Aristotle's De Anima: A Critical Commentary

by Ronald Polansky

Overview

Aristotle's De anima is the first systematic philosophical account of the soul, which serves to explain the functioning of all mortal living things. In his commentary, Ronald Polansky argues that the work is far more structured and systematic than previously supposed. He contends that Aristotle seeks a comprehensive understanding of the soul and its faculties.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521148856
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/05/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	598
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Ronald Polansky is Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University. Editor of the journal Ancient Philosophy since founding it in 1979, he is the author of Philosophy and Knowledge: A Commentary on Plato's Theaetetus, and co-editor of Bioethics: Ancient Themes in Contemporary Issues.

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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-86274-5 - Aristotle’s De anima - by Ronald Polansky
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Introduction

1. The De anima and Self-Knowledge

That which Aristotle investigates systematically in the De anima he calls by the name ψυχή ( psyche), that is, soul. This term appears among a rich vocabulary available to the earlier tradition for related notions. In the earliest Greek literature that we possess, Homer’s epic poems, the psyche is a kind of breath-soul escaping at death, the eschatological soul flying off to Hades’ realm and retaining there merely a pale, shadowy existence.¹ This may help explain why ψυχή could also be used for butterfly or moth (see Aristotle HA 551a13–14). Heraclitus and Plato prominently accept psyche to stand for the whole soul (see, e.g., DK 22B36, B45, B77, B107, B115, B117, B118, and Plato Apology 29d–30b, Republic 353d, Cratylus 400a, Laws 959a). They perhaps delight in suggesting ironically that the afterlife need hardly be shadowy as Homer depicts it and that many persons now upon this earth lead merely shadowy lives.

   But why suppose that there is soul at all? The ancients observe or postulate certain operations and functions; for example, animals engagein voluntary motions and have perceptive capacities, and humans seem perhaps to have some capacity for survival after death. Soul is then posited as necessary for explaining such functions as their source or cause. Only that account of soul suffices that manages to handle compellingly the function or functions that soul is introduced to explain.²

   For just what functions should soul account? Are these only the obvious functions, such as motion and perception, or do such obscure conditions as dreams, trances, and afterlife involve soul? Does each function require its own sort of soul, that is, many functions entail many souls, or can a single soul or one sort of soul account for many functions? And how far does the notion of soul extend? Humans and other animals may have souls, but do plants also have souls? Do the elemental bodies and the bodies composed of them have souls? Do the heavenly bodies have souls? Dreams, thought, or other operations may suggest that souls are somehow separated from embodiment. Do unembodied gods then have souls? Until the extension of the notion of soul is ascertained, the common definition of it cannot be developed. Aristotle will have to determine the functions attributable to soul. In this effort he will also work out the notion of life in its connection with soul.

   A treatise devoted to the soul may offer insight into the self. The Platonic and other philosophical traditions give special prominence to self-knowledge.³ Aristotle’s De anima, the first philosophical text providing a thorough exposition of the soul, has seemed promising for deepening self-understanding.⁴ Yet the De anima hardly takes the form of an autobiographical or biographical work about the self. It does not even focus upon humans. Neither does it consider, in a way we might expect from some modern psychology, how to put our lives in order. Can it, then, contribute to our knowledge of the self? Perhaps it can if it clarifies the soul and its faculties.

   What is the self, and how might it connect with soul? Some insight into notions available to Aristotle may be gained by reflection upon Plato. The very first word of the Phaedo, the dialogue devoted to Socrates’ life and the possibility of its continuance, is αὐτός, the word for self.⁵ Phaedo is asked whether he was present himself in the prison when Socrates died. Phaedo was in fact there in body and soul in the prison with Socrates – as he is now with Echecrates in Phlius – so that he witnessed firsthand what transpired and did not merely hear about it or imagine it. Such presence of the self is being somewhere in person. The self seems to be the entirety of the person. Yet this hardly exhausts the meaning of self. Soon in the Phaedo it is suggested that at death body and soul separate so that each gets away itself by itself (αὐτὸ καθ᾽ αὑτό, 64c6 and αὐτὴν καθ᾽ αὑτήν, 64c7–8; cf. 65d1–2). The self here is what something is when nothing foreign to it is together with it. This seems reinforced when Socrates refers to something as being itself just (τι εἶναι δίκαιον αὐτό, 65d4–5), and he goes on to speak of the Form as the essence that each being is (τῆς οὐσίας ὃ τυγχάνει ἕκαστον ὄν, 65d13–e1) and each thing itself under investigation (αὐτὸ ἕκαστον, 65e3). Here “self,” in expressions such as “the X itself,” means the very being of the thing. What it itself is, its being when considered apart from anything other than or alien to it, is its ownmost self. From this perspective the very self of a human being is the soul – the body being taken merely as something foreign to it – or some essence or Form, such as the Human Being itself, or even one’s highest capacity, such as intellect.⁶

