Diversité des fonctions et unité de l'âme dans la psychologie aristotélicienne (XIVe-XVIe siècles)
Résumé
The question of the unity of the soul is posed in the Middle Ages at the crossing-point of the Aristotelian theory, which distinguishes several potencies, even several parts in the soul, and the Augustinian doctrine which underlines the unity of the mind using corporeal powers. John Buridan, when commenting the Treatise on the Soul of Aristotle, emphasizes the unity. From the middle of the 14th century till the beginning of the 17th, the problem goes on being debated through the two questions of the substantial unity of the soul and of the relation between the soul and its potenties. This article studies some stages of this development, some of them immediately after Buridan, in Nicole Oresme's and Peter of Ailly's positions, another more distant, in Antoine Rubio's work. It suggests that we find the same problematics, reelaborated and transformed, in Descartes.