ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 12.2: ARISTOTLE CONTINUED
PSYCHOLOGY:
- begins with discussion of past problems & unanswered questions
- physics, study of nature
- everything living has a soul, first to posit plans as ensouled
- we move and know through the soul, the soul is not necessarily self-moving tho
- can alterations (passions, affections) actually be movements?
- passions are qualitative changes dependent on the body, perception, etc., so the soul doesn’t get affected, the composite individual does
- soul might be moved accidentally (so denial of a Godly accidental soul)
- the soul is that which holds the body’s end within itself, its entelechia, and also the body’s first actuality (the body is the second)
- many functionalist readings, soul as that which allows the body to function and cannot be separated from it
- the soul is an actualization of the material body’s potential, and when combined they become a second actuality
- and this makes them inseperable
- our essence is our souls, which is a rational essence
- if the eye was animated, had a soul, its soul would be sight → i.e. an actualization of the body’s innate potentiality
- Nutritive, Sensitive, Appetitive, Locomotive, Rational souls, graded system, etc.
- Plants (nutritive); Animals (sensitive); Humans/Higher Beings (Rational)
- what are these parts? they’re not universal in any sense, but common traits of individual and species souls, the species soul will always be one containing all the lower ones, but always as a unity
- in the same way that in the sphere a circle and a line are contained, but only as potential geometric objects, not actual ones
- this would imply that the Unmoved Mover has a soul and all the lower faculties; Aristotle insists that the intellect is different, but never elaborates
- the faculties are logically, not spatially separated, the soul is spread all over the body, it is singular but divisible
- each species of sense perception has its own object (sight-colour; hearing-sound; etc.)
- Aristotle solves the problem of Empedocles and Democritus: how is sight possible? What am I actually seeing? For them it was object particles (but this would degrade the object)
- Aristotle posits color moving and affecting the air
- so the air is a field of potentiality of sight, actualized in the eyes/sensorium (sensory organ)
- THE SENSORIUM IS AN ORGAN THAT RECIEVES THE FORM WITHOUT ANY OF THE MATTER! an imprint of the Form, or a part of the Form
- and your sight, in second actuality, in seeing, becomes the color being seen
- the intellect needs sensoriums for imagination
Intellection:
- the intellect is a matter perpetually being moulded, and perpetually producing
- but how does the potentiality of thought become an actuality?
- active intellect is matter becoming all intelligibles, actuality by essence
- is this active intellect fully in us? Aquinas: yes, that’s our eternal bit; Alexander: the active intellect is the unmoved mover, intelligibles exist because he’s thinking them, we tap into the thought of the active intellect, in a sense, and thus the intelligibles are always prior to their intellection by us
ETHICS:
- abt particulars, not really precise, knowing for the sake of action, and mostly about action
- we aim for the absolute good of our lives, eudaimonia, flourishing, that which we persue only for itself, never instrumentally
- critique of the Forms: if man and man-form have the same definition what are we doing? wtf is the form of the good, how are you supposed to actualize the good life if the good is a transcendent form, and eternal good is not more good than temporary good (how is eternal white more white and temporary white? wtf are you on about plato?)
- our proper activity is exercise of the soul according to reason, an active life
- over a whole life ofc, one swallow does not make a summer
- virtue is unshakable and will stay with you no matter what, so virtues are instruments used to attain eudaimonia
- the best kind of man, the happiest man, will always turn their life around
- and you can also feel fear, pity, pain, sadness (unlike with the Stoics); you’re allowed to mourn, to fear; overcoming these, excelling in how we handle them are the virtues!
- rational and irrational part of the soul; irrational can obey reason
- moral & intellectual virtues: concering the mixture of the rational and irrational; concering purely the rational
- habit builds virtue
- 2 parts of rational part of the soul: contemplative (eternal necessary objects), deliberative practical (moral choices, production, accidental objects)
- Book 10: most divine part of us is the intellect, it leads to the best life; contemplation is the best life, that which we choose for its own sake; the one life that does not require circumstances to be good