Summary: On the Soul (page 2)

On the other hand, if the soul has a natural movement, it must also have a natural place.

This notion of "natural place", introduced by Aristotle, can be explained as follows: each element has a natural place towards which it tends and in which it comes to rest.

For the earth, this is the bottom (the centre of the universe); for fire, the top (the periphery of the universe); and for water and air, the intermediate spaces. Yet there is, in reality, no natural place left for the soul.

Indeed, if it moves upwards, the soul would be fire; if it moves downwards, it would be earth ¹ — an absurdity.

If the soul could move, it would be possible for it to leave the body and return to it. It would follow that dead animals could be resurrected ². This notion of resurrection is foreign to ancient thought.

Therefore, the soul cannot move. Aristotle goes further, arguing that it cannot even move the body.

According to Democritus, the soul moves the body because it undergoes spatial movements that correspond precisely to those of the body. For Aristotle, it is not in this way that the soul moves the animal; it is actually by a certain choice and thought ³.

What moves the body is not the soul itself, but what the soul desires: the perfect form towards which it tends by virtue of its essence — the desirable. Once attained, the animal comes to rest, like a physical body that has reached its natural place.

On these grounds, we may reject Plato's psychogony as presented in the Timaeus: the World has a soul, and the revolutions of Heaven are the very movements of the soul ⁴.

Finally, thought appears to be more a state of rest and stillness than of movement. Therefore, the soul is neither a movement nor in motion.

Aristotle then addresses another problem: what is the relationship between body and soul? Can a soul belong to any body whatsoever?

It is therefore fitting to examine the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul as harmony (expounded in detail by Plato in the Phaedo). According to the Pythagoreans, the body is a composition of opposites whose resultant is the soul — and the soul is therefore a harmony.

Just as a note — which is immaterial — is produced by the material strings of a lyre, so the soul is the immaterial product of the body.

However, Aristotle argues that it is health, rather than the soul, that deserves to be called harmony — for health is a balance of cold and warm within the body. Moreover, while it is easy to call the soul a harmony in general terms, it is harder to be precise: which harmonies constitute sensation, love, or hate, for example? Of which parts of the body is it the harmonious blend?

He concludes:

It is therefore evident from what we have said that the soul can be neither a harmony nor move in a circular motion ⁵.

Emotions — joy, sadness, and so forth — are not movements but acts of the soul.

We must now consider whether we can assert, as Empedocles did, that the soul is composed of elements. Against this, Aristotle defends the unity of the soul: it is not a compound.

Empedocles' view rests on the argument that only like can know like. The soul must therefore be composed of elements in order to know things (which are compounds of elements).

Aristotle demonstrates the absurdity of this idea: to understand what a stone is, the soul would itself have to be a stone.

Moreover, according to Empedocles, the most ignorant of beings is God, for he alone does not know one of the elements — Hate — whereas mortal beings, composed of all the elements, will know it ⁶.

The various operations of the soul — knowledge, sensation, desire, and so forth — do not undermine its unity. They are not distinct parts of the soul, but different acts of one and the same soul.

¹ I, 3, 406a
² ibid., 406b
³ ibid.
⁴ ibid., 407a
⁵ I, 4, 408a
⁶ I,5, 410b