Aristotle view on the soul - Essay Example

Aristotle’s View on the Soul of Learning Aristotle’s View on the Soul Aristotle considered the living beings in terms of the correlation between the matter and form (Amadio, 2014). If the form is a driving principle, the soul is a form, and the body is the matter of organic beings. More precisely, Aristotle defined the soul as the first entelechy of an organic body, i.e. vital principle of the body, which coordinates it. In other words, the “soul, Aristotle says, is “the actuality of a body that has life” (Amadio, 2014).

 Therefore, the living bodies clearly reveal a purposeful activity of nature. According to their functions, the soul is divided into three kinds. The functions of feeding and reproduction form a nutrient or plant soul. Feeling and movement inherent in animal form a sentient or animal soul. Finally, the thinking is performed as an activity of the rational soul. It belongs only to a man. The law here is that the higher functions, and therefore the souls, cannot exist without the lower functions, while the latter can exist without the higher functions.

The novelty of the views of Aristotle on the structure of the soul is, firstly, that Aristotle found a holistic approach, in which the soul was thought of as being one and indivisible. Secondly, the structure of the Aristotelian scheme of the soul is imbued with the idea of ​​development. On the one hand, the individual faculties of the soul appear as successive stages of its evolution, and on the other - it is about the development of the individual human soul as a repetition of these stages of evolution.

Aristotle’s doctrine of the three major powers of the soul resulted in the tasks, which were reduced to the development of these three abilities. The development of the plant abilities forms human agility, strength and health; sensory abilities - courage, will and emotions; and mental abilities - intelligence.References Amadio, A.H. (2014). Aristotle. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/34560/Aristotle