Abrif rev - Summary On the Soul - On the Soul PDF

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This is a brief summary of a chapter on the passive mind in the "On the Soul" by Aristotle. ...

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Hunter College City University of New York

Explication de texte On the soul 3.4: passive mind

Ekaterina Lubek Aristotle PHILO 380 Professor G. Press Due date October 5th, 2018

De Anima or On the Soul is one of the significant Aristotle's treatise that for the first time in the history discusses the soul in a systematic way, discovers its nature and its essence, farther its attributes. Although the treatise have only three books, it become a foundation of the modern psychology. Starting to study the essence of the soul, Aristotle rejects all those ideas about the soul that he considers untenable, erroneous. Truth, he believes, begins with the rejection of delusion. Therefore, at the beginning of his treatise On the Soul, he consistently expounds and then criticizes all the basic teachings on the nature of the soul that was common in his time. Already in this review and in this criticism, the empirical character of Aristotle's psychology, his conviction in the close connection between mental and bodily phenomena, clearly emerges. In his treatise De Anima,III, Aristotle categorizes the soul, the mind and its activities. He makes adjustments to Plato's doctrine on the soul and classifieds the soul into three parts or “faculties” that are responsible for certain activities, such as the nutritive (belongs to plants and animals), sensitive (belong to animals), rational (the part that discriminates the human's soul from the rest of beings). The nutrient and the sentential elements of the soul require a body to process the functions such as food consumption or sense perceiving functions. In case of the soul's part that is responsible for the thoughts doesn't have a body as necessity. Aristotle gives an analogy between thought and sensation, analyses mind and comprehended by a mind, questions "how thinking takes place " (Aristotle, On the soul, III 429a10). Thinking, argues philosopher, shouldn't be subjected to anything as with the sensory perception but must be able to perceive the form. The form is actuality that realizes potentiality, that would be a flash, bones and a fur of an animal. If the mind has in-

terference with additional elements, connected to the body, then it would have a certain quality that would always be combined with the subject of thought, hindering his comprehension. Aristotle concludes that the mind by nature is ability.

The mind is part of the soul that thinks and judges. Aristotle agrees with Plato that the soul is "‘the place of forms'; though this description holds only of the intellective soul, and even this is the forms only potentially, not actually" (Aristotle, On the soul, Ill.4, 429а 27—29). Aristotle argues that mind is nothing before it thinks, meaning that when mind in inactive state is not an actual mind, it’s a potentiality. When mind is stimulated by senses and starts actualizing itself, then becomes the mind. That brings Aristotle to a conclusion that mind itself doesn't depend on the body; otherwise, it would have a certain quality such as being hot or cold, or soul may have an organ that carries the sensitive facility. The mind does not have any organ in the body, unlike the animal and plant parts of the soul, which have an organ - or an organ of knowledge, or a nutrition organ, or a reproductive organ. On the contrary, the body is an organ of the rational soul. The soul commands the body like an instrument's hand. Aristotle questions if the mind perceives things in the same way or in different ways. Does the soul rely on the sense-perception faculty or has its way to perceive potential reality? According to Aristotle although the ability to sense is impossible without the body, the mind can exist outside of it, thus, having an ability that is separate from the sensitive faculty to apprehend the potential reality.

Mind and body for Aristotle are almost the same principle as a matter and form, where both are acting in tandem as elements of one object or subject. So if the body is a form, then the mind is matter. He says that like form and matter, even though both are the composition of one object same is soul and body two equal aspects of subject. (Aristotle, On the soul, III.4 429a20). Aristotle states that the bodily sense perception is stimulating the mind to actualize itself, in other words, to start thinking. To clarify a potential confusion between the soul as being an intrinsic part of the all living things, and the mind as being an un-embodied reason, Aristotle distinguishes two faculties or types of the mind as being active or passive. The active mind is being internal and unchanging, the mind alone is capable of comprehending the highest essences. The passive mind is an integral component of a living body that accommodates its processes and actualizes its potential. The passive mind has a potential knowledge, whereas the active mind is free from anything material and is pure thinking, and is a movement of everything. It might be true that Aristotle talks about the passive mind as a human mind, the one that resins within a body and coexists together with it. Thus, the person's mind would sometimes think and sometimes not. To learn, a person must receive a source of knowledge from the senses and direct the passive mind to a state of activity, that is, bring your mind closer to the active mind, learn the essences, actualize a potential knowledge. With the death of the body, with the disappearance of the plant and animal soul, the mind lives forever, because it is a form of forms. It separates from the body and merges with the active mind. The mind is not a person, but a particle of the universal law of thought and reason. That will be precisely that moment when the passive and active mind can be united, which also means they both eventually can be

separated from one another. Thus, passive and active mind are not separate entities but rather one is part of the other, and they both exist together and separate at the same time. For Aristotle, the soul is an integral component of the living creatures where the highest among the three faculties is rational. Moreover the rational part of the soul, is the mind. Among the active and passive minds, the latter is a facility through which a person may actualize the knowledge that lives in the active mind.

Works Cited

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R. P. McKeon, ed., Basic Works of Aristotle, Random House, 1941.

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Tr. Irwin and Fine, Aristotle. Selections, Hackett, 1995.

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David Ross, Aristotle. 6th edn. Routledge, 1995....