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I. Meaning of the word Philosophy

The term philosophy comes from Greek word, and it means “love of wisdom.” Ancient traditions
tells that early Greek thinkers called themselves as “wise men” and that out of humility, Pythagoras
wanted to call himself simply a lover of wisdom or philosopher. This is the origin of the term Philosophy.

Etymology of Philosophy. It comes from two Greek words, PHILIA which means “love” and SOPHIA
which means “wisdom”. A philosopher then is called as a LOVER OF WISDOM.

Definition of Philosophy. It is the knowledge of all things through their ultimate causes acquired by
the use of reason.
Material Object of Philosophy. Philosophy studies all things. All aspects of reality can be object of
philosophical studies, since one can seek their ultimate causes acquired through the use of reason.
Formal Object of Philosophy. The study of reality “through their ultimate causes,” that is, by seeking
the deepest explanations regarding the existence and nature of beings.

Human being possesses a keen desire to know, that leads him to seek causes of events or
happenings. He looks for answers to questions that occur to him, and the answers he gets frequently
give rise to further questions. Famous ancient Greek Philosopher for example Thales, by the use of his
own experience and common knowledge was able to arrive at an understanding that the world is made
of water. Everything is made of water, the explanation is simple, with water, there is life and the world is
full of life. The desire to know the truth pushed Thales to arrive at an understanding that everything in
this world is made of water.

A certain knowledge about reality, including the ultimate truths that are object of philosophy, such
as the existence of God, the immortality of the human soul, the principles of the natural law, can be
attained by the human intellect in a natural way, even without scientific study, as long as reason is used
correctly. Any person who has not done violence to his intellect through bad dispositions (by fostering
pride, for example) or through bad moral habits, is capable of affirming the real existence of beings
around him, of acknowledging the need for a Maker of beings found in nature, of knowing that there is
life after death, without having to study philosophy.

Philosophy and particular sciences. Philosophy goes beyond art. Art arises when starting from some
experiences, one arrives at a universal judgment applicable to all similar cases. Philosophy seeks
explanations based on knowledge of causes; hence we have to affirm that is a science, and it deals with
some knowledge higher than obtained in the arts.
Philosophy as a science is different from particular sciences. Particular sciences limit to the search
for proximate causes. For example, physics and chemistry strive to explain how material substances are
transformed into other substances. However, philosophy on the other hand, seeks the highest or
ultimate causes, that is, the causes that suffice by themselves, in so far as there are no deeper causes
than them. Philosophy seeks to know the essential properties of matter and its origin, and thus arrives
at the creation of matter by God.
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II. Ordinary human knowledge and Intellectual Knowledge

Remember: There is nothing in the mind that did not pass through the senses.

Continuity with ordinary knowledge. Philosophy carries out its endeavor, in continuity with ordinary
knowledge. It makes use of the same means: it begins from sense experience through which it obtains
abstract universal knowledge with the use of intellect. It advances in knowledge by making use of
inferences, whose significance is ultimately determined by sensible or intellectual evidence.

It is not correct to say that philosophy is a task exclusively meant for people who possess some special
capacity of knowing. Philosophy makes use in a systematic way of all the means available to human
knowledge. Sense experience, induction, reasoning; value of its statements is based on evidence, as in
any other type of knowledge.

III. Ordinary knowledge VS Particular science VS Philosophy

Ordinary knowledge is base on common experience, which is accessible to everyone. It includes all
matters, theoretical as well as practical, that affect human existence.

Particular Sciences study in greater detail some specific aspects of reality, making use of
experimentation and diverse logical processes (such as the hypothetical-deductive method) in an
orderly and systematic manner.

Philosophy studies reality by seeking its ultimate causes. For this, it bases itself on ordinary and
scientific knowledge, examining the degree of certainty that they attain in each particular case.

Philosophy and intellectual evidence. Intellectual knowledge starts from sense data; however, the
intellect is able to reach the essences of things, whose external accidents are grasped by the senses.

Induction. The process by which we start from sensible evidence in order to arrive at the universal
knowledge. For example, in front of us is an elephant. Because of its huge size, we cannot see the whole
elephant but limit only to what is in front of us, maybe the tail, the left or right side of the animal or
maybe the head. From particular knowledge of each part of the elephant we are able to describe
despite its size that an elephant is color black, it has four legs, there’s a long tail, etc.

Deduction. The process by which we start from universal understanding or evidence in order to have
the knowledge of each part.

