Exegesis on De Anima 412b10-24*

In Aristotle’s De Anima, Book II, lines 10-24, Aristotle explains what a soul is. Aristotle writes, “It [the soul] is substance in the sense which corresponds to the account of a thing”. Aristotle tries to clarify this definition through analogy with an axe. Aristotle asks us to suppose that the axe is “natural body”. It seems like Aristotle wants us to make this distinction because an axe is normally considered as an “artificial body”, and only natural bodies can have souls. After this supposition, Aristotle notes that “being an axe” is the essence of an axe, and “if this disappeared from it, it would cease being an axe, except in name”. This passage is a bit unclear. At first glance, Aristotle seems to be suggesting that if “being an axe” disappeared from an axe, the axe would cease “being an axe”. This seems tautological, as it is trivially true that an axe minus its axeness isn’t an axe.

Further examples suggest a different reading. Aristotle asks us to “...apply this doctrine in the case of the parts of the living body.” and to “Suppose that the eye were an animal-sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance of the eye which corresponds to the account, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name.” This example helps clarify Aristotle’s definition, and suggests a better reading of the axe passage. Sight can be called the soul of an eye in that it is the essential, distinctive feature that the matter of an eye is arranged for. Likewise, instead of describing an axe’s essence as “being an axe”, Aristotle could have described an axe’s essence as “axeing”; that is to say, the distinctive action that an axe does, such as splitting matter like wood into halves. Also, like the eye is the matter of seeing, an axe is the matter of axeing. Here, Aristotle may be suggesting that matter is arranged so that a certain function may be carried out; the eye is spherical so as to better its seeing, and the axe is heavy on one end with a sturdy grip so that it might better carry out the function of axeing.

Interestingly, Aristotle seems to think that when the matter of an eye or an axe is not able to perform its function, the matter can only be considered an eye or an axe in “name only”. Aristotle compares these functionless objects to “...the eye of a statue or of a painted figure.” This seems a bit strange since it seems like people would still call the dull, axe shaped object that used to be an axe an axe. At most, they would describe it as a broken axe, but a broken axe still seems like an axe. Here, Aristotle seems to be departing from his usual practice of explaining how ordinary language correctly or quasi-correctly describes things. Aristotle’s account would probably benefit from an explanation of why people are confused when they speak of broken axes as a axes, and sightless eyes as eyes.