Lecture: Dr. Sean Kelsey (’92) on Aristotle’s De Anima

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Mind and World in Aristotle’s De Anima

by Dr. Sean Kelsey (’92)
Rev. John A. O'Brien College Professor of Philosophy
University of Notre Dame
St. Vincent de Paul Lecture & Concert Series
Thomas Aquinas College, California
August 25, 2023

 

The material I want to talk to you about tonight is drawn from a larger project on Aristotle’s De Anima. (I hope that’s OK. The De Anima is a text that half of you have read already, and that the rest of you will read — some of you, later this year. And it is in many ways a difficult text: abstract, compressed, engaging predecessors who (often) we know relatively little about, and chock-full of technical vocabulary and distinctions. It is easy then to miss the forest for the trees; to lose sight of — to never get sight of — the larger point or points, the big ‘take-aways.’ Not that every text has ‘big take-aways’; some texts are more like music — the value lies in the listening, not in lessons you take away from it. Still, some texts do have lessons, morals, take-aways; and even when they don’t it’s often worth looking. In the words of the great nineteenth century Aristotelian John Henry Newman: ‘If points were never discussed, much knowledge would be missed, which by discussion is attained.’[1])

The basic idea of the larger project was to read the De Anima as addressed to one relatively particular question. (I don’t mean that it is the only question the De Anima is addressed to. Just that it is among the questions the De Anima is addressed to.) The question, roughly put, is about ‘Mind’ and ‘World’: what is it about the one that makes it such as to know the other — that is, to perceive and to understand, the honest-to-God truth about honest-to-God beings? My guiding hypotheses were two. The first was that the question is Aristotle’s — that is, a question he means to answer, in the De Anima. The second was that the nub of his answer is that, in a way, Mind is World. In his language (and now I quote): Soul in a way is All Beings.[2]

The material I want to talk to you about tonight has mainly to do with the question (as distinct from the answer). Above all, what question is it, exactly? And also, is it among the questions Aristotle means to answer in the De Anima? But before I get to that I also want to say at least something about the answer encapsulated in the remark I just quoted: Soul in a way is All Beings. The remark is certainly cryptic. It is also at least seemingly rather un-Aristotelian. For taken on its face, it looks tantamount to some kind of idealism (Mind is World, Soul is the Beings). So, before your tutors have me tarred and feathered and run out of here, on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, I want to start by taking a look at the cryptic remark in its original context.

1: A moral and its upshot

The remark occurs relatively late in the De Anima: Book III, Chapter 8. It is introduced as finishing up, as ‘putting on the capstone,’ as drawing the moral, of at least some of what to this point Aristotle has been saying about soul.[3] This introduction is (I think) important. It is as though Aristotle is telling us: ‘listen up; here comes the punchline; remember how our predecessors said that soul is an amalgam of the elements of all beings? Well: they’d have done better to say like me, that in a way soul simply is all beings — ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ ὄντα πώς ἐστι πάντα.

Admittedly this ‘punch-line’ is pretty compressed — and, in fact, we do get some elaboration and comment in the lines that immediately follow (PASSAGE 1):

[Remark] But now to put a cap on what we have said about soul, let us say again that SOUL IN A WAY IS ALL BEINGS. [Rationale] For beings are either perceptible or intelligible, and understanding or science is its objects, in a way, and the senses their objects. [Demand for clarification] But what way this is needs looking into. [Clarification 1] Well, understanding and the senses are divided into the things, potentially potentially and in fulfillment in fulfillment. But the sentient and understanding [parts] of soul are these potentially, in the one case what is understandable, in the other what is perceptible. [Clarification 2] And it is necessary that they be either the things themselves or their forms. But surely not the things; for it is not the stone that is in the soul but rather its form. [Upshot] The result is that the soul is like the hand: indeed, for the hand is tool of tools, and intelligence form of forms, and the senses forms of sensibilia.[4]

How is that for a little word salad? Let me start with what I think are some relatively easy points (three of them). 1) Aristotle’s initial wording notwithstanding — Soul in a way is All Beings — it is not in fact all soul that he thinks is all beings.[5] No, that honor belongs only to some soul: specifically, to the kind that is both sentient and intelligent. This is clear from his rationale for saying that soul is all beings: namely, that while beings are either perceptible or intelligible, the senses in a way are the perceptible beings, as intelligence (lit. ‘understanding’ or ‘science,’ ἐπιστήμη) in a way is the intelligible beings (lit. ‘the objects of understanding or science,’ τὰ ἐπιστητά). Now, we know that the only soul Aristotle thinks is capable of both perceiving and understanding is our (human) soul. Given that, his point must be that our human soul ‘in a way is all beings.’ 2) The statement that soul is all beings, even when restricted to just human soul, needs further qualification. In a way, Aristotle says, soul is all beings, and the ‘way’ he means, as he also says, is ‘potentially.’ That is, it is only when it is (so to speak) ‘at work’ — when we are using our senses, or using our intelligence, when we are perceiving or understanding — that our soul is, in ‘actuality’ or ‘fulfillment,’ the beings that we are then perceiving or understanding. 3) A third qualification is in order. When Aristotle says, of our human soul, that it is potentially ‘all beings,’ what he actually means, again as he says, is that it is potentially the forms of all beings: ‘for it is not a stone that is in the soul but rather its form.’

