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Plato, Aristotle and Descartes on body and soul

Plato, Aristotle and Descartes on body and soul. Michael Lacewing. Plato’s Phaedo. Death is the separation of the soul from the body

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Plato, Aristotle and Descartes on body and soul

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  1. Plato, Aristotle and Descartes on body and soul Michael Lacewing

  2. Plato’s Phaedo • Death is the separation of the soul from the body • When it is joined to a body, “the soul is only able to view existence through the bars of a prison, and not in her own nature; she is wallowing in the mire of all ignorance”

  3. A separate soul I • Souls can’t be destroyed • The soul is unseen • All unseen things are ‘simple’, they have no parts • To destroy something is to break it into parts • Objection: perhaps there are other types of destruction

  4. A separate soul II • Change is change from what something (currently) is to what it (currently) is not • Life changes into not-life, death • Becoming alive involves a change from not being alive • Upon life, the soul is joined to the body - so the soul exists before birth • Objection: not all change is like this - coming into existence is not a change into an opposite

  5. Aristotle • A person is an ‘ensouled body’ • The soul is the ‘form’ of the living body - what does this mean? • Four types of ‘cause’ or explanation • Material: ‘that out of which a thing comes to be, and which persists’, e.g. marble of a sculpture • Efficient: brings about change or rest, e.g. the sculptor

  6. Four causes (cont.) • Final: ‘the end (telos), that for which a thing is done’, e.g. the answer to why the sculptor made the statue • Formal: ‘the account of the essence’, e.g. what a ‘sculpture’ is, so that we understand what the sculptor was doing

  7. What is a heart? • Material: muscle (flesh) • Formal: pumps blood • Final: sustain life by pumping blood • Efficient: cell development guided by genes aiming at creating a living organism

  8. What is a soul? • ‘living is the being [the essence] of living things, and the soul is the cause and principle of this.’ (415b). • What it is to be a living being is to live; and the soul is the formal, efficient and final cause of a living thing.

  9. What is a soul? • Final: living things live in order to live (stay alive) • Efficient: living changes and develops our bodies; it changes and develops us as persons • Formal: the activity of living provides an account of what it is to be what we are, a particular kind of living being.

  10. Soul as form • Matter endures (material cause). But we always identify matter by some form it has. • With living beings, matter constantly changes. Living things are forms embodied in ever-changing matter. Even to refer to a ‘living thing’ is to privilege form over matter.

  11. Human soul and body • Different living things are capable of different kinds of lives: • plants: growth and reproduction; • animals: sensation; • human beings: rational activity • So each has a corresponding type of soul.

  12. The intellect • No part of the body corresponds to the intellect • Each sense is limited to a type of experience • But thought can be about anything • So the intellect ‘seems to be another kind of soul, and this alone admits of being separated, as that which is eternal from that which is perishable’ (428b)

  13. Descartes on the soul • Aquinas developed Aristotle’s ideas, claiming the soul, intellect and the form were the same thing, and a separable substance • Descartes agrees, but drops reference to ‘form’: The soul is the intellect and a separate substance from the body. • Bodies work mechanically - they don’t need explaining in terms of the soul.

  14. What am ‘I’?: the narrow view • ‘I’ am essentially a soul, a thing that thinks that can be separated from a body. (Meditation II) • But is Descartes right to think souls can be separated from bodies?

  15. What am I?: the broad view • ‘I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but…I am very closely united with it, and so to speak so intermingled with it that I seem to compose with it one whole.’ (Meditation VI) • I am a person - an embodied soul. • the soul takes on bodily experiences as its own, i.e. we refer our sensations, emotions, etc. to our selves.

  16. What am I? essentially • I am not essentially a person, because I could be the same ‘thing’ - a soul - without a body. • I am essentially a person, since I am my psychological properties, and these depend on my body. • I am essentially a person, because the unity of soul and body creates a new, distinct kind of thing.

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