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Chapter 5 SubStanCe, powerS and aCtS Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither. Oscar Wilde, ‘Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young’, Chameleon, 1894. Aquinas approvingly paraphrases Aristotle when he writes that defining the soul — as Aristotle had done in the beginning of book ii of the De anima — amounts to nothing more than to giving a sketchy, preliminary description of it: Deinde epilogando colligit que dicta sunt et dicit quod secundum predicta determinatum est de anima et posita est anime descriptio figuraliter, quasi extrinsece et superficialiter et incomplete. Complebitur enim determinatio de anima quando pertinget usque ad intima ut determinetur natura uniuscuiusque partis ipsius anime.1 Next, by way of conclusion, he sums up what has been said; and he says that in the foregoing a determination and description of the soul was given figuratively, as it were extrinsically and superficially and incompletely . The determination of the soul will be completed when he reaches its inner structure such that he determines the nature of each part of the soul. To elucidate the soul’s definition, it is necessary to look more closely at the various ‘parts’ of the soul. Only then will the soul’s definition become something more than a mere extrinsic, superficial and incomplete description. Looking back, we can see that this approach was already indicated in the questions on the possibility of any science of the soul taken up in book i, in which what I called the simplicity arguments were countered by the introduction of some structural complexity within the soul, either in terms of attributes (passiones) or in terms of ‘parts’ (partes).2 For if the soul were completely simple, lacking ‘parts’ in every sense of the word, as the simplicity arguments claimed, it would be impossible to study it scientifically. The ‘parts’ in question are the soul’s powers, and their relation to each other and to the soul as a whole is one of the main subjects of this chapter.3 1 Thomas Aquinas, SentdeA, ii.2, 76158–164 . 2 See above, 3.1.2. 3 For example Thomas Aquinas, SentdeA, 873–8 : “Non autem habet aliter anima partes nisi secundum quod eius potencie partes eius dicuntur, prout alicuius potentis 210 chapter 5: substance, powers and acts All commentators included the soul’s having parts — I will omit the scare quotes from now on — as one of the necessary conditions for the possibility of a scientia de anima. But the methodological questions never made it fully clear how important these parts really are. The quote from Aquinas given above leaves no doubt as to their importance: defining the soul is not the ultimate goal of the scientia de anima but merely its beginning.4 Much more important — and this takes up most of Aristotle’s treatise — is fleshing out this definition by describing the various acts and powers of the soul, beginning with those that are the easiest to understand (the vegetative powers) and ending with those that are the most difficult to understand (the intellective powers). If the soul were so completely simple and undivided that it lacked parts in every sense of the word, then, after giving the definition of soul, there would be no possible way of proceeding. But precisely because the soul is ultimately responsible for a variety, even a broad variety, of powers and acts, it can be studied in a scientific manner. In the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries this meant, as we have seen, studying it within the natural philosophical framework.5 multa, partes dici possunt potestates ad singula; unde determinare de partibus anime est determinare de singulis potenciis eius.” See also Anonymus Giele, QdA, ii.5, 7715–19 : “Sensitivum siquidem et secundum locum motivum universaliter sunt partes animae in quibuscumque inveniantur, quia secundum locum etc., non est sine sensitivo, nec sensitivum sine vegetativo; ideo quodlibet istorum est semper pars animae et non tota anima.” 4 Aristotle’s approach in the scientia de anima, in which he first gives a definition of the soul, and then devotes the remainder of the treatise to discussing and elucidating the various parts of the definition (as well as those other topics that are either presupposed by or necessarily connected to the elements of the definition), is a method he also employs elsewhere. Lang, ‘Aristotelian Physics’, using the Physica as a case-study, gives an excellent analysis of the manners in which both Aristotle and Aquinas proceed in natural philosophy . Both philosophers take...

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