On the Difference between Platonic and Aristotelian Philosophy

...they say that branches of learning are certain recollections, and that to learn is nothing other than to remember. For if the mind is older than this body, what was to prevent it from thinking, seeing, and knowing before it entered the body? But if it was thinking, seeing, and knowing, how can it not be said to be remembering when—upon its first entry into our body—it has forgotten those things, but later receives back the same things it knew before? Read Arnobius, Book 2, on the topic of recollection original: "l. Arnob. l. 2. g. p. reminiſc." This refers to Arnobius of Sicca, an early Christian apologist who discussed the soul's origin.

CHAPTER XI.

He says the mind is incorruptible, yet he does not mention it in his books [on Ethics]. This should have been done to correct his argument, because his denial—attributing no good to man after death—contradicts itself.

Censure is also warranted for this, among other things. For although he affirmed that the human mind is subject to no corruption and is eternal—both in the books he wrote On the Soul Aristotle's "De Anima" and in those called the Metaphysics Metaphysics: the branch of philosophy dealing with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, and substance—he does not then seem to make any mention of the immortality of souls in the Ethics Specifically the Nicomachean Ethics, which is the one thing that would have brought the greatest weight to the praise of virtue.

But it must be judged far worse for this reason: that he attributes no good to a man already deceased which he might enjoy after death. In this way, Aristotle clearly and diligently guards himself so as not to introduce a speech contrary to his own words. For if man possesses something immortal that remains after death, that one thing certainly must be, most greatly and most truly, the man himself. How, then, will no good remain for him when he departs from this life? On the contrary, it will happen that after the laying down of that which is mortal within him, he will obtain the capacity for a more blessed and better way of living. For this reason, even that Alexander of Aphrodisias A famous 2nd-century commentator on Aristotle known for a more materialistic interpretation of the soul, having drawn that discourse toward his own wickedness, took the opportunity to say that the immortality of the human soul was denied by Aristotle himself.

And so much for these matters.