The effect of these points, taken together, is to soften the remark the passage begins with. I suppose that everyone knows that, for Aristotle, the ‘Mind,’ in knowing the ‘World,’ is somehow ‘likened to,’ somehow ‘becomes,’ the same in form as the beings it knows. But what seemed provocative about the remark the passage begins with — Soul in a way is All Beings — was its apparent suggestion that the Mind, in its very own nature, and (therefore) in advance of its use in knowing the World, is already all beings. And it is precisely that suggestion that is apparently taken back by the qualification that Soul is but potentially all beings.

Or is the suggestion taken back? We have yet to consider the last thing Aristotle says in this passage: his statement of the ‘result,’ or ‘consequence,’ or ‘upshot,’ of the remark he began with, now qualified and limited by the points that intervene. The result, or consequence, or upshot, he says, is that ‘the soul is like the hand: indeed, for the hand is tool of tools, and intelligence form of forms, and sensibility form of sensibilia.’ What does that mean? And how is it related to what precedes?

We began from the remark, what I have called the ‘moral,’ that — in a way — the soul is all beings. We have seen that this remark is to be limited and qualified: it makes the point that [human] soul is [potentially] [the forms of] all beings. Not only that, but we have also seen why Aristotle thinks this is a fair characterization of human soul: it is because human soul is at once sentient and intelligent. Owing to its ‘sentient part,’ or to the senses (what I will call ‘sensibility,’ αἴσηθσις), our soul is potentially the forms of all perceptible beings; owing to its ‘scientific part,’ or to the intellect, what I will call ‘intelligence,’ our soul is potentially the forms of all intelligible beings. So far so good. (Ish.) But now suppose we were to press a step further and ask: ‘yes, but owing-to-what are they, sensibility and intelligence, potentially and between them, the forms of all beings?’ Perhaps we will be told: ‘why, each of them owing to its very own self, to its own nature or essence.’ No doubt true (I mean: no doubt Aristotle thinks so). Still the question remains, or at least seems to remain: ‘yes, but what are those natures? I mean, what is the nature, the essence, the “what-is-it” of sensibility? and what is the nature or essence of intelligence?’

Granted, Aristotle does not himself take this further step — does not raise these further, basically Socratic questions about the nature or ‘quiddity’ of sensibility and intelligence — not in this passage. Still he does raise them, and answer them, earlier in the De Anima. Sensibility, he says, is ‘a kind of ratio (λόγος),’ specifically ‘as it were a kind of mean,’ of the contrariety in perceptible qualities (hot and cold, wet and dry, light and dark, bitter and sweet, and so on); and intelligence, he says, at least one kind of intelligence, is something ‘simple,’ ‘separate,’ ‘unmixed,’ ‘being in its essence activity.’[6] What is more, it is pretty plainly these doctrines — the one about the nature of sensibility, the other about the nature of intelligence — that Aristotle is here drawing the moral of, in the passage we have been discussing. (He is hardly drawing the moral of what he had said about ‘veg’ and its soul.) That moral, in a word, is that soul — that is, human soul — is ‘like the hand.’ Like the hand, in that sensibility and intelligence — which are what distinguish our soul from all other soul — are, respectively, ‘forms of the forms of’ their objects (in the one case perceptible forms, in the other intelligible forms). Fitted to our further questions, the idea would be that it is owing to that — to being ‘forms of the forms of’ their objects — that sensibility and intelligence are, potentially and between them, the forms of all beings.[7]

Stepping back from these details, whatever else make of the ‘upshot,’ it does suggest that Aristotle thinks of sensibility and intelligence as being, in their own natures — that is, in advance of their use in knowing anything — forms: indeed, not just any forms, but special forms — forms that are special, that is, in their relationship or standing vis-à-vis other forms (all other forms). Now, the exact nature and consequences of this ‘special standing’ are hardly to be extracted from this passage alone.[8] Still the passage is suggestive. It is especially suggestive when read against the background of the question I want to press: roughly put, why is it in our nature to know beings? If that question were Aristotle’s question too; if he thought the answer must lie in the nature of our cognitive powers, of sensibility and intelligence; if the point of the remark we began from is to draw the moral of his account of the natures of those powers — in that case the result would be that, for Aristotle, the reason it lies in our nature to know beings is that our cognitive powers, sensibility and intelligence, in their very own nature — and, therefore, antecedently to their use in knowing anything — are ‘forms’ of the forms of all beings. (In any case it is this doctrine that the larger project is about trying to understand, on the hypothesis that it is intended to encapsulate Aristotle’s answer to the question I’m pressing.)

2: Facts of life

Enough of that. For the rest of the talk I’d like to step back from this doctrine and focus instead on the question that (I think) the doctrine is meant to address. I want in part to clarify the question, in part to make plausible that the question is Aristotle’s. (And — I apologize in advance — I mean to plod a little. Why? Well: ‘if points were never discussed, much knowledge would be missed, which by discussion is attained.’)

