Dr. Frey is an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of South Carolina.

Dr. Frey describes his lecture: "What unites the millions of biological species that populate our universe and sets them apart from its inanimate remainder? Why should we consider activities as diverse as an amoeba dividing, a saffron crocus blooming, a Bengal tiger stalking its prey, and a human contemplating the heavens to be manifestations of a single thing, namely, life? This is one of the central questions Aristotle confronts in De Anima. He attempts to answer it in a familiar way: he provides a definition of life’s principle—the soul. But he is pessimistic about his purported definition’s adequacy. Life, Aristotle insists, cannot be defined properly. By his own lights, this renders any attempt to define soul, including his own, “foolish.” But what is it about life that makes definition impossible? And if we cannot define life, is there any unity at all to be found in the remarkable variety of ways that organisms pursue their lives?”