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Aristotle's Motionless Soul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Martin Tweedale
Martin Tweedale
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Extract

Whether or not we adopt some form of physicalism in our thinking about the psychology of humans and other organisms we all believe that a mind is something that comes into being, changes, develops and decays. The correlation of the development and then later the decay of our mental powers with changes in the brain post-dates our belief that the mental realm is as much an area where things ebb and flow, come to be and pass away, as is the physical. Even ancient authors who hold to the indestructibility of the soul allow that it changes in a host of ways. It is very odd, then, to discover that Aristotle appears to deny all this and feels impelled to treat the soul as unchanging and motionless. I propose to explore here exactly what Aristotle meant by saying the soul does not move and why he said it. In the end our investigation leads to some difficulties for Aristotle's psychological ontology which I am not able to resolve.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 29 , Issue 1: Aristotle , Winter 1990 , pp. 123 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1990

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References

Notes

1 De Anima I, 1, 403a7; 4, 408b1–3.

2 See the following passages in De Anima: II, 10, 422a21; II, 11, 424a5; III, 2, 425b21, 426b10, 426b23; III, 3, 427a20, 428a3; III, 7, 431a20.

3 On Memory and Recollection, 2, 451b29–31. Sorabji's translation.

4 Rhetoric II, 5, 1382a23–25.

5 Physics III, 1, 201a9–15.

6 Ibid., 201b8–15.

7 Physics VII, 3, 246a17–20.

8 Two other passages which suggest that forms can begin existing and cease existing without ever coming into being or passing away are the following: Metaphysics H.3, 1043b14–16; Metaphysics A3, 1070a15–17.

9 Needless to say, I hold to the view which Lloyd, A. C. defended in his Form and Universal in Aristotle (Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1981)Google Scholar and which is becoming widely accepted, namely, that forms are individuals, i.e., there are many individual forms within the same species.