Abstraction – it is the process by which the intellect grasps the essences of things, expressing them
through ideas or concepts, such as man, plant, color and so on.
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IV. Fact and Opinion

A fact is an event known to have happened or something known to have existed. This is something that
can be proven true or false.

An opinion is something that you believe to be true but might not be. This can be an attitude or
judgment that cannot be proven true or false.

Dr. Christoffer S. Lammer-Heindel --Properly understood, the term ‘fact’ refers to a state of affairs or an
aspect of reality, not to a class of beliefs. By contrast, ‘opinions’ and ‘considered judgments’ are types of
beliefs, and those labels are most usefully used to distinguish sufficiently well-supported from
insufficiently well-supported beliefs. The primary thing these distinctions reveal is that it is inappropriate
to contrast facts with opinions. To do so is to make a category mistake: it is to treat facts in themselves
as a species of beliefs. Of course we have beliefs about what the facts are, and there are also
psychological facts about what individuals believe. However, maintaining a fact-opinion dichotomy only
serves to cloud discussions that would be more productively oriented towards figuring out whether our
beliefs are justified and whether they conform to the facts.

Further Readings
Facts & Opinions
taken from https://philosophynow.org/issues/115/Facts_and_Opinions

Christoffer Lammer- Heindel tells us some important facts about them.

From a very young age we are encouraged to distinguish facts from opinions. Now the ability to
distinguish facts from merely alleged facts, and the ability to distinguish opinions from considered
judgments, is an important skill. However, the fact-opinion duality is a false dichotomy which rests on a
category mistake. In claiming that facts and opinions stand in a dichotomous relationship, we ignore the
two classes which stand in genuine opposition to each set in turn: facts are properly opposed to what
we variously call non-facts, merely alleged facts, fictions, or falsehoods; and opinions really stand in
opposition to considered judgments.

A Fact Is Whatever Is The Case

When someone asks, “Is that a fact?” they can be understood as asking, “Is that really the case?” or “Is
that ultimately true?” When someone says, “It is a fact that…” they are telling us, in other words, “It is
the case that…” or “It is true that…” That is, facts are not the statements themselves; they are, rather,
the state of affairs or the reality to which a true statement corresponds.

Now it is neither necessary nor useful – indeed, it is positively misleading – to define ‘fact’ in terms of
what is indisputably the case – yet people sometimes do. We should resist the temptation to endorse
this qualification, for the simple reason that whether a particular matter is disputable or not has no
bearing on what is the case. Moreover, there is very little that is not, at least in some sense, disputable.
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To appreciate that disputability has no bearing on whether something is or is not a fact, consider the
following case. It is well-known that some people believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill John F.
Kennedy, while many others believe that he did. Both views are backed up by reasons and supported by
at least some evidence. So this is clearly a disputable issue. To say that a point is disputable is to say, at
the very least, that different individuals hold different views on it. Nevertheless, there is a fact of the
matter as to whether Oswald was involved in the assassination: he either was or he wasn’t. One of the
two options must be the case.

The same thing can be said about the question of whether God exists. This is clearly a disputable issue,
but we must recognize that it either is the case that the being referred to by the term ‘God’ (let us say,
‘creator of the universe’) exists, or it is not the case that such a being exists. (The fact that people have
differing conceptions of God doesn’t serve to undermine this point, but simply to make it more
complicated: for each conception of God, the being so conceived either does or does not exist.)

Arguing about an issue doesn’t somehow make it into an issue about which there is no answer. Indeed,
genuine dispute is only meaningful when there is an answer. It’s basically pointless to engage in a
dispute about something for which there is no fact of the matter.

Facts & Knowledge

Still, it is sometimes asked in response to controversial issues, “Who determines what the facts
are?”This is an ambiguous question. On the one hand, the question can be understood as asking, “Who
would be in a position to discern what the facts are?” This is a perfectly reasonable question to ask,
since some of us are more equipped than others to discern the facts in a certain area. For example, I
know very little about automobiles. As a consequence, I am in no position to pronounce on whether the
clicking noise I hear when I start up my car is caused by the fuel system, the timing belt, or whatever. By
contrast, I am in a position to determine, in the sense of discern or figure out, whether my wife picked
up our child from school this afternoon, whereas you are not. The ability to make an informed judgment
as to what the facts are in a certain situation is a function of available evidence, experience, training,
and so forth. And of course, with respect to some issues, no one is in a position to discern the facts. (We
will return to this point in a moment.)

