Philosophy
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LECTUREAristotleonthesoul.docx5
LECTURE: Aristotle on the soul
What is the soul?
With our account of Aristotle’s general metaphysics in place, we are now ready at last to look at what he has to say about the nature of the soul, and about human nature in particular. Recall Aristotle’s view that all natural substances have a substantial form – the organizational pattern that makes something a substance of a certain kind and gives it its distinctive properties and powers. For example, water is the kind of substance whose substantial form or organizing pattern gives it properties and powers like being liquid at room temperature, transparency, the capacity to conduct electricity, and so on.
Now, for Aristotle, the soul just is a kind of form. We can define it as follows:
soul: the substantial form of a living body
In other words, “soul,” for Aristotle, is a technical term for the form or organizational pattern that makes something a living thing and gives it the distinctive properties and powers of a living thing (such as taking in nutrients, going through a growth cycle, etc.).
Now, properly to understand Aristotle’s view, it is crucial that we put out of our minds any preconceptions or “pop culture” notions we might have about what a soul is. It is NOT the same thing as a ghost, or “ectoplasm” from the Ghostbusters movies, or anything like that. It is, again, a kind of form, in the technical sense of that term that we discussed in earlier lectures. If you understand how the form or pattern of being triangular is related to the ink that takes on that form when you draw a triangle, then you have a good first approximation to how the soul relates to the body. To be sure, there’s more to the soul than that, but that’s the best way to start thinking about it.
Not what a soul is
Keep in mind, though, that a form is not just a shape. So, I am not saying that the soul is the shape of the body. It is, again, the form of the body – what gives organizational structure of any kind to the matter that makes up the body, and that includes not only its shape, but all its other features too (its solidity, its metabolism, its ability to heal, and so on).
The soul and hylomorphism
Aristotle’s conception of the soul reflects his more general theory of hylomorphism, according to which physical substances are made up of form and matter, and form and matter in turn are a special kind of actuality and potentiality. Matter by itself is just the potentiality to be a physical substance of a certain kind, and form is what actualizes that potentiality so as to yield some particular substance. And the soul, in turn, is just the specific kind of form that actualizes the potential that matter has to be a living thing, so as to yield some particular living substance. In other words:
SOUL FORM ACTUALITY
is to AS is to AS is to
BODY MATTER POTENTIALITY
This is why Aristotle, in his book De Anima (or “On the Soul”), defines the soul as “the first actuality of a natural body which has life potentially.” This is pretty mysterious sounding if you’re unfamiliar with Aristotle’s jargon, but we can understand it in light of what we’ve been saying about his general metaphysical account of how nature works. What he is saying is that some natural bodies or kinds of matter have (as a result of their chemical composition, we would say today) the potential to be a living thing. And the soul is just the specific kind of form that actualizes that potential.
By “first actuality,” he means that the soul is what actualizes the potentials in this kind of matter in the most fundamental way. It is what gives a bit of matter the most fundamental features of a living thing (such as taking in nutrients, going through a growth cycle, etc.) as opposed to merely secondary features (such as having a certain color or weight). In other words, the soul is the substantial form of a living thing rather than a merely accidental form.
Three kinds of soul
Notice that I have been saying that the soul is the form of a living thing. I didn’t mention human beings, specifically. Does that mean that Aristotle thinks that other living things, such as trees and dogs, have souls? Yes, it does. However, keep in mind that all that means is that they have substantial forms which give them the basic powers of living things. It doesn’t mean that they have immortal souls (Aristotle thinks they do not), and it doesn’t mean that when they die, a ghostly thing floats away from their bodies! Again, a soul is not a ghost or anything like that.
We have souls! Us too!
Aristotle thinks that there are three irreducibly different kinds of living thing, each with its own distinctive kind of soul. And he thinks they are arranged in a kind of hierarchy, insofar as the living things higher up in the hierarchy possess all the basic features of the ones lower down, but add to them irreducibly different properties and powers of their own. The three kinds are as follows:
1. The vegetative or plant soul:
This is the kind of soul (or substantial form or organizational structure) that gives the material substances that have it three basic powers or capacities: nutrition , growth , and reproduction . This, for Aristotle, is the “basic package” that all living things have. They take in nutrients to sustain themselves; they go through a growth cycle; and they make copies of themselves. Anything that has these three basic capacities but does nothing more is an essentially vegetative form of life. There are lots of different ways such a form of life might carry out these functions – they correspond to all the different kinds of plants and fungi there are – but if what a thing does is basically just a riff on these functions, then it falls into the vegetative category.