Considered generally, the question seeks the ‘cause’ of a ‘fact’: in the lingo, the ‘why’ (διότι, propter quid) of a ‘that’ (ὅτι, quia) — in a headline, of the fact that MIND KNOWS WORLD. For starters we might ask: what fact is this?

It is characteristic of animals, in different ways and to different degrees, to be sensitive to opportunities afforded by their environments: in Aristotle’s language, to ‘make discriminations’ (κρίνειν) and to ‘perceive’ (αἰσθάνεσθαι) — for example, predators and prey, obstacles and paths, offspring and mates, and so on — and if all that, then also things like size and shape and motion and rest, and if all that, then also one or more of (say) temperature, hardness, moisture, savor, odor, color, pitch. In Aristotle’s view, there is no question but that this is characteristic of animals. That is a ‘fact of life,’ on a par with what we might call the ‘fact of nature’ that some beings move.[9] As such, it is both a starting point for inquiry and matter for explanation. (Though it is not something we seek to establish, it is something we seek to understand. If St Anselm’s motto was fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding, Aristotle’s is knowledge quaerens intellectum; the understanding we seek is of known facts — in this case, ‘facts of life.’)

Anyhow another fact of life, similar but different, concerns human beings. It is in our nature to pick up what’s on offer, not merely in our immediate environment, in the way of just getting by, but in the whole wide world, in the way of understanding or insight. It is true that, for Aristotle, it’s not every being that ‘is’ (so to speak) ‘on principle,’ and also that, absent a principle, there is (in a way) nothing to ‘get.’ Some things are done on impulse, not on policy; some are due to luck, not to skill; some are due to chance, not to nature; of such matters, at least in a way, there is no ‘why’ (no scope for ‘understanding’ or ‘insight’). But none of this upsets the larger point, which is not only that (by and large) there is a ‘what’ and a ‘why’ to what we do and what there is, but also that it lies in our nature both to seek and to find it. In short, understanding ‘why’ is a ‘function’ (ἔργον) or ‘fulfillment’ (ἐντελέχεια) of our nature as intelligent creatures. In Aristotle’s view, this too is a fact of life, and thus this too is a starting point for inquiry and matter for explanation. (Again, it is out of place to ask whether, but not to ask why.)

For a start, then, it is these big, broad, basic facts of life — about animals in general, and about human beings in particular — that the question I think Aristotle is asking is about: taken together and in a headline, the fact that MIND KNOWS WORLD. The reason I take them together is that Aristotle himself often does the same, treating them as one big fact. And he too states that fact ‘in a headline,’ roughly and schematically, by attributing ‘knowledge’ (τὸ γινώσκειν) to soul. The exact formulation varies. Sometimes he flat-out predicates knowledge of soul, as when he says for example that ‘the soul both knows and understands or judges.’[10] Sometimes he uses a construction with the genitive of characteristic, saying that knowledge or perception is ‘of’ soul.[11] Other times he says that knowing ‘belongs’ to soul ‘by nature’ (ὑπάρχει κατὰ φύσιν).[12] Other times he speaks of perceiving or understanding as among the ‘attributes,’ ‘affections,’ or ‘functions’ of soul (πάθη, συμβεβηκότα, παθήματα, ἔργα).[13] [PASSAGES 2-4.]

These formulations are, in my view, variations on a kind of shorthand. They serve to indicate, roughly and in general, what Aristotle regards as simply a fact: namely, that it is in the very nature of living things — at least some living things — to perceive, or to understand, or to perceive and understand, beings (all beings). The question I think he is asking seeks the ‘cause’ of this fact: in brief and in shorthand, why does it ‘belong’ — by nature belong — to soul to know beings?

3: Subjects and Attributes

Now, Aristotle’s use of this shorthand raises a question: what sense (if any) does it make to attribute knowing, or for that matter any vital activity, to soul in particular (as opposed to creatures that have soul, i.e. living things)? Taken on its face, to say that some vital activity ‘belongs to’ soul appears to imply that soul itself is what ‘does’ or ‘undergoes’ or ‘performs’ that activity: for example, that soul itself is what grows or perceives or moves or understands. Most commentators, and probably you all too, find it difficult to believe that this is Aristotle’s view: namely, that though much (perhaps all) vital activity is also attributable to ‘living things’ (τὰ ἔμψυχα), being a joint undertaking of both living things themselves and the soul that is in them, still, even such vital activity as is attributable to living things too is in the first instance performed, or undergone, or executed, by soul itself. Such a view invites us to conceive of soul as being, if not literally a body, still, some body-like item that, having taken hold of other bodies, and thereby made them living things, then utilizes those bodies in performing its own work. But this conception is excluded by Aristotle’s definition of soul, according to which soul is, not a body, but rather the form and fulfillment of certain kinds of body.[14] It is true that Aristotle often predicates vital activities of soul or of its powers.[15] Nonetheless, in one place he also explicitly corrects this, remarking that ‘it is probably better not to say that the soul pities or learns or reasons, but that the human being [does] with his soul (τῇ ψυχῇ)’ (PASSAGE 5).[16] Indeed, he elsewhere speaks in similar terms about ‘art,’ in some places saying that it ‘does’ or ‘makes’ things, in others that human beings do so ‘with’ art.[17] But surely Aristotle does not think art is a body-like item, which first ‘occupies’ and then ‘uses’ human beings to perform its own work. (As though learning a trade were being invaded by body-snatchers.)

