Notes on Aristotle De Anima 3. 5

ion, how can a mere part of that soul, the Active Intellect, be anything more than an abstraction ? Yet clearly for Aristotle it is much more than an abstraction.28 There is no easy solution to this problem. All we can do here is indicate that this difficulty about the Active Intellect is merely an extreme example of a difficulty about the Aristotelian form in general. The problem has been explained in the clearest possible terms by Gilson. Gilson29 imagines Plato living long enough to read the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics and then writing a dialogue entitled Aristoteles to refute the novelties of his pupil. In this supposed dialogue Socrates is made to say: "Then, my lad, I wish you could tell me how it may be that beings are, through sharing in an essence, which itself is not." The difficulty is simply that while Aristotle usually regards avvo?a (individuals) as the only realities, he also identifies ousia with essence in the Metaphysics. Essence is the cause of the existence of individuals, but essence by itself does not exist. And yet sometimes it does seem to exist apart-at least in the case of God. But not only in the case of God does this difficulty arise. We can now see that the Active Intellects, identical but distinct in individual men, exhibit the same confusion. The soul is the form of the body; the Active Intellect NOTES ON ARISTOTLE "DE ANIMA" 3. 5 17 is in the soul during our mortal life; the form cannot exist without the matter. If any real consistency is to be preserved for the doctrine of the De anima, we cannot but follow the advice of Philip,30 who remarks: "I can see no grounds for refusing to concede that in studying and describing the human soul Aristotle recognized in it some faculty or capacity or element, not explainable as part of the body-soul complex. . ." It is certainly true that in De anima 3. 5 the Active Intellect does not seem to be explainable as part of such a complex; yet we must not forget that in general Aristotle holds that it is by the possession of the power of reason that man is differentiated from the animals. And he is not merely thinking of the possession of such a power, but of its use; that is, he regards vo5q vo&v as an essential aspect of the form of man.31 We are back again to the problem of whether and in what way form in general can exist apart. The De anima merely exhibits in an extreme manner the difficulties in the whole Aristotelian doctrine of the reality or unreality of essence. The soul is not only a form, but as we know from 412b10-11, an o0a9o6 X MIM -Ov ?o6yov. rO5ro 8e, 0 6 L tv ?LVo -t TXo8c. GCTO[Ct-. In view of this, it seems no easier to understand how the human mind, and a fortiori the Active Intellect, is not a part of the body-soul complex than it is to believe that there can be wholly immaterial substances. And yet for Aristotle there is at least one such substance.