Life's Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul

Abstract

Dennis Des Chene explores how Western philosophers understood life and the soul in the early modern period before Descartes radically changed how the universe was conceived. Life's Form is a detailed analysis of the often overlooked work of the Jesuit commentators on Aristotle whose writings dominated Western European science and the academy until the mechanistic revolution. Des Chene considers the work of scholastic writers such as Suarez and the Coimbrans, who provided thorough and sometimes profound studies of Aristotle's definitions of the soul and of life.Life's Form is not restricted only to questions relevant to the human case, such as the immortality of the soul. Des Chene analyzes what might be called the protobiology of late Aristotelians: the theory of living things in general, of their powers, and of the relation between soul and body in all organisms. His mastery of doctrinal subtlety offers insight into conceptual issues of renewed relevance to the philosophy of biology.

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