GF Colloquium Miira Tuominen

Receptivity of Soul in Aristotle’s Account of Scientific Knowledge: Preliminary Considerations

Prof. Miira Tuominen, Stockholm University

Abstract: In his account of human ‘intellect’ (the nous of the soul in De Anima 3.4-5), Aristotle draws an analogy between perceiving and grasping intelligible objects, according to which the ‘intellect’ is related to intelligible objects as perception is to perceptibles. Aristotle qualifies the analogy by identifying differences between perception and ‘intellect’, and there has been a long and powerful tendency to argue that the analogy is presented just to be refuted. Various strategies have been introduced to explain the striking claim of intellect’s receptivity away, often by reference to either an internal (in the soul) or external (Aristotle’s god) ‘productive’ intellect. My task is not to consider the much-debated section in the De Anima. Rather, I will focus on another difficult text, namely the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics (2.19), where we also find a claim of ‘passivity’. After briefly explaining how reason (logos) occurs in some animals (human beings) from perception, memory and experience and comparing the relevant process to retreating soldiers, Aristotle declares that the soul is such that it can undergo (paschein) ‘this’ (100a13-14) without explaining what exactly the soul is supposed to undergo. The claim is not usually given much weight, and the debate about Aristotle’s account in the chapter focuses on other issues. In this talk, I will consider what it is that the soul undergoes and argue that the claim plays an important role in Aristotle’s solution to Meno’s paradox.