GREEK PHILOSOPHY

As philosophy began to emerge among the Greeks, the human being came to be considered within the framework of physis or basic principle of all growth and movement. The psyche came to be identified with whatever element each philosopher held as primary, e.g., fire, water, air or ether. In general, it was agreed that the psyche was material: while it was a source of growth and movement, it was not considered personal or immortal. On this, the pre-Socratic philosophers generally harked back to Homer rather than to the Orphics.(8)

Socrates and Plato took a different approach; it is difficult and here quite unnecessary to distinguish the two. Plato's idea of the soul was related to his theory of knowledge. The material world is marked by particularity and impermanence; sensual perception can only give us impressions of a confusing multiplicity of concrete objects subject to the vicissitudes of time. For Plato, that is misleading and is not real knowledge. What are reliable, because permanent, are concepts, Ideas or Forms (eidos). If that is the case with concepts of substantives, it is all the more true of abstract qualities such as beauty, justice, or truth, which are never embodied as such in concrete objects. Furthermore, concrete objects are never simple. A chair contains more than 'chairness' ; it also has 'woodness' , etc. A beautiful person contains not just 'beauty', but also has other qualities such as being 'human', and so on. So a concrete chair is less perfectly a chair than the Idea of a chair; and a beautiful person is less perfect than the Idea of beauty. What is more permanent and more perfect is of course also more important; and, Plato insists, also more real. Hence, the world of Ideas is more real than the world of concrete objects. The body with its distracting and entangling senses which inform one of concrete objects is the 'lower' part of a human being; thought, which alone informs one of the 'higher' world of Ideas, is the most important human activity; and what enables one to think is the soul, the 'higher' part of the human being. A successful life for a human being is therefore the intellectual life, the life of the soul, which alone can commune with the higher, more real world.

In the Phaedo, Plato's account of Socrates' last conversation with his friends, the distinctions between the soul and the body are made clear:

Did you ever behold [absolute justice, beauty, and goodness] with your eyes? ..... Or did you ever reach them with any other bodily sense? －and I speak not of these alone, but of absolute greatness, .....and of the essence or true nature of everything..... Is not the nearest approach to the knowledge of their several natures made by him who so orders his intellectual vision as to have the most exact conception of the essence of each thing which he considers? .....And he attains to the purest knowledge of them who goes to each with the mind alone, not introducing or intruding in the act of thought sight, or any other sense together with reason, but with the very light of the mind in her own clearness searches into the very truth of each; he who has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements which, when they infect the soul, hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge－who, if not he, is likely to attain to the knowledge of true being?(10)

Not only is the soul higher than the body, the body also drags the soul down from intellectual heights. It is only when the soul is rid of the body that it can attain wisdom and purity:

For the body is the source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement for food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of every kind, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us the power of thinking at all ..... It has been proved to us by experience that if we would have pure knowledge of anything we must be quit of the body－the soul in herself must hold things in themselves : and then we shall attain the wisdom which we desire, and of which we say that we are lovers; not while we live, but only after death; for if, while in company with the body the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things follows－either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death ..... And thus having got rid of the foolishness of the body, we shall be pure and hold converse with the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is no other than the light of truth.(11)

The conclusion is that "the soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intellectual, and uniform, and indissoluble, and changeable." The care of the soul is the most important task in life: preparation for the soul to leave the body and return to the invisible world, the preparation for death. The fate of those who have neglected the soul and lived the life of the body will be reincarnation as beasts.(12)

It is clear then that Plato conceived of the human being as a composite, with soul and body being distinct substances; and in conformity with the theory of Ideas, it is the soul, not the body, that is real; it is the soul that is the person. At the end of the Phaedo, when Socrates was asked how he wanted to be buried, he said:

However you please, if you can catch me and I do not get away from you ...... I cannot persuade Crito, my friends, that the Socrates who is now conversing ..... is really I: he thinks I am the one whom he will presently see as a corpse .....After I drink the poison I shall no longer be with you, but shall go away to the joys of the blessed .....(13)

The Orphic influence in these passages is obvious. It will presently be shown how Plato's concept of the soul merged with Jewish eschatology to form a cornerstone of Christian thought.

Plato's disciple Aristotle started out with a concept of the soul similar to his master's, but it gradually developed into a very different and more subtle idea. Aristotle's emphasis was biological rather than religious; he was concerned to find in his work on the soul the principle of life rather than guidance for life. Yet his doctrine on the soul is more metaphysical than that of Plato.(14)

As a biologist, Aristotle was concerned to find a common definition for all living things.(15) This was his goal in the De Anima, his systematic general theory on the subject. In this treatise, he defined soul as "the first actuality of a natural body potentially possessing life. "(16) This terse definition requires explanation.

