death and, indeed, is even immortal. I do not find Plato's arguments for the immortality of
the soul to be very convincing. For example, Socrates' argument in the Meno and the
Phaedo that we already contain within us knowledge which we could have only gained
by learning it in a previous life, such as mathematical knowledge, is open to the Kantian
criticism that such a priori knowledge is simply there due to the very manner in which
our minds are constituted (e.g. geometry is really the a priori study of space which is a
form of intuition that our minds need to use to make experience possible for us) but
Plato's conception of the soul at least explains how we can have an immaterial aspect to
ourselves (e.g. our rationality, our subjective sensory experiences) which I do not see
how Aristotle's account can accomplish, all the while avoiding Aristotle's problematic
notion of prime matter to boot.




Citations

S. Marc Cohen, editor, Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc. 2011).