In this seminar we will engage in a close study of Aristotle’s De anima (On the Soul), a work on the principles and capacities of living things. In addition to examining traditional psychological concerns of this work such as perception and mind, our inquiry will focus on ways that the study of life and the living might contribute to Aristotle’s ontological investigations into substance and being. In particular we will consider the relationship between the principles of matter and form as manifest in living things, as well as Aristotle’s analogies between nature and art. Our reading of De anima will be supplemented with relevant selections from other works in Aristotle’s corpus including Metaphysics, Physics, Parts of Animals, Movement of Animals, and Generation of Animals.