Surveying Immateriality of Soul in Aristotle's System of Thought

Aristotle’s ideas on immateriality of soul lack uniformity. He has not discussed this issue explicitly and to the point. Through a discussion of immateriality in general and an explanation of soul’s features, the present article is aimed to provide a more vivid view of this issue. To this end, the following questions are raised: For Aristotle, is the soul immaterial or not? If it is immaterial, what is the meaning of immateriality? Is the soul completely immaterial or is it partially immaterial? For Aristotle, immateriality of the soul has two different meanings: one is simplicity, and the other one is being incorporeal. The article first provides both negative and positive reasons for the immateriality of soul from an Aristotelian point of view. Negating the corporeal and physical characteristics such as place, amount and combination, and enumerating the positive features of being resourceful, having existence, being simple and immateriality of intellect the article tries to express Aristotle's reasons in three categories: Aristotle's criticism of predecessors, properties of the Soul and the immateriality of intellect.