Abstract
By scholarly consensus, extant fragments from, and testimony about,
Aristotle’s lost dialogue Eudemus provide strong evidence for thinking that Aristotle
at some point defended the human soul’s unqualified immortality (either in whole
or in part). I reject this consensus and develop an alternative, deflationary, speculative,
but textually supported proposal to explain why Aristotle might have written
a dialogue featuring arguments for the soul’s unqualified immortality. Instead of
defending unqualified immortality as a doctrine, I argue, the Eudemus was most likely
offering a dramatically engaging propaedeutic to the sort of philosophical inquiry
about the soul and its prospects that Aristotle pursues more scientifically in the De
anima and Parva naturalia.