The Principle of Life: Aristotelian Souls in an Inanimate ... · 1.1 The Soul as Life’s Principle Aristotle begins his Metaphysics with the famous pronouncement that “all men

The Principle of Life: Aristotelian Souls in an

Inanimate World

Christopher Frey

November 11, 2014

2

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The Soul as Life’s Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.2 Three Conceptions of Ensouled Organisms . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.2.1 Standard Materialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.2.2 Material Vitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1.2.3 Standard Hylomorphism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.3 Substantial Vitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

1.4 The Project in Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

2 A Science of the Soul 37

2.1 Scientific Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

2.2 The Project of De Anima and the Varieties of Unity . . . . . . 48

2.2.1 Definitional Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

2.2.2 Analogy and Focal Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

2.2.3 Hierarchical Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

2.3 Hierarchical Unity and Individual Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

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ii CONTENTS

3 The Unity of Soul 75

3.1 The Soul as Capacities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

3.1.1 Unity of Soul as the Physical Overlap of Physiological

Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

3.1.2 Unity of Soul as Teleological Subordination . . . . . . 76

3.1.3 Unity of Soul as Coordinated Benefit . . . . . . . . . . 76

3.2 The Soul as Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

3.3 Souls and Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

4 Natural Unity and Organic Unity 77

4.1 Contingent Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.2 Function and Homonymy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.2.1 The Varieties of Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.2.2 Natural Unitary Homonymy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.3 Inanimate Natural Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.3.1 Simple Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.3.2 Mixtures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.4 Animate Natural Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.5 The Two-Body Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.5.1 The Artifact Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.5.2 The Mixture Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

5 From Blood to Flesh 79

5.1 Blood’s Curious Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

CONTENTS iii

5.2 Being Dunamei and Being Energeiai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

5.2.1 Case 1: Individuals (House Builders) . . . . . . . . . . 80

5.2.2 Case 2: Artifacts (Houses) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

5.2.3 Case 3: Mixtures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

5.2.4 Case 4: Artifacts (Cakes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

5.3 The Prison Model of Organic Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

5.4 The Natural Continuity Model of Organic Unity . . . . . . . . 80

5.5 The Homonymy of Material Capacities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

6 Why We Die 81

6.1 The Material Cause Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.1.1 Soul as Death’s Cause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.1.2 Matter as Death’s Cause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.1.3 Standard Hylomorphism and the Material Cause Ac-

count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.1.4 Death’s Physiological Basis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.1.5 Gill’s Defense of the Material Cause Account . . . . . 82

6.2 Matter and Mortality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.2.1 Celestial Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.2.2 Hypothetical Necessity and the Sense of Touch . . . . 82

6.2.3 Hypothetical Necessity, Generation, and Natural Growth 82

6.3 The Formal Cause Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.3.1 Nature’s “Choice” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

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6.3.2 Natural Unity and Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.3.3 Against the Material Cause Account . . . . . . . . . . 82

6.4 Appendix: (Supra)Lunar Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

6.4.1 Celestial Souls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

6.4.2 God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

6.4.3 Fire Animals on the Moon and Life Beyond the Stars . 83

7 Change and Persistence 85

7.1 Hylomorphism and Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

7.2 What Persists in Change? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

8 Instrumental Bodies 87

8.1 Living Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

8.2 Nature as Housekeeper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

8.3 Material Necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

8.4 Formal Natures and Material Natures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

9 The Continuity of Material Explanation 89

9.1 Explanations: Animate and Inanimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

9.2 Methodology and Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

9.3 Investigative Repetition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

10 A Metaphysics of Life 91

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 The Soul as Life’s Principle

Aristotle begins his Metaphysics with the famous pronouncement that “all

men by nature desire to know” (Metaph. Α.1, 980a21). This desire is not neu-

tral; it directs us toward the good. For Aristotle rightly places the knowledge

we naturally seek among that which is fine and prized for its own sake.1 But

not all types of knowledge are equally valuable. The value of the knowledge

that a particular investigation yields derives in part from the excellence of

its subject matter and the wonder this subject matter elicits.

Aristotle recognizes that, on this score, an investigation into life promises

knowledge that deserves to occupy the highest rank (402a1-4). The superi-

ority of life over other domains of inquiry is partly due to living organisms’

1τῶν καλῶν καὶ τιμίον, DA I.1, 402a2. Cf. Metaph. Ζ.7, 1072a34-35.

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2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

privileged position among the things that are. For not only does Aristotle

insist, quite generally, that “soul is better than body, and the living, having

soul, is thereby better than the lifeless which has none” (GA II.1, 731b28-30),

but, when he surveys the things that are in order to determine which among

them are substances—the primary, determinate individuals upon which all

other being somehow depends—Aristotle claims that living organisms “are

substantial beings most of all” (Metaph. Ζ.7, 1032a20).

And one hardly needs to argue that life inspires wonder (θαυμασμὀς)

in those who pause to contemplate it. Philosophy, according to Aristotle,

begins in a sense of puzzlement that often accompanies wonder, and few

subjects engender more puzzlement and fuel more philosophical reflection

than the nature of living organisms and the remarkable variety of ways in

which they pursue their lives. We are confronted with an enormous diversity

of amazingly complex and highly organized biological individuals endowed

with determinate, specific natures that allow them to perform extraordinary

activities found nowhere else in the inanimate universe. We ought not mis-

take the familiar for the mundane; we ought to marvel in wonder at the life

1.1. THE SOUL AS LIFE’S PRINCIPLE 3

that surrounds us.2

An inquiry into life is an inquiry into soul (ψυχή). This is because

the soul is life’s principle (ἀρχή).3 A principle, in this context, is that

which ultimately explains something, i.e. its first or primary cause (τὴν

πρώτην/κυριώτερον αἰτίαν). And the soul serves this role in two respects.

First, the soul is that in virtue of which the living is distinguished from the

non-living. To live is to possess a soul; to die is to cease being ensouled

(to be ἔμψυχος). Second, the soul is the cause and explanatory ground of

all the vital activities that occur within or by a living organism, including

bodily maintenance, reproduction, self-motion, perception, and thought. An

individual performs these activities in virtue of (or with) its soul (ἄνθρωπον

τῇ ψυχῇ, DA I.4, 408b14-15).

