The Review of Metaphysics

Aristotle distinguishes in the De anima three main kinds of souls (the nutritive, the sensitive-locomotive, and the rational) corresponding to plants, animals, and human beings. He is the first philosopher to offer a systematic account of the nutritive soul, whose three main vital functions are growth, self-maintenance, and reproduction. Aristotle considers the nutritive soul the most common and basic kind of soul, without which no living being can have higher living functions in the sublunary world. Compared to his accounts on the sensitive and rational soul, Aristotle’s views on the nutritive soul have received much less attention in the literature. This collection of essays on nutrition and nutritive soul in Aristotle and Aristotelianism is thus an important and much needed contribution to Aristotelian scholarship.

The volume comprises a total of sixteen essays, written by well-known scholars from both Europe and North America: James G. Lennox, Mary Louise Gill, R. A. H. King, Sophia M. Connell, Andrea Libero Carbone, David Lefebvre, Hynek Bartoš, Giouli Korobili, Robert Mayhew, Gweltaz Guyomarc’h, Tommaso Alpina, Martin Klein, Christoph Sander, Elisabeth Moreau, Bernd Roling, and Andreas Blank. The essays are grouped in two parts. The first part focuses on Aristotle; the second part on the Aristotelian tradition broadly understood. The first part benefits from recent studies on Aristotle’s Generation of Animals, a treatise that had not received sufficient attention from scholars until a few years ago. This is important, because the account of nutrition and nutritive soul in this treatise complements the better-known account found in De anima and On Generation and Corruption. The historical approach is one of the many strengths of this volume, which uses Aristotle as a dynamic point of reference, considering his successors (and to some extent, though more limited, his predecessors). Thus, we can appreciate not only the importance of the nutritive soul and nutrition in Aristotle, but also the complexities and developments of this fundamental dimension of life in its late antique, medieval, and early modern reception. The wide range of topics and authors (Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Avicenna, John Buridan, Galen, Paracelsus, Fernel, Albertus Magnus, Liceti, Von Bergen, Borch, and Ponce de Santacruz) covered by the authors of the essays is impressive, revealing not only the multifaceted dimensions of this “lowest” kind of soul but also its bearing on contemporary debates, such as the account of the unity and difference of the parts of the soul, the unity of soul and body, the unity of the different functions attributed to the nutritive soul, the meaning and being of life, the purpose of reproduction, the female role in generation, embryology, digestion, hibernation, the role of heat in life, the interaction of the nutritive and rational soul with one another (as when we fall asleep while reading), and the explanation of emerging properties—to name just a few of the topics addressed through the various essays of the volume.

At the same time, the breath of topics and authors does not result in a mere succession of essays. The volume has an internal, underlying unity [End Page 149] tied together around the figure of Aristotle. Two main research topics further secure the unity of the volume: the relationship between body and soul, and the partition of the soul. The first three essays also contribute to the unity of the volume, focusing, respectively, on the integration of the different functions of the nutritive soul, on Aristotle’s method of investigating the kinds of soul as described in De anima, and on the relation between nutrition and hylomorphism. These three essays provide a helpful general framework within which more specific topics are pursued in the following chapters. Nutritive soul and the phenomenon of nutrition are a privileged crossroads where philosophy, medicine, biology, and psychology meet in a fruitful and intriguing way. Not only philosophers interested in Aristotle’s natural philosophy and psychology, but also scholars devoted to the...