Summaries on Aristotle views on the Soul!

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Biology and Psychology

For Aristotle, biology and psychology were intertwined, much more so than we would view them today, and he treated the two subjects as one science.

The purpose of psychology was to discover the attributes and essence of the soul (translated from the Greek work psyche). Aristotle struggled to come up with a single definition of the soul and concluded that none existed. On the other hand, the variations in the kinds of souls were not so different that some common ground could not be ascertained. Aristotle therefore arranged a series of various forms that become increasingly complex, so that each form of the soul possesses the qualities of all those that precede it in order.

The most basic soul is nutritive, which exists in all living things, including both plants and animals.

Beyond the nutritive soul is the sensitive soul, possessed by all animals. This category can itself be broken down into the same kind of hierarchy, in which touch is the most basic sensation.

A sensitive soul is capable not only of perception but also of desire, since it can feel pleasure and pain.

Moreover, an animal can possess two additional faculties that are not necessarily found in all: the first he calls imagination, which also includes the faculty of memory and is an extension of the cognitive aspect of the animal; the second is the faculty of movement, an extension of the appetitive side.

Human beings of course possess the most complex soul, which exercises the faculty of reason. Aristotle justifies this hierarchy by showing that the faculties are ordered by their necessity, nutrition being the most fundamental and reason contributing not so much to sustenance as it does to well-being.

One key issue that Aristotle raises is the relationship between soul and body. He views them as inseparable and makes the analogy that the soul is to the body as form is to matter. In other words, the soul is the primary actuality of the body, providing the body with its essential character and therefore is inseparable from it.

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Notes on Aristotle's Metaphysics and Psychology
Sandra LaFave

West Valley College

"We are in the habit of recognizing, as one determinate kind of what is, substance, and that in several senses, (a) in the sense of matter or that which in itself is not 'a this', and (b) in the sense of form or essence, which is that precisely in virtue of which a thing is called 'a this', and thirdly (c) in the sense of that which is compounded of both (a) and (b). Now matter is potentiality, form actuality; of the latter there are two grades related to one another as e.g. knowledge to the exercise of knowledge." De Anima II,1

In other words, “substance” (ousia) can be pure matter (ulh), pure form (morfh, or eidoV), or composite.

Matter is

1. undifferentiated potentiality

2. inert

3. impredicable (nothing can be said about it)

4. no-thing (formless, hence nothing we can name)

We have no experience of undifferentiated matter. Pure matter (prote hule) isn't anything. Everything we experience is already something — it already has some form.

Form is

1. active

2. differentiating

3. the organizing and limiting principle of everything in our
world (the Form of X is what makes X's stay X's and not turn into Y's before their time)

4. actuality, or being, in the sense that if something has Form X, it is an X


We have no experience of pure form. Pure form is Aristotle's God, or Prime Mover, who actualizes all potential at once. Everything we experience is individuated; it is a "something" and hence has a material component.

So everything we encounter is composite. In Aristotle’s hierarchy of being, pure potentiality (“prime matter”) is at the bottom, pure actuality (Aristotle’s God) is at the top. Formed matter (everything else, including our world) is in between. See a picture of this.

For Aristotle, all the composite beings in our world are actually something at any time (because they always embody some form); and each step in the development of that being follows a particular trajectory, according to the kind of being it is. So there is a form of, say, dog, which all dogs possess equally; but individual dogs are different from one another because their matter differs. The doggy form brings with it various potentials: to bark, scratch, pant, etc. As dogs exist through time, they change, according to both their form (all dogs get bigger, older, and so on), and according to their matter (my dog gets bigger because of the specific food he eats, which no other dog eats). Change is the transformation of potentiality to actuality. As my dog actualizes his doggy potentials within his individual life, his scope of possibilities narrows, since our lives are finite.

Aristotle's world-view is teleological. For Aristotle, things have natural goals or purposes or functions. When Aristotle says everything has a goal, he doesn't mean everything is conscious, by the way. For Aristotle, most things are not conscious. But the whole universe is set up so things naturally, automatically act to attain full being, or perfection of their being. For Aristotle, this is the same as saying everything's goal is to be as fully and completely as possible what it already is potentially. Like Plato, Aristotle believes excellent things are not only better but more real (more actual). Aristotle uses the word entelechy to mean fully realized being that exists within something formally and guides the actualization of its potential toward full being. Entelechy is a kind of form.