To deny that there are souls is to deny life itself. This may come as a

2(i) In addition to its superior subject matter, the relative value of a type of knowledgeis also determined by its precision (ἀκρίβεια). Knowledge is precise if its subject matteris relatively invariable (Metaph. α.3, 995a15-16) and if it is explanatorily fecund, i.e. ifit comprises a small number of principles from which one can derive a large body ofknowledge (An. Post. I.27, 87a33-35 and Metaph. Α.2, 982a25-28). The study of soul,according to Aristotle, is superior on this count as well since (a) its subject matter, thesoul, is, in a sense we will explore, a formal principle that is free from the variabilitythat matter introduces and (b) “it makes a great contribution to all truth, particularly toknowledge of nature” (DA I.1, 402a4-7). (ii) On wonder and its relation to philosophy, seeΑ.2, 982b11-22 and Plato Theaetetus 155d2-4.

3Aristotle asserts that the soul is the principle of (animal) life at DA I.1, 402a6-7 andthat the soul is the principle of the basic ways in which life manifests itself at II.2, 413b11-13. The former claim contains the qualifier οἷον; the soul is there described as a sortof principle or like a principle. This expression, however, doesn’t entail that souls arenot life’s principle or are a principle in only a qualified sense. Rather, Aristotle employsthe qualifier so that his introduction of soul is maximally noncommittal and does not begimportant questions that ought to be left open at the beginning of the inquiry, e.g. whetherthere is one or more principle of living things (cf. Lennox [2009] p.4-5).


surprise to the vast majority of present-day thinkers who happily countenance

living beings in all of their variety but actively eschew explanations that

invoke souls. This aversion is largely due to the connotations the idea has

accrued over time: to be ensouled, it is commonly thought, is to house some

immaterial entity that is the seat of consciousness and persists after death.

Though it is difficult not to hear ‘soul’ in this broadly Cartesian register,

this is not, as we will see, Aristotle’s conception. But even before we arrive

at Aristotle’s positive picture, we must understand that to introduce the

soul as the principle of life is not itself to make any substantive claim about

what souls are beyond their being that which ultimately causes and explains

life. Before one determines what something is or the reason why something

is, one must establish if it is.4 One establishes the existential claim for

souls by recognizing that there are living organisms and by appreciating that

there must be something, or perhaps several things, that explain both life’s

presence and the sundry ways in which it manifests itself. Aristotle calls

this principle, whatever it turns out to be, soul. So even the most adamant

materialist, as long as she is not an eliminativist about life, must accept that

there are souls. Disagreement arises only with respect to what souls are and

what it is about them that causes and explains life.5 It is this question—What

4“We are seeking, when we seek the “that” or the unqualified “if it is”, whether thereis or is not a middle term for it; and when, having come to know either the “that” or “ifit is”, either partially or without qualification, we seek the reason why or the what-it-is,we are then seeking what the middle term is.” (An. Post. II.2, 89b37-90a1).

5Cf. Polansky [2007] p.38: “So long as there is agreement that there are living beings oranimals having principles, distinguishable from other beings, there is acceptance that soulis something, namely, the principle of these beings. Investigation can proceed to determine

1.1. THE SOUL AS LIFE’S PRINCIPLE 5

is the soul, qua principle of life?—and the closely related question—How are

we to understand the being and activity of organisms that are ensouled?—

that guide this book.

Our guiding questions have received many answers. And, as should be

expected, the answers Aristotle provides are subject to numerous interpre-

tations. My primary aim in what follows is to defend an interpretation of

Aristotle’s conception of soul which I call Substantial Vitalism. According to

Substantial Vitalism, to live is to actualize a single, natural capacity for a

determinate form of life and it is in virtue of this unitary natural activity that

a living organism is a substantial unity that is, in a sense that I will elabo-

rate, naturally isolated from its inanimate environment. In order to arrive

at a rough and preliminary understanding of this interpretation, it is useful

to contrast it with three other conceptions of ensouled organisms. These

three conceptions—Standard Materialism, Material Vitalism, and Standard

Hylomorphism—are not exhaustive. But they will allow us to bring into re-

lief those aspects of Aristotle’s theory of soul that make it both unique and

worthy of our attention.

just what sort of principle soul is.”


1.2 Three Conceptions of Ensouled Organisms

1.2.1 Standard Materialism

Standard Materialism is the view that the majority of present-day theorists,

both philosophers and non-philosophers, accept. According to Standard Ma-

terialism, all living organisms are complex material systems. This fundamen-

tal commitment is expressed well in the following quote.

Any living organism, including a human being, is a complex ma-

terial system. It consists of a huge number of particles combined

in a special way. Each of us is composed of matter that had a

largely inanimate history before finding its way onto our plates

or those of our parents. It was once probably part of the sun,

but matter from another galaxy would do as well. If it were

brought to earth, and grass were grown in it, and milk from a

cow that ate the grass were drunk by a pregnant woman, then

her child’s brain would be partly composed of that matter. Any-

thing whatever, if broken down far enough and rearranged, could

be incorporated into a living organism. No constituents besides

matter are needed. (Nagel [1979] p.181)

Life, according to this conception, is entirely a consequence of the manner in

which wholly inanimate materials are arranged. The material composition

and organization of a dog or a flower is different than that of a mountain

1.2. THREE CONCEPTIONS OF ENSOULED ORGANISMS 7

or a storm. Only the former exemplify a sort of systematic unity in which

otherwise inanimate entities perform functions that, when taken together,

constitute one or more of those activities we typically associate with life.

But the animate and the inanimate are alike in being, at bottom, collections

of material entities whose properties, movements, and interactions can be

explained exhaustively by the physical sciences, as presently conceived.

As we are living creatures, the same is true of us. We are composed en-

tirely of matter that had a largely inanimate history before becoming located

in our bodies. This same matter will follow a largely inanimate path upon

our deaths. We are transitory stages in the histories of more fundamental

material entities.

So Standard Materialists identify the soul with the basic material orga-

nizations that obtain in those things that are alive. Or, alternatively, they

identify the soul with those physical structures in living organisms that play

a special role in bringing about and maintaining such an organization, e.g.

DNA or RNA.6 Either way, the soul, that which causes and explains life and

animate activity, can be analyzed in terms of the properties, activities, and

6There have been many candidates over time. All that matters for our purposes is thatthe physical structure and its operations do not involve a substance or force that is distinctfrom and irreducible to the other substances and forces that are operative in the inani-mate domain. For example, Descartes’ appeal to blood and fire in the following passagequalifies as an instance of Standard Materialism. “In order to explain these functions [sc.nourishment, growth, respiration, sleep and waking, the reception of perceptual stimuli,appetite/desire, movements of the limbs, etc.], then, it is not necessary to conceive of thismachine [i.e. the living body] as having any vegetative or sensitive soul or other principleof movement and life, apart from its blood and its spirits, which are agitated by the heatof the fire burning continuously in its heart—a fire which has the same nature as all thefires that occur in inanimate bodies” (Treatise on Man, CSM I, 108).


organization of inanimate bodies.