On the other hand, the question, “Who determines what the facts are?” could be understood as asking,
“Who makes it so that something is or is not a fact?” When applied to the question of whether God
exists, the answer is obvious: no one does. Neither the existence nor the non-existence of God
(whatever the fact of the matter may be) is caused by human action; so no one makes it a fact that God
exists, and no one makes it a fact that God doesn’t exist. In this case, the fact of the matter is totally
independent of us. In the case of Oswald’s involvement or lack of involvement in the assassination of
President Kennedy, Oswald was the one who made the fact what it is. We, looking back on the incident
and the evidence, do not.

This illustrates an obvious but rather important point. To the extent that people act, they clearly do
make various things the case and various things not the case. If I place my coffee cup on the table, I’ve
made it a fact that the coffee cup is on the table and I’ve made it a falsehood that the coffee cup is in
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the cupboard. This is because I can interact with the physical world and change physical states of affairs,
thus to that extent determining what the physical facts are. There are, however, facts beyond physical
facts. For example, sometimes our actions take on meaning and so create facts because of institutional
rules that are in place. When a sufficient number of individuals on a college’s board of trustees all vote
to divest the college’s holdings in Company X, then it becomes a matter of institutional fact that the
college is not to hold shares in Company X. Similarly, when the Pope speaks ex cathedra [meaning, with
the agreement of all the cardinals, Ed] on matters of faith or morals, he makes it the case that those
things become, as a matter of fact, Catholic doctrine. They will be Catholic doctrine whether other
Catholics (and non-Catholics) agree with the proclamation or not, and regardless of whether we even
care.

In these and myriad other ways, people do determine the facts in the sense of make them.

Something Can Be A Fact Even If We Can’t Know It

Consider the claim, “At precisely the moment that the US National Institute of Standards and
Technology’s atomic clock struck 15:00:00 on the afternoon of March 4, 2015, there were an odd
number of people inside the New York Public Library’s Main Reading Room.” This claim is either true or
false: it either was the case that an odd number of people were (completely) inside the room at that
time, or it was not the case. Now, if it was the case, then the claim would express a fact. If it wasn’t the
case, it would express merely an alleged fact, which was (in fact) false. Notice, however, that we
probably can’t know whether the claim is true or false – which is to say that we can’t know whether it is
a fact or not. Such is life. There are, quite literally, an infinite number of possible claims that we could
make that we know must be either true or false (it is a fact that there is a fact about it!), but we cannot
possibly figure out their truth-values. For another example, it either is or is not a fact that Julius Caesar
was red-green color blind; but it is doubtful that anyone will ever now know what the fact of the matter
is.

Facts Are Not Properly Contrasted With Opinions

As I mentioned at the outset, facts are often presented as the opposite of opinions. Justin P. McBrayer, a
philosophy professor at Fort Lewis College, Colorado, reported in the New York Times’ blog, The Stone in
2015 (‘Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts’) that national education standards in the
United States require elementary school children to learn to categorize statements according to
whether they express facts or express opinions – the assumption being that all of the statements with
which they’re provided express either facts or opinions, and that no statement could express both.
McBrayer rightly points out that, contrary to the assumption that forms the basis of that standard, the
fact-opinion dichotomy is a false dichotomy.

To say that statements must either express facts or express opinions, but not both, is a bit like saying
that all fruit must either be an apple, or be produce available at my local grocer. While a banana is
clearly produce available at my local grocer but not an apple, and a Red Astrakhan – a relatively rare
heirloom apple – is an apple but not available at my local grocer, it is simply not true that every fruit
must either be an apple or available at my grocer. Nor is it true that a fruit could not be neither. The
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Granny Smith sitting in my fridge is clearly both an apple and available at my grocer, while physalis –
sometimes known as giant ground cherries – are neither apples nor available at my grocer.

To appreciate this analogy, we must clarify what an opinion is. Clearly, the term ‘opinion’ denotes a
kind of belief. In common usage, an opinion is a belief which has not been sufficiently well-
supported or substantiated to count as a considered judgment . Indeed, beliefs can be usefully
classified as either opinions (beliefs which do not enjoy sufficient support or justification) or considered
judgments (beliefs which do enjoy sufficient support or justification). This is a perfectly appropriate
dichotomy. Note, however, that it should not be confused with another equally important and
legitimate dichotomy: namely, the distinction between true beliefs and false beliefs. Both every opinion
and every considered judgment – in other words, every belief – will either be true or false. This is a
function of the fact that beliefs are about things or states of affairs and they will either comport with the
facts or not. So as with the fruit example, it is not true that a belief is either a fact or an opinion. Rather,
an opinion may or may not express a fact, just as a considered judgment may or may not express a fact.
(And again, it is a separate issue whether the fact in question can ever be known or not.)