For example, a knife's function is to cut. A knife is a better knife, and more of a knife (it has more knife being) the better it realizes its potential to cut. Its entelechy is its knifely structure. The structure organizes its matter and at the same time limits and determines the possibilities for that matter. (Matter organized in a knifely way can cut, but it can't walk or carry on photosynthesis. Those limitations are imposed by the entelechy.) The optimal knife, the best knife, the knife with the most knifeness, is the one put together optimally to achieve the natural purpose of a knife. We help this along (by cleaning, sharpening, etc.) or hinder it (by leaving it out in the rain); knives can't be fully knifely without our help.

According to Aristotle's famous definition, the soul (yuch) is "the entelechy of a natural body having life potentially within it." (Your translation has: "the soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it." The word translated as "actuality" is the word for entelechy.)

Since entelechy is form, the soul is the form, or principle of organization, of any living body. It is the actualization of the body-matter that enables the composite to perform its proper function, according to its kind. A knife doesn’t have a soul since it’s not alive. For Aristotle, there are different kinds of soul corresponding to different kinds of living things. They are arranged in a hierarchy such that the higher forms have all the properties of the lower types but not vice versa. The second chapter of the second book of De Anima (in the assigned reading) makes the following distinctions:

plant soul: nutritive or vegetative (able to assimilate nutrients)

animal soul: sensitive (having sense perception, desire, and local motion). Palmer calls this the appetitive soul.

human soul: rational, involving two faculties: (1) the ability to grasp a priori knowledge (epistemonikon) -- whose virtue is theoretical wisdom (sophia) -- and (2) the ability to grasp truths about the changeable world (logistikon), whose virtue is practical wisdom (phronesis).

Palmer pictures this on page 59.

So soul makes a living thing what it is (it's its form). Living things (like everything else in Aristotle's world) are striving for full and complete being, which means full realization of their potential within the constraints of their type of being, which is the same as performing their proper function with excellence. Plants naturally seek light. They get bigger and bigger up to a certain point (different for different kinds of plants); i.e., they exercise their nutritive capacity to the fullest if conditions permit. Animals exercise their capacities for exploration of their environments (sensing); they'll roam around if they can. Animals have desires and seek to fulfill them, each according to its kind.

(There's an important ethical intuition behind all this: that it's wrong to waste or crush potential. Why do we think poverty and injustice are bad, after all? Because oppressed people don't get to realize their potential; they don't get to actually be what they already are potentially. Some animal rights folks make a similar argument about animals. They says it's prima facie immoral to restrict an animal's movements, or its ability to explore its environment, or its ability to reproduce, etc.)

Full human being is fully rational being, since for Aristotle, the proper function of humans is to reason. A fully human being is one who exercises his proper function with excellence: he is a good reasoner, with both sophia and phronesis (practical wisdom). The latter enables him to recognize the GOLDEN MEAN, and thereby act with arete (areth), or "human excellence."

Now, what about immortality of soul?

1. Aristotle says, no way! In general, souls require bodies. In other words, there's no such thing as disembodied soul. So forget about immortality. A dead thing can't do its proper functions; it has therefore ceased to be essentially what it was. As Aristotle says: "That is why we can wholly dismiss as unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one, or generally the matter of a thing and that of which it is the matter.... as the pupil plus the power of sight constitutes the eye, so the soul plus the body constitutes the animal. From this it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from its body, or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has parts) for the actuality of some of them is nothing but the actualities of their bodily parts."

2. Aristotle says, maybe! Maybe some souls, or parts of souls, don't require bodies after all. In Chapter 1 of Book II Aristotle says: "Yet some [parts of the soul] may be separable because they are not the actualities of any body at all." In Chapter 2, he says: "We have no evidence as yet about mind or the power to think; it seems to be a widely different kind of soul, differing as what is eternal from what is perishable; it alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers. All the other parts of soul, it is evident from what we have said, are, in spite of certain statements to the contrary, incapable of separate existence though, of course, distinguishable by definition."

Aristotle never decides this issue with certainty, but Christian scholars have made much of these passages: they say Aristotle "leaves the door open" for immortality of soul.

