Aristotle (384-322 BCE).
Son of a doctor. Sent to
Groundbreaking work on pretty
much all aspects of the sciences, theory of science, psychology, ethics,
ontology, metaphysics and logic, rhetoric, literary theory. (The term
“metaphysics” is due to the name for Aristotle’s writings on fundamental
philosophical questions. Main traits of his philosophizing: Very abstract
philosophical discourse. Great systematizer; tries to organize everything he
finds into one huge order. Looks at the world as basically ordered by telos:
everything behaves or ought to behave in a purposeful way. (Modern thinking is
dominated by the idea of causal analysis). His ideas and his world-picture
dominated thought and science until the Renaissance, albeit in a Christianized
way. We will look at his ideas of soul (philosophical psychology) and how to
live a good life (ethics), and nature (Physics).
I.
Why be
interested in the soul?
“For what is a man profited,
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man
give in exchange for his soul.” (Matthew 16:27)
Me, caring for my soul; my
soul taking care of me. In this world. Aristotelian ethics is care for soul.
For another world?
The concept is value-laden.
Different sets of values lead to different models of the soul.
The Christian Idea of the Soul:
Soul that part in us we share with God. God’s spirit in us.
Given to us from God, immortal, returns to a trans-mundane existence after our
death (“Then shall the dust return to the
earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it”
(Ecclesiastes 12:7).
In
this world the soul is human will, understanding, and character, i.e. unique
personality. Feelings and desires belong to the flesh. Most importantly: the
Christian soul is free. Free to decide to do the good or to do evil, not
subjected to the senses in its decisions. Being the main agent and medium of
insight and control, it is through our souls that we conduct our lives, our
soul acting as a governing agency in us (
Each
human being has a unique soul, given to her or him in the process between
conception and birth (the Catholic church teaches that the soul is present from
the moment of conception). It is our most precious good, and calls for moral
protection of its being, as well as constant guidance.
From a transcendent point of
view the soul is the agency that is responsible for the life we lead before
God. Surviving our death, souls will be judged by God. If our life finds grace
before God, the soul will gain eternal life in Heaven and enjoy eternal
fellowship with God. If, on the other hand, the judgment is negative, the soul
will be punished for the sins of our lives. (An older theology: hell).
The Buddhist Soul:
[Adapted
from the article “Buddhism” in Encyclopedia Britannica.]
As
individuals we exist in separation and limitation, both of which ground desires
to overcome the obstacles, and desire is the basis of suffering.
Buddhism
rejects the idea that the soul exists as a metaphysical substance, but
recognizes the existence of the self as the subject of action in a practical and moral sense. Life
is a stream of becoming, a series of manifestations and extinctions, without an
underlying coherent agency. The concept of the individual ego is a delusion;
the objects with which people identify themselves—fortune, social position,
family, body, and even mind—are not their true selves. There is nothing permanent.
We can
overcome the delusion of the mundane self and attain no self (an atman). But that means that we deal with the appearance of
the self or soul. What we take to be our self consists of five aggregates or
constituents (khan has): (1) corporeality or physical forms, (2)
feelings or sensations, (3) ideations, (4) mental formations or dispositions,
and (5) consciousness. Human existence is only a composite of the five
aggregates, none of which is the self or soul. A person is in a process of
continuous change, and there is no fixed underlying entity.
Two
important elements of the complex and diverse Buddhist tradition: (1)We can
overcome the delusion of self by attaining states of non-selfness. Yoga
practices are a means towards this end. Not only can we exist in a state of
non-self. We are also more enlightened beings in that state, closer to our true
selves than when we move in the world of desire and identification with mundane
values. (2) On the other hand, depending on how we live, we are reborn in
different incarnations in other lives. This is of course difficult to conceive
without assumption about something permanent that ‘underlies’ different
existences.
Contrasting
the Christian and Buddhist Souls:
The two
religious attitudes – with their very different models of the soul, show quite
neatly how basic notions depend on basic values of world-views: the Christian
world-view modeling of the soul manifests the idea of a creator God to whom we
are responsible in our lives and beyond. It also lets itself be dominated by
the idea of a conflict in value between body and soul. The soul knows and
pursues the good, the body is dominated by desires and appetites that fall on
the bad side, and the idea that the soul ought to rule a recalcitrant and
basically immoral corporeal self.
The
Buddhist notion, on the other hand, conceives of our mundane existence in a
negative way. It is thus let to see a problem in what is commonly called
‘soul.’ In setting up a practice of overcoming the negative, the soul is put
into the role of that which is to be overcome, and the overcoming as the
shedding of an illusion.
