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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
On the soul: A translation, explanation and commentary on Book II of Aristotle's 'De anima'

On the soul: A translation, explanation and commentary on Book II of Aristotle's 'De anima'

Roolvink, James Paul

Paperback

Philosophy

ISBN13: 9798188152147
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 20 2026
Pages: 230
Weight: 0.62
Height: 0.58 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Aristotle's magnum opus could well have been titled 'On Nature', for he was, like no other, a philosopher of nature-someone who sought to understand nature, the physical world. He therefore wrote many works on physics, but he also wrote a book on metaphysics, for to the Greeks, nature-the physical world-is itself supernatural, metaphysical. The supernatural unfolds within and from nature, and that is why his work on the soul belongs to the realm of physics. For it is in the soul that the supernatural manifests itself within nature. The fact that the supernatural can manifest itself in nature, and is part of nature, may, however, point to the transcendent.

Before we explore this further, it is important to understand how Aristotle uncovers that supernatural aspect of the living being-a living nature. He does not approach the soul directly, but seeks to understand how the soul manifests itself in the effects of the soul within natural sensory perception, and how perception perceives other natural beings-formed matter.

He demonstrates with great precision - provided one is able to read, that is to say, to think - that the capacity of a sense organ of living flesh to be affected by the perceptible form of that matter presupposes a mental faculty, by means of which the sense organ can form a concept of the perceived, formed matter, the mental faculty that can grasp that concept and, simultaneously, can grasp all the concepts grasped by all the senses into a single concept, which the faculty of thought can then actually comprehend. That mental faculty within the senses, the sensus communis, resides in the self-aware living heart, the centre of the entire body, which structures and moves that whole by participating in the centre of the centre, the thinking of the mind, which, as thinking, is transcendent and higher than the immaterial, supernatural mind of the living heart, and imbues the individual self-consciousness with its qualities, whereby the self-consciousness of the living heart becomes a soul of that life.

This book on Aristotle's *De anima* (On the Soul) is much more than just a translation, explanation and commentary. Whilst Aristotle demonstrates what must be presupposed in perception for perception to take place, this book shows how perception can actually be carried out. Aristotle lays out all the tools and building materials, but this book shows how to build. Among other things, it demonstrates that the 'Platonic' principle of individuation-that which makes us unique souls-cannot be matter, nor is it form; and it shows that the metaphysical, the supernatural, is more physical and more natural than the physical, natural world, because all physical, natural things are composed of one or more of the four supernatural elements. Above all, the subject of perception leads us to a theory of colour in which, through the relationship between light and colour, we can conceive of the metaphysical and the transcendent.

Everyone can relate to light and to sensory perception, and that makes this book extremely accessible to souls who wish to know through experience.

This book and the text above are translated with the translation machine DeepL.

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