Philosophy of Mind

On the Soul

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Aristotle

c. 350 BC

De Anima — On the Soul — is Aristotle's systematic investigation of the principle that animates living things. Rejecting both Platonic dualism and crude materialism, Aristotle argues that the soul is the form of the body: not a substance trapped inside flesh but the very actuality of a natural body capable of life. The work surveys the hierarchy of souls — nutritive, sensitive, and rational — and culminates in the difficult doctrine of the active intellect, a faculty of mind that is separable, unmixed, and immortal. De Anima stands at the origin of philosophy of mind and shaped centuries of debate on the relationship between thought and matter.