Aristotle’s soul
The soul
is a well-circumscribed part of our whole being. First, everything that has
life also has soul. (413a20: “that which has soul is distinguished from that
which has not by life.”) Plants and animals have souls. As bodies are also
found in the world that is not alive, soul must be the distinctive feature of
life. But what are ‘body’ and ‘soul’ doing inside of the living unit, each of
them present in that unit, how are they united and what is each of them there?
The naïve
view: We turn to a living being. It is a substance in Aristotle’s terms: an
independent being distinct from other beings of its kind and of other kinds.
First we find a body, describable in biological term: the thing that lives. For
some of the living bodies we find we will say that this body is inhabited by a
soul that does what we ascribe to the psyche: it perceives, feels, remembers,
dreams, thinks, desires, wills. We will, perhaps, also ascribe structural
traits to that soul, things like character traits. These are NOT Aristotle’s
ideas.
The Hylomorphic
Model
Soul
as form, body as matter:
“Now the
soul is that by means of which, primarily, we live and perceive and think.
Hence it will be a kind of principle and form, and not matter or subject.” (414a13)
“The soul must be substance
qua form of a natural body which has life potentially” (412a19).
Body and
soul are, in relation to each other, matter and form of the living being. This
is Aristotle’s hylomorphic conception of man. Body is matter=hyle;
soul is form=morphe. The soul is the form of the body of a living being.
The body is the matter of a living being whose form is the soul.
What does
it mean to be form, or to be matter?
Start
with something that is a separate being of a certain kind. Aristotle calls it a
substance. A tree, a snake, a human being are substances, but also a house, a
knife or a lyra. Or start with something of another kind, because they can only
occur together with a separate being: a feeling or an emotion like anger, a
color like ‘red,’
Matter is
that, out of which that something is.
Form is
what we describe when we say what the something is.
Examples
for form: shape and size (spatial form) of as figure, duration, speed, rhythm
(temporal form), artifacts (house vis-à-vis brick and mortar), essential
features, genre, inner order and organization). Anger – a sophisticated case
(403a30): boiling of the blood as matter of anger, desire for retaliation as
form of anger.
Form of
process: continuous (, cyclical (of seasons); speed (of a moving object);
ripening (of the change in a fruit).
Forming
form: In general: the potential and tendency in things to assume a certain form
(of water molecules to arrange in the form snow crystals; constitution (of a
state); soul (of living beings).
Forms
confer whatness, but also bind together parts and elements: the form of the
sandstone rock binds together the grains of sand in the rock.
For the
head of Aristotle shown at the beginning: Its matter is the bronze out of which
it is made. Its form is ‘Aristotle’s head.’ (It shares that form with other
Aristotle heads.)
A first
comparison between living substances and substances that are not alive,
juxtaposing form and matter in each case:
|
soul :
body ~ Aristotle-head : bronze |
The analogy is from the point
of view of form and matter: Just as Aristotle-shape is form relative to bronze
as its matter in the statue, so soul is form relative to the body as its matter
in the living being. Relativity: bronze is matter in the sculpture, but it can
be form vis-à-vis molecules.
Form-matter
distinction for living beings:
The bust
is an artifact, we are not. Not yet, perhaps soon. We are interested in the
form and matter of living things. That means that we need to look for elements
that can count as form relative to the body. Now Aristotle’s decisive move: He
lets himself be guided by the idea that life is the shared essential
trait of all living beings, and that life is their shared form. ‘To be alive,’
‘to be a life’ is our most basic function, and also of the world of plants and
non-rational animals. (Note the process-indicating prefix “a-“ in “alive!).
Aristotle’s idea and thesis: The soul is, or better includes, the complex
system of life-constituting functions for the living being. Whatever
actively contributes to confer life to living beings possesses soul character.
Function as form. If all soul elements are absent, we do not have life. And all
and only those elements that contribute in a forming manner to the conduct of
life of a specific form of life count as soul- elements.
The
biological body cannot be a living body without a soul. According to Aristotle,
no live body is without soul. Attention: This is not the venerable animism that
attributes to each living being an individual complete soul, assuming that the
tree feels, perceives, acts intentionally, communicates with us, a soul that suffers when the
tree is hit and says ‘no’ when the wind gets into its crown and shakes it. This is the attitude of the fairy
tale (Lord of the Rings), of certain religions wrongly called primitive, and of
our own ancestors. Aristotle thinks differently. More precisely: he thinks the
issue, instead of basing his attitudes on faith.
How are body (matter) and soul (form) working together to
constitute a living being?
Highly
intransparent formulae: “The soul must be substance qua form of a natural body
which has life potentially.” (412a18) and “The soul will be the actuality of a
body of this kind,”i.e.of a “natural body which has life potentially.”
And “the soul is the first actuality of a natural body which has life
potentially.”
What
is Aristotle saying here? Taken in abstraction from all soul elements the body
of a living being is not alive. The body lacks the form necessary for ‘life.’
