Gurevich P.S. Mind and Soul in Aristotle's and Plotin's Interpretation

Abstract: Human had never been the corner stone of Aristotle's philosophy. However, as the previous researches of the author demonstrate, Aristotle was the ancient philosopher who was the father of classical philosophical anthropology. Very often thoughts and ideas of Aristotle that are so important for anthropology appeared in his other researches, for example, thoughts on syllogisms and etc. As we can say, thoughts on Mind were needed by the philosopher to classify categories, but inside that topic he proposed a very important idea about polysynthetism of Mind and that Mind has both human and divine nature. The author of the present article bases his research on the principle of historicism that allows to compare Aristotle's anthropological teaching with Plotin's thouhts about human. The author has also used the method of hermeneutical analysis of ancient philosophers' texts. Various thoughts of Aristotle about Mind, the human and the divine have never been viewed as part of philosophical anthropology. Referring to Aristotle's teaching about induction and deduction, those thoughts touched upon Human, too. Detailed analysis of Mind reveals particularities of human nature and at the same time bring the phenomenon of transcendence to the fore. By comparing Aristotle's and Plotin's teachings, it is possible to outline the teaching about soul and internal human world.

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