Several of Aristotle’s predecessors advocate Standard Materialism. Dio-

genes identifies the soul with air because air is the most subtle and incorporeal

of the elements. Both Democritus and Heraclitus identify the soul with fire

because fire’s shape and fineness guarantee its constant movement and this

movement initiates and explains all other movement within and by living

organisms. And Empedocles identifies the soul with the ratio that obtains

among the material elements that compose an organism’s body because he

considers life to be a harmony among bodily contraries.7

But few, if any, interpreters attribute Standard Materialism to Aristotle.

For not only does Aristotle condemn the views of each of these predecessors,

he also clearly states, on numerous occasions, that neither the activities nor

the organization of the four simple terrestrial bodies—earth, water, air, and

fire—are sufficient to explain the generation, persistence, and vital activity of

living organisms.8 Adding other simple bodies or other material forces, say,

love and strife, will not alleviate the explanatory deficit. What is needed,

according to Aristotle, is an appeal to an organism’s form. Unless one in-

troduces an organism’s form as the end (τέλος) toward which its natural

development and activity are directed one cannot give a plausible account of

obvious facts, e.g. that beings of a given kind develop in a predictable and

7On Diogenes, see DA I.2, 405a22-24, on Democritus 403b28-404a16, 405a8-13, on Her-aclitus 405a25-28, and on Empedocles I.4, 408a18-28.

8Among other places, this claim is made at GC II.9, 335b30-336a12, Meteor. IV.12,389b28-29, DA II.4, 416a9-18, GA II.1, 734b31-735a4, and Metaph. Ι.3, 984b5-15.


orderly manner that results in a specific, articulate bodily configuration and

that beings of a given kind reliably bring about individuals of a like kind

through reproduction. In fact, Aristotle thinks that unless one appeals to an

organism’s form qua end, one fails even to grasp what it is that one purports

to explain.

John Cooper expresses the negative point well when he says,

Democritean necessity does not suffice to explain the coming to

be of any fully-developed plant or animal: you cannot start from

the presence of certain materials and trace a connected series of

changes, resulting from nothing but necessities belonging to the

natures and powers of the materials present, that leads up to the

fully-formed living thing as its outcome. (Cooper [1986] p.143)

Allan Gotthelf also mentions the positive point when he concludes that,

[T]he development of a living organism is not the result of a sum

of actualizations of element-potentials the identification of which

includes no mention of the form of the mature organism. (Got-

thelf [1976] p.11)

But to deny Standard Materialism is not to advance a particular alternative

account. There are several options available that treat Aristotle’s insistence

that an appeal to form is necessary quite differently.


1.2.2 Material Vitalism

One available alternative to Standard Materialism is Material Vitalism. Ac-

cording to Material Vitalism, an organism is alive because it possesses or is

moved by a special kind of matter or a special kind of material force that is

different from, and cannot be reduced to, the other materials and forces that

operate in the inanimate realm.

Material Vitalism has a long history but reached its peak in the late

19th century among so-called “organicists.” These vitalists appeal to an ir-

reducibly animate substance/entelechy (e.g. “germinal matter” or “proto-

plasm”) or force/conatus (e.g. “vital spark” or “élan vital”) in their expla-

nations of life.9 To live is, say, to possess élan vital; to die is for élan vital

to dissipate or cease operating.

Material Vitalists intend the novel substance or force they introduce to be

entirely material. That is, we should place élan vital on the inventory of the

basic things a complete scientific theory must countenance. But it is neither

derivable from nor even supervenes on the other entities and forces which,

assuming completeness, would suffice to explain every inanimate phenomenon

in the universe.

A minority of interpreters attribute Material Vitalism to Aristotle. For

example, Gad Freudenthal points out that connate pneuma is the substrate

of an organism’s vital heat and argues that, for Aristotle, its presence and

9Important contributions to fin de siècle Material Vitalism include Beale [1870] andDreisch [1908].


absence are the sole causes of an organism’s life and death, respectively

(Freudenthal [1995]).10 Vital heat is distinct from the heat that characterizes

inanimate bodies; its natural movement, unlike the natural movement of

inanimate hot bodies, will result in the realization of a specific, determinate

bodily organization if nothing prevents it from doing so. So in this attenuated

sense, Material Vitalism adheres to the letter of Aristotle’s thesis that a

proper explanation of life must, in some way, make an ineliminable reference

to an organism’s form. Nevertheless, pneuma is an entirely material body

and vital heat is an entirely material capacity to be understood as being of

a kind, in most respects, with the four simple terrestrial bodies and their

inanimate material capacities.

1.2.3 Standard Hylomorphism

A much more popular interpretation of Aristotle is Standard Hylomorphism.

In his Physics, Aristotle introduces the idea that everything that comes to

be by nature or art can be analyzed in terms of two factors: matter (ὕλη)

and form (εἶδος/μορφή). Matter is that which persists through change and

change consists in the loss and acquisition of form, broadly construed. Living

organisms are no exception; an organism’s matter and form are its body and

its soul, respectively.

Standard Hylomorphism is opposed to both Standard Materialism and

Material Vitalism. According to Standard Hylomorphism, an organism’s10See also Bos [2003].


vital activities are not reducible to a series of material movements even if

it includes those movements that arise from pneuma and vital heat. An

organism’s immaterial form, i.e. its soul, is primarily responsible for the

coming to be, development, and persistence of a living individual as the kind

of organism it is. And the very same immaterial form is the first cause of all

the vital activities that occur within and by an organism throughout its life.

Though numerous variants of Standard Hylomorphism exist, its adher-

ents almost universally attribute four theses to Aristotle and I will take their

conjunction to capture what is central to the interpretation. Though each

of these theses, and subtle variations thereof, will receive significant atten-

tion in the chapters that follow, I will briefly present their most widespread

formulations in turn.

(SH1) Contingent Specification of Matter (Two-Body Thesis): For any

hylomorphic composite with a given form, the composite must contain

some matter that (i) is actually present, (ii) is identifiable indepen-

dently of its having such a form, and (iii) is capable of being so-formed.

Matter’s contingent specification is clear in the artifactual examples Aristotle

employs when he introduces hylomorphism. The same bronze is present

before, during, and after it has the form a statue. That is, it persists as such

through the statue’s generation and destruction. Though a given parcel of

bronze has the capacity to take on the form of a particular statue, its identity

as bronze bears no necessary relationship to the form it acquires and loses.


