Philosophic Classics From Plato to Derrida

ON THESOUL(BOOKII) 157

everything that has no material is indivisible? So the condition the human intellect, or
that of any composite being, is in at some period of time (for it does not have hold of
what is good at this or that time, but in some whole stretch of time it has hold of what is
best, since that is something other than itself), is the condition the thinking that thinks
itself is in over the whole of time.

ON THE SOUL (in part)

BOOKII

1. Let this be our discussion of the things handed on about the soul by those who
   came before us. But let us go back again and, as though from the beginning, try to dis-
   tinguish what the soul is and what articulation of it would be most common to all its
   instances. One of the most general ways of being we call thinghood;* of this, one sort
   has being as material, which in its own right is not a this, but another sort is the form or
   look of a thing, directly as a result of which something is called a this, and the third sort
   is what is made out of these. Now the material is a potency, but the form is a being-at-
   work-staying-itself,** and this in two senses, one in the manner of knowledge, the other
   in the manner of the act of contemplating.
   The things that seem most of all to be independent things are bodies, and of these,
   the natural ones, for these are the sources of the others. And of natural bodies, some
   have life while others do not. By life we mean self-nourishing as well as growth and
   wasting away. So every natural body having a share in life would be an independent
   thing having thinghood as a composite [of material and form]. And since this is a body,
   and one of a certain sort, namely having life, the soul could not be a body, since it is not
   the body that is in an underlying thing, but rather the body has being as an underlying
   thing and material [for something else]. Therefore it is necessary that the soul have its
   thinghood as the form of a natural body having life as a potency. But this sort of thing-
   hood is a being-at-work-staying-itself; therefore the soul is the being-at-work-staying-
   itself of such a body. But this is meant in two ways, the one in the sense that knowledge
   is a being-at-work-staying-itself, the other in the sense that the act of contemplating is.
   It is clear, then, that the soul is a being-at-work-staying-itself in the way that knowledge
   is, for both sleep and waking are in what belongs to the soul, and waking is analogous
   to the act of contemplating but sleep to holding the capacity for contemplating while not

Aristotle,On the Soul(Book II, 1–3 and III, 4–5), translated by Joe Sachs. Copyright © 2001 by Green Lion
Press. Reprinted by permission of Green Lion Press.

*, often translated “substance,” means (as our translator puts it) “the way of being that belongs
to anything which has attributes but is not an attribute of anything, which is also separate and a this.Whatever
has being in this way is an independent thing.”
**, often translated “actuality,” means (as our translator puts it), “a fusion of the idea of
completeness with that of continuity or persistence. Aristotle invents the word by combining (com-
plete, full-grown) with (to be a certain way by the continuing effort of holding on in that condition).”

10

412 a

10

20

5

15

25