The noetic soul is paradoxically both impassible and receptive to form

Evidence

But do these analogies permit the further deduction, of plasticity as the ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’ character of νς? Wouldn’t the carefulness of Aristotle’s argument be invalidated by the violence of such a gesture, where a procedure that is no more than aporetic is transformed into the rigidity of a thesis? What is said on the subject of νς makes for a response to these questions extremely difficult. It must be the case, Aristotle insists, that ‘this part of the soul be, while impassible (/παθ0ς), is capable of receiving the form of an object (δεκτικν (…) τ ε1δυς) that it must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object’. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 411

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The core paradox — an impassible capacity that nonetheless receives form — IS the plasticity concept’s genesis; this is the load-bearing tension of the whole chapter.
• XREF: This paradoxical receptivity-without-affection directly anticipates the plasticity theory that grounds the reader’s brain work. — connects to: Soul is experienced only as absence, in the creatureliness of the other. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 181; The soul, unlike wax, assimilates sensory forms into its own substance

Broader Connections

• The soul, unlike wax, assimilates sensory forms into its own substance #epitomizes (0.85)