This analysis is then applied outside the artifactual domain to living

organisms. This extension is not without its obstacles. Aristotle identifies

the obvious candidates for a living organism’s matter—the body, the organs,

and even the tissues—by their functions. That is, an organism’s matter is

a “natural organic body” (σώματος φυσικοῦ ὀργανικοῦ, DA II.1, 412b5-6)

and to be an organ or tissue, to belong to an organic body, is to possess

the capacities necessary to perform a characteristic ἔργον—a work, job or

function. For “[w]hat a thing is is always determined by its function: a thing

really is itself when it can perform its function; an eye, for instance, when it

can see” (Meteor. IV.2, 390a10-12) and this is true of an organism’s tissues

as well (390a14-15). So for an organic body to exist, it must actually have

the capacities required to work in a particular way. But the capacities that a

body must possess in order to exercise its identity-determining function are

the very same capacities whose possession entails that a body is ensouled.

For we can correctly say that a thing lives if it possesses the capacities that

enable it to function in one or more of the basic ways life manifests itself

(DA II.2, 413a20-23).

If this is correct, a living organism’s matter, unlike an artifact’s matter,

is essentially, not contingently, informed.11 That this is so is reflected in

Aristotle’s attributions of homonymy (ὁμωνυμία). Things are homonyms if

they differ, either partially or completely, in their essence or account but are

11The locus classicus for this difficulty that a comprehensive account of hylomorphismfaces is Ackrill [1972].


nevertheless picked out by a single word. Aristotle is explicit that the organic

body and its parts are not identical to anything that is present in a body

bereft of soul. For example, though we apply a single word, ‘heart’, to both

the organ currently pumping in our chest and the visually indistinguishable

object before us on the autopsy table, the latter is called a heart merely

homonymously (πλὴν ὁμωνύμως); it is a heart in name only and stands to

a pumping, embodied heart as a sharp knife stands to a sharp note, as a

man stands to a picture of a man, or as a healthy diet stands to a healthy

complexion.12

Despite this, there is, according to Standard Hylomorphism, a candi-

date for an organism’s matter that, unlike its organic body, is contingently

specifiable. What is present and persists as matter in a living hylomorphic

composite is some “structured physical thing” whose identity is not essen-

tially tied to the composite’s form or its life-constitutive functions.13 This

“physical” thing has on different occasions been called the BODY, remote

matter, compositional flesh, the body’s material basis, and the non-organic

body (which I will use from now on), to name a few.14

12Aristotle discusses organic homonymy at GC I.5, 321b29-32, Meteor. IV.12, 390a10-12,DA II.1, 412b13, 21-23, PA I.1, 640b34-641a34, Metaph. Ζ.10, 1035b10-26, Ζ.11, 1036b30-32,Ζ.16, 1040b5-8, and Pol. I.2, 1253a19-25.

13The phrase ‘structured physical thing’ occurs at Williams [1986] p.193. The term‘physical’ here cannot be Aristotle’s, viz. φυσικός, since Aristotle maintains that what wewould presently call a human’s psychological activities, e.g. perception and ratiocination,are just as physical as an inanimate body’s natural movements. One of the tasks of thosewho introduce bodies characterized in this way is the justification of this distinct andrelatively modern use. Cf. Code and Moravcsik [1992] p.130.

14These expressions occur at Cohen [1992] p.69, Irwin [1988] p.241, Whiting [1992] p.79,Lewis [1994] p.273, and Shields [1999] p.137, respectively.


Donald Morrison expresses the reasoning behind this commitment in the

following passage.

Chemically, the flesh of a person immediately before and imme-

diately after death is the same. Cooling and putrefaction take

time. Aristotle’s claim that the flesh afterward is no longer flesh

looks like a piece of arbitrary linguistic legislation. It may have

lost its biologic function, but it is still the same stuff. If Aristotle

insists on restricting the term “flesh” to what’s inside a living

body, then it looks as if being “flesh” is a mere relative property

of the stuff, which, qua stuff, remains the same both when in-

side the body (and thus possessing the relative property “being

flesh”), and when outside of it (at least for a certain time, before

putrefaction sets in). Good science would seem to require tak-

ing as the matter in question the stuff itself, and not the relative

entity. (Morrison [1989] p.209)

So, in addition to the essentially ensouled organic body that Aristotle claims

is an organism’s matter, there is a non-organic body present in living organ-

isms that is contingently specifiable. As with the matter of artifacts, non-

organic bodies exist before an organism comes to be, are actually present

within an organism as it lives, and survive an organism’s death. I call this

consequence of SH1 the two-body thesis.

An interpreter who adopts the two-body thesis must provide a more de-

tailed account of the non-organic bodies that are present in living organisms


and must explain the relation that obtains between this non-organic body

and the essentially ensouled organic body that is central to Aristotle’s ac-

count. The next thesis of Standard Hylomorphism attempts to do just this.

(SH2) Unovicity of Material Capacities: The accounts of a living or-

ganism’s tissues’ material capacities are identical to the accounts of an

inanimate body’s material capacities.

The tissues our organs comprise are uniform (ὁμοιομερής) bodies that arise

through the mixing (μίξις) of simpler, material bodies. Given this, it would

be reasonable to conclude that an organism’s tissues are materially indistin-

guishable from inanimate bodies with identical elemental compositions. That

is, an organism’s tissues, like inanimate mixtures, possess some determinate

temperature, some determinate level of moisture, and some determinate place

toward which their locomotion naturally tends. As David Charles puts it, all

organic bodies are “made up of constituents which can also be constituents of

non-living material substance” and “the forces or types of causes involved [in

the operations of an organism’s tissues] are ones which operate in non-living

matter” (Charles [1988] p.50 n.39).

Proponents of SH2 will grant that the ratio in which these material capac-

ities are present in a tissue is fixed by the soul of its encompassing organism:

for the most part, a tissue comes to be with its suite of material capacities

because only a body with these capacities can execute a job of function that

is needed for the organism to exemplify, or exemplify more thoroughly, its


specific form of life. But Aristotle’s explanation of the mixing involved in a

tissue’s generation, viz. concoction (πέψις), qua mixing, is not fundamentally

different from his explanation of the mixing that results in inanimate uni-

form bodies.15 Moreover, Aristotle’s explanations of the exercises of not only

a tissue’s basic material capacities—hot, cold, wet, dry, heavy, and light—

but also the material capacities that supervene on these basic capacities—

e.g. tension, ductility, fragmentarily, hardness, softness, density, rarity, and

many others—are not fundamentally different from his explanations of the

exercises of the material capacities that inanimate bodies possess.