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Aristotle
De Anima (On the Soul)
Selections from Book II
translated by J. A. Smith

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i. LET the foregoing suffice as our account of the views concerning the soul which have been handed on by our predecessors; let us now dismiss them and make as it were a completely fresh start, endeavouring to give a precise answer to the question, What is soul? i.e. to formulate the most general possible definition of it.

We are in the habit of recognizing, as one determinate kind of what is, substance, and that in several senses, (a) in the sense of matter or that which in itself is not 'a this', and (b) in the sense of form or essence, which is that precisely in virtue of which a thing is called 'a this', and thirdly (c) in the sense of that which is compounded of both (a) and (b). Now matter is potentiality, form actuality; of the latter there are two grades related to one another as e.g. knowledge to the exercise of knowledge.

Among substances are by general consent reckoned bodies and especially natural bodies; for they are the principles of all other bodies. Of natural bodies some have life in them, others not; by life we mean self-nutrition and growth (with its correlative decay). It follows that every natural body which has life in it is a substance in the sense of a composite.

But since it is also a body of such and such a kind, viz. having life, the body cannot be soul; the body is the subject or matter, not what is attributed to it. Hence the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentially within it. But substance is actuality, and thus soul is the actuality of a body as above characterized. Now the word actuality has two senses corresponding respectively to the possession of knowledge and the actual exercise of knowledge. It is obvious that the soul is actuality in the first sense, viz. that of knowledge as possessed, for both sleeping and waking presuppose the existence of soul, and of these waking corresponds to actual knowing, sleeping to knowledge possessed but not employed, and, in the history of the individual, knowledge comes before its employment or exercise.

That is why the soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it. The body so described is a body which is organized. The parts of plants in spite of their extreme simplicity are 'organs'; e.g. the leaf serves to shelter the pericarp, the pericarp to shelter the fruit, while the roots of plants are analogous to the mouth of animals, both serving for the absorption of food. If, then, we have to give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first grade of actuality of a natural organized body. That is why we can wholly dismiss as unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one, or generally the matter of a thing and that of which it is the matter. Unity has many senses (as many as 'is' has), but the most proper and fundamental sense of both is the relation of an actuality to that of which it is the actuality. We have now given an answer to the question, What is soul?-an answer which applies to it in its full extent. It is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing's essence. That means that it is 'the essential whatness' of a body of the character just assigned. Suppose that what is literally an 'organ', like an axe, were a natural body, its 'essential whatness', would have been its essence, and so its soul; if this disappeared from it, it would have ceased to be an axe, except in name. As it is, it is just an axe; it wants the character which is required to make its whatness or formulable essence a soul; for that, it would have had to be a natural body of a particular kind, viz. one having in itself the power of setting itself in movement and arresting itself. Next, apply this doctrine in the case of the 'parts' of the living body. Suppose that the eye were an animal-sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name-it is no more a real eye than the eye of a statue or of a painted figure. We must now extend our consideration from the 'parts' to the whole living body; for what the departmental sense is to the bodily part which is its organ, that the whole faculty of sense is to the whole sensitive body as such.

We must not understand by that which is 'potentially capable of living' what has lost the soul it had, but only what still retains it; but seeds and fruits are bodies which possess the qualification. Consequently, while waking is actuality in a sense corresponding to the cutting and the seeing, the soul is actuality in the sense corresponding to the power of sight and the power in the tool; the body corresponds to what exists in potentiality; as the pupil plus the power of sight constitutes the eye, so the soul plus the body constitutes the animal.

From this it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from its body, or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has parts) for the actuality of some of them is nothing but the actualities of their bodily parts. Yet some may be separable because they are not the actualities of any body at all. Further, we have no light on the problem whether the soul may not be the actuality of its body in the sense in which the sailor is the actuality of the ship.

This must suffice as our sketch or outline determination of the nature of soul.

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ii. Since what is clear or logically more evident emerges from what in itself is confused but more observable by us, we must reconsider our results from this point of view. For it is not enough for a definitive formula to express as most now do the mere fact; it must include and exhibit the ground also. At present definitions are given in a form analogous to the conclusion of a syllogism; e.g. What is squaring? The construction of an equilateral rectangle equal to a given oblong rectangle. Such a definition is in form equivalent to a conclusion. One that tells us that squaring is the discovery of a line which is a mean proportional between the two unequal sides of the given rectangle discloses the ground of what is defined.

