Plato, Aristotle and Descartes on body and soul

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Plato, Aristotle and Descartes on body and soul

• Michael Lacewing

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Platos 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

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A separate soul I

• Souls cant 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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Descartes on the soul

• Aquinas developed Aristotles 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 dont need
  explaining in terms of the soul.

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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?

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What am I? the broad view

• I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a
  vessel, butI 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.

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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.