Abstrakt
Aristotle's analogy between "the phusis in the pneuma" and "the element of the stars" (GA II 3, 736b37-737a1) belongs to the often quoted yet perennially frustrating passages in the corpus. In order to determine the possible meaning of this analogy, this chapter does not attempt another reconstruction of Aristotle's lost works nor rely on commentators, but focuses on the well-preserved treatises.
It proceeds in two steps: first, it re-reads the passage where the analogy occurs and add other relevant texts from the treatise concerning the role of pneuma in the generation of living beings; second, it turns to De caelo and the celestial "first body" as internally animate. My aim is to demonstrate that the key to the analogy lies in the shared link between motion and animation, a link which, in these two cases only, does not require the actual presence of the soul.