It should be noted that a belief being false doesn’t automatically render it a mere opinion. Suppose that,
in addition to lying to their child by telling her that Santa Claus exists, a couple also set out to create an
elaborate ruse to provide the child with evidence (albeit concocted, misleading evidence) that Santa
exists. It is perfectly possible that the child’s false belief in Santa has then risen to the level of a
considered judgment.

It is also worth noting that whether a particular belief is a mere opinion or a considered judgment is
highly variable: it’s relative to the individual believer, and to a particular time in their life, too. To return
to the automobile example, my mechanic and I could independently arrive at the belief that the clicking
noise I hear when starting up my car is caused by a faulty valve in the engine. In my case, and
considering the state of my current knowledge (that is, my current ignorance), this would be nothing
more than an opinion – just short of a wild guess, really – whereas in the case of my mechanic, it would
be a considered judgment (or so I hope). Now, let’s suppose that the clicking noise is in fact caused by a
faulty valve. In this case, the statement “My car engine has a faulty valve” expresses a fact; but before
my conferring with my mechanic, my own belief would nevertheless be a mere opinion.

Moral Facts and Moral Opinions

In the context of a heated discussion about a controversial moral issue, it is not uncommon to hear the
retort, “Well, that’s just your opinion,” where this is intended to mean that the matter in question is
something about which there can only be opinions, for there are no moral facts.

This is a view that enjoys a fair amount of currency in contemporary society, and unlike some, I do not
think it is a view that should be dismissed out of hand. It could end up being the case that those who
believe that there are moral facts are mistaken. There is nothing obviously incoherent about that view.
Yet it must also be emphasized that it isn’t obviously true that there are no facts about what is moral,
good, right, just, etc. There may well be objective moral facts. If moral matters are genuinely disputable,
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we must assume that there is some fact of the matter under dispute, although we can and perhaps
should admit that the facts are sometimes very difficult to discern. Further, as J.L. Mackie argued in his
book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), if there are no moral facts, it will turn out that all beliefs
dependent upon supposed moral facts will be false beliefs.

Philosophers have also long debated what kinds of facts moral facts would be. Some have sought to
reduce them to other kinds of facts – for example, institutional facts or psychological facts – while
others have claimed they are a unique and irreducible type of fact. Matters of taste are sometimes
thought to be a close cousin of value judgments. Indeed, various philosophers (such as David Hume)
have entertained the possibility that moral judgments are nothing more than matters of taste. Such
views are interesting and worthy of careful, critical examination, although it is beyond the scope of the
present article to consider them. What is within our scope is the widespread claim that matters of taste
are simply opinions.

Matters of Taste Are Not Opinions

Suppose someone declares that licorice is disgusting; we could imagine another person responding by
saying, “That’s simply your opinion.” In such a case, this latter claim clearly means something like,
“That’s just a matter of your personal taste.”

Now it is surely correct to say that whether licorice is disgusting or pleasing is a matter of personal taste.
To that extent, labeling it a matter of opinion is understandable. Notice, however, that the meaning of
‘opinion’ here is very different from the meaning used above, where an opinion is an insufficiently
supported belief. This difference in meaning is significant, for in ordinary circumstances it would be a
mistake to say that one’s report that one finds licorice disgusting is an insufficiently supported belief. If
one has tasted it and found it unappealing, one’s declaration concerning its disgustingness is perfectly
well-supported, so long as the disgustingness is understood as being relative to the subject and not
implied to be an observer-independent (objective) quality of the licorice. Put another way, it is a fact
that this person finds licorice distasteful; and this is perfectly compatible with it being a fact that a
different person finds it quite satisfying.
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V. The Unity of Man

Man as we observe is a living being endowed with life. At the very beginning of our philosophical study
of man, we shall endeavor to determine precisely what we mean when we say that a being lives, or
better man lives, because, only then we can begin to understand what man is.

