Key Arguments

• He says it is 'necessary to go through the puzzles from which we must become free as we proceed', indicating that clarifying aporiai is a methodological precondition of progress.
• He adds that we must 'at the same time... collect the beliefs of those of our predecessors who declared any views on the subject', making doxographical collection an explicit part of the method.
• The stated purpose of this survey is selective: 'so that we may take what is correct in what they say, and, if anything is incorrect, guard against it', showing he treats predecessors’ doctrines as both resources and potential errors.
• He describes as a 'starting-point of our inquiry' the setting out of 'the things that seem most of all to belong in accord with nature to the soul', tying method to what appears about the soul’s natural properties (movement and perception).

Source Quotes

I 2 In our investigation concerning the soul it is necessary to go through the puzzles | 403 b 20 | from which we must become free as we proceed and at the same time to collect the beliefs of those of our predecessors who declared any views on the subject, so that we may take what is correct in what they say, and, if anything is incorrect, guard against it. 28 A starting-point of our inquiry is to set out the things that seem most of all to belong in accord with nature to the soul.

I 2 In our investigation concerning the soul it is necessary to go through the puzzles | 403 b 20 | from which we must become free as we proceed and at the same time to collect the beliefs of those of our predecessors who declared any views on the subject, so that we may take what is correct in what they say, and, if anything is incorrect, guard against it. 28 A starting-point of our inquiry is to set out the things that seem most of all to belong in accord with nature to the soul. What is animate, | 403 b 25 | then, seems to differ from what is inanimate most of all in two regards—moving and also perceiving.

28 A starting-point of our inquiry is to set out the things that seem most of all to belong in accord with nature to the soul. What is animate, | 403 b 25 | then, seems to differ from what is inanimate most of all in two regards—moving and also perceiving. And these are pretty much the two characteristics of soul that have been handed down to us by our predecessors.

What is animate, | 403 b 25 | then, seems to differ from what is inanimate most of all in two regards—moving and also perceiving. And these are pretty much the two characteristics of soul that have been handed down to us by our predecessors. For some say that what causes movement is most of all and primarily soul.

Key Concepts

• it is necessary to go through the puzzles | 403 b 20 | from which we must become free as we proceed and at the same time to collect the beliefs of those of our predecessors who declared any views on the subject, so that we may take what is correct in what they say, and, if anything is incorrect, guard against it.
• A starting-point of our inquiry is to set out the things that seem most of all to belong in accord with nature to the soul.
• What is animate, | 403 b 25 | then, seems to differ from what is inanimate most of all in two regards—moving and also perceiving.
• these are pretty much the two characteristics of soul that have been handed down to us by our predecessors.

Context

Beginning of I.2, where Aristotle lays out his methodological approach for the treatise and motivates the ensuing survey of earlier theories of soul.