Vegetative forms of life are purely material. Everything they do is tied to matter, so that when they die, that is the end of them. They do not have immortal souls. Still, Aristotle thinks that they differ in kind, and not just in degree, from non-living kinds of matter (stone, metal, etc.). He thinks there are irreducibly different kinds of matter in nature, and would reject the idea that there is just one kind that everything is a variation of.
I got the soul stone! (Yeah, but which
soul?)
2. The sensory or animal soul:
This is the kind of soul that gives the physical substances that have it, first, all the powers of the vegetative soul, plus three new powers or capacities of its own: sensation , appetite , and locomotion . In other words, animal forms of life can, just like plants, take in nutrients, grow, and reproduce themselves. But in addition, they take in information through specialized sense organs in a way that involves conscious awareness; they have inner drives to pursue or avoid what they are consciously aware of in sensation; and they can move themselves toward or away from these objects of sensation and appetite.
As Aristotle understands these powers of the animal soul, they form a kind of “package deal” or naturally go together. An animal’s sensory awareness of what is around it would be pointless if it didn’t have locomotion or the power to move itself toward or away from the things it senses. And appetites or inner impulses (like hunger or fear) are what link together sensation and locomotion. For example, a dog sees water, which gives rise to the appetite of thirst, which in turn causes the dog to move itself toward the water and drink it.
Non-human animals, like plants, are in Aristotle’s view purely physical things. Everything they do is tied to matter too, so that they do not have immortal souls. Still, sensation, appetite, and locomotion differ in kind rather than degree from what vegetative forms of life can do, and animals do those vegetative things too. So, for Aristotle, animals are higher up in the hierarchy of reality than plants are. Moreover, their distinctively animal functions transform the vegetative ones. For example, both plants and animals take in nutrients, but unlike plants, animals can consciously experience this, which is why they take pleasure in eating.
3. The rational or human soul:
This is the kind of soul that gives the physical substances that have it – namely, us human beings – first, all the powers of the vegetative and animal souls, plus on top of that some new and distinctive powers of our own: intellect and will . In other words, like other animals, we take in nutrients, go through a growth cycle, reproduce ourselves, have conscious awareness through specialized sense organs, have inner drives or appetites, and can move ourselves around. But in addition, we have rationality and free choice.
Let’s add this mind stone to the soul stone
Rationality or intellect involves three basic capacities of its own:
1. The capacity to grasp abstract ideas or concepts (like the concept man or mortal)
2. The capacity to put concepts together into complete thoughts or propositions (like the proposition that all men are mortal)
3. The capacity for logical reasoning from one proposition to another (as when we reason from the propositions that all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal)
Will, in turn, is appetite guided by intellect rather than mere instinct or impulse. Like a non-human animal, we have appetites that push us toward or away from various objects. But whereas a non-human animal will give in to whatever appetite happens to be stronger, we are able to “stand back” from a stronger appetite and judge it to be irrational to indulge it. Reason’s capacity to override animal impulse is what the will involves.
Just as the animal powers transform the vegetative ones, intellect and will transform our vegetative and animal powers. For example, like plants and animals, we take in nutrients, and like animals, we can consciously experience doing so in the act of eating. But unlike non-human animals, our rationality adds a cultural element to eating – transforming it into the institution of the meal, which is governed by rules of etiquette, involves preparing and presenting food a certain way, and so on. In similar ways, our rationality transforms our enjoyment of the other things we experience through our senses (insofar as we have practices like art and music, etc.), our reproductive capacities (insofar as we associate them with romance, marriage, child-rearing customs, etc.), and so on.
In Aristotle’s view, intellect and will differ from what plants and animals can do in kind and not just in degree. So he takes us to be higher up still in the hierarchy of things than non-human animals are. But he also takes intellect and will to differ from what plants and animals can do in an even stronger sense. For he takes the intellect to be immaterial or not entirely tied to the body. This is why his position amounts to a kind of dualism. And Aquinas, who builds on Aristotle’s philosophy, takes the immateriality of the intellect to open the door to the immortality of the human soul.
We will turn next to why they take the intellect to differ in kind and not just degree from what non-human animals are capable of, and in particular why they take it to be immaterial. Then we will see how Aquinas builds, on this result, an argument for immortality.
Aquinas 101 on the Powers of the Soul: A First Look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2_t7nW6MZQ
Aquinas 101 on Body and Soul:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTzNGUCJkm4