In our introductory part, we begin to study man as a rational being. Man has the capacity to think and
makes use of his reason in order to view reality. Moreover, we acquired an understanding of substance
and accidents as the principles, which underlie the manifold activities of a limited existent. Substance as
we know is a being that can exist of itself while accidents is a being which existence depends on a
substance. Man is a living substance, though limited, man can still exist of its own, and so the problem
of our discussion arises and I think this is worthy to remember as we go along in our study of man.
“what do we mean when we say man lives?”

Operations of living Beings

The operations proper to living beings are immanent: Since the nature of a being is known through its
operations, it will be necessary, to distinguish living from non-living beings.

Preliminary Notion of Immanent Operation: Non-living beings as we observe moves only when moved
by another. Living beings on the other hand, move themselves; they are the causes of their own local
movement or at least of their own vegetative changes, nutrition, growth and reproduction. When such a
being is no longer capable of causing its own motion, it is no longer consider to live.

More precise notion: Immanent operation we mean operations to be those “whose principles are
within the operator, and in virtue of which the operator moves itself to operation. (living beings move
because they have something that causes them to move.) The operation therefore which distinguishes
living beings from those that are non-living is self-operation whether it be material, partly immaterial, or
spiritual.

Two types of immanent action.

1. Purely immanent – comprises the sensitive and intellectual functions. The act of knowledge for
example is strictly immanent. In the act of knowledge, there is no passing of the faculty of
knowledge from potency to act.
2. Semi transient – vegetative functions are a less perfect type of immanent action and hold
midway position between the perfection of the act of a perfect being (sensitive and intellective
operations and the imperfection of transient action for the perfection of one part of the
vegetative unit is communicated to another part which did not previously possess it.

Apparent Immanent Action: There are certain corporeal beings, which seem to move themselves and
yet cannot be consider as living; their activity is only apparently immanent. Smoke for example, will rise
of itself; a stone will naturally fall to the ground. These motions cannot be call as operations of living
beings. What then distinguishes them from truly immanent actions found in other corporeal beings, as
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for example the vegetative process in plants or the local movement of animals? To answer this question
we must first distinguish two types of local movement.

Local motion and Locomotion. A vital act not only begins in the agent but must somehow terminate in
the agent. Local motion of itself – even when caused by the nature itself, when it begins from within
does not terminate in the same supposit (agent or subject) in itself local motion is not an immanent
action but a transient operation. A motion is considered locomotion, when the subject is living. The
reason is that local movement of this kind presupposes knowledge and desire, some sorts of awareness.

For the Living, “To be” is to live.

Since a being acts in so far as it is in act, the absolutely first intrinsic principle of immanent operation in a
living being is the existential act, “To be”. To live therefore is a “To be” so perfect it enables the nature
to act immanently.

“To live” must be predicated indirectly of living creatures, directly of God since living creature have “to
be” and God however is “to be.”

For the Living existence is life

In the primary and most profound sense, life is the “to be” of a living being conceive abstractly. It is the
existence of a living being. There are many secondary meanings of the term “life”

a.) Vital operations

b.) living substances
c.) habitual manner of action
d.) vegetative operations.

General types of living beings

1. Plants (vegetative) – move themselves only as regards the execution of action. The form and
end of action is determine by their nature.
2. Animals (sensitive) – move themselves as regards the execution of specification. The form,
which determines their action, is acquire by their own operations through sense knowledge.
They do not however determine the ends of their actions. They don’t have the rational capacity,
instead they make use of their instinct to live and survive.
3. Man (rational/intellectual) – moves himself as regards the execution, specification and
immediate finality (end) of his action. He does not however, determine his last end.
Thus, plants, animals and man are essentially distinct.
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VI. Human person as an embodied spirit

The soul as the first (essential) principle of life, of vital operations in man. This principle is not
found in non-living beings because their forms are lower perfection.

What is a soul?

The soul is not the body; it is the act of the body - St. Thomas said, the first principle of vital
operation cannot be a body or bodily organ, such as heart or brain. For if bodies were first
principles of life by their very essence, that is, precisely as bodies, all bodies would be principles
of life, of vital operation and consequently, all bodies would be living beings. The fact that many
of them are not living, for example, stones, the air, minerals. Therefore the first principle of life
of vital operation is not the body.

The human soul is simple – the notion of simplicity, which is obtained by denying composition,
denotes much more than a mere negation of parts. It designates a positive perfection, “a
definite disposition because of which a being need not be made of parts.”

