The universal soul is Aristotle’s passive potential intellect in sleep

Evidence

Hegel uses the notion of the ‘universal soul’ to designate life in its simplest, most elementary form: an original vitality (prior to the sundering which introduces particular forms) which has not yet arrived at the stage of division which characterizes particular forms. Universality is here in every sense of the word the most primitive stage of the soul; it can only achieve ‘its actual truth as individuality’. For the moment it is simply the ‘sleep of spirit’, the passive νς of Aristotle, which is potentially all things. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 327

Categorization

• XREF: The passive nous as ‘potentially all things’ grounds the reader’s plastic-receptivity pole; connects to Aristotle on time (ch32-33) and to how passivity is not yet agency.