RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
A1 Labuda, Pavol
T1 The Unity of the Human Soul: A Dimensional Reading of DA II.3
JF Aither
YR 2025
VO 17
IS 2
SP 4
OP 23
DO 10.5507/aither.2026.002
UL https://aither.upol.cz/artkey/ath-202502-0001.php
AB This paper offers a new interpretation of the unity of the human soul's parts in De Anima II.3, drawing on the mathematical notion of dimension. Dimensionality, understood as an intrinsic property that parameterises a system's complexity by the number of its independent yet ordered parameters, provides a suitable framework for explaining the unity of the tripartite human soul. The nutritive, the perceptual, and the intellectual parts emerge as three definitionally distinct yet operationally ordered dimensions of a human being. Though anachronistic, this dimensional account is philosophically fruitful: it effectively unifies three structural features of the soul's parts - serial order, potential containment, and teleological subordination - identified in recent scholarship (Johansen 2012, 2014; Corcilius 2015, 2023, 2025).