 The soul has no essential parts – that which is composed of essential parts (matter
and form) must be a body. But the soul of man is not a body, as explained
previously, therefore the human soul is not composed of essential parts but is
essentially simple.
 The soul has no quantitative parts – by quantitative parts we mean extended parts,
occupying space in three dimensions so that one part is outside another. Now a
being is extended and has quantitative parts by reason of matter. Moreover, that
which has matter as a constituent principle of its essence is a body. But the soul, as
we have shown is not a body. Therefore, the soul does not have quantitative parts.

The human soul is spiritual – the simplicity which is discussed above does not necessarily imply
spirituality. Such simplicity merely excludes parts (essential and quantitative) whereas
spirituality not only supposes essential and quantitative simplicity, but over and above denotes
existence of an independent matter. (Not every simple reality is spiritual but every spiritual
reality is simple) accordingly, we may define spirituality as existential independence from
matter; to be spiritual is to be (to exist) independently of matter.

The human soul is incorruptible (immortality) – the words incorruptible and immortal are
often used as synonyms. To be faithful to the terminology of St. Thomas, however we must
reserve the term immortality for the incorruptibility of living things, the ever enduring
conservation of a “to be” which is a “to live.” Incorruptibility on the other hand, is a more
general term and is applicable to any being that cannot undergo substantial change.

The human soul is created – the question “where does the soul comes from? Is answered once
we have established that the human soul is a spiritual. Because the soul is not a material form,
matter has no potency for it, and consequently no extrinsic agent however powerful could
educe the soul from potency of matter. Accordingly, since the human soul cannot be educed
from matter as from a pre-existing subjects, it has no strict becoming; its coming into existence
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is to-be-created. Now, God alone can create, for He alone is pure act in the existential order.
Consequently, the human soul must be created immediately by Him.

VII. Union of the Body and Soul

What is man? In the course of our study we try to give a Philosophical answer to this question.
Accordingly, man is composed of body as is manifested from sentient and vegetative operation.
But not only that, the being that we call man is also the source of operations that transcend the
influence of matter; he is the source of spiritual operation of intellection. Is man therefore a
spiritual being and the body an illusion? Or the other way around. Another question to consider
is that are there two elements in man? –body and soul. If it is true how are these two distinct
reality united as one? In this lesson we should answer that question however before going into
that, let us first try to see in history, different positions that tries to answer our million dollar
question.

These positions are:

1. Monistic position – it is an evasion of the mind and body problem. Such views of human
nature, in their extreme and pure forms admit only one element in man, either “matter
or mind”
 Pure materialist – for them intellection is but a more perfect and more
complex form of sensation; vegetative activities are reduced to chemical
processes; in brief, the operations from the most perfect to the least perfect
are explained as functions of “matter.” In this view, the problem of the union
between soul and body does not exist.
 The strict idealist – they are lock up in a universe of his own mind. In the
extreme form of idealism knowledge and reality are held to be convertible;
the real is the contents of the mind. The existence of the body is denied.
2. Exaggerated dualism – of those who attempted to resolve the problem of the union
between the soul and the body, many have fall into Manichaeism, which declares that
matter is evil and that its union with the soul is very weak and imperfect, if not
altogether unnatural. Those philosophers who follow this line of argument insist that
the soul would be more perfect were it free from the bondage of the body. Famous
manichaeist before converted to Catholic faith is St. Augustine.
3. Moderate Dualism – This position adhere to the idea that only by rising to the
existential order can the philosopher hope to give an adequate explanation of the union
of body and soul in the existential unit, man.

To understand this…let us consider the following explanation

 The intellectual soul is the substantial form of the body – the substantial form is the
first intrinsic actual principle of a corporeal essence.
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VIII. Definition of Soul

Its famous definition is composed by Aristotle, and he said, “the soul is the first act of a
physical, organized body having life potentially.”

Explanation:

a. The soul is the act of the body – it is the perfecting principle informing matter so that
the resulting substance is a body, is organic and is in potency to vital operations. (take
note the difference between ACT and POTENCY to understand this line)
b. The soul is the first essential act – because it is the substantial form which gives the first
“to be” (to live); the second act on the other hand is the operation which gives a
secondary “to be”
c. The phrase physical body – signifies that this kind of body from mathematical bodies
and artifacts
d. The term organized – signifies that this kind of body has a diversity of parts dynamically
unified, working together for the good of the whole being
e. The phrase having life potentially – indicates that the body is in potency to vital
operations, which will perfect it; that it is in potency to vital operations is due to the first
act, the soul.