These considerations make it tempting to suggest that when Aristotle speaks of vital activities as ‘belonging to’ soul, this is just a figure of speech, and that what these activities really belong to is, not the souls of living things, but living things themselves.[18]

But there is reason to resist this suggestion. First, it is hard to square with the idea that perhaps some vital activity is proprietary to soul — that is, does not also belong, because of soul, to animals too (PASSAGE 3, ‘THE MISSION STATEMENT’). But there is a related and more important point. To say of some attribute that it belongs to living things ‘because of’ soul (διά + acc.), is to say that its connection to soul is somehow prior to and explanatory of its connection to living things.[19] Indeed, just this is also implied by Aristotle’s own definition of soul as the substance, form, and fulfillment of natural organic bodies.[20] For one upshot of that definition is that soul is the ‘essence’ of living things, which implies that it is somehow the ‘cause’ of their attributes, i.e. the reason ‘why’ those attributes belong to them.[21] But in that case it can hardly be ust a figure of speech when Aristotle speaks (say) of knowledge, or of the imparting of motion, as ‘belonging to’ soul itself. For his own account of the ‘nature’ of soul as the ‘essence’ of living things implies that the connection of these attributes to soul is prior to and explanatory of their connection to living things.

In view of these considerations, I would propose that the sense in which these vital activities ‘belong’ to soul is simply the sense in which any activity belongs to that of which it is an ‘operation’ or ‘employment’ or ‘use’ (ἐνέργεια, χρῆσις).[22] (PASSAGES 6, 7) It is true that this makes it look as though soul is a ‘power’ or δύναμις, and that Aristotle does not define soul as a δύναμις,[23] but (rather) as a kind of ‘fulfillment,’ specifically the ‘first’ fulfillment of certain kinds of body.[24] But although this is important, I don’t see that it’s a difficulty; in Aristotle’s view, power and fulfillment are both said in many ways, and if soul is the ‘first’ fulfillment of certain kinds of body, it is likewise a power for ‘vital activity’ (ζωή ).[25] My proposal, then, is that for Aristotle, vital activity ‘belongs’ to soul, not in the sense of being performed ‘by’ soul (ὑπό), but in the sense of being an operation ‘of’ soul — that is, one of its natural functions or uses.

To illustrate, just as seeing is a use of the sense of sight, and healing is a use of the art of medicine, and deliberation and decision are uses of practical wisdom (φρόνησις, prudentia) and contemplation, teaching, and proof are uses of understanding or science (ἐπιστήμη), so too, I propose, perception, understanding, nutrition, growth, reproduction, and so on, are all of them uses or operations of soul.[26] And just as the former doctrines hardly invite us to conceive of the sense of sight, or the art of medicine, or practical wisdom, or scientific knowledge, as though they were body-like, neither does the latter invite us to conceive of soul in that way. Moreover, although (for example) healing the sick belongs, not only to the art of medicine, but also to physicians, the reason why it belongs to physicians — the reason why it is their work — is that it belongs to, is a natural employment of, their art, the art of medicine. Similarly, although much (perhaps all) vital activity belong, not only to soul, but also to living things, still the reason why it belongs to living things — the reason why it is their work — is that it is an operation of soul. On the current proposal, then, it comes out that, just as healing’s connection to the art of medicine is prior to and explanatory of its connection to physicians, so too the connection of vital activity to soul is prior to and explanatory of its connection to living things.[27] [28]

4: Explanation, Definition, and Essence

So far I have tried to clarify the ‘fact’ that the question I think Aristotle is asking is a question about: in a headline, the fact that Mind Knows World — in Aristotle’s language, the fact that Knowledge ‘is an attribute of,’ or ‘belongs by nature to,’ Soul (if not all soul, then such soul as is sentient or intelligent or both). I now want to say a bit more about the question I think Aristotle is asking about this fact. Considered in terms of its form, the question asks ‘why’ (διὰ τί, propter quid) some attribute belongs to some subject. But this may be put a little more precisely: what the question is asking, in particular, is what about that subject (soul) makes it a subject of that attribute (in this case, what about soul makes it a subject of the attribute knowledge). In Aristotle’s language, the question is by being what (τί ὄν, διὰ τὸ τί εἶναι) is it of soul to know beings? [Cp. PASSAGE 9]

The point may be illustrated from a criticism Aristotle makes of some of his predecessors. These thinkers, he says, arrived at their views about the nature of soul from looking to the fact that it is of soul to know beings. (PASSAGE 8) What must soul be, they wondered, if knowledge of beings is to belong to it by nature? A kind of amalgam, they figured, of the elements of beings. For, they held, knowledge is ‘of like by like’; and in that case, they reasoned, if it belongs to soul to know beings, soul must be like beings — which is just what it would be (close enough), if it were an amalgam of all the same ‘ingredients’ (namely, the ‘elements’ or ‘principles’ of beings). The result is a view about ‘what’ soul ‘is,’ about its nature or essence. But it is not merely a view about that nature or essence. As Aristotle represents it, it is a view about the essence or quiddity of soul which also purports to show ‘why’ it is of soul to know beings: the idea is that it belongs to soul to know beings, because soul is like beings (like them, in being an amalgam of all the same elements).

