My understanding of De Anima by Aristotle
This chart below helped me to understand better the difference between potentially existent, actuality and full actuality. What’s important in Aristotle’s argument is the full actuality of a living thing. A body has only the capacity of life when it has a soul, the soul is actuality and body is potentially existent. Therefore, full actuality is made out of both the body and the soul; they are inseparable.
Potentially Existent
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Actuality
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Full Actuality
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Main Ideas
· “Soul and body together constitute the animal”. (11, P. 53) They cannot be separated from each other.
· Life distinguishes the animate from the inanimate. However, the term life is used in various senses: intellect, sensation, motion, nutrition, decay and growth. “…And if life is present in but a single one of these senses, we speak of a thing of living”. (2, P.55)
· Plants have only the faculty of soul concerned with motion of nutrition, decay and growth. Which, can be separated from the other faculties. While mortal creatures cannot be separated from it. Both plants and mortal creatures live.
· Animals (mortal creatures) have the sense mentioned above plus sensation. “…It is sensation primarily which constitutes the animal”. (5, P.55) A body then, which has the faculty of sensation and nutrition, is an animal.
· The primary sense in all animals is touch; this sense may exist apart from the other senses.
· “It may suffice to say that the soul is the origin of the functions above enumerated and is determined by them, namely, by capacities of nutrition, sensation, thought, and by motion. But whether it is only logically distinct or separable in space is also a question…” (6, P. 55)
· “Soul and body together constitute the animal”. (11, P. 53) They cannot be separated from each other.
· Life distinguishes the animate from the inanimate. However, the term life is used in various senses: intellect, sensation, motion, nutrition, decay and growth. “…And if life is present in but a single one of these senses, we speak of a thing of living”. (2, P.55)
· Plants have only the faculty of soul concerned with motion of nutrition, decay and growth. Which, can be separated from the other faculties. While mortal creatures cannot be separated from it. Both plants and mortal creatures live.
· Animals (mortal creatures) have the sense mentioned above plus sensation. “…It is sensation primarily which constitutes the animal”. (5, P.55) A body then, which has the faculty of sensation and nutrition, is an animal.
· The primary sense in all animals is touch; this sense may exist apart from the other senses.
· “It may suffice to say that the soul is the origin of the functions above enumerated and is determined by them, namely, by capacities of nutrition, sensation, thought, and by motion. But whether it is only logically distinct or separable in space is also a question…” (6, P. 55)