Abstract
A second medieval synthesis arose through Muslim transmission of Aristotelian texts. This Aristotelian synthesis maintained subsistent souls but weakened the role of participation in cosmic life. Theologians reinterpreted Aristotle’s four causes, changing souls from dynamic processes into immaterial agents with biological faculties, the ability to cause life activities. Major players included the Islamic philosophers al-Kindî, al-Fârâbî, Ibn Sînâ, and Ibn Rushd and the Jewish theologian Maimonides. They questioned the life and ensoulment of plants as well as the persistence of human individuality after death. Nonetheless the language of vegetable souls and resurrection remained common. Animal souls continued to be taken for granted, including aspects of both will and reason.
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Notes
- 1.
Ammonius wished to reconcile Aristotle ’s prime mover with Plato ’s demiurge in the Timaeus. Philoponus wished to reconcile the prime mover with the Christian God.
- 2.
Al-Fârâbî used the terms irâdah for animals and ikhtiyâr for humans (Ivry 2012).
- 3.
Al-Fârâbî drew on Aristotle ’s division of the soul in the Nichomachean Ethics (I.13), where he identified the animal soul with appetite . Aristotle also mentions the appetite as such in the final chapters of On the Soul, 3, though it is less clear here that it fits neatly into the animal soul .
- 4.
McGinnis (2016) citing The Cure I.5. McGinnis details the significant differences between Aristotle ’s use of ‘nature’ and Ibn Sînâ’s.
- 5.
Volition here is the same irâdah used by al-Fârâbî to describe the lesser agency of non-human animals. Elsewhere, Ibn Sînâ attaches it more closely to the type of agency unique to humans.
- 6.
Philoponus discusses precisely this in his commentary on Aristotle ’s On the Soul; see Blumenthal (1996), p. 119.
- 7.
Tawara (2014). This echoes the skepticism about plant life in On Plants, attributed to Aristotle , but likely written by Nicolaus of Damascus. A translation of the latter work can be found in Barnes 1984.
- 8.
For vegetable souls , see the preface to Mishnah Avot in Commentary on the Mishnah and Eight Chapters, Chapter 1.
- 9.
I am not convinced by Marder’s further claim that Maimonides was motivated by his principle against the mixing of kinds. The avowal of psychic unity seems sufficient.
- 10.
This position is reminiscent of Philo ’s argument about the incorruptibility of stars .
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Mix, L.J. (2018). Aristotle Returns: A Second Medieval Synthesis. In: Life Concepts from Aristotle to Darwin. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96047-0_10
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