Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

He himself does not affirm that the soul is material, and as a matter of fact
he holds, in other books, the contrary opinion, but the Ash‘arites largely
adopted the Stoic materialism. The ten arguments of the philosophers for
the spirituality of the soul derive all from arguments given by the Greeks. It
would seem to me that Ghazali’s arguments for the soul’s materiality may
be based on the Stoic answers (which have not come down to us) against
the proofs of Aristotle and the later Platonists for the immateriality of the
soul. There is in the whole discussion a certain confusion, partly based on
the ambiguity of the word ‘soul’. The term ‘soul’ both in Greek and Arabic
can also mean ‘life’. Plants and animals have a ‘soul’. However, it is not
affirmed by Aristotle that life in plants and animals is a spiritual principle.
‘Soul’ is also used for the rational part, the thinking part, of our
consciousness. It is only this thinking part, according to Aristotle, that is
not related to or bound up with matter; sensation and imagination are
localized in the body, and it is only part of our thinking soul that seems to
possess eternity or to be immortal. Now, most of the ten arguments derive
from Aristotle and mean only to prove that the thinking part of our soul is
incorporeal. Still the Muslim philosophers affirm with Plato and Plotinus
that the whole soul is spiritual and incorruptible, and that the soul is a
substance independent of the body, although at the same time they adopt
Aristotle’s physiological explanations of all the non-rational functions of the
soul and accept Aristotle’s definition of the ‘soul’ as the first entelechy of
an organic body. On the other hand, the Muslim philosophers do not admit
the Platonic theory of the pre-existence of the soul. Aristotle’s conception
of a material and transitory element in the soul and an immaterial and
immortal element destroys all possibility of considering human personality
as a unity. Although he reproaches Plato with regarding the human soul
as a plurality, the same reproach can be applied to himself. Neither the
Greek nor the Muslim philosophers have ever been able to uphold a
theory that does justice to the individuality of the human personality. That
it is my undefinable ego that perceives, represents, wills, and thinks, the
mysterious fact of the uniqueness of my personality, has never been
apprehended by them. It is true that there is in Aristotle’s psychology a
faint conception of a functional theory of our conscious life, but he is
unable to harmonize this with his psycho-physiological notions.
I have discussed in my notes the ten arguments and will mention here
only two because of their importance. Ghazali gives one of these
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