Workshop:
Aspects of Hylomorphism and Cardiocentrism in Aristotle and Alexander,
27-28 Mai, 2011
On 27-28 Mai 2011 TOPOI' s Mapping Body and Soul Research Group together with the Graduate School of
Ancient Philosophy at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin organized a workshop entitled: Aspects of
Hylomorphism and Cardiocentrism in Aristotle and Alexander.
Conceptually, this workshop took up a crucial question raised at the very end of a workshop in February 2010,
organized by our Group on Aristotle’s Cardiocentrism (15.02.2010 - 25.02.2010). The main task for now was to
investigate in some detail into the many facets of the relations between the general, metaphysical theory of
hylomorphism and it's specific, biological implementation as cardiocentrism, this time in Aristotle as well as in
Alexander of Aphrodisias, antiquity’s most faithful and most influential Aristotelian.
The basic problem is this: Hylomorphism, as applied to the soul body relation, is the claim that soul stands to
body as form to matter. To use Aristotle’s own example: soul is the form of the body as the Hermes shape is the
form of the Hermes statue. Cardiocentrism, on the other hand, is the claim that the soul has its bodily centre in
the heart, or as Aristotle as well as Alexander put it, that the soul is in the heart. Taken together these two claims
seem, for the following reason, hard to reconcile: According to Hylomorphism soul is the form of the whole
body. The whole body and each of its parts are alive because soul is present throughout the whole body. Soul
therefore is in the whole body. But according to Cardiocentrism soul in some sense is only in the heart, for both
Aristotle and Alexander time and again stress that all relevant kind of soul related activities like the
transformation of blood into nourishment, as well as perception, phantasia, memory, but also emotions take
place in or around the heart, which obviously is only one particular part of the body. Now given Cardiocentrism
and the claim that soul is in the heart it is hard to see how soul can at the same time be in the whole body. In a
sense then, Aristotle and Alexander seem to hold contradictory views about the location of soul in the body.
According to Hylomorphism soul is in the whole body. According to Cardiocentrism soul is not in the whole
body, but only in some part of the body. But how can the soul be in the whole body and not in the whole body?
To address this question we had 11 confirmed speakers, two of them, Marwan Rashed (Paris) and Inna Kupreeva
(Edinburgh), unfortunately could not make it, so we finally had the following 9 talks :
Stephen Menn Two controversial passages in Aristotle's de An III 4, Miira Tuominen Cognitive Receptivity in
Alexander's De Anima, Henry Mendell On Demonstrated Lives: Aristotle's de An II 1-3, Francesca Pedriali The
Ordered Series in Arist. de An II 3, Klaus Corcilius The Soul and its Accidents, Pavel Gregoric Like a City well
governed by Law: Implications of Cardiocentrism, Orna Harari The Efficacy of the Soul, George Karamanolis
Why the soul is not a harmony, Jakub Krajczynski Soul, Heart and Organs.
The talks by Stephen Menn and Miira Tuominen explored Aristotle and Alexander’s views on human nous
(understanding) – a controversial border case for hylomorphic analysis. Nous, as Aristotle puts it, is not mixed
with body, which in turn seems to imply that nous is not the form of any body and thereby not analyzable in
hylomorphic terms. Alexander on the other hand explicitly holds on to Aristotle’s basic assumption, yet at the
same time he clearly takes nous to be subject of hylomorphic anayisis. Exploring nous as the border case of
Hylomorphism helped to understand the scope and general outlook of this theory.
Henry Mendell and Francesca Pedriali delved into Aristotle’s general definition of soul as the first actuality of a
natural organic body. As one of the leading scholars on ancient mathematics Henry Mendell shed light on the
geometrical examples Aristotle uses to clarify his point that because soul’s powers form an ordered series the
general definition of soul, without the definitions of each of the powers, is incomplete. Francesca Pedriali
complemented these insights analyzing Aristotle’s talk of parts of soul and their methodological significance to
define the soul.
Klaus Corcilius and Pavel Gregoric investigated the relations between Aristotle’s De Anima, which contains
Aristotle’s general theory of Hylomorphism as applied to living beings, and Aristotle’s biological works like the
Parva Naturalia on the one and the De Motu Animalium on the other hand, both of which are devoted to
particular questions and the biological implementation of Hylomorphism. Klaus Corcilius argued that De Anima
offers a highly abstract and formal sketch of the soul itself, while particular issues of soul’s embodiment are
addressed in the Parva Naturalia. Pavel Gregoric focussing on Aristotle’s explanation of Animal Movement and
his analogy of soul to body as monarch to well governed city in his De Motu Animalium concluded his talk with
the claim that ‘because cardiocentrism is true, Hylomorphism is true’.
The talks by Orna Harari, George Karamanolis and Jakub Krajczynski all gravitated around Alexander of
Aphrodisias and his distinctive understanding of soul and its biological embodiment in the living organism. Orna
Harari discussed Alexander’s claim that the soul is not only the formal and final, but also the efficient cause of
the body, showing that soul’s efficient causation involves bodily intermediates. George Karamanolis made
visible the broad Peripatetic background and showed how Alexander’s polemic against the Pythagorean
harmony theory of soul in fact is a critique of earlier Peripatetic views. Jakub Krajczynski presented Alexander’s
particular combination of Hylomorphism and Cardiocentrism as a non-instrumental, strict cardiocentric
Hylomorphism, arguing that it is Alexander’s peculiar assumption that the heart is not an organ which makes
Hylomorphism and Cardiocentrism compatible.
More than 30 scholars, both from Berlin as well as guests from Munich, Hamburg and Budapest took part in this
stimulating workshop.