The paper offers a reinterpretation of one of the most famous definitions of man in the Western tradition: "Man is the living being in possession of reason (logos)". This quotation can be traced back to Aristotle, whose understanding of the soul is based, at least up to a certain point, on the government of reason over the more uncontrollable striving desire. It is this understanding which almost all of the commentaries of his work has taken as their starting point. This "first" way into Aristotle's theory of the soul does, however, contain certain problems which the paper will present opening up another approach to the the soul in his work, according to which the soul, rather than being hierarchically structured, is composed of parallel interacting forces. Drawing on the Aristotelian notion of friendship, philia, this second approach will finally prove to be more in accordance with his own conception of being human: A being in possession of reason and an establisher of commonwealth.