The unovicity of material capacities fits well with SH1. For it is an or-

ganism’s tissues insofar as they are identified by their material capacities

that are most often taken to be the contingently specifiable matter that per-

sists through the organism’s generation and destruction, i.e. its non-organic

body.16

So the hylomorphic account suitable for living organisms mirrors, in sev-

eral important respects, the hylomorphic account appropriate to artifacts.

That is, the conjunction of SH1 and SH2, in their strongest forms, allows

one to say that “non-organic bodies exist before and survive the death of the

organism. Just as the iron of an axe co-exists with axe matter [i.e. iron func-

15Aristotle says that “the process [sc. concoction] is the same in an artifactual and in anatural instrument, for the cause will be the same in every case” (Meteor. IV.3, 381a10-11).

16The unovicity of material capacities is also maintained by those who interpret Aris-totle’s talk of material natures in such a way that an organism’s nature is “a complexof a material nature and a formal nature” where “the generation of an organism arisesfrom the interaction between these two natures” (Henry [2008] p.70; cf. Lennox [2001] andLeunissen [2010]).


tionally specified in terms of its capacity to chop], so the non-organic body

exists while organic bodies exist” (Shields [1999] p.152, explication added).

This comprehensive account allows one to provide parallel explanations of

the relationship between an organism’s non-organic and organic bodies and

the relationship between an artifact’s matter and its functionally-specified

parts. When an artificer produces an artifact, he imparts a function upon

some contingently specifiable matter from without. For example, when a

house builder produces a door, he imposes the function of facilitating entry

to and egress from a house upon what is and remains, by its own nature, a

wooden rectangular prism. Similarly, the vital functions that a materially-

determined non-organic body acquires when it comes to be a tissue will be

externally imposed on it by an organism’s soul. As Frank Lewis says,

In its natural, proper context, flesh or bone (say) is alive, as

blood is hot—but like the heat of the blood, the life of flesh

or bone is externally driven in a way that is determined by the

form of the whole animal, which is an external principle relative

to them. In addition to the living flesh and bone, then, doing

(or at least capable of doing) its proper work within the living

animal, and which has the form or soul as its constitutive form-

analogue, there exists also the material basis for the flesh or bone,

which comprises all the correct material parts, but which can exist

independently of the animal’s form or soul. (Lewis [1994] p.273)

So an organic body’s essential characteristic functions are external imposi-


tions on an otherwise autonomous non-organic body.

(SH3) Prison Model of Organic Unity: An organism’s soul is the cause

of its bodily unity by virtue of constraining the exercises of its tissues’

material capacities.

If, as SH2 states, an organism’s tissues possess the same material capaci-

ties that inanimate bodies possess, then these capacities’ unfettered exercise

would disrupt the organization required for the successful performance of

the organism’s vital activities. For example, if left to their own devices,

our predominantly earthen bone would move to a location that is close to

the cosmos’ center and our comparatively fiery flesh would move toward a

higher location. How does an organism maintain its bodily unity and vital

organization in the face of these material tendencies?

Aristotle addresses this question directly during a discussion of plants’

bodily unity. “[F]or what is it” asks Aristotle, “that holds together <tissues

that possess the material capacities of> fire and earth, given that they tend

in opposite directions? For they will be torn apart, unless there is something

to prevent them.” His answer: “[I]f there is, then this is the soul and the

cause of growth and nourishment” (DA II.4, 416a6-9).

The prison model attempts to flesh out Aristotle’s answer and is so-called

because it bestows the role of warden upon the soul.17 That is, the soul ef-

fects an organic unity in part by systematically constraining the exercises17Mary Louise Gill, in a more optimistic spirit, says that the “[s]oul plays a supervisory

role” (Gill [1989a] p.200).


of its tissues’ material capacities. It achieves this not through some sort of

immaterial causation. An organism’s soul checks the exercises of its tissues’

material capacities insofar as it realizes itself through an organism’s nutri-

tive activities. The activity of the nutritive soul qua reproductive faculty (τὸ

γεννετικόν) prevents the matter from which all animate tissues come to be in

generation, viz. καταμήνια, from exercising its material capacities freely and

directs it in a way that is contrary to its material capacities’ natural ends.

The activity of the nutritive soul qua threptic faculty (τὸ θρεπτικόν) is the

exercise of a “capacity to maintain its possessor as such” (DA II.4, 416b18-19)

and is responsible for impeding (when disruptive to the body’s vital orga-

nization) and allowing (when consistent with the body’s vital organization)

the exercises of the organism’s tissues’ material capacities.

The soul’s influence is not absolute. Our tissues’ material capacities are

constantly striving to achieve their proprietary ends. When a bit of one

of our tissues manages to overcome or avoid our soul’s nutritive reach and

exercises its material capacities successfully, it will escape our bodies and be

free of the soul’s influence once and for all. This is not a rare occurrence and,

consequently, there is a continuous “flowing out” of matter from our tissues

(GC I.5, 321b25-26).18 Replenishing this lost matter is among the nutritive

soul’s principal duties.

Upon an organism’s death, its tissues no longer suffer the soul’s exter-

18Our tissues are, in this respect, as Heraclitus describes rivers: “Upon those who stepinto the same rivers, different and again different waters flow” (DK 22B12).


nal check at all and can exercise their material capacities with the freedom

typical of unconstrained inanimate bodies. We call this unconstrained nat-

ural movement putrefaction (σῆψις). For “when the soul departs, the body

disintegrates and decays” (DA I.5, 411b8-9).

(SH4) Material Cause Account of Death: An organism’s death is to

be explained primarily in terms of material causes.

Standard Hylomorphism’s final thesis concerns Aristotle’s account of senes-

cence and death. Mary Louise Gill adopts the material cause account when

she claims that “the natural destruction [of a living organism], even if acci-

dentally caused by external factors, is primarily due to the entity’s matter”

(Gill [1989b] p.187). And R. A. H. King, in a similar spirit, asks ‘whether

what makes something easily perishable, and so short-lived, is its body or

its soul” and goes on to declare that “[t]he answer is the body, for it is

characterized by contraries and so changes and perishes” (King [2001] p.3).

