As a student of Plato, Aristotle spent twenty years at his Academy. However, the habit of thinking independently led to the fact that in the end the philosopher began to come to his own conclusions. They differed markedly from the theories of the teacher, but the truth was more precious than personal attachments, which gave rise to the famous saying. In fact, having created the foundations of modern European science and logical thinking, the philosopher distinguished himself in the field of psychology. What Aristotle wrote about the soul is still being studied in high school today.
First of all, the thinker believes that this element of the human psyche has a dual nature. On the one hand, it is material, and on the other, it is divine. Having written a special treatise "On the Soul", Aristotle pays attention to this issue in his other works. Therefore, we can say that this problem is one of the central ones in his philosophical system. It is known that he divided everything that exists into two parts. The first is physicsmaterial world. The second is the realm of the gods. He called it metaphysics. But when we try to understand what Aristotle thought about the soul, we see that from his point of view, both of these worlds have an impact on the psyche.
The philosopher divided the book on this issue into three parts. In the first, he analyzed what his predecessors thought about the soul. But in the second part, he considers the problem in detail, based on his logical and systematic approach. Here he comes to the conclusion that the soul is the practical realization of the ability of the natural body to live ("entelechy"). Therefore, all creatures possess it - plants, animals, and people. In addition, Aristotle reflected on the soul, since the essence of any thing is its form, the ability to live can be characterized in the same way.
But there is a difference between different kinds of "entelechy of the body". The vegetable and animal souls cannot exist either without matter or outside of it. The psyche is everywhere where it is possible to ascertain the existence of life. The vegetative soul is distinguished by its capacity for nourishment. Therefore, the plant can develop. The animal soul has this ability and the ability to feel and touch. This is the sensibility inherent in a higher level of development. But there is a third kind of life form, as Aristotle said about the soul. It is inherent only to rational beings. They should be able to reason and reflect.
In fact, the philosopher believed that a person has three souls. It has both vegetative and plant forms. Unlike Plato,Aristotle proves that the presence of these souls in a person is connected with matter, and their state directly depends on the body. However, these forms have their own hierarchy. All of them are dominated by the rational soul. It is also "entelechy", but not of the body, since it belongs to eternity. The philosopher suggests that such a soul does not die, since there is, after all, another kind of “higher form” that can exist separately from matter and not come into contact with it at all. And this is God. Therefore, the rational soul belongs to metaphysics. The faculty of reflection can and must exist separately from the body. This is the conclusion Aristotle draws about the soul. You read the summary of the treatise of the same name in this article.