Now, one criticism Aristotle makes of this view is that it fails to explain the fact it sets out to explain: it does not, he says, belong to soul to know beings because soul is an amalgam of elements (PASSAGE 9).[29] What is more, in making this criticism, Aristotle is inviting us to ask him in turn: all right, wise guy, if you’re so wonderful, why don’t you tell us, by being what does it belong to soul to know beings? It is true that, thus formulated, the question presupposes things Aristotle rejects: for example, that it does belong to soul (that is, to all soul) to know beings, or that all soul is ‘uniform’ (ὁμοειδής), that is, one and the same in every living creature. But even once these points and some others are acknowledged, the broad fact from which we began remains basically intact: that is, it does belong to soul — not all soul, but some soul — to know, that is, to perceive and to understand, perceptible and intelligible beings (that is, all beings). And if the fact remains, the question remains too: by being what does it belong to (that kind of) soul to do that? (Indeed, if I were to leave you with one point tonight, it would be this: when it comes your turn to study the De Anima, or to come back to it and study it again, press it for an answer to this question.)

5: Categorical Bases

The point may be illustrated from his treatment of another ‘fact of life,’ that animals move: in the shorthand, that it belongs to (some) soul to impart motion to animals. Here too we may ask: by being what does it belong to (such) soul to do that? What sort of answer would Aristotle give to this question? Here once again his treatment of his predecessors is instructive.

Aristotle imputes to his predecessors a tolerably substantive answer: roughly put, that the reason it belongs to soul to impart motion (κινεῖν) is that soul itself is something in motion (κινεῖται).[30] (PASSAGE 2) It is true that Aristotle himself rejects this answer: it is impossible, he says, that motion should be even an attribute of soul, let alone any part of what it is in its essence.[31] (PASSAGE 9, 10) But though he rejects the answer, he does not reject the question. That is, he himself is not at all content simply to say that the reason it belongs to (some) soul to impart motion is that soul (of that kind) is ‘motion-imparting’ (κινητικόν, κινοῦν). On the contrary, the first question he asks, when he begins his own treatment of this topic, is what on earth is the motionimparting part of the soul of animals? Is it, in fact, just a part of their soul, or is it the entire thing? And if a part, which part — one already mentioned or some other one besides?[32] (PASSAGE 11) I leave aside the details of Aristotle’s answers to these questions, which are in any case controversial.[33] The point I am now making is just that, in seeking why it belongs to some soul to impart motion, Aristotle is not content just to say that soul of that kind is ‘motion-imparting.’

Ditto, I submit, as regards why it belongs to our human kind of soul to perceive and to understand beings. What is wanted is not simply the information that our soul is both sentient and intelligent. (Pardon my French, but no shit Sherlock.) What is wanted is an account of what makes our soul sentient and intelligent — if not its being an amalgam of elements, then what? Put slightly differently, what is wanted is an account of sensibility and intelligence themselves, an account of ‘what’ each of them ‘is,’ such as will also tell why — that is, by being what — it ‘belongs’ to them ‘by nature’ — that is, is their function or work — to perceive and to understand beings.

6: Generality and Emptiness

This brings me to the last point I want to make (hooray!). The question I have been focusing on asks why an attribute (‘knowledge’) belongs to a subject (‘soul’); and it seeks a categorical answer to that question, in terms of the nature or essence or ‘whatis- it’ of that subject. I have argued that Aristotle means to provide such an answer, in the De Anima. It is not just that he puts the question on his agenda in the beginning of the De Anima (PASSAGES 3, 4). It is also that he takes his predecessors to task, not for asking the question, but for failing to answer it (PASSAGE 9). Still, maybe that was a mistake on his part; after all, the question is dizzying in its generality. What would even count as a satisfying answer? What would such an answer exclude? What would it secure? I want to end by saying something about how I think about this.

So, first, consider some analogous questions as raised about analogous facts: for example, why (‘by being what’) does it ‘belong’ (say) to the art of medicine to heal, or to the art of building to build? These are questions about the ‘functions’ of these arts; they ask why those functions are functions of those arts, and seek answers in terms of the nature or quiddity of those arts. Now, I allow that these are questions that (in some moods) Aristotle might refuse, on the ground that the arts in question are simply defined by their functions.[34] But I also observe that (in other moods) he might rise to the bait, making appeal to the doctrine that arts are — are what? — are the very forms of their produce.[35] This doctrine makes a categorical statement — admittedly a very general one — about what arts are. The generality of the statement precludes it from saying much. Still it does exclude something: for example, that the association of medicine with health, and of building with buildings, is merely a coincidence.[36] It also secures something: for example, that healing and building really do ‘belong’ to the arts of medicine and building — that they really are functions of those arts. Moreover, there is sometimes a point to securing even this much, in contexts in which the going alternatives effectively deny it. Such is the context Aristotle often takes himself to be in. Certainly it is the perceived context of his investigation of ‘nature’; as he complains about Empedocles in Physics II 8, ‘a person who says that’ — namely, roughly, that this comes from that ‘as luck would have it’ (ὥς ἔτυχεν) — simply ‘does away with nature and things due to it altogether.’[37] And he speaks in a similar vein about earlier views about soul. He complains that most of them neglect the fact that things interact, not just any old thing with just any old thing, but ‘because of their community’ (διὰ τὴν κοινωνίαν)[38] — in the case that interests me here, the community of subject and object, of knower and known, of Mind and World, of Soul and All Beings. (PASSAGE 12)

