I. Introduction
– What is the essence of human soul? – principle of life – living being
– My views are the soul:
• soul is the act of a body
• itself in its own right: subsistence and incorruptible
• has life potentially: form and matter
II. Analyze information
– Definition of soul: incorporeal essence of a living being
• Aristotle: the soul is the first actuality of a natural body that hasa capacity to engage in the activity
• Plato: immaterial and belonging to the “world of the forms” as part of the “form of the good”
1. Whether the soul is a body?
– Main theory: soul is the first principle of life
– Two categories of life:
• Living (animate): composed of body and soul
can be “potentially” (the capacity to develop thing)
can be “actually” (act on something)
• Non-living (inanimate)
– Life is especially made manifest by two operations: cognition is a higher form of life, while movement is the change which will
lead to generations and corruption both ideas was considered belonging to corporeal by ancient philosophers
Thing is not corporeal is nothing soul is a part of body
– Not every living thing is a soul
– As the vision is the principle of the eye, hearing is the principle of ear, or heat is the principle of calefaction vision,
hearing, and heat are action to fulfill the purpose of eye, ear, or calefaction’s potencies
This is called essentially ordered has to have power to set something in motion
Soul is not a body, it is an act of body
Body and soul are interdependent parts
2. Is a soul subsistence? Corruptible?
Principle of intellectual operation is subsistence and incorporeal
– Subsist: has existence in itself
– According to Aristotle there are 3 degrees of soul:
• Vegetative soul: principle of taking nutrition and reproduction (plant)
• Sensitive soul: powers of motion, ability to response to the environment (animal)
• Intellectual soul: ideas of reasons and understanding (human) by intellect we know the nature of body, but what we know the
nature would impede the knowledge of anything else
therefore, the intellect principle cannot be a body in it by naturemeans once something has a body then just stay in it and cannot
be anything else.
– Example: a sick person will not taste the sweetness but bitter.
Intellectual principle has an operation per se (through itself) in which the body does not share in. however, nothing can operate
unless it subsists in its own right
– Example: the color of light is made up of the wavelengths and each wavelength has particular visible color which gives different
colors at each different range. So that what is wavelength gives light.
Support the thesis that the soul is incorporeal and subsistence.
Human soul is incorruptible
3. Is a soul composed of matter and form?
– Aristotle mentioned in De Anima is the idea of change: something that needs to be subsistence in order to change.
• Matter (potentiality)
• Form (actuality)
– The soul does not have matter:
• Prime matter: totally unformed, pure materiality itself, pure potency can’t exist
Example: a statue (form) is made from marble (matter). Before turning a block of marble into a statue, it is just being marble
without any form.
– Form can be two kinds:
• Substantial: making matter into the kind of thing that substance is inform the prime matter and create to bring a new substance
into existence
• Accidental: creating some part of an already constituted substance.
The soul is the first actuality of a natural body that has life potentially first actuality is a kind of potentiality.