We resume our inquiry from a fresh starting-point by calling attention to the fact that what has soul in it differs from what has not, in that the former displays life. Now this word has more than one sense, and provided any one alone of these is found in a thing we say that thing is living. Living, that is, may mean thinking or perception or local movement and rest, or movement in the sense of nutrition, decay and growth. Hence we think of plants also as living, for they are observed to possess in themselves an originative power through which they increase or decrease in all spatial directions; they grow up and down, and everything that grows increases its bulk alike in both directions or indeed in all, and continues to live so long as it can absorb nutriment.

This power of self-nutrition can be isolated from the other powers mentioned, but not they from it-in mortal beings at least. The fact is obvious in plants; for it is the only psychic power they possess.

This is the originative power the possession of which leads us to speak of things as living at all, but it is the possession of sensation that leads us for the first time to speak of living things as animals; for even those beings which possess no power of local movement but do possess the power of sensation we call animals and not merely living things.

The primary form of sense is touch, which belongs to all animals. just as the power of self-nutrition can be isolated from touch and sensation generally, so touch can be isolated from all other forms of sense. (By the power of self-nutrition we mean that departmental power of the soul which is common to plants and animals: all animals whatsoever are observed to have the sense of touch.) What the explanation of these two facts is, we must discuss later. At present we must confine ourselves to saying that soul is the source of these phenomena and is characterized by them, viz. by the powers of self-nutrition, sensation, thinking, and motivity.

Is each of these a soul or a part of a soul? And if a part, a part in what sense? A part merely distinguishable by definition or a part distinct in local situation as well? In the case of certain of these powers, the answers to these questions are easy, in the case of others we are puzzled what to say. just as in the case of plants which when divided are observed to continue to live though removed to a distance from one another (thus showing that in their case the soul of each individual plant before division was actually one, potentially many), so we notice a similar result in other varieties of soul, i.e. in insects which have been cut in two; each of the segments possesses both sensation and local movement; and if sensation, necessarily also imagination and appetition; for, where there is sensation, there is also pleasure and pain, and, where these, necessarily also desire.

We have no evidence as yet about mind or the power to think; it seems to be a widely different kind of soul, differing as what is eternal from what is perishable; it alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers. All the other parts of soul, it is evident from what we have said, are, in spite of certain statements to the contrary, incapable of separate existence though, of course, distinguishable by definition. If opining is distinct from perceiving, to be capable of opining and to be capable of perceiving must be distinct, and so with all the other forms of living above enumerated. Further, some animals possess all these parts of soul, some certain of them only, others one only (this is what enables us to classify animals); the cause must be considered later.

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Aristotle on the Soul

Matter and Form

1.Aristotle uses his familiar matter/form distinction to answer the question “What is soul?” At the beginning of De Anima II.1, he says that there are three sorts of substance:

a-Matter (potentiality)
b-Form (actuality)
c-The compound of matter and form

2.Aristotle is interested in compounds that are alive. These - plants and animals - are the things that have souls. Their souls are what make them living things.

3.Since form is what makes matter a “this,” the soul is the form of a living thing. (Not its shape, but its actuality, that in virtue of which it is the kind of living thing that it is.)

Grades of Actuality and Potentiality

1.Aristotle distinguishes between two levels of actuality (entelecheia). At 412a11 he gives knowing and attending as examples of these two kinds of actuality. (It has become traditional to call these first and second actuality, respectively.) At 412a22-26 he elaborates this example and adds this one: being asleep vs. being awake. But he does not fully clarify this important distinction until II.5 (417a22-30), to which we now turn.

2.At 417a20, Aristotle says that there are different types of both potentiality and actuality. His example concerns different ways in which someone might be described as a knower. One might be called a knower in the sense that he or she:

a-is a human being.
b-has grammatical knowledge.
c-is attending to something.