Considerations like these are a guide to what we may expect from Aristotle in the way of explaining certain ‘facts of life’: for example, the fact that it ‘belongs’ to our soul to perceive and to understand — taken together and in short, ‘to know beings.’ We may expect him to try to explain this fact in terms of the nature of soul — not of all soul, but of our soul, and specifically of its cognitive powers, sensibility and intelligence. In particular, we may expect his accounts of ‘what’ those powers ‘are’ to be intended to reveal their ‘community’ with their respective objects, with perceptible and intelligible beings, and thereby to show why the association of those powers with those objects is not merely ‘as luck would have it,’ but is rather in line with their respective natures. Put another way, we may expect Aristotle’s accounts of the natures of those powers, of sensibility and intelligence, to be attempts to say ‘by being what’ it is their work to perceive and to understand perceptible and intelligible beings. In fact we already know (more or less) what we will find: the thesis that sensibility is a kind of λόγος, specifically a kind of mean, and that intelligence is ‘simple,’ ‘separate,’ ‘unmixed,’ etc. These theses, I am thinking, just are Aristotle’s attempt to answer my question: to say ‘by being what’ it is of sensibility and intelligence to perceive and to understand beings.

Conclusion

To conclude, the basic idea of the project I’ve been working on for is to try to look at some familiar but obscure doctrines from a somewhat different perspective. The doctrines, as I think, attempt to define ‘sensibility’ and ‘intelligence’: they say, in brief, that the one is a kind of λόγος, specifically a kind of mean, the other something simple, separate, unmixed (etc.). The perspective is to see these doctrines as filling out Aristotle’s answer to a particular question: roughly put, why — by being what — does it belong to us by nature to perceive and to understand beings. And my guiding hypothesis is that Aristotle gives us (in a nutshell) his answer to this question, in the dark but suggestive remark from which I began, that ‘soul in a way is all beings.’ I have suggested that the upshot of this remark, once duly limited and qualified, is that the differentiae of human soul, sensibility and intelligence, are, in their very nature — that is, in advance of their use in knowing anything — 'forms of the forms’ of their respective objects, perceptible and intelligible beings. (For more on what that means, I’m afraid you will have to read the book. [Soul as κριτής, PASSAGE 13])

 

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Endnotes

[1] LD XXIV 3.

[2] DA III 8, 431b21.

[3] DA III 8, 431b20-21, see Rodier 1900, 520 ad loc.

[4] DA III 8, 431b20-432a3.

[5] In fact Aristotle’s initial wording recalls a view attributed earlier to some of his predecessors: namely, that psuchē is an amalgam of (ἐκ) the elements of all beings (e.g. DA I 2, 404b8-10, 405b11-19, I 5, 410b16-17, 411a24-25) (so too Hicks 1907, 543 ad loc.). This makes it tempting to read the present passage as intended to correct that view: so to say, psuchē is, not an amalgam of the elements of all beings, but simply all beings (ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ ὄντα πώς ἐστι πάντα). (For a recent, detailed, and rather different reading of the chapter as a whole—different, in seeing the chapter as focused on the integration of sensory and intellectual cognition within the psuchē of individual human beings, rather than as making a pointed correction of a conception of psuchē prevalent among his predecessors— see now Crubellier 2020.)

[6] DA II 12, 424a27-28, 31, II 11, 424a4-5, III 4, 429b23-24, III 5, 430a17-18.

[7] Cp. now Crubellier 2020, 236-38, esp. 237: “La comparaison [of psuchē to hand] suggère donc que les “formes” dont on parle ici sont des moyens qui permettent (facilitent, rendent plus précise) la connaissance des choses” (emphasis added).

[8] The comparison to the hand is suggestive, especially given the similar remark in PA IV 10, 687a20-23: “the hand seems to be not one tool but many; for it is as it were the tool before tools (ὄργανον πρὸ ὀργάνων). So nature has given the hand, the tool whose uses are most varied (τὸ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον τῶν ὀργάνων χρήσιμον), to the creature capable of acquiring the most arts.” But even this leaves many things unclear. What is the point—that hands are multi-purpose (many tools or organs in one)? that they are our first tool? that they are useful in making or using other tools? that many other tools are, in their very idea, hand-tools? And which points are invoked in De Anima III 8? How do they carry over when we put “intelligence” or “sensibility” for “hand,” “form” for “tool,” and “forms” or “sensibilia” for “tools”?

[9] Cp. Phys. I 1, 185a12-14, II 1, 193a4-9.

