Comparing Aristotle And Descartes In The Meditations On First Philosophy

The soul is the essence of the immortality of living things. It can have many different meanings according to the philosopher. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle believes that every animate being is a living thing because it has a soul. He explains that each living thing cannot exist or function without a soul. In contrast, In the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes believes that the nature of the mind is completely separate from that of the body. He thinks it is possible that both mind and body can exist without one another. While both philosophers come from different time periods, both explore the meaning of the mind, soul, and body. Although Aristotle and Descartes are both well-respected philosophers, their teachings differ significantly
on what kind of beings possess souls. According to Aristotle, every animate being is a living thing, which can move itself because it has a soul. Aristotle believes that animals, plants, and humans are all related because they obtain a soul.
He explains that those three elements have a nutritive soul, which initiates and guides their most basic functions like the absorption of food, growth and reproduction of its kind. All animals and some plants have a sensitive soul in which they perceive features of their surrounding in which they perceive features of their surrounding and move in response to the stimuli it provides. Human beings have both sensitive soul and rational thought that permits representation and thought. Each living thing has just one soul. The actions of which one exhibits some degree of nutritive, sensitive, rational functioning. This soul is the formal, efficient, and final cause of existence of the organism. The material cause resides purely in the body. Thus all the operations of the organism are explained in terms of the function of its soul. Human Knowledge is broken into three parts: sensation, thought, and desire. First is Sensation, which is the passive capacity for the soul to be changed through the contact of the associated body with external objects. There are a variety of sensations. The result in the souls becoming potentiality is what the object is in actuality. The soul takes on the form of the object. For example, when I
feel the point of a pin, its shape makes an impression on my fingers, conveying the form to my sensitive soul. Second is thought which is the active process of engaging in the manipulation of forms without the contact with external objects. Imagination involves common sense with stimulation by sensory organs of the body. All knowledge must begin with information acquired through the senses, resulting in rational means. The soul employs the formal method of logic to cognize the relationship among abstract form. Last is Desire which is the origin of movement toward some goal. Specifically, every animate being, to a certain degree, is capable of responding to its own internal states and also those of its external environment. Desire alleviates the felt of absence or the lack of some pleasure. Unlike Aristotle, Descartes believes that the mind and body can exist without one another.
Descartes believes that the nature of the mind is completely different from that of the body. It is possible for one to exist without one another. A rational idea that the soul is immortal presuming that the mind and the soul are more or less the same thing. In the Sixth Meditation Aristotle states, “On the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing, and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.” (Descartes ). Descartes is explaining that I have a clear and distinct idea of the mind as a thinking, non-extended thing I have a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended, non-thinking thing. Therefore, the mind is really distinct from the body and can exist without it. Descartes clarifies what he means by a “clear/distinct idea” in his work. He claims that both premises his idea of the mind and his idea of the body excluding all other ideas that don’t belong to them. This includes each other and all that remains what can be clearly understood of each. Descartes clearly and distinctly understands the mind all by itself, separate from the body and body all by itself, separate from the mind. His ability to clearly and distinctly understand them separately from
one another is that how they can exist alone without one another. This is because “existence is contained in the idea or concept of every single thing, since we cannot conceive of anything except as existing. Possible or contingent existence is contained in the concept of a limited thing...” (Descartes__). I believe that Aristotle has a better and more reasonable understanding of the concept of the soul. I believe that in order to live we must acquire a soul. The soul must acquire a body. I agree that it is impossible to survive or function without the soul and the body.