A knower in sense (a) is someone with a mere potential to know something, but no actual knowledge. (Not everything has this potential, of course. E.g., a rock or an earthworm has no such potential.) A knower in sense (b) has some actual knowledge (for example, she may know that it is ungrammatical to say “with John and I”), even though she is not actually thinking about it right now. A knower in sense (c) is actually exercising her knowledge (for example, she thinks “that’s ungrammatical” when she hears someone say “with John and I”).

3.Note that (b) involves both actuality and potentiality. The knower in sense (b) actually knows something, but that actual knowledge is itself just a potentiality to think certain thoughts or perform certain actions. So we can describe our three knowers this way:

a-First potentiality
b-Second potentiality = first actuality
c-Second actuality

4.Here is another example (not Aristotle’s) that might help clarify the distinction.

a-First potentiality: a child who does not speak French.
b-Second potentiality (first actuality): a (silent) adult who speaks French.
c-Second actuality: an adult speaking (or actively understanding) French.

A child (unlike a rock or an earthworm) can (learn to) speak French. A Frenchman (unlike a Frech infant, and unlike most Americans) can actually speak French, even though he is silent at the moment. Someone who is actually speaking French is, of course, the paradigm case of a French speaker.

5.Aristotle uses the notion of first actuality in his definition of the soul (412a27):

"The soul is the first actuality of a natural body that is potentially alive."

6.Remember that first actuality is a kind of potentiality -a capacity to engage in the activity which is the corresponding second actuality. So soul is a capacity - but a capacity to do what?

7.A living thing’s soul is its capacity to engage in the activities that are characteristic of living things of its natural kind. What are those activities? Some are listed in DA II.1; others in DA II.2:

-Self-nourishment
-Growth
-Decay
-Movement and rest (in respect of place)
-Perception
-Intellect

8.So anything that nourishes itself, that grows, decays, moves about (on its own, not just when moved by something else), perceives, or thinks is alive. And the capacities of a thing in virtue of which it does these things constitute its soul. The soul is what is causally responsible for the animate behavior (the life activities) of a living thing.

Degrees of soul

1.There is a nested hierarchy of soul functions or activities (413a23).

a-Growth, nutrition, (reproduction)
b-Locomotion, perception
c-Intellect (= thought)

2.This gives us three corresponding degrees of soul:

a-Nutritive soul (plants)
b-Sensitive soul (all animals)
c-Rational soul (human beings)

3.These are nested in the sense that anything that has a higher degree of soul also has all of the lower degrees. All living things grow, nourish themselves, and reproduce. Animals not only do that, but move and perceive. Humans do all of the above and reason, as well. (There are further subdivisions within the various levels, which we will ignore.)

Soul and Body

1.A key question for the ancient Greeks (as it still is for many people today) is whether the soul can exist independently of the body. (Anyone who believes in personal immortality is committed to the independent existence of the soul.) Plato (as we know from the Phaedo) certainly thought that the soul could exist separately. Here is what Aristotle has to say on this topic:

"...the soul does not exist without a body and yet is not itself a kind of body. For it is not a body, but something which belongs to a body, and for this reason exists in a body, and in a body of such-and-such a kind (414a20ff)."

So on Aristotle’s account, although the soul is not a material object, it is not separable from the body. (When it comes to the intellect, however, Aristotle waffles. See DA III.4)

2.Aristotle’s picture is not Cartesian:

a-There is no inner/outer contrast. The soul is not an inner spectator, in direct contact only with its own perceptions and other psychic states, having to infer the existence of a body and an “external” world.
There is thus no notion of the privacy of experience, the incorrigibility of the mental, etc., in Aristotle’s picture.

b-The soul is not an independently existing substance. It is linked to the body more directly: it is the form of the body, not a separate substance inside another substance (a body) of a different kind. It is a capacity, not
the thing that has the capacity.

It is thus not a separable soul. (It is, at most, pure thought, devoid of personality, that is separable from the body on Aristotle’s account.)

c-Soul has little to do with personal identity and individuality. There is no reason to think that one (human) soul is in any important respect different from any other (human) soul. The form of one human being is the same as the form of any other.

There is, in this sense, only soul, and not souls. You and I have different souls because we are different people. But we are different human beings because we are different compounds of form and matter. That is, different bodies both animated by the same set of capacities, by the same (kind of) soul.

