Living without a Soul: Why God and the Heavenly Movers Fall Outside of Aristotle’s Psychology

Abstract

I argue that the science of the soul only covers sublunary living things. Aristotle cannot properly ascribe ψυχή to unmoved movers since they do not have any capacities that are distinct from their activities or any matter to be structured. Heavenly bodies do not have souls in the way that mortal living things do, because their matter is not subject to alteration or generation. These beings do not fit into the hierarchy of soul powers that Aristotle relies on to provide unity to ψυχή. Their living consists in their activities, not in having a capacity for activity.

Knowing in Aristotle part 2:Technē, phronēsis, sophia,and divine cognitive activities

“…18 18 Contra Judson 2019 who takes divine nous to think a variety of essences (327‐329); ms Menn., like me, holds that the divine understanding cannot admit any sort of plurality, since it cannot be composed (443 and 459, n. 35). Michael Frede (1996), Jonathan Lear (1988, 298), Myles Burnyeat (2008), who hold versions of the variety of essences view, take divine cognitive activities to be synonymous and univocal with the best human ones, Cohoe, 2020 argues that there are good reasons to think that divine nous is different in kind from the human state that shares this name. …”