The evolution of concept of phyche Homer to Aristotle- Katona.pdf

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The Evolution of the Concept of Psyche from Homer to Aristotle

Gabor Katona†

Princeton University

Abstract

In the following essay I examine those aspects of theevolution of the concept of psyche from Homer to Aris-totle that show striking dissimilarities with our modernunderstanding of the soul/mind. In my analysis I will givemore room to the problem of the Homeric soul-words,for Homer’s picture of the soul seems to be especiallychallenging for our conceptual schemes. My guiding sus-picion during this study is that there is a temptation formodern students of this subject (like myself) to suppose agreater continuity between their understanding of what itis to be a soul or mind and ancient thinkers’ grasp of thesame experiential field than is warranted by available tex-tual evidence. I will focus on some of the astonishing fea-tures of the concept of psyche from Homer to Aristotle—- features that I was, hopefully, able to reconstruct inspite of the assimilating force of my prejudices.

1. THE HOMERIC PSYCHE

The first problem we face when entering the Homeric texts is thelack of a center or spiritual core of man’s behavior that could be theequivalent of our “soul” or “mind”.1 Instead there are several “soul-

† Correspondence concerning this essay may be sent to Gabor Katona,Princeton University, History of Science Department, Dickinson Hall,Princeton, NJ 08544

1 See Bruno Snell: Discovery of the Mind, Cambridge, Mass.,:Harvard University Press, 1953, p. 8. C. A. van Peursen: Body, Soul,Spirit, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966, pp. 87-88. Arthur W.Adkins: From the Many to the One: A Study of Personality and Viewsof Human Nature in the Context of Ancient Greek Society, Values, andBeliefs, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970, pp. 15-16. David B.Claus: Toward the Soul: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Psyche BeforePlato, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, pp. 1-7. Jan Bremmer:


Psyche from Homer to Aristotle 29

words” denoting different aspects of behavior. They refer to physicalorgans, “mental functions”, or the results of those functions. Which ofthe following terms should be rendered as “soul”: thymos, nous,menos, phrenes, psyche, ker, ethor, or kardie? What are we looking forwhen we try to identify a “concept of the soul” in Homer? Of course,tradition suggests that out of all available soul-words we concentrateon psyche, since, due to later developments following Homer, psychebecame the core-concept of what is meant by the mental. But doessuch a later development warrant our choice of singling out psyche as“the soul” in Homer? Laying this question aside in this essay, I ratherpursue the following line of thought: What kind of transformations hadthis early, Homeric, anthropology undergone until it reached Plato’scomprehensive personal “soul” which is (a) the immortal, divine partof man, (b) the center of his whole being, (c) the seat of rational judg-ment and moral choice, and (d) an antagonist of the body, related to itas master to slave?2

1.1. Lack of unity the Homeric self

Homeric man understood himself as an aggregate of different“mental” agents (fragmentary thesis).3 Homeric man did not knowgenuine personal decision4, did not yet know of the will as an ethical

The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1983, pp. 3-12. Daniel N. Robinson: Aristotle’s Psychology, NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1989pp. 4-5. Ferenc Lenard: Alelektan utjai (The Ways of Psychology), Budapest: Akademiai Kiado,1986, pp. 11-13. Charles Taylor: Sources of the Self, Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 118. I. Sz. Kon: Enunk nyomaban(Quest for the Self), Budapest: Kossuth Konyvkiado, 1989, pp. 71-73.

2 Concerning the development of psyche from Homer to Plato seeDaniel D. Robinson: Aristotle’s Psychology, New York: Columbia Uni-versity Press, 1989, pp. 1-29. D. B. Claus: Toward the Soul, pp. 3-4. J.Bremmer: The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, pp. 24, 54, 66-69. A.W. Adkins: From the Many to the One, pp. 44-48, 60-62. R. B. Onians:The Origins of European Thought, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 1951, pp. 115-118. Charles Taylor: Sources of the Self, pp.111-126. Peursen: Body, Soul, Spirit, p. 92.

3 B. Snell: Discovery of the Mind, pp. 19-22. Cf. Peursen: Body, Soul,Spirit, (1966), p. 89. A. W. Adkins: From the Many to the One, p. 75.Charles Taylor: Sources of the Self, p. 117. Paolo Vivante: The HomericImagination: A Study of Homer’s Poetic Perception of Reality, Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press, 1970, p. 35.

4 B. Snell: Discovery of the Mind, pp. 20, 31. Cf. Laszlo Versenyi :Man’s Measure: A Study of the Greek Image of Man from Homer toSophocles, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974, p. 12.