   There seem, then, at least two ways to think about the self. There are the notion of self as the entirety of the person, and of the self as what is most genuinely what one is. The entirety notion is an expansive self. It may extend to even greater wholes than the individual soul and body. The Greek saying that “the friend is another self” (see NE 1170b6–7) suggests that the self may embrace one’s circle of friends (cf. the speech of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium and its background in Empedocles).⁷ But we might then also identify with larger groups or wholes, such as family, polis, or cosmos, so that the self can be remarkably embracing. The other notion of self, as what is most genuinely the thing itself, heads in the opposite direction: to greater refinement rather than to expansion. The principle or ruling element, and particularly that which has fullest awareness, appears most the thing itself. So in Plato’s Alcibiades I the soul is said to be the self inasmuch as it uses the body as instrument (cf. Laws 959a-b). And more especially that part of the soul by which we think and know ourselves seems most the self. Aristotle in Metaphysics 1037a7–8 suggests that Socrates is his soul; in Nicomachean Ethics ix 4.1166a16–17 and 8.1168b28–1169a3 he identifies the self with mind, the ruling element of the person, and analogously, the self of the polis is its politeia (see Politics 1276b1–13).⁸

   This reflection upon the self suggests how treatment of the soul can pertain to the self. For Aristotle it will be determined that soul is fundamentally the principle bestowing life upon a body capable of life. Soul and body are for him somehow one, the soul giving unity to the body or matter, enabling the living being to engage in its various functions. The view of soul and body united as form and matter later receives the name “hylomorphic” theory. Generally it is the person or animal, composed of soul and body, rather than merely the soul that does things, such as experiencing emotions, perceiving, and thinking (see DA 408b12–15). Thus Aristotle prepares an understanding of soul equipped to account for the typical way that self is used to mean the individual person or living being. As a scientific and theoretical treatise, the De anima cannot be about a particular individual, such as Socrates, but it can explore what enables the various individuals to be the individuals that they are. The treatise goes beyond study of the relationship of body and soul, and the ordinary meaning of self, to determine what the soul itself is and what are its several functional capacities. These investigations answer to that more peculiar sense of self where it may refer to the ownmost being or essence of the thing. As Aristotle explicates such capacities as those for nutrition, sense perception, and thought, he gives access to the most characteristic modes of being of the self for different levels of living things. The different capacities of soul support various levels of life. The higher sorts of life constitute richer modes of selfhood inasmuch as they get further from body and have more complete self-involvement.

   Even nonliving things have bodies, but humans share with all mortal living beings possession of a body that serves the soul by providing instruments useful for its functioning. Humans share with plants the nutritive and reproductive capacity. With animals we in addition share sense-perceptive capacity. With sense perception are pleasure, pain, imagination ( phantasia), desire, self-awareness, and frequently voluntary motion. Distinctive of humans among mortal living things is mind. This enriches the possible self-awareness and voluntary progressive motion. Though mind does not have a specific bodily organ as does each of the senses, humans only think because they have sense perception to open and activate their minds. All the operations of mortal living things, then, involve the entire living being encompassing body and soul, but though the higher living beings have more complexly organized bodies, their operations are somehow less body dependent. Bodies are initially most obvious, supplying organs or tools for soul’s utilization, but since they are merely instrumental to soul, they may not ultimately be so fundamentally self and intelligible. As soul in the De anima elaborates upon its own capacities of sense and mind, it uses the self-awareness accompanying all cognition to gain self-understanding by elucidating what allows for such self-understanding.

