Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

The priority of soul in Aristotle’s De anima: Mistaking categories? 283
nowhere in Aristotle, and it is here applied not to the body’s several organs,
but rather to the body as a whole. 25 Aristotle’s claim is not that the
body be organ-equipped, but rather that the soul is the form of the sort
of body suited to serve as its tool, where this is a body so structured that
it can engage in activities characteristic of the kind of soul it serves:
plants engaging in nutrition and generation, non-human animals additionally
in perception, and human animals in reason as well.
Given the account of priority in actuality we have just developed,
this is hardly surprising. On the contrary, like any other sort of tool,
the matter of a human being must be functionally suited to realizing
the purpose to which it is to be put to use. A soul cannot be realized
in unsuitable matter. This in turn suggests that Aristotle’s complaints
against Pythagorean accounts of transmigration in De anima I 3 are
meant with a high degree of literalness. After rejecting the account of
the soul in Plato’s Timaeus in that chapter, Aristotle pauses to draw a
general moral:
But something absurd turns out for this account as for most others concerning
the soul, since they conjoin the soul to the body and place it in the
body without articulating in addition the cause of this or the condition
of the body. This, however, would seem to be necessary; it is because of
their commonality that one acts while the other is affected, and that the
one initiates motion and the other is in motion. None of this belongs to
things which just happen to be related to one another. These accounts
merely endeavor to say what sort of thing the soul is without articulating
anything further about the body which is to receive the soul, as if it
were possible, as according to the Pythagorean myths, for just any soul
to be outfitted in just any body. For each body seems to have its own peculiar
form and shape, and what they say is almost the same as if someone
were to say that carpentry could be outfitted in flutes; for it is necessary that
the craft make use of its tools, and that the soul make use of its body.
1je?mo d³ %topom sulba_mei ja· to}t\ t` k|c\ ja· to?r pke_stoir t_m peq·
xuw/r· sum\ptousi c±q ja·tih]asim eQr s_la tµm xuw^m, oqh³m pqosdioq_samter
di± t_m’ aQt_am ja· p_r 5womtor toO s~lator. ja_toi d|neiem #m
toOt’ !macja?om eWmai· di± c±q tµmjoimym_am t¹ l³m poie? t¹ d³ p\swei
ja· t¹ l³m jime?tai t¹ d³ jime?, to}tym d’ oqh³m rp\qwei pq¹r %kkgka to?r
tuwoOsim. oR d³ l|mom 1piweiqoOsi k]ceim po?|m ti B xuw^, peq· d³ toO denol]mou
s~lator oqh³m 5ti pqosdioq_fousim, ¦speq 1mdew|lemom jat± to»r
Puhacoqijo»r l}hour tµm tuwoOsam xuwµm eQrt¹tuw¹m 1md}eshai s_la.
doje? c±q 6jastom Udiom 5weim eWdor ja· loqv^m, paqapk^siom d³ k]cousim
the instrumental body is something other than the ordinary perceptible body,
and is instead a subtle body composed of pneuma.
25 This is a point rightly stressed by Everson 1997, 64.