GF Colloquium: Andreas Anagnostopoulos (LMU Munich)

Title: The Body and Matter in Aristotle's De Anima II.1

This talk aims to question common views about the nature of the "body" that Aristotle refers to in his first, general account of the soul as first actuality. I'll argue against the view that the body which Aristotle identifies as the matter of the organism is  subject to the "homonymy principle", i.e., that is necessarily ensouled, and second, I will question whether Aristotle identifies the matter of a living organism with its body in any straightforward sense. My suggestions will point to a more radical conception of matter than usually attributed to Aristotle.