De Anima

De Anima Synopsis

Like many cultures then and now, the early Greeks pondered the nature of the soul. Originally conceived as a kind of ghost, surviving in a bloodless existence after the death of the body, the soul was defined by later philosophers - notably the Pythagoreans and Plato - as an immaterial divine being temporarily 'imprisoned' in the body. True knowledge was gained not through the senses but from contemplation of external ideas that were, like the soul itself, immaterial and immortal. A reformulatio as well as a criticism of earlier thinkers, Aristotle's 'De Anima' describes the soul and body as complementaries rather than polar opposites, as they stand together in a mutual relation of matter and form. Each living entity, endowed with its own animating and informing principle, realizes its proper end.