First, the terms he used. A 'body' is a substance, that is, "something which is neither predicated of a subject nor present in a subject", e.g., a human, a tree, a stone.(17) A 'natural body' is a body that is not made by human hands. 'Life' is "the capacity for self-sustenance, growth, and decay."(18) To understand 'potentiality' and 'actuality', it is necessary to delve further into the concept of substance.

As a class of existing things, substances may be divided into three:

1. matter, in the sense of pure matter without shape or form, which in itself is not an individual thing;
2. shape or form, which attributes individuality; and
3. the compound of the two.

In this analysis, matter is potentiality, form or shape is actuality.(19) For example, a piece of shapeless wax is potentially a statue; the shape that the wax acquires from a mold is actuality. The wax originally had the potential to be made into a statue, which potential was actualised when the statue was made. Similarly, certain natural bodies have the potential to be made into living beings; what actualises this potential is the soul.

Now, the term 'actuality' (or 'entelechy', or 'fulfillment') has two senses, which are analogous to

1. the possession of knowledge, and
2. the exercise of that knowledge.

For example, before a person has learnt what Aristotle means by the soul, one has the capability or potential for learning it. Once having learnt it, the person is capable of tracing the steps of the arguments, but does not need to do so; that person may be said to know, to have fulfilled the capability. This is analogous to the first actuality. This actualised knower may prefer to spend every waking moment retracing the arguments; that active exercise of the knowledge is analogous to the second actuality. Again, every person has the potential to study to be a historian. Once having fulfilled that potential (assuming that 'history' is a discreet subject), this person is a historian even in an undisturbed slumber (cf. first actuality). When researching and writing, he is a historian exercising the knowledge (cf. second actuality).(20)

To return to the definition of the soul. The natural body having a potential or capacity for life is related to its soul in a manner analogous to the knower's relation with the knowledge possessed, to the historian's relation with history. Without historical knowledge, one would not be a historian; without the shape provided by a mold, an amorphous piece of wax would not be a statue; without a soul, a natural body that has capacity for life would not be a living thing. Thus, a living thing is a compounded substance of body and soul, as matter and form. The soul, the form, is the first actuality of the life potential of the body, the matter. (The living thing－body and soul together－exercising its vital functions is second actuality. 'First' and 'second' are in ontological, and not necessarily temporal, order.) Thus, the soul is the cause and first principle of the living body, not only as the formal, but also as the efficient and the final cause, while the body is the material cause.(21)

Here, a few points need to be made.

1. Since form and matter are both substances, the soul is as substantial as the body; but the soul is not, of course, material, and therefore not corporeal.
2. Since a soul is the actuality of a particular potential, a human soul will not actualise a dog's body, nor vice versa; there is little, if any, room allowed for a Platonic transmigration of souls.
3. Since soul is form, and body matter, and the two compounded make up the living thing, "one need no more ask whether body and soul are one than whether the wax and the impression it receives are one."(22) It is also obvious that the soul must be spatially co-extensive with the body.(23) "Furthermore, the soul cannot exist without the body."(24) Hence, by this definition alone, Aristotle seems to have ruled out the immortality of the soul.(25)

But Aristotle goes further and introduces ideas on the hierarchy of nature into his discussions on the soul. "A thing lives if any one of the following is present in it－mind, sensation, movement or rest in space, besides the movement implied in nutrition and decay and growth." Of these vital functions, the most basic is the capacity to absorb food, because "it may exist apart from all other powers, but the others cannot exist apart from this in mortal beings". Hence, nutrition is found in all living things, from plants to humans. Similarly, animals have sensations, and among different sensations, touch is the most basic, being common to all animals.(26) Proceeding this way up a ladder, so to speak, one can enumerate the faculties of the soul: nutrition, appetite, sensation, locomotion, and thought, and rank living things accordingly.

Plants have the nutritive faculty only, but other living things have the faculty for sensation too. But if so sensation then also for appetite..... In addition to these senses some also possess the power of movement in space, and others again－viz., man and any other being similar or superior to him－have the power of thinking and intelligence.(27)

This, then, is Aristotle's ladder of souls. Just as there are higher and lower orders of life, so there are higher and lower kinds of souls－the higher souls possessing more faculties than the lower ones. This ladder may be roughly said to have three steps:

1. the souls of plants that are strictly nutritive ;
2. those of animals that are nutritive as well as sensitive; and
3. those of thinking and reasoning beings.

Are any of these living things immortal at all? Aristotle talks about biological reproduction－like nutrition, a faculty common to all living things－as being done for the sake of having "a share in the immortal and divine in the only way they can ....."(28) But this striving for the immortality of the species is not personal immortality, nor yet the kind of which Socrates assured his friends.

