# On the Soul

- id: de-anima
- original title: Περὶ Ψυχῆς / Peri Psychēs
- author: Aristotle
- language: Greek
- composed: c. 350 BCE, Athens
- field: philosophy

Aristotle's treatise on what it is to be alive: nutrition, perception, imagination, intellect. Its third book, on the intellect, became the most fought-over text in medieval philosophy, in Arabic and then in Latin.

## The chain

- **c. 870–900** Greek -> Arabic, translation [attested]
  Ishaq ibn Hunayn (translator), Baghdad
  Ishaq translated the work twice; the Fihrist reports the first version was left slightly unfinished. His Arabic is lost as an independent text. An older anonymous Arabic version also circulated, which Averroes quotes in nine passages as 'the other translation'.
  Evidence: Ibn al-Nadim 987 (reports the double translation, the first incomplete); Treiger 2017 (reconstruction of the lost translation from its descendants)
  - **c. 1186** Arabic -> Arabic, commentary [attested]
    Ibn Rushd (commentator)
    The Long Commentary quotes Ishaq's translation in full as its lemmata, which is why the lost Arabic survives inside it. Where it was written is not documented; Averroes was then moving between al-Andalus and the Almohad court in Marrakesh.
    Evidence: Taylor 2009 (dating to c. 1186, within a range of roughly 1181-1190); Ben Ahmed 2021
    - **c. 1220–1224** Arabic -> Latin, translation [probable]
      Michael Scot (translator)
      In use in Paris by about 1225, where Averroes became simply 'the Commentator' within a decade. The unicity-of-intellect reading drawn from this book was condemned at Paris in 1270 and 1277. Only a few of the fifty-plus manuscripts name Scot; stylometry supports the attribution.
      Evidence: Hasse 2010 (stylometric case for Scot's authorship of the anonymous Averroes translations); Hasse 2020
  - **1284** Arabic -> Hebrew, translation [attested]
    Zerahyah ben Isaac Hen (translator), Rome
    Made from the Arabic in Rome. Together with the Latin lemmata, it is one of the witnesses from which Ishaq's lost translation is reconstructed. Its closing section follows a different Arabic version that completed Ishaq's unfinished text, as the Hebrew preface itself records.
    Evidence: Treiger 2017

## Worth knowing

The chain doubles back on itself. Ishaq ibn Hunayn's 9th-century Arabic translation is lost, and Averroes' Long Commentary survives complete only in Michael Scot's Latin. So modern scholars reconstruct Baghdad's Arabic De Anima out of the Latin lemmata of this very translation, with help from a Hebrew version of 1284. A marginal note in the tradition even records the seam where Ishaq's first, unfinished version stopped.

## Sources

- Treiger, Alexander (2017). Reconstructing Ishaq ibn Hunayn's Arabic Translation of Aristotle's De Anima. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 27.
- Taylor, Richard C. (tr.) (2009). Averroes: Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle. Yale University Press.

Confidence grades: attested (named in the medieval record or settled in scholarship), probable (standard view with real uncertainty), disputed (scholars disagree).