Aristotle's View On Seeping And Dreams

Sleep is a state of unconsciousness where the primary sense-organ such as seeing, hearing, smelling stops functioning. Unlike deafness or blindness, sleep is a natural state of a living organism (human and animal). According to David Gallop (writer), he states that sleeping is a privation of waking. Sleeping is responsible for imagination and dreams and it an affection that required both body and soul. Aristotle state that sleeping is considered as a potential sensation while waking up is actually a sensation. Every animal and human beings need sleep because every organ have a certain function but they cannot be working all the time and need a break because they are getting tired and won’t be able to perform due to lack of sleep.

Staying awake brings up a state of powerlessness and it’s at that moment that someone will start to feel tired. People with small veins such as children and dwarfs are more likely to fall in a position on unconsciousness and to sleep more because their veins are narrow so the humidity cannot move through them. According to Aristotle awakening occurs when the whole body finish the digestion meaning that the strong amount of heat has taken control and the thickest blood got detached from the pure blood. The thinnest and purest blood is in the brain and the thickest and the most agitated is in the lower parts. while we dream it is possible to see and hear things in an unqualified sense but while we sleep all of our function are inactive whether it’s the particular sense or common sense and for this reason, dreams are illusory and don’t give us a real image of the reality.

Aristotle believed that dreaming is another word for fantasizing and it’s kind of mental images that occur in our head while we are sleeping. What people often ask themselves is what is the difference between dreaming and fantasizing? Aristotle state that dreaming is a dream that you are not aware of at the time that you’re dreaming while fantasizing is dreaming and being aware of what you are dreaming. Dreaming cannot be sent by God because an animal with no minds could dream also and human with low intellectual capacities could dream too. If dreams were sent by God it would only be the people with intellectual virtues that would be able to experience it. The Stageirite also said that dreams are not divine but they are daemonic. Daemonic in a way that it is beyond human control and not sent by daemons. This theory is important because it states another theory from Aristotle and makes us understand the process of sleeping and dreaming. For thousands of years, humans always wanted to know why do we spend our 1/3 of our lives in an unconsciousness state and what is happening while we are sleeping and what causes the human being to sleep.