It has been noted above that Aristotle's definition of the soul seems to leave no room for immortality. There is, however, an escape hatch, so to speak, in his hierarchical scheme. For although the soul of a living thing is an inseparable whole exercising all the numerous vital functions, "in the case of the mind and the thinking faculty nothing is yet clear; it seems to be a distinct kind of soul, and it alone admits of being separated, as the immortal from the perish-able."(29) Elsewhere in the treatise, Aristotle elaborates on this point. Just as there must be a distinction between an art and its material, between the matter in a thing and its efficient cause, so there must be a distinction between an active mind and a passive mind within the soul. "Mind in the passive sense is such because it becomes all things", and its thinking is closest to perception－which, according to Aristotle, is a passive or neutral sense receiving messages from an active object and is temporarily actualised by the object. The active mind, on the other hand, "makes all things; this is a kind of positive stage like light; for in a sense light makes potential into actual colours. Mind in this sense is separable, impassive, and unmixed, since it is essentially an activity; for the agent is always superior to the patient, and the originating cause to the matter." He concludes:

[The active] mind does not think intermittently. When isolated it is its true self and nothing more, and this alone is immortal and overlasting (we do not remember because, while mind in this sense cannot be acted upon, mind in the passive sense is perishable), and without this nothing thinks.(30)

What does he mean? He has admitted above that he was not yet clear, and Greeks, Muslims, and Christians have debated this concept for more than two thousand years. This is indeed the most obscure part of his psychology. It is probable that he believed in a hierarchy reaching from the lowest beings to God, with the active reason of a human being among the highest members in the scale, yet still below God and other intelligences. Whether or not that is a correct interpretation of what was at the back of Aristotle's mind is not important for this essay; the main point here is that Aristotle admits of the immortality of the individual human soul, and thus enters the mainstream of discussions on that problem. After a certain metamorphosis, his psychology as outlined here became established Catholic doctrine.

To oversimplify a long and complicated story, that metamorphosis may be said to have taken place in two stages. First, a Judaeo-Christian eschatology merged with one form of the Platonic concept of the soul, resulting in the Augustinian doctrine that dominated the early middle ages; the emphasis of this teaching was the substantiality of the soul and its independence from the body. Second, the early mediaeval Christian idea was redefined by St. Thomas Aquinas in essentially Aristotelian terms in the 13th century; this redefinition emphasised the unity of the human being, of body and soul together. The Thomistic approach was officially adopted by the Church, especially by the Council of Trent.

8.New Cath. Ency., XIII, 447, 451. S.G.F. Brandon, Man and his destiny (Manchester, 1962), 174-184.

9.Sir R.W. Livingstone, Portrait of Socrates: being the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Plato in an English translation with introductions and notes (Oxford, 1953), 78-81. Cf. A.E. Taylor, Plato: the man and his work (7th ed., 1960), 180-193.

10.Livingstone, 100-101.

11.Ibid., 101-102.

12.Ibid., 126-129.

13.Ibid., 194. Cf. Antony Flew, “Immortality”, in Encyclopaedia of philosophy (NY, 1967), IV, 139-150; Herschel Baker, The image of man (NY,1947, 1961), 46-49, for Plato’s later views.

14.Wm. A. Hammond, transl., Aristotle’s psychology: a treatise on the principle of life (London, 1902), xxvi-xxvii. For stages of development of Aristotle’s psychology, see Sir David Ross, Aristotle, Parva Naturalia: a revised text with introduction and commentary (Oxford, 1955), 1-18; also, Ross, Aristotle (5th ed., London, 1964), 112.

15.Ross, Aristotle, 112, 129. Hammond, xv, xxi-xxii, xxvii, 1xxxiii.

16.W. S. Hett, transl., Aristotle: On the soul, Parva Naturalia, On breath (Cambridge, Mass, 1957), 69 (de Anima II, 1, 412b5 in the Greek Text). Cf. Ross, Aristotle, 134.

17.Hett, 67.

18.Ibid.

19.Ibid.

20.Ibid., 97-101. Ross, Aristotle, 134.

21.Hett, 87-88. Hammond, xxii.

22.Hett, 69, 79-80.

23.Hammond, xxii-xxiv. Baker, op. Cit., 60.

24.Hett, 79.

25.Flew, op. cit. Hammond,1xxxv. Ross, Aristotle, 131-132, 135.

26.Hett, 75.

27.Hett, 81-83. Hammond, 81-83. Ross, Aristotle, 129-131. Cf. Joseph Needham, Science and civilisation in China, II, 21-23.

28.Hett, 86-87.

29.Hett, 77.

30.Hett, 171, (De Anima, III, v, 430al0-25, in the Greek text), on the 'active mind' Ross, Aristotle, 135, 148-153, on 'active reason'. Hammond, lxxi-lxxxvi, on 'creative reason'. Also known in the middle ages as 'active intellect' or 'agent intellect' (intelligentia agens).