‘Actuality’ is both that there is action – the action of the form on/in the
body, and that there is something going on right now – to live is to be
enlivened. Two ingredients, then, in “the soul is actuality.
But,
in order to be able to be enlivened by a forming soul, that body must be apt to
receive that form, just as the bronze and the marble must be apt to
receive the form of the statue. This is why body, taken in isolation, has life
“only potentially.” The body brings to the enlivening form the matter – an
organization of flesh and blood, organs and body-parts. The “body has life
potentially.” Without that potential and that actualization to concur, we do
not have a living being. As a living being, the item with that form and that
matter is a substance. What is it that lets that substance be that particular
kind of living being, that goose, elephant or amoeba? We would use Linnaean
criteria for distinguishing them from each other and refer, ultimately, to
differences in body and bodily function. Aristotle thinks that it is the form,
and therefore the soul, that is ultimately responsible, because the soul has
formative power and function. So, the soul contributes the decisive element to
the living substance: “the soul is substance qua form:” meaning: What kind of
substance that being is the item’s soul-function. The body only lends its
potentiality to the compound. (The conception lends itself to the idea that
there could be an elephant’s soul in a mouse, or woman’s soul in a man’s body.)
(Note
the prefix “en-“ in “ensouling” and “enlivening.” It presents the following
verb as saying that there is an activity that brings about a result.) These
formative activities are of the kind of a process and an activity; they are
‘actuality.’ The soul is therefore the actuality of a living body. ‘Actuality’
says two things: on the one hand, the soul is a condition for life; on the
other hand, being alive is an activity first, and a state only second. The
form-matter distinction is thus a first factor that lets the Aristotelian soul
be distinct from what mind-functions are for us. For Aristotle, life=Bios
is soul-activity!
What,
then, is the body taken in isolation – and what does the soul do to the body
when it enlivens its body? The body in isolation, considered without the soul,
is close to the item that lies before us right after death, or better, in
cardiac arrest: all the organs are there, everything that allows life-processes
to unfold is in place. But the processes do not take place. These
processes may resume, and if they do, the Aristotelian life-conferring soul
returns to its matter and actualizes it. (Play this through for different
stages of human gestation from conception to birth. Is there a likely stage or
development for the life-conferring soul to be in place? Where would that
be?).
Can body and soul/mind exist separately?
The
fact that soul is enlivening form to the potentially living body has an
immediate consequence. Christian theology has answered he question right from
the start in Genesis 2:7: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living soul.” But philosophy has been plagued by the question whether body and
soul can exist independently from each other. You have heard that the Christian
religious idea asserts independence of the two. And you will hear soon from Ann
that Descartes thinks so too. The idea of separate existence or ontological
difference of mind and body is dualism of body and mind, body and soul. Its
opponents claim that body and mind do not have independent existence, and often
achieve this by claiming that there is only one kind of item: either everything
is material – both body and mind, or everything is mind, bodies and matter as
well as soul. These are two monist positions: Materialism of the soul, idealism
or animism of the world.
Aristotle
sends them back to back, taking a position that is neither dualist monist.: “It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are
one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the wax and its shape are one,
nor generally whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the
matter are one. For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what
is properly so spoken of is the actuality” (412b6-9).
No
after-life for the soul after loss of the body it enlivens. I do not think
Aristotle believes in an after-life in Hades, in form of bodiless shadow. All
that can be said about the soul after death is that it is a potentiality for
ensouling. And, as the uniqueness of the individual substance and the
remembered trajectory of a life contribute decisively to the individuality of
the soul in a living being, that individuality depends on the body. In other
words: No continuation of individual soul, not even in the form of a lifeless
shadow (Greek mythology), a soul that can be reincarnated (Buddhism) or a soul
that can be subject to punishment or bliss in an after-life (Christianity).
Body
and soul are two, because they play different roles in a living being. But they
are not themselves substances, precisely because they cannot exist independently.
They are not parts of the living being either, for they do not function as
components. They are codependent: the body without the soul is a being that has
lost its life and has lost the capacity for self-maintenance, also as a body.
The soul that vanishes from the body is deprived from the matter that gives
existence to it as a living soul. It is not the body that walks and the soul
that feels. Both are activities of the whole being, in our case of the person.
The person walks and feels. And walking and feeling both involve soul and body,
in different roles.
Similar
for the body: without the soul it is not alive. It is potential for life as
long as the body is a ready recipient for the enlivening form, or is
‘ensoulable.’ The body does therefore not have special dignity after death.
Soul-body
interactions.
