Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

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Christopher Shields
soul – as an actuality-bestowing formal substance – provides the key to
answering such questions of soul-body unity as may arise. The controlling
sense of oneness, he says, is actuality; and, further, he maintains, the
soul is the actuality of the body. Accordingly, we need not ask the question
of whether the soul and body are one. The body is made one only
by the presence of the soul; and the compound of soul and body, the
living animal, is for the same reason one in virtue of its soul. 36
36 Sections of this paper were presented in Hamburg, at the Zweiter Kongress der
Gesellschaft für antike Philosophie, on the topic of Leib und Seele in der antiken
Philosophie. I thank the audience on that occasion for their well-informed
and instructive questions, and also most especially Prof. Dorothea Frede for organizing
the Congress, which was stimulating throughout. I thank also Thomas
Ainsworth for his incisive comments on an earlier draft.