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. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Plato conceives self-motion as non-spatial in Laws X. I demonstrate this by focusing on the textual evidence and by refuting interpretations according to which self-motion either is a specific type of spatial motion or is said to require space as a necessary condition for its occurrence. Moreover, I show that this non-spatial understanding differs from the identification of the soul’s motion with locomotion in the Timaeus. Consequently, I provide an explanation for this difference between (...) the Timaeus and Laws X by considering developmentalist and contextualist viewpoints. (shrink)

A topic common to both Plato’s and Aristotle’s discussions of theories of the soul is the doctrine of the soul as a harmony of the parts of the body. Plato’s Phaedo as well as Aristotle’s De anima and Eudemus present this theory and argue against the identification of the soul as a harmony. This paper has two focuses, one philosophical and one historical. First, I will focus on the argumentation used by Aristotle in his dialogue Eudemus, which is often associated (...) with Aristotle’s early attachment to Plato. On the basis of the argumentation against the harmonia theory, I will try to show that the Eudemus is not a dialogue that depicts Aristotle’s Platonic phase. Instead, by comparing the arguments of the Eudemus with both Plato and Aristotle’s mature thought, I will argue that the argumentation of the Eudemus seems to be an indirect attack on Plato’s view on the Forms and on the nature of the soul, and that it seems to be consistent with Aristotle’s mature work On the Soul. Second, given that Aristotle discusses this topic twice, I will try, also on the basis of conclusions about the Eudemus and on later reception of Aristotle’s arguments, to show why this is the case. (shrink)