30 Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psy. Vol. 22, No. 1, 2002

factor5, and he constantly felt himself decisively influenced (guided orimpeded) by gods6 (lack of personal decision thesis). Concerning thefragmentary thesis, the different interpretations boil down to two basictypes: (1) The Homeric self is dualistic; (2) the Homeric self is multi-ple. According to (1) the different “soul-words” fall under two com-prehensive categories. Rohde opted for the duality of the visible man(the body and its functions) and psyche (“the other self”, the double ofthe self, etc.).7 Bremmer distinguished between body souls endowingthe body with life and consciousness and the free soul representing theindividual. The free soul is psyche in Homer; it is active during uncon-sciousness. The body souls (thymos, nous, menos) are active duringwaking life. Claus maintains that the Homeric soul-words express twotypes of underlying semantic categories: thought words and life-forcewords. Among the eight soul-words analyzed by Claus, nous andphren/phrenes belong to the thought word category, whereas thymos,menos, ethor, and ker are life-force words. (Claus, 1981, 15-16).

Advocates of (2), the “multiple soul” view, like Snell, Peursen,Vivante, Taylor, and Versenyi claim that the Homeric self is frag-mented according to the different soul-words employed to grasp differ-ent aspects of the field we unifyingly call the mental. The self is the

5 B. Snell: Discovery of the Mind, pp. 30-31. Cf. A. C. Fellman & M.Fellman: The Primacy of the Will in Late Nineteen-Century AmericanIdeology of the Self, Historical Reflections, 1977/4, pp. 26-45.

6 B. Snell: Discovery of the Mind, p. 20, pp. 29-32. Cf. Peursen: “Thusthere is no room within man for an individual, personal soul. Wheremodern man would wish to speak of a highly personal action orthought, Homeric man sees other forces at work, divine powers. Fran-kel puts a particular emphasis on this point, describing archaic man asan ‘open field’ for these forces, in which the ‘I’ and the ‘non-I’ arehardly separated and the frontiers between them as yet scarcelydefined.( Body, Soul, Spirit, p. 91). See also Charles Taylor: Sources ofthe Self, p. 118; A. W. Adkins: From the Many to the One, pp. 28-44. I.Sz. Kon: Enunk nyomaban (Quest for the Self), p. 9. J. E. Raven & G.S. Kirk: The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1957, pp. 213-214.

7 Erwin Rohde: Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in ImmortalityAmong the Greeks, Freeport, N.Y., Books for Libraries Press, 1972.pp.4-10. Relying on the ruling anthropological theories of his day,Rohde argued that occurrences of psyche in Homer were manifesta-tions of the belief in the Doppelganger. For a critique of Rohde’s the-ory see D. B. Claus: Toward the Soul, pp. 1-2. J. Bremmer: The EarlyGreek Concept of the Soul,pp. 6-7. Herbert Weir Smyth: HarvardEssays on Classical Subjects, Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press,1968, p. 244.



open field of internal and external forces that determine behavior. InHomer we witness the immediate flux and fusion of feelings, actions,thoughts, gestures, inner and outer worlds.8 The thesis of the “frag-mentary, battleground-like” Homeric self, however, seems untenablein the light of the following: Homeric heroes had no difficulty saying ‘Iwish’ or ‘I thought’, therefore they must have had a sense of a psychicwhole, a psychic coherence implied by the use of the personal pro-noun.9 Achilles urges: “But let us allow these things to be over and donewith, having subdued our thymos in our chest.”10 In this situation it isthe whole personality expressed by the personal pronoun that inhibitsimpulses.

The lack of personal decision thesis emphasizes that in most cases theaction of a Homeric hero is instigated by his thymos or nous, or feetand hands11 instead of by a representative core of personality that

8 B. Snell: Discovery of the Mind, pp. 1-22. Peursen: Body, Soul,Spirit, pp. 90-95. Charles Taylor: Sources of the Self, pp. 117-119. P.Vivante: The Homeric Imagination, pp. 35-36. L. Versenyi : Man’sMeasure, pp. 10-13. For the critique of this view see D. B. Claus:Toward the Soul, p. 59.

9 H. Lloyd-Jones: The Justice of Zeus, Berkeley: University of Cali-fornia Press, 1971, p. 9. K. J. Dover: Greek Popular Morality in theTime of Plato and Aristotle, Oxford, 1974, p. 151. J. Bremmer: TheEarly Greek Concept of the Soul, pp. 66-67. Taylor, on the contrary,claims: “To the modern, this fragmentation, and the seeming confusionabout merit and responsibility, are very puzzling. Some have beentempted to make light of Snell’s thesis, and to deny that Homeric manwas all that different from us in his way of understanding decision andresponsibility.”(Sources of the Self, p. 118.) Versenyi observes: “It isnot that the self in Homer has absolutely no unity. To begin with it hasthe same kind of loose unity that the episodic epic as a whole has: onethat barely holds the separate and discrete aspects of a man’s personal-ity together.” (Man’s Measure, p. 12.)

10 Homer: Iliad, 19.65. (Homer: The Iliad, translated by StanleyLombardo, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishers, 1997.) See also Iliad,1.188 where Achilles controls his thymos. Cf. A. W. Adkins: From theMany to the One, p. 22.

