Abstract
Since antiquity interpreters have disagreed as to whether νοῦς (intellect) according to Aristotle is separable from the body or is rather, as a part of the form of the body, inseparable from it by its very definition. I argue that this traditional dilemma is a false one.
It leads to either illegitimately separating νοῦς from its organic unity with the body or improperly assimilating it to other parts of the soul. In fact, I argue, νοῦς according to Aristotle does not fall under the narrow definition of soul as something whose activity numerically coincides with an activity of the body, and so no inseparability follows from its definition.
At the same time, however, Aristotle finds strong reasons for believing in its inseparability in the nature of its objects: if what it thinks is always the cause for some X of its being Y and if X is only accessible through the perceptive capacity (which is inseparable from the body by its very definition), then our νοῦς cannot be active and, by implication, cannot exist separately from the body. The inference is more problematic when it comes to objects existing separately from matter, such as the movers of the heaven, each of which turns out to be a νοῦς thinking itself independently from a body.
And this is why the issue of separability cannot, according to Aristotle, be decided on the level of natural philosophy. There are, nonetheless, good reasons to think that Aristotle's first philosophy provides, in his eyes, the missing premises supporting an argument that infers that our νοῦς is ontologically inseparable from our body even if we are able to think immaterial objects.