PHILOS 2P03 Lecture : Aristotle on Living Things
Document Summary
The greek notion of the soul: the soul had close connections to ideas about life: to be ensouled was simply to be alive, soul was not assumed to be immaterial or immortal. It was taken for granted that there were living things and non-living things. Therefore there was no question that the soul existed. It was merely the question of what was the soul. Aristotle s view on the soul was similar to modern idea of mind, soul the form of the body. For aristotle all living things (including plants & animals) have souls. To study the soul was primarily to study the capacities and characteristic activities of living things (e. x. nutrition, reproduction, movement, sense perception, (human) thought). The relationship between soul and body is a special case of the relationship between form and matter, the soul is the form of the body.