This emphasis on material causes is a consequence of SH3. An organism

dies when its nutritive activity fails to meet a certain threshold for resisting

the exercises of its tissues’ material capacities. The effectiveness of the nu-

tritive soul’s resistance and replenishment are increasingly diminished with

age. This is to be expected since these material capacities offer constant re-

sistance. Aristotle describes the soul’s struggle against matter as a toilsome

enterprise (DC II.1, 284a14-18) and says that “a life of the soul cannot be

free from pain or blessed; since it is in fact accompanied by force in its move-


ment” (284a28-30). This general description gains further support from the

detailed explanations Aristotle offers of the physiological processes involved

in aging and death. As we will later see, Aristotle’s discussions emphasize the

explanatory role of two material capacities above all others, viz. the wet and

the hot, and the explanations he offers do not seem to contain an ineliminable

appeal to an organism’s form or soul. In fact, it is difficult to distinguish the

kind of explanation Aristotle employs in his discussions of senescence and

death from that which he employs in treatises, like Meteorology, that deal

with natural bodies only insofar as they are inanimate.

So according to SH4, it is reasonable for Aristotle to say that “the inca-

pacities of animals, age, decay, and the like are all unnatural, due, it seems,

to the fact that the whole animal complex is made up of materials which

differ in respect of their proper places, and no single part occupies its own

place” (II.6, 288b15-19). For it is “substance which is matter and capacity,”

i.e. matter that possesses contrary material capacities that are naturally di-

rected toward ends that are deleterious to life, that make the continuity of

vital activity laborious and death inevitable (Metaph. Θ.8, 1050b27-28).

We find ourselves in a continuously and autonomously changing material

world whose movements are occasionally but inadequately checked by the

unifying activity of stable and unchanging forms. For in general, the “Aris-

totelian cosmos is a world of tension and commotion—ordered and preserved

by form, disordered by matter” (Gill [1989a] p.242). Organisms are the bat-

tle lines where this war is waged. But all terrestrial organisms die and do so

1.3. SUBSTANTIAL VITALISM 23

necessarily. In the eternal struggle between matter and form, matter always

prevails.

1.3 Substantial Vitalism

Standard Hylomorphism, in one variety or another, is by far the most popular

interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of ensouled organisms. This status is

not unreasonable. In addition to the numerous passages that its advocates

invoke in support of the view, Standard Hylomorphism has the advantages

of fitting seamlessly with Aristotle’s hylomorphic account of change in the

Physics and of reflecting the symmetry that is present in Aristotle’s expla-

nations of inanimate and physiological phenomena. Given this, Standard

Hylomorphism is able to share one feature of Standard Materialism that

many find unshakable: living organisms are not isolated from their inani-

mate environments. Our non-organic bodies are continuous with the broader

inanimate world and an investigation of inanimate natural bodies will not

entirely exclude living organisms from its purview. It achieves this without

introducing novel material bodies or capacities that cannot be integrated

satisfactorily into the remainder of natural science and without falling into a

form of Platonic dualism according to which soul and body are distinct sub-

stances that can exist independently of each another. In this way, Standard

Hylomorphism makes Aristotle’s account of life relatively hospitable from

our presently dominant materialist and anti-vitalist perspective.


Nevertheless, I contend that Aristotle maintains none of Standard Hylo-

morphism’s four central theses. Though it will be left to the remainder to

defend it, we can arrive at a rough understanding of our preferred interpreta-

tion, Substantial Vitalism, by seeing how it differs from each of these widely

held claims.

(SV1) No Contingently Specifiable Matter (One-Body Thesis): There

is no matter in a living organism that is identifiable independently of

the organism’s form. There is only one body to be found in an organ-

ism: its organic body.

(SV2) Homonymy of Material Capacities: The accounts of a living or-

ganism’s tissues’ material capacities are not identical to the accounts

of an inanimate body’s material capacities.

(SV3) Natural Continuity Model of Organic Unity: An organism’s soul

is the cause of its bodily unity in virtue of being the single, formal end

of a unitary capacity for naturally continuous movement. This unitary,

naturally continuous activity of which soul is principle and end simply

is an organism’s life.

(SV4) Formal Cause Account of Death: It is an organism’s form, not

its matter, that ultimately explains its death.

When you gaze upon a living organism, what stands before you is not a

multiplicity of capacities each performing an autonomous function. Nor is


it a holistic complex built up from these basic activities. A living organism

is a substantial unity whose life is a complex but unitary activity. A living

organism is a form being realized.

One arrives at this view if one takes seriously Aristotle’s claim that living

organisms, despite their complexity, are, first and foremost, natural unities.

Natural movement is a kind of formal perfection; it is movement that con-

stitutes the (further) realization or perpetuation of something as the kind of

being it is. Living organisms are natural unities and their vital activities are

aspects or partial manifestations of a single, unfolding, end-directed activ-

ity. That is, an organism’s parts and tissues come to be as they are and act

as they do for the sake of the organism’s soul, for the sake of bringing into

being, as completely as can be, a perfect exemplar of a specific kind of life.

This single activity is continuous by nature. That is, the various movements

and activities that occur within and by living organisms arise from a single,

unitary, internal principle of movement and rest and occur for the sake of

a single, formal end. It is the soul which is both the principle and essential

end of this unitary, naturally continuous activity.

There is no level of analysis that reveals a matter within a living organ-

ism that is not essentially ensouled. Asking for the matter of man is not like

asking for the matter of a bed or the matter of a bundle of sticks. Asking

for the matter of man is more like asking for the matter of a parcel or earth,

or the matter of a uniform mixture. When natural unities are the subject,

be they animate or inanimate, such inquiries will not issue in an object iden-


tifiable independently of the unity’s nature qua form. Moreover, all of the

capacities that are exercised within a living organism, including the material

capacities located in the organism’s tissues, are part of the organism’s uni-

tary capacity for form. Hence, the homonymy that characterizes organs and

tissues applies to the tissues’ material capacities as well. And though the

coming to be, development, and full realization of an ensouled organism is a

naturally continuous activity, this activity is, at least in the case of terrestrial

beings, intrinsically unstable. Being enmattered is not, as most interpreters

of Aristotle believe, inconsistent with immortality; but being a member of a

terrestrial species is.

Substantial Vitalism breaks more radically from Standard Materialism

than does Standard Hylomorphism. According to Substantial Vitalism, there

is nothing present in an organism that is also to be found in the inanimate

world. The carbon, say, that is present in one of our tissues is essentially

different from even isotopically and allotropically identical carbon present in

a rock. Organisms are, in an important sense, naturally isolated from their

inanimate environments.