[10] γινώσκει τε ἡ ψυχή καὶ φρονεῖ, DA III 4, 429a10-11.

[11] E.g. DA I 2, 405b6.

[12] DA I 5, 411a24-25, I 2, 403b25.

[13] E.g. DA I 1, 403a3-11, I 5, 409b15-16.

[14] DA II 1, 412a16-28, II 2, 414a13-19.

[15] He says, for example, that soul ‘moves the animal,’ that it ‘knows’ and ‘judges’ and ‘reasons’ and ‘supposes,’ that it is ‘what nourishes,’ or again that the several senses ‘perceive incidentally one another’s proprietary objects,’ and that intelligence ‘understands everything.’ DA I 3, 406b24-25, III 4, 429a10-11, 23, II 4, 416b21-22, III 1, 425a30-31, III 4, 429a18.

[16] DA I 4, 408b13-15. On this passage see now Carter 2018.

[17] GC II 9, 335b32-33, SE 172a34-36, 173b22-23.

[18] Cp. Carter 2018, 52 and n.53.

[19] Cp. Carter 2018, 53: psuchē “plays the primary causal role in constituting the composite’s psychological affections.” My own idea is to focus, not on the constitution of psychological affections, but on the “middle term” and “cause” of the fact that undergoing those affections “belongs to” living things. (See further below.)

[20] DA II 1, 412b4-6.

[21] DA II 1, 412b10-11. Though I have said that psuchē is the essence of living things, what Aristotle says it is the essence of is natural organic bodies (lit. τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι τῷ τοιῳδὶ σώματι, 412b11, picking up 412b5-6, ἐντελέχεια ἡ πρώτη σώματος φυσικοῦ ὀργανικοῦ). But these bodies are living things, not the bodies of living things, as is clear from the illustration which immediately follows (DA II 1, 412b11-17). There Aristotle says that if axes were natural bodies, psuchē would be the essence, not of the “body” of axes, but of axes, and that because their “essence” (τὸ πελέκει εἶναι) would be their ousia, which is what psuchē is; that is, psuchē is the ousia of such bodies as axes would be, were axes (not only tools but also) natural bodies. (The same point may be argued from the subsequent illustration [“for if the eye were an animal,” etc., DA II 1, 412b17-22], and also from 412b25-26 [“but it is not what has shed its psuchē that is potentially so as to live,” τὸ δυνάμει ὄν ὥστε ζῆν]—a passage which controls the interpretation of the expressions “having zōē,” “partaking of zōē,” and “having zēn potentially,” used earlier at 412a13, 15, 17, 20, 28.) On the larger issues broached here see e.g. Frey 2007 and 2015.

[22] See e.g. EE II 1, 1219b2-3, “each of them, zōē and action, is use and activity (ἐνέργεια)”; EN I 7, 1098a13, “we say the function [of human beings] is a certain zōē, and this is an activity of psuchē”; EN X 4, 1175a12, “zōē is a sort of activity”; Met. Θ 8, 1050a34-b1, “where there is no other work in addition to the activity, the activity is present in them (e.g. seeing in what is seeing, contemplating in what is contemplating, and zōē in psuchē, which is why happiness [is present in psuchē]; for it is a sort of zōē).”

[23] When he says that psuchē is “defined by” certain powers, he does not mean that it is those powers, but that (as he also says) it is their “principle” (ἀρχή) (DA II 2, 413b11-13).

[24] DA II 1, 412a9-11, 22-28.

[25] DA II 5, 417a21-29, DA II 1, 412a27-28.

[26] Cp. APo. I 10, 76b3-4, “scientific understanding contemplates per se attributes” (ἡ ἐπιστήμη θεωρεῖ τὰ ὑπάρχοντα καθ' αὑτά), i.e. this is its natural operation or employment. (The comparison of psuchē to art is also developed, along different lines, in Menn 2002, 95 ff..)

[27] The force of the point may be illustrated from current debates about the nature of science. One position in this debate, a deflationary position, is that “science is what scientists do” (Pigliucci 2017, 26 197, chez Dupré 2018). This position rejects, as misconceived, the very attempt to discover the “nature” of science, such as would explain why scientists do what they do (e.g. write grants, run labs, teach students, hire postdocs, apply for patents, collaborate with government and industry, join professional associations, present their findings at conferences, publish them in journals, etc. etc.). On such a view, the so-called “nature” of science is rather like the titular deities of Aristophanes’ Clouds, in being always on the move, always changing shape, ever varying with the fluctuating practices as here and there and now and then are accorded the honorific “scientific.” One might take an analogous view about the relation of healing the sick to physicians, or of zōē to living things; such a view would repudiate the idea that zōē belongs in the first place to psuchē, and only then and because of that to such creatures as have psuchē.

