The Traditional Interpretation Refuted

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The Traditional Interpretation Refuted

The psychology of Aristotle has never been understood in a historically correct way. A new interpretation of the De anima will be proposed in which this work can be seen as compatible with the psychology that can be reconstructed from the fragments of Aristotle's lost dialogues and the De motu animalium and other biological works (in which the notions of pneuma and 'vital heat' play a crucial role) and the doxographical data gathered from ancient writers besides the commentators. In De anima, II, 412b5, where psychè is defined as 'the first entelecheia of a natural body that is organikon,' the words 'natural body' should not be taken to mean 'the body of a living plant, animal or human being' but to stand for 'elementary body.' And the qualification 'organikon' should not be understood as 'equipped with organs' (as it always has) but in the sense of 'serving as an instrument to the soul.' This 'instrumental body' that is inseparably connected with the soul is the seat of desire (orexis), which physically influences the parts of the visible body. Besides those two corrections there are the words ta merè in 412b18 that should be taken as meaning not 'parts of the body' but 'parts of the soul.' Aristotle is arguing there that even those parts of the soul that are not yet actualized in the embryo of a new living being can be said to be 'not without body.'

Do we really know Aristotle's psychology? This question may sound strange at first, since we have a famous book by Aristotle which is called On the soul and we possess quite a bit of information about a lost dialogue, the Eudemus, which was also subtitled On the soul. Yet I propose to argue that Aristotle's psychology has remained unknown up till now. And this is because since the third century AD the text of his extant work De anima has been interpreted in a way that runs completely counter to Aristotle's intentions. What has been held to be Aristotle's psychology is the result of the interpretation of his work put forward by Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century AD.(1) The situation is comparable with the imaginary situation that Plato's oeuvre had been lost except for his Parmenides and that we only possessed the information of Plotinus for a reconstruction of Plato's thought.

To make a convincing case for this revolutionary theory, I will argue three propositions.

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