And though Substantial Vitalism is, as its name suggests, a type of vital-

ism, it is, in many respects, more radical than Material Vitalism. There is

no special material substance or material capacity present in us that inter-

acts with and governs a multiplicity of inanimate bodies that constitute our

tissues and organs. There simply are no inanimate bodies or capacities to be

so-governed. It is organisms as wholes that are special; it is the specific forms


of these natural unities, viz. souls, that are life’s principle, cause, and end.

It is the soul of each kind of organism that should be added to the inventory

of those basic and irreducible things a comprehensive natural science must

countenance.

Montgomery Furth memorably framed the question that drives Aristotle’s

introduction of soul in the following way.

[T]he occurrence in the megascopic world of these endlessly re-

peated, specifically identical, highly organized, sharply demar-

cated, integral structures or systems (sustēmata, he calls them or

sustaseis)—the biological objects which are the substantial indi-

viduals, each one a unitary individual entity or “this”, each one

exemplifying over its temporal span a sharply defined complete

specific nature or substantial kind—stands out as a remarkable

fact of nature which invites explanation. “Invites”, not “defies”—

how do such entities come to take shape, out of the Empedoclean

swirl of mixing and unmixing, clumping and unclumping? (Furth

[1988] p.70)

From this point of view, living organisms are “knots” or “relatively stable

eddies” in an endlessly seething mélange of Empedoclean masses (ibid. p.172).

But living organisms are not whirlpools or vortices within a plenary sea of

Empedoclean matter; they are islands.


1.4 The Project in Outline

The character of the discussion that follows in many fits Wittgenstein’s de-

scription of his Philosophical Investigations: an album of pictures each pro-

viding an incomplete perspective on the same landscape that, collectively,

provide an adequate depiction. Aristotle’s conception of life permeates al-

most all of his his philosophical inquiries and there is no single point of entry

that captures it in its entirety. Our discussion will extend well beyond the

confines of De Anima. Living organisms are natural unities, so we will have

to discuss not only Aristotle’s account of nature in his Physics, but the more

detailed accounts he provides of natural bodies—both the simple bodies and

the uniform mixtures that arise from them—in De Caelo, De Generatione et

Corruptione, and Meteorology. Living organisms are substantial unities, so

we will have to discuss Aristotle’s metaphysics of individual substance, espe-

cially that found in Metaphysics Θ. Living organisms are biological unities, so

we will have to discuss Aristotle’s descriptions and explanations of biological

phenomena in Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals, and throughout the

Parva Naturalia. It is only after we view life and soul from each of these per-

spectives that Aristotle’s account becomes pellucid. But there are better and

worse ways to organize the album and it will be useful to give an overview

of the line of argument that dictates our chosen assemblage.

I begin, in chapter two, A Science of the Soul, with the question—What

makes a science of life possible? If a science is to be, there must be something

1.4. THE PROJECT IN OUTLINE 29

that unites the objects it studies. But can we find any unity at all among

the practically limitless variety of living organisms and their equally diverse

activities? Can a single investigation comprehend the living as such?

I defend Aristotle’s view that it is foolish to try and define ‘life’ by giving

a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that all and only living things

satisfy. We must recognize that there is a small number of basic ways in which

something can live: there are lives dedicated to nutritive self-maintenance

and reproduction, lives that involve locomotion and perceptual engagement

with the world, and lives that are able to participate in rational activity.

In De Anima, Aristotle is not simply giving accounts of these basic vital

capacities. He is trying to explain what it is to be a vital capacity. I will show

why it is important to distinguish two questions—(i) For a particular vital

capacity, what is it? and (ii) What is it for any capacity, given what it is, to

be vital?—and will argue that the second question is central to Aristotle’s

project. In short, Aristotle aims to reveal what unites the basic ways life

manifests itself and, in doing so, to understand what makes them instances

of living at all. That is, Aristotle’s principal aim is to understand life itself.

Aristotle claims that the basic ways life is said are organized hierarchicaly.

I argue that belonging to a properly grounded hierarchy is a source of unity

that is distinct from the unity that issues from belonging to a well-defined

genus, from being related analogically, or from being focally connected.

Aristotle approaches the principle that unites the basic and hierarchically-

ordered ways life manifests itself across species by considering how the ca-


pacities that underlie these vital activities are united in (relatively advanced)

individuals. Chapter three, The Unity of Soul, takes up this very question:

How are we to understand the unity of an advanced organism’s soul? I present

a perennially popular account of the soul, the capacity account, according to

which a soul is a collection of capacities for the activities we all recognize as

modes of living and these capacities are related to one another in a manner

that effects a unity of soul over and above the multiplicity. I argue against

the capacity account and defend a view according to which the soul’s unity

consists in one or more lower souls being present potentially (δυνάμει) in the

single, higher soul that is the individual organism’s nature. I then offer an

initial analysis of what it is for a lower soul to be present in a higher soul in

this way.

In chapter four, Natural Unity and Organic Unity, I turn from the unity

of soul to the unity of ensouled organisms. I argue that living organisms

are natural unities. Natural unities are the basic entities that an inquiry

into the natural world reveals. Natural unities exemplify a higher degree of

unity than does any complex of independent but interrelated entities. Living

organisms are natural unities because they possess a single internal principle

of movement and rest in virtue of which their organs and tissues come to be

and persist as such, namely, a soul. That is, for Aristotle, the numerous vital

activities that occur in the coming to be and continuation of a life arise from

a single, unitary, internal principle of movement and rest and occur for the

sake of a single formal end. This chapter contains the primary argument for


SV1, that there is no contingently specifiable matter in living organisms and

that organisms’ possess only one body: an organic body. This discussion will

allow us to explain what it is for the soul to be both a living organism’s cause

of being and the principle of a bodily unity that warrants the attribution of

homonymy to the parts that organic bodies comprise and indistinguishable

inanimate bodies.

If living organisms are natural unities, how do they ever arise within a

world of inanimate uniform bodies? How does anything breach the divide

that separates the inanimate from the animate? Chapter five, From Blood

to Flesh, attempts to answer theses questions and focusses on those nutritive

and reproductive movements by virtue of which animate tissues come to

be. According to Aristotle, in both generation and nutrition, inanimate

matter is acted upon by a living organism in a way that imparts a primitive

directiveness toward a determinate form of animate existence. I discuss in

detail how this transition from the inanimate to the animate occurs and

defend the perhaps initially surprising claim that blood, the matter from

which all tissues come to be, occupies a middle ground between two otherwise

mutually exclusive domains—blood is unique in being, at one and the same

time, both animate and inanimate.

