The Soul Itself in Aristotle's Science of Living Things

This chapter offers an analysis of two correlative terms that to some large extent structure Aristotle’s science of perishable living things in the De Anima. They are the “soul itself” and the “accidents of the soul”. It will turn out that the soul itself is the fundamental explanatory essence of the phenomena of perishable living things generally. It consists of the so-called “parts of the soul” nutrition, perception, and thinking. As such the soul itself in the De Anima is not a really existing kind. It is a scientific postulate, an artifact at the highest level of biological abstraction, more abstract than other and more familiar scientific abstractions of such a kind, as e.g., blooded or locomotive animals. However, in spite of from an ontological perspective being posterior to actually existing kinds of living things, it is definitionally and explanatorily prior to them. That is why the science of living things ought to start with the definition of the soul itself. The accidents of the soul, by contrast, turn out to be the explananda of the science of perishable living things. The chapter closes with the suggestion that the distinction between the soul itself and the accidents of the soul either is, or involves, some version of the form/matter distinction.