   The soul’s cognitive powers thus make possible illumination of the self, achieving self-understanding by giving accounts of themselves. Aristotle will say,

When it [mind] thus becomes each thing as the person knowing according to actuality is said to do (this happens when he is able to exercise the power on his own initiative), its condition is still one of potentiality, but not in the same way prior to learning or discovery; and it is then able to think itself. (429b6–10)

The human or animal engaged in any perceiving or thinking, on Aristotle’s view of these, is aware of self because the self now is the perceiving or thinking of what is being perceived or thought. This self-awareness develops into the whole account Aristotle provides of the soul. The account of the soul relies upon self-awareness involved in any perceiving or thinking and deepens to self-understanding of its own capacities and operations. The soul, especially in its highest capacity and operation, mind and thinking, seems the genuine self. The De anima can thus be a work about the self and a work of self-knowledge.

   The highest capacity of soul, mind, has a peculiar relationship to soul, however. Plato seems to insist mind is only in soul (see Timaeus 30b), but Aristotle seems to argue that mind is somehow separate (see 403a10–12, 429a18–27, 430a17–18, a22–23).⁹ Since souls are posited as principles explaining the motions and operations of certain sorts of bodies, gods lacking bodies will not need souls. Yet the gods engage in thinking and have life. God, for Aristotle, is a life of thinking, thinking thinking itself (see Metaphysics xii 9). For God to be actuality with no potentiality, God is thinking (noesis) rather than mind (nous), which is merely a capacity for thinking. Self and life in their fullest divine applications, then, ultimately surpass soul. Understanding of our own mind prepares us for some grasp of what is divine about our self and the godhead.

   All soul bestows life, but since life may surpass soul, life serves as principle of soul even more than the reverse, whereas his predecessors typically give life only very limited attention, and when they do, they settle for a single criterion such as motion, respiration, or awareness to demarcate the living, Aristotle devotes serious attention to life and recognizes that life has many varieties. But he finds that the basic sort of life essential to mortal beings, the condition that suffices for any of them to live and that will also be necessary, is nutrition, growth, and decline. Hence life begins with plants and includes animals, rather than as most predecessors supposed starts with animals. Therefore life and soul are not limited to those beings that can be conscious of having a self. Soul and life take their rise below the level of awareness and self-awareness with plants. Then animals have soul, life, and self-awareness. But subsequently life and self, with the gods, transcend the reach of soul.

   What may Aristotle have to say about the possible continued existence of the self of mortal beings following the present life, that is, the immortality of soul? To the extent that soul is posited to account for the functions of mortal living things and only functions with bodily instruments, there is no reason to suppose that it can continue when the body becomes largely dysfunctional, especially so that it cannot support nutritive functioning essential to mortal life. Of course there are temporary dysfunctions, for instance, sleep, drunkenness, fainting, injury, sickness, that permit recovery, but death seems more final. The only way soul could have continued significance is if it could become reincarnated, a view not extended any credence by Aristotle since soul is the principle of life of its own body (see 406b3–5 for reincarnation based upon an impossible assumption). Mind, however, has only limited dependence upon body even when humans are alive. Mind also seems to originate from outside us inasmuch as we learn much from those who already know (see GA 736b27–29). If humans always exist, mind seems always in existence. Perhaps therefore mind somehow continues, though not soul, especially inasmuch as mind is “unaffected” and “separate” (see 429a15 and b5). With loss of body, however, sense capacity, phantasia, and memory are lost as well. It seems, then, that disembodied and nonensouled mind cannot retain or concern itself with particulars but only the truly intelligible things. Such mind can have no rewards or any liability to punishments. Aristotle no more bothers to consider the way disembodied minds might be individuated, assuming that there are such, than he concerns himself with the individuation of the gods (see Meta. xii 8). If mind continues after death, perhaps as universal knowledge in humans, the way in which it continues might seem to us a rather selfless selfhood.

