Chapter 7 - The Soul

Summary

Chapter Summary. The long, introductory chapter of the De anima provides a detailed and complicated erotetic structure for a norm-governed inquiry into the soul. Answering the complex list of questions laid out in that chapter provides the norms that govern Aristotle’s critical discussion of his predecessors in de An. i and his own positive account of the soul in de An. ii–iii. In this chapter, I will begin with a careful study of that introductory chapter from the standpoint of what we can learn about Aristotle’s methodos for an inquiry into the soul, and then turn to a study of the way in which the norms derived from answering the questions laid out in de An. i.1 govern the inquiry that ensues. One surprising result of this study is that, contrary to a widespread assumption, the de An. is, for good reason, not simply one of a number of contributions to natural science.