Fire burning in the heart: Aristotle's conception of the soul

Since the beginning of human history, many thinkers have tried to understand and make sense of the soul. The subject of the soul has maintained its importance in philosophi-cal literature from past to present and has gained new perspectives and meanings in every era. Almost all thinkers have said something about this subject, which is im-portant to almost everyone. When we look at those who place the soul apart from the body, those who equate the soul with the body, and those who reduce the soul to one or many things, we see that the subject is quite complex and complicated and that there is no consensus on what the soul is and its relation to the body. On the other hand, a care-ful look at the reasoning and analysis of Aristotle, one of the most important thinkers in the history of Western philosophy, reveals that perhaps the issue is not as complicated as one might think. However, even though the Aristotelian tradition or literature has analyzed what the definition of the soul is for Aristotle and what this definition, which is adorned with terms belonging to Aristotle's metaphysics, means, the biological mean-ing or counterpart of this definition in Aristotle's corpus and thought has been ignored. This modest study attempts to point out and fill this gap.