2. Study of Soul in Relation to Physics

Aristotle is very attentive to what scientific field he is working in and keeps closely to what is appropriate within that field. Therefore his division of sciences into theoretical, practical, and productive sciences, as in Metaphysics vi 1, has important impact upon what he covers and his methodology. For example, the four causes, form, matter, mover, end, emphasized in the theoretical works are clearly in play in the practical science ethics; for example, happiness is the end, character the form applied to the matter of the passions, and choice is the moving cause, but Aristotle will not refer explicitly to this demarcation of causes since such theoretical notions are generally out of place in practical science. Similarly, we find Aristotle in Politics 1256a40–b32 claiming that all animals are here to serve human needs; that is, nature providentially supports justice and our being political animals, but this is not the way he speaks in his theoretical works, where it seems each natural kind seeks its own end enabling it to be most godlike. We should expect, then, that where the treatment of soul fits among the sciences will greatly influence Aristotle’s approach. Soul is a major topic, of course, in practical science (ethics and politics) and productive science (rhetoric and poetics), but the De anima is a theoretical treatment of soul undertaken for the sake of knowledge of the truth rather than any practical purpose. Aristotle further divides theoretical science into mathematics, physics, and theology, that is, first philosophy (see Meta. 1026a18–19). Study of soul as principle of rest and motion of natural beings fits largely within physics.

   Soul belongs primarily within physics because soul is the nature of ensouled beings. Natural beings have motion by nature; nature is an inner principle of rest and motion in a natural being (see Physics ii 1). Some natural beings are self-movers. Mortal self-movers are ensouled. Animals are most obviously mortal self-movers, but plants as well seem self-movers insofar as they grow under their own power, though lacking progressive motion. It looks, then, as if study of such mortal self-movers belongs within physics (see Metaphysics 1025b34–1026a6, DA 402a6, and 403a27–28 for soul as studied to some extent in physics). Soul is posited to explain the self-motion of mortal living things. The soul is cause of self-motion, whether this motion is change in quantity (as the growth of a plant or animal), change in place (as the walking, swimming, or flying of an animal), or change in quality (as in animal cognition or emotion). A dead plant or animal, and even more obviously an image of a plant or animal such as a painting or a statue, cannot move itself: the incapacity is explicable by the absence of soul and the capacities it gives (see PA 640b29–641a32).

   Aristotle complains that his predecessors focus too exclusively upon humans (402b3–5). The study of soul must extend to all ensouled beings if soul and even human soul are to be understood. But this extension makes a science of soul problematic for Aristotle. Plants and animals do not form a single genus, and living things even less form a clear genus. Since science usually pertains to a single genus as its subject matter, study of soul is unlikely to constitute a science and Aristotle does not refer to his project in the De anima as the elaboration of a single, self-contained science, though much of it fits within physics. Why then study soul in its full extension and initially seeking the most common account (κοινότατος λόγος) of soul (412a4–6)?

   The answer is that for Aristotle to do otherwise than to seek the most common account of soul is to study something other than soul. Merely to study plants, animals, or humans will not provide an account of soul as such and dubiously discloses all of its key faculties. Only through arriving at the most general account of soul and at the beginning of the presentation of his own positive view is he in position to analyze the soul’s faculties because his general account of soul implies what faculties the soul has. His definition of soul develops only through acceptance of nutritive capacity as basic and the further faculties follow as well from this definition. He thus arrives at a very different sort of division of soul from that found for example in Plato with his rational, spirited, and appetitive parts of soul. Were Aristotle instead to start with study of human or animal capabilities he perhaps would become preoccupied with cognition. And launching inquiry with the soul’s faculties rather than his most common account, he would have trouble justifying these faculties as all pertaining to soul. Without an embracing account of soul little light can be shed on the connections of the soul’s faculties and the relationship of soul and body. Even then if Aristotle might well have arrived at his general account of soul only after much reflection upon the soul’s faculties, as book 1 well shows, in his systematic presentation of his investigations he must commence as he does with the most common account. Book 1 surely offers extensive preparation for both the general account of soul and accounts of its faculties.

   The soul’s faculties, that is, its “parts,” will to some extent be studied along the same lines as the parts of the body. In the Parts of Animals Aristotle suggests that rather than treat each species of animal separately, in which case parts such as heart, lungs, and stomach will be considered again and again, investigation of animals by the parts shared by many species of animal is most appropriate (639a15–b5 and 644a23–b15). He similarly studies soul by going through shared capacities of soul: nutritive, perceptive, intellective, and locomotive powers. Not only are these capacities generally widely shared, but also they have an order of succession within perishable living beings, the higher functional capacities presupposing and depending upon the lower. This accords with the most common account of soul. The lowest capacity of soul that first bestows life, nutritive power, belongs to all mortal living beings; plants possess it without any higher capacities. Similarly, some simple animals have the contact senses touch and taste without having any of the distance senses, though all the animals having the distant senses will also have the contact senses. Animals having intellect require sense perception as well. Hence, any soul with higher capacities will have the lower capacities. The order of treatment of the faculties mainly follows the order of succession. And since the higher capacities cannot generally be separated from the lower and depend upon them, they may only be understood in connection with them.

