BODY IS SAID IN MANY WAYS: AN EXAMINATION OF ARISTOTLE'S CONCEPTION OF THE BODY, LIFE, AND HUMAN IDENTITY

Aristotle differentiates not just soul from body, but proximate from remote matter. Yet Aristotle can be easily misunderstood as holding that the body of the human being is essentially biological in nature, and that the human differs from the beast only in having an immaterial intellect. On the contrary, I show that for Aristotle even the form of embodiment in humans is different from the form of bestial embodiment, and that human embodiment cannot be adequately understood in the biological way appropriate for understanding bestial bodies. Rather, the form of embodiment proper to humans is habit.