Interactions:
Behavior occurring between two agents or agencies in such a way that the action
of one directed at the other is connected with the action of the other at the
direction of the first: action1 (x à y) connected with action2
(y à x)
The
basic form of interaction has already been discussed: the soul confers life to
the body, which, in isolation is alive only potentially. The body in turn
offers the potential for actualization of the whole being to the soul, which
does not have reality without being embodied. The two are interdependent. When
one occurs, the other also occurs. But we still have, as it were, two agencies,
and therefore the possibility to analyze a phenomenon from the perspective of
the body or of the soul. Anger, once again (403a30): anger – an emotion – is also boiling of the blood. But it is
also desire for retaliation, and desire is a soul function.
The
soul expressed in the body:
Nothing
obliges Aristotle to think of the soul as an element that is ontologically
spiritual, different from elements that are ontologically material. The
distinction between form and matter is at any rate a relative and functional
distinction: Forming soul is whatever is the form constituting element
vis-à-vis something that is the formed – matter – in this connection.
His
thinking is different from ours, tinted by 2000 years of Platonism and
Christianity. But he thinks of an interaction here, between two agencies that
play different roles in that interaction, whether they look to us as physical
or as mental. We do not think like that. How can one think like Aristotle?
First, he does not possess the chemical knowledge we have. Philosophically more
interesting is the question: How can he even distinguish forming activity from
formed form? If, as he says, the body is prepared to receive the form of life –
the body is life potentially – how can one even distinguish the forming force
and the formed recipient? Our chemical analysis does not do this. Indeed, it
does not even have a model that calls for that thought. Our genetic perspective
does exactly that, but only for growth and renewal of cells. Alas, also for the
degeneration of aging. It looks as if we could think only in terms that
distinguish soul and body as ontologically different, mental here and corporeal
there, conceiving of the forming soul as if it were a sculptor who works on his
material. Nature as clay animation!?
NOT
Aristotle’s conception. To be form and formative does not imply being mental in
the sense of ‘mind-stuff.’ The Bonsai tree shows in its appearance what its
soul works from the inside:
[From:
Finding a
Soul in Bonsai. http://www.artofbonsai.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=961
Part
of the caption: “The Japanese have a word known as Kami. As far as I know I am
about the only person who has chosen to associate this word with Bonsai. Other
Bonsaists choose to use Wabi and Sabi when defining the
quasi-spiritual aspects of bonsai. Kami is for lack of a better definition
defined as spirit or soul, an almost personality that inhabits things of great
beauty, power, and artistry. It is a force that almost gives a thing a life of
its own that supersedes a tree or a pot or a sword, or a landscape.”
The
distinction between an active, forming function in our plant and a passive,
formed function makes sense if we make one important assumption: the body that
is enlivened by the nutritive and self-maintaining soul of the plant is not
just lying there, waiting to be ensouled, perhaps longing for it like
Snow-White for the kiss of her Prince. The body is also recalcitrant. It has
its own resistance to being kept alive and brought into its form. The form has
to constantly overcome that resistance in maintaining that body alive and
giving to it its typical form. Taken separately, the body is not just
propensity to be ensouled, made and kept alive. It is also an item in its own
right – potentially – and that resistance needs constantly to be overcome. We
see it at work in illnesses, aging, in the deviations that can occur in
generation. The idea of soul as enlivening form and body as formed life is
therefore an idea that combines the idea of fit – the propensity of each to
unite with the other to constitute a specific form of life and the idea
that there is an opposing tendency in life – something that opposes being in
that form. Only together do they account for life: Not ‘nature as clay
animation,’ but: nature as antagonism of forces. Nature is the world of change.
Its living domain changes as a consequence of internal antagonism.
A
comparison of soul features
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Aristotle - - - - - - - - - - - |
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Modern - - - - - - - - - - - |
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Hylomorphism: body and soul
functionally distinct but in interdependent relation. Neither dualism (Descartes)
nor monism (materialisms) |
Dualisms: body and soul
each have their own being; may have
independent destinies. Monisms: materialism denies
independent being to soul/mind; a certain brand of idealism says everything
is soul. |
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Soul enlivens body; body
gives reality and sustains soul in existence (gives ‘actuality’ to soul).
Soul in principle not linked to mind, as we understand it. |
Biological life is mind-independent,
therefore not ensouled. Mind-functions are
‘add-ons’ to life. |
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Hierarchy of basic
faculties: |
Multitude and plurality of
functions; related, but without systematic order, only partially ordered. |
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Soul-functions are active,
enabling sources of performances, corporeal functions are soul-activated; affective
and perceptive soul-functions show double aspect: soul appearance and
corporeal appearance. Example: sight is due to
the eye-soul making the eye perform its purpose, but depends on the eye being
hit by object, and recording the object. Hylomorphist: sight is
interaction of eye-matter and sight-form. |
Mind-functions are
dependent on body-functions; Example: sight either
coincides with or is due to neurological processes in the eye, the nerves and
the brain. Reductionist: sight is but
a complex of neurological events. |