   In studying the faculties successively, as fits with his most common account of soul, Aristotle traces analogous features so far as possible. Each faculty has its correlated object and most have a bodily organ through which they work. The faculties break up analogously into subfaculties, as sense encompasses five senses; nutrition covers growth, maintenance, and reproduction; and intellection may be theoretical, mathematical, or practical. Hence much is gained by approaching the higher capacities through their striking analogies and partial disanalogies with the lower capacities of soul that are initially easier for us to understand (see Physics 184a16–21 about proceeding from what is at first more intelligible to us to what is intelligible in itself). The nutritive capacity not involving awareness is clearer to us than the higher capacities of soul, yet the less bodily involvement there is in the functioning of a capacity of soul, the more intelligible it is ultimately. Much as the relationship of body and soul is considered in analogy to form and matter and actuality and potentiality, functional capacities allow for extended analogies. A preliminary indication of the significance of reflection upon analogy and disanalogy in the De anima appears in Table 1.¹⁰ These analogies discussed in the commentary take us deeply into Aristotle’s positions and offer compelling support for their coherence. We might expect that those speaking of something possibly imperceptible like soul are constrained to use examples, models, images, and metaphors based on perceptible things (cf. Plato Statesman 277d and 285d–286b). Aristotle will inevitably employ these to clarify the soul and its powers, and these are closely related with analogy. But by especially emphasizing analogy and disanalogy among the several capacities of soul considered, he advantageously avoids having the account go below the level of soul since for Aristotle life cannot be explained exclusively in terms of the nonliving.

TABLE 1

Capacity and Subcapacities	Object	Medium	Organ	Operation(s)
Nutritive	Food		Heat (pneuma)	Nourishing
Growth, decline	“		“	Growing, declining
Life, maintenance	“		“	Living
Reproduction	Seed		Heat, form	Reproducing
Sensitive	Sensible	Medium	Sense organ/sensible form	Sense-perceiving
Sight	Visible	Illumined	Eye	Seeing
		Transparent
Hearing	Audible	Air (water)	Ear	Hearing
Smell	Odor	Air (water)	Nose	Smelling
Taste	Flavor	Tongue	Inner organ (heart)	Tasting
Touch	Tangible	Flesh	Inner organ (heart)	Touching
Phantasia	Phantasma, sensible		Sense organs	Presentation in many operations
Intellective	Intelligible	Agent intellect, phantasma	[Knowledge/intelligible form]	Thinking
Theoretical	Essence	“	[“]	“
Mathematical	Abstractions	“	[“]	“
Practical	Goods	“	[“]	“
Locomotive	Desirable	Desire, phantasma	Connate pneuma, joints	Voluntary motions
Appetite	Pleasant	“	“	“
Spiritedness	Incitement	“	“	“
Wish	Good	Desire, practical thought	“	“

   The way soul’s powers are sequential, going from the most widely shared to the less widely shared capacities, can explain why the heavens and gods are not ensouled so that the study of soul pertains just to mortal living beings. The heavens are self-movers and may have something analogous to soul to account for this, but while rotating endlessly, they do not grow or alter (see De caelo i 3), so they must lack nutritive life and sense perception. If all ensouled beings require nutritive capacity to support any other faculties, the heavenly bodies are not ensouled. For similar reasons, God engaged in thinking, living but without nutritive and sense-perceptive life, does not enter within the subject domain of investigation of soul.¹¹ Plants and animals as self-moving mortal beings are ensouled beings.