Blood is, in one manner of being, inanimate; it is an advanced phase or

form of nutriment (ὴ τελευταίν τροφή)—blood is nutriment in activity or in

actuality (ἐνεργείᾳ). But blood is, in another manner of being, animate; it

is essentially tied to a living organism’s “ensouled body qua ensouled” (DA


II.4, 416a29-b10)—blood is flesh, sinew, bone, and the other living tissues

in capacity or in potentiality (δυνάμει). The transitions from unprocessed

nutriment to blood and from blood to flesh are, respectively, transitions from

the inanimate to the animate dunamei and from the animate dunamei to the

animate energeiai—the animate in its fullest and primary sense.

This chapter contains an extended discussion of the distinction between

these two manners of being, dunamei and energeiai, and contains the primary

arguments for both SV2—the homonymy of material capacities—and SV3—

the natural continuity model of organic unity.

The second kind of transition that can occur between the animate and

the inanimate is the focus of chapter six, Why we Die. I discuss Aristotle’s

account of senescence and death and defend SV4, the formal cause account

of death. According to the formal cause account, the coming to be, devel-

opment, and full realization of an ensouled organism is a unitary natural

activity that is intrinsically unstable. I discuss, quite generally, the rela-

tionship between being enmattered and being mortal. I argue that being

enmattered is not inconsistent with immortality and then argue that our

forms are primarily responsible for our being mortal. These arguments in-

volve detailed discussions of hypothetical necessity and the sense in which

“in every case, when several paths are open, nature always chooses the best”

(Juv. 4, 469a26-29).

At this point, the positive case for Substantial Vitalism will be complete.

But several obstacles still stand in the way of its being an adequate inter-


pretation. The next three chapters attempt to identify and overcome the

principal challenges the interpretation faces.

In chapter seven, Change and Persistence, I discuss the hylomorphic anal-

ysis of change that Aristotle provides in his Physics. Standard Hylomorphism

satisfies this analysis comparatively easily. According to Standard Hylomor-

phism, a material body, or at least a collection of material capacities, persists

as such through an organism’s generation and destruction. If, as SV2 claims,

the accounts of even the material capacities located in an organism’s tissues

differ from those located in inanimate bodies, how does Aristotle overcome

the Parmenidean concerns of generation ex nihilo and destruction ad nihilum

for the sake of which he introduces his hylomorphic analysis of change? I

argue that Substantial Vitalism is consistent with Aristotle’s view that some-

thing persists whenever a change occurs but argue that this persistence does

not entail that some body or capacity with the same account is present both

before and after the change takes place.

Chapter eight, Instrumental Bodies, discusses two related obstacles for

Substantial Vitalism. First, Aristotle claims on numerous occasions that

nature and craft/art (τήχνη) are analogous. Particularly relevant to our

guiding questions is Aristotle’s employment of this analogy in discussions

of reproduction and nutrition. Aristotle compares the soul’s reproductive

activity to the activity of a carpenter or house builder (GA I.22, 730b14-24).

He also compares the soul’s threptic activity to that of a painter, sculptor,


carpenter, and housekeeper.19 He says that the nutritive soul uses the same

“tools” in both reproduction and bodily maintenance; for “the capacity of the

nutritive soul makes growth out of the nutriment, using heat and cold as its

instruments (ὀργάνοις)” (GA II.4, 740b29-32). These analogies are thought

to support Standard Hylomorphism because an artificer’s tools are typically

distinct from the artificer herself and possess their own autonomous natures

or accounts. I argue that it is at this precise point that nature and art are

disanalogous (analogies are not identities). Strictly speaking, we should not

say that the soul’s activity uses the organism’s organic body, but rather that

the soul’s activity is identical to the organic body’s activity. Organic bodies

are living instruments.

Second, Aristotle is clear that some tissues and organic structures do

not come to be for the sake of the (further) realization of its encompassing

organism’s form but arise through a necessity grounded in the coming to be

of tissues that do come to be for the sake of form. The matter of these bodies

are the material byproducts of those activities that are properly part of an

organism’s generation and, at best, the soul uses these bodies for the sake

of the organism’s vital ends.20 I argue that these claims do not undermine

Substantial Vitalism’s insistence that the soul is the principle and cause of

all of an organism’s vital movements. This argument includes a discussion

19These comparisons occur at GA II.7, 743b20-25, PA II.9, 654b29-33, DA II.4, 416a35-b1, and GA II.6, 744b16-33, respectively.

20Leunissen [2010] makes this distinction central to her bipartite account of naturalteleology.


of what is commonly called ‘material necessity’ and of what Aristotle refers

to when he discusses an organism’s material nature in contrast to its formal

nature.

Chapter nine, The Continuity of Material Explanation, concerns the par-

allels one finds between Aristotle’s descriptions and explanations of physio-

logical phenomena and his descriptions and explanations of inanimate phe-

nomena. If the material capacities located in a living organism’s tissues are

not the same as the material capacities located in inanimate bodies, what

licenses this methodological continuity? I discuss Aristotle’s views about the

relationship between scientific methodology and questions of ontology and

explain why Aristotle’s discussions of both inanimate and animate phenom-

ena can, and often do, prescind from their explanandas’ accounts of being.

At this point, the defense of Substantial Vitalism will be complete. The

tenth and final chapter, A Metaphysics of Life, highlights what makes this ac-

count of life and soul both peculiar and profound. What are the consequences

of taking souls to be explanatorily and causally primitive? What are the con-

sequences of taking living organisms to be substantial beings par excellence?

How does Aristotle’s account shed light on one of the fundamental ways we

describe the world around us—the practice of employing descriptions and

explanations that involve teleological concepts? How does Aristotle’s con-

ception of soul and life bear on current attempts to understand relations of

ontological grounding, substantial being, natural dispositions, and biological

function? And what consequences does Aristotle’s account of life have for


current attempts to resuscitate the Aristotelian idea that a good human life

is, at the most general level, one according to which all of our actions progress

toward the exemplification of our human form?

Aristotle warns us that an investigation of soul is especially difficult; for

“in every respect and in every way it is the most difficult of things to attain

any conviction about it” (DA I.1, 402a10-11). But the rewards are immense

and we should not delay the investigation any longer.


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The Principle of Life: Aristotelian Souls in an Inanimate ... · 1.1 The Soul as Life’s Principle Aristotle begins his Metaphysics with the famous pronouncement that “all men

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