The efficacy of Aristotle's soul: vitalistic powers vs embodied activities

• Grant number: 17/25952-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: February 19, 2018
• End date: February 18, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Lucas Angioni
• Grantee: Roberto Grasso
• Supervisor: Klaus Corcilius
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 16/02485-0 - Dualistic tendencies in Aristotle's Psychobiology, BP.PD

Abstract

The 'embodied activity' interpretation concerning the efficacy of Aristotle's soul has been recently proposed (in an unpublished draft presented at Unicamp) by Klaus Corcilius (University of Tübingen). Corcilius' reading aims at avoiding 'homuncularism' and the hypostatization of Aristotle's soul, proposing to this end a deflationary account of its definition as an organized clusters of powers. This approach seems incompatible with one of the key ideas of my FAPESP research project on 'dualistic tendencies in Aristotle's psychobiology', which aims to show that the soul is, rather, a vitalistically conceived (non-supervenient and quasi-substantial) power endowed with efficient causality on the body, and thus some sort of 'agent' working at the physiological level. For this reason, it would be crucial to engage in detail with the reading Corcilius is going to offer in his important forthcoming work. Corcilius' expertise on Aristotle's conception of the soul and his treatment of life activities in biological works, attested by his internationally renowned publications on the subject, would also represent a substantial academic gain with regard to the revision and completion of the papers I am currently working on (one on DA II.5; another one on DA II.11; a final one on Emergentism vs. Vitalism in the definition of the soul of DA II.1-2).