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Aristotle on the Soul:

When we come to Aristotle's psychology, we shall not him to share with Plato the extreme view for the soul is the immortal tenant of a strange and body. He will think in terms of gradations rather than sharp distinctions. That is in fact what we find. He uses here me categories of form and matter, actual and potential, worked out in his study of nature. The soul for him is the form of the body. This does not mean that it is merely the most complex level reached in the development of the material organism, as it might suggest to a modern reader. For, while form and matter are inseparable only in thought and are distinguished by us in a substance, form is for Aristotle sovereign over matter. The other set of categories, actual and potential helps to preserve that relation. The soul is the form of a specific kind of organism, and that organism in turn can most adequately be described as the one that is potentially soul. Aristotle recognizes that, within our experience, the psychological and the physiological are bound together. He knows nothing of the connection between mind and brain, but had he known it he would have said that it entirely supported hi view.


His analysis of the soul is akin to that of Plato, which to be sure, was based on certain obvious distinctions. But he is intrigued by one fact that may well not have come within his predecessor's ken. Certain lower forms of life, worms and insects, for example, do not die when they are cut in half; instead, each half continues to function as though it were a whole; The relation between soul and body is not therefore that the former is present spatially in the latter, in which case part of one would carry with it only part of the other. The soul must be present non-spatially, so that it can function as a whole even in the two parts into which the body is divided. Yet, of course, there is a close connection between the soul in certain of its activities and the body in certain of its parts, the sense organs. We see by the eye, and if the eye is injured, sight is impaired as a result. This might lead us to question the immortality of the soul, were it not that our reasoning powers do not seem dependent on particular organs to the same extent. But that is a question to which we shall come shortly.

What exactly happens in sensation, when, for example, we see a bright or coloured body? One suggestion that had found acceptance in certain quarters was that such a body gave off infinitesimal particles that impinged on the organ of sight. That is too materialistic a view for Aristotle; sensation is rather apprehension of the form of an object and that by a process of appropriation. "Sense is that which is capable of receiving the sensible forms without the matter." (W. D. Ross: Aristotle: Selections, 1927 p. 211). Note the qualification ‘sensible;’ It will be important in the sequel. The illustration used is that of wax taking the imprint of a seal, of whatever metal the seal may be composed. The process of perceiving is one of assimilation, so that not only does the hand become hot from the object it holds--a quite intelligible state of things--but the eye similarly becomes coloured from a 'coloured object--which is most difficult to grasp. But of course we perceive, let us say, a body that is brightly coIoured, heavy, and so on; we pool the findings of the various senses in our awareness of objects. There must therefore be what Aristotle calls common sense' to perform this function of collection and synthesis.

We are now in a position to consider the different levels at which the soul functions. For Aristotle, the human soul will not be something quite new; it will represent an advance on the principle of life in animal and plant and at the same time include these. They will be the matter to which it gives its specific form. Thus we must think of the human soul as containing within itself those functions that constitute the soul in animal and plant. Let me again make the point that this does not imply that man has come about by evolution from plant and animal. Each species is fixed and there is no transition from one to another for Aristotle. It is as if a graded series of textbooks on a subject were written at the same time but quite independently; when the series was complete, we should see how each formed an advance on what was in the one below it. So plants possess the nutritive powers of the soul, they seek food to maintain themselves. The animal has these, and in addition is capable of perception; with perception goes desire, and "desire includes appetite, anger, and rational wish". Man in addition has reason.

While reason supervenes upon the lower levels of the soul, it is distinct from them and does not appear to be as closely bound up-with the body as they are. What complicates Aristotle's treatment at this point is that he distinguishes two types of reason, one active and the other passive, and goes on to relate these as form and matter, actual and -potential. As the sense-organ receives the impress of sensible forms, so the passive reason receives that of intelligible forms, e.g., mathematical relations. So far so good. What the active reason does is not so clear. Does it operate on the passive reason and what it receives? That is suggested by the form-matter analogy. Or is it a fresh source of knowledge by intuition and contemplation? That is supported by Aristotle's acceptance of speculation as the highest activity with something divine about it. What is important in this connection is that he claims complete separability from the body and immortality for the active reason alone.

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Less Balkanian Dogmatic Paranoia.
More Rational Ancient Hellenic Wisdom.

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