[28] The force of the point may be illustrated from current debates about the nature of science. One position in this debate, a deflationary position, is that ‘science is what scientists do’ (Pigliucci 2017, 197, chez Dupré 2018). This position rejects, as misconceived, the very attempt to discover the ‘nature’ of science, such as would explain why scientists do what they do (e.g. write grants, run labs, teach students, hire postdocs, apply for patents, collaborate with government and industry, join professional associations, present their findings at conferences, publish them in journals, etc. etc.). On such a view, the so-called ‘nature’ of science is rather like the titular deities of Aristophanes’ Clouds: always on the move, always changing shape, always varying with the fluctuating practices as here and there and now and then are accorded the title ‘scientific.’ One might take an analogous view about the relation of healing the sick to physicians, or of ‘vital activity’ (‘liv-ing’ [zōē]) to living things. The force of the doctrine that ‘vital activity’ belongs in the first place to soul, and only then and because of that to such creatures as have soul, is to exclude that analogous, deflationary view of the relationship of vital activity to living things. [To this it might be objected that the language of “employment” implies a subordination of soul to living things, as though soul were something living things “use,” a “tool” (ὄργανον) they employ in vital activity, whereas in fact, in Aristotle’s view, it is the other way around. After all, it is living things themselves, i.e. natural bodies of a kind that “have” or “have a share in” (ἔχει, μετέχει) vital activity, which bodies Aristotle characterizes as “tools” or “tool-like” (ὀργανικός) (DA II 1, 412a28-b5, cp. II 4, 415b18-20).28 This objection need not much concern us, for two reasons. First, the main point I have relied on is that vital activity (ζωή) is an “operation” or “activity” (ἐνέργεια) of soul; this point remains, even if it should turn out that, in Aristotle’s considered view, vital activity (ζωή), though indeed an “operation” of soul, is not properly speaking its “employment” or “use” (χρῆσις). But there is another point, which is that it is Aristotle himself who speaks of soul as an “instrument” of living things, as “that with which” they do what they do. He speaks this way, not only in the wellknown passage from De Anima I 4 (408b13-15, cited earlier), but also elsewhere: notably, in De Anima II 2, where he not only says soul is “that with which primarily” we live and perceive, but uses the point to argue that soul is form and fulfillment (DA II 2, 414a4-6, 12-14). And he speaks in a similar vein about the parts or powers or kinds of soul: he says, for example, that motion is perceived “with the sense of touch” (ἁφῇ) and “the sense of sight” (ὄψει), and that it is either “with the sense of sight” (ὄψει) or “with some other sense” (ἑτέρᾳ) that we perceive we are seeing, and that intelligence is “that with which” (ᾧ) soul reasons and takes as true (DA II 6, 418a19-20, III 2, 425b12-13, III 4, 429a23). When I say, then, that Aristotle thinks of vital activity (ζωή) as the “employment” or “use” of soul, I am simply tracking this use of the instrumental dative (a use that is as natural and intuitive with ψυχή as it is [say] with τέχνη or the five senses). Finally, it might be objected that though the foregoing remarks apply well enough to vital activities that also belong to living things, they do not apply to the ones that are proprietary to soul (if such there be). The last word on this topic must ultimately await discussion of how Aristotle thinks about such activities and about the kind of soul to which they belong. But if I may anticipate, presumably the sort of activity Aristotle has in mind is a kind of “understanding” or “insight” (νόησις), and the kind of soul he thinks it belongs to is a kind of “intelligence” (νοῦς)—in particular, though this is controversial, the kind which he describes as “being, in its substance, activity” (DA III 5, 430a17-18). Thus although Aristotle does speak of this activity as “belonging” to a kind of intelligence, still, he does not conceive of it as distinct from the intelligence it belongs to, but rather as itself being what that intelligence is, viz. itself a kind of “vital activity” (ζωή) (cp. Met. Λ 7, 1072b26-30, and also, for its relationship to human intellectual activity, EN X 7, 1177b26-28, 1178a5-7). This kind of “soul” then, which is marked early on as seemingly sui generis (DA II 2, 413b24-27), will not, I take it, be the “primary” fulfillment of anything, but will instead simply be the operation or activity that in its own substance it is.]

[29] διὰ τὸ ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων εἶναι, DA I 5, 411a24-25.

[30] Cp. DA I 2, 403b28-31.

[31] DA I 3, 405b31-406a2.

[32] DA III 9, 432a15-22. lit. περὶ τοῦ κινοῦντος, τί ποτέ ἐστι τῆς ψυχῆς [sc. τῶν ζῴων]; lit. πότερον ἕν τι μόριον αὐτῆς…ἢ πᾶσα ἡ ψυχή;

[33]The short answer is that the reason it belongs to (some) psuchē to impart motion is that psuchē (of that kind) is desiderative, where it is understood that desire is an “operation” (ἐνέργεια) of sensibility, which in turn has been defined as a kind of ratio or mean (DA III 10, 433b10-11, III 7, 431a10-14). But this short answer needs qualifying if it is to be adequate to certain problems in this area and the necessary qualifications are not easy to interpret. (For the problems, see DA III 9, 432a30-433a8; for the qualifications, see esp. DA III 10, 433b10-13.)

[34] Cp. Cael. IV 3, 310b16-19, Phys. VIII 4, 255b15-17, Cael. IV 1, 308a29-31.

[35] E.g. Met. Z 9, 1034a24.

[36] Compare Lewis 1983.

[37] Phys. II 8, 199b14-15, tr. Charlton 1970.

[38] DA I 3, 407b15-19.

 

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