   Among the animals, however, humans have at least one power of soul, mind, that gets outside the realm of physics. Mind may not need to be embodied, and Aristotle will utilize Anaxagoras’s view that mind is “separate” and “unaffected” (DA iii 4). To the extent that mind is not so closely mingled with body while its operation is unlikely to be a motion, mind leaves the domain of physics that concentrates upon movable beings and their principles. Parts of Animals confirms the place of soul within physics but denies that all of soul, in particular mind and especially theoretical mind that does not as such initiate motion, belongs within physics:

What has been said suggests the question, whether it is the whole soul or only some part of it, the consideration of which comes within the province of natural science. Now if it be of the whole soul that this should treat, then there is no place for any other philosophy beside it. For as it belongs in all cases to one and the same science (theoria) to deal with correlated subjects – one and the same science, for instance, deals with sensation and with the objects of sense – and as therefore the intelligent soul and the object of intellect, being correlated, must belong to one and the same science, it follows that natural science will have to include everything in its province. But perhaps it is not the whole soul, nor all its parts collectively, that constitutes the source of motion; but there may be one part, identical with that in plants, which is the source of growth, another, namely the sensory part, which is the source of change of quality, while still another, and this not the intellectual part, is the source of locomotion. For other animals than man have the power of locomotion, but in none but him is there intellect (dianoia). Thus then it is plain that it is not of the whole soul that we have to treat. For it is not the whole soul that constitutes the animal nature, but only some part or parts of it. (i 1.641a32–b10)

Were physics to encompass mind and its correlated objects, that is, intelligible beings, it would seem to be considering all of being, and physics would be all of philosophy. Since study of soul thus pertains to physics while also going beyond physics, soul’s investigation may be difficult and not result in a science of the soul.

---

© Cambridge University Press

Table of Contents

Preface ix

List of Abbreviations xv

Introduction 1

Commentary on De Anima

Book I

1 The Nobility and Difficulty of Study of Soul; Its Connection with Body 33

2 The Predecessors' Use of Soul to Account for Motion and Perception 62

3 Criticism of Predecessors' Way of Accounting for Motion 83

4 Criticism of the Harmonia View as an Account of Motion 103

5 Criticism of Predecessors' Way of Accounting for Cognition 123

Book 2

1 Definition of Soul 145

2 What is Life? 171

3 How Powers of Soul Are Distributed and United in the Soul 188

4 The Nutritive Faculty: Its Object and Subfaculties 200

5 Clarification of Being Affected, Living as Saving, and the First Definition of Sense 223

6 The Three Sorts of Sensible Objects 250

7 Vision, Medium, and Objects 263

8 Hearing, Sound, and Voice 285

9 Smell and Odor 302

10 Taste Is a Contact Sense; the Tasteable 313

11 Touch, the Tangibles, and Sense as a Mean 321

12 Definition of Sense and Whether Sensibles Affect Nonperceiving Bodies 338

Book 3

1 In the World As It Is There Can Be but the Five Senses 361

2 What Allows for Perceiving That We Perceive; Sense Joins in a Common Power so That the Five Senses Are Subfaculties of a Central Sense Faculty 380

3 Distinguishing Sense and Thought; What Is Phantasia? 403

4 What Is Mind as That Capable of Thinking All Things 434

5 What Enables Thinking to Occur 458

6 The Sorts of Intelligible Objects 473

7 Phantasia Has a Role in All Thinking 481

8 That Mind Can Think All Things 494

9 There Is a Capacity for Progressive Motion 501

10 The Desiderative Capacity Is the Primary Cause of Progressive Motion 514

11 Even the Simplest Animals Have Indefinite Phantasia, and Calculative Phantasia Fits the Account of Progressive Motion 527

12 The Necessary Order of the Faculties of Soul 534

13 The Sort of Body Requisite to Support the Order of the Faculties of Soul 546

Bibliography 555

Index 563

Editorial Reviews

"It is a thorough work with often illuminating lines of interpretation, which provides a coherent account of the three books of the De anima. While its target audience is certainly the scholarly world, the book will also appeal to students, its style having an important pedagogical component. From the beginning of the volume, it is apparent that the work is not only a commentary, but also offers a complete picture of Aristotle's treatise and thus provides the references and details that a scholar of the De anima needs. This approach necessarily makes the commentary lengthy and gives the reader more than just one author's point of view on Aristotle's De anima, but it also makes this an important tool of research—a tool that cannot be ignored by any scholar of this work. " —BCMR

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