Book contents
- Aristotle’s On the Soul
- Cambridge Critical Guides
- Aristotle’s On the Soul
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Hylomorphic Explanation and the Scientific Status of the De Anima
- Chapter 2 Aristotle on Earlier Definitions of Soul and Their Explanatory Power: DA I.2–5
- Chapter 3 Why Nous Cannot Be a Magnitude: De Anima I.3
- Chapter 4 Souls among Forms: Harmonies and Aristotle’s Hylomorphism
- Chapter 5 Aristotle on the Soul’s Unity
- Chapter 6 Aristotle on Seed
- Chapter 7 The Gate to Reality
- Chapter 8 Aristotle on the Objects of Perception
- Chapter 9 Perceptual Attention and Reflective Awareness in the Aristotelian Tradition
- Chapter 10 Phantasia and Error
- Chapter 11 Intelligibility, Insight, and Intelligence
- Chapter 12 The Separability of Nous
- Chapter 13 Thought and Imagination
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Critical Guides
Chapter 6 - Aristotle on Seed
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2022
- Aristotle’s On the Soul
- Cambridge Critical Guides
- Aristotle’s On the Soul
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Hylomorphic Explanation and the Scientific Status of the De Anima
- Chapter 2 Aristotle on Earlier Definitions of Soul and Their Explanatory Power: DA I.2–5
- Chapter 3 Why Nous Cannot Be a Magnitude: De Anima I.3
- Chapter 4 Souls among Forms: Harmonies and Aristotle’s Hylomorphism
- Chapter 5 Aristotle on the Soul’s Unity
- Chapter 6 Aristotle on Seed
- Chapter 7 The Gate to Reality
- Chapter 8 Aristotle on the Objects of Perception
- Chapter 9 Perceptual Attention and Reflective Awareness in the Aristotelian Tradition
- Chapter 10 Phantasia and Error
- Chapter 11 Intelligibility, Insight, and Intelligence
- Chapter 12 The Separability of Nous
- Chapter 13 Thought and Imagination
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Critical Guides
Summary
This chapter addresses an interpretive question about why Aristotle identifies generation, growth, and nourishment as the three distinct functions or activities of nutritive soul. Scholars typically try to explain this by appealing to the shared goal of these activities, though there is no consensus about what that goal is: Does Aristotle think that generation is a way of keeping oneself alive (and thus that the shared goal is self-maintenance), or is nourishment really a quasi-generative activity (and thus that the shared goal is “form (re)production”)? Rather than taking that approach, Gelber offers a different but complementary way of accounting for the unity of these activities, by focusing on the continuity of their shared physiological basis. As it is argued here, the fact that these biological processes form a continuous cycle stems from Aristotle’s adherence, in his biological theory, to principles from his hylomorphic metaphysics. Attending to the details in works such as Generation of Animals that focus on the mechanisms underlying generation, growth, and nourishment, it is shown how we can construct a coherent account of the unity of the three nutritive soul activities.
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- Aristotle's On the SoulA Critical Guide, pp. 104 - 121Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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