11 For body parts as instigating factors see Iliad. 1.166. “For Homerthe feet, the knees, the hands, the eyes are not simply parts of thebody, but instruments or agents charged with an overflowing energy,and single acts are often represented as self-developing processesalmost independent of a person’s control: it is then the feet that stepsout, the knees that move and carry away, the hands that crave foraction, the eyes that look and gaze.” (P. Vivante: The Homeric Imagi-nation, pp. 35-36.)



would hold all ‘thoughts’ and ‘feelings’ under purview. Further, thegivenness of motivating factors is manifest in the intervention ofgods.12 Gods cause the hero to do what he would not otherwise do orgive him a sudden surge of strength and vigor.13 Yet, this “divine med-dling” does not absolve the hero from being responsible for his

12 Iliad. 5.177; 5.185; 6.108; 9.459; 11.363; 11.366; 15.255; 15.290;15.473; 17.98; 20.98; 24.331; 24.374; 24.538. Odyssey. 3.131; 3.173; 4.380;4.469; 4.712; 5.221; 9.142; 10.141; 14.65; 14.227; 16.356; 18.407; 19.488;21.196; 21.213; 23.63; 24.182. (Homer: The Odyssey, translated by E.V.Rieu, London-New York: Penguin Books, 1991.) Bernard C. Dietrichemphasizes that the group of Olympic gods is just a machine, a conve-nient tool at the poet’s disposal to impose his own will on the action ofthe poem. This machine often deteriorates to an empty device. TheOlympian Gotterapparat is an artifice of the poet, and it was not part ofthe popular belief. (B. C. Dietrich: Death, Fate, and the Gods: TheDevelopment of A Religious Idea in Greek Popular Belief and inHomer, London: Athlone Press, 1965, pp. 297-299.) Vivante disagrees:the gods constantly help men because of their deep and continuousconcern for man’s life. (Vivante: The Homeric Imagination, 1970, p.43.) See also Versenyi: Man’s Measure, pp. 21-23, and Jasper Griffin:Homer on Life and Death, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1980, p. 93.

13 “Homer’s characters routinely claim to be compelled, moved, dis-tracted, or deceived by the gods. The world of the ancient Greeks, longbefore the classical period and before written law, recognized madnessas exculpatory. The most ancient of the generic terms for the grosslydistorted mind, entheos, refers to ‘a god within.’ The victim or vessel ofentheos is thereby irresistibly enthralled.” (Daniel Robinson: WildBeasts and Idle Humours, Cambridge and London: Harvard UniversityPress, 1996, p. 9) “The Homeric hero is always ready to attribute thecause of an event to a deity, if that happening should noticeably assistor retard him, or if it should occur contrary to his expectation or plan-ning.” (Dietrich: Death, Fate, and the Gods, p. 301.) Versenyi claimsthat Homeric man attributes an act to the gods if it seems out of hischaracter or whose consequences do not cohere with the desired ones.(Man’s Measure, p. 12.) Shein holds that in the Iliad a god is manifeston any occasion on which a person seems to be or to do somethingmore than would be normally expected. (Seth L. Shein: The MortalHero: An Introduction to Homer’s Iliad, Berkeley: University of Cali-fornia Press, 1984, p. 57.) Dodds used the Freudian term overdetermi-nation to explain the mixture of divine and human motivation. (EricRobertson Dodds: The Greeks and the Irrational). See also A. W.Adkins: From the Many to the One, pp. 25-28. Peursen: Body, Soul,Spirit, p. 91 Vivante: The Homeric Imagination, pp. 39-42.



actions.14 Robinson accepts the role of divine meddling in causation ofbehavior. However he argues against the view that would totalize thelack of personal decision in Homer. This view is present, for instance,in Snell’s interpretation of the Homeric self and Julian Jaynes’ bicam-eral hypothesis in terms of which Homeric characters were constantlyunder control of hallucinations, interpreted as alien agencies, arisingfrom their not-yet-integrated nervous system. Robinson maintains thatone of the earliest recorded insanity defenses can be found in Iliad 19.when Achilles and Agamemnon are reconciled. Agamemnon’s excusefor his action is a reference to Zeus and fate and the Erinys. If thisexplanatory strategy was available for Homeric heroes and if it wastaken seriously enough to commend forgiveness, then it was a clearindication of a recognized distinction between personal agency [per-sonal initiative] and acting under the influence of gods.15

1.2. Psyche in Homer

After-life in Homer is a miserable state in comparison with life“here under the sun.”16 Features of this after-life state are the follow-ing: the psyche lacks “flesh, bones and sinews”; it has the power of

14 G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield: The Presocratic Philoso-phers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 9. Adkins triesto give an account for this paradox feature in terms of the Homericsociety being both a results-culture and a shame-culture. (A. W.Adkins: From the Many to the One, pp. 28-48). Versenyi writes: “Theattribution by Homeric man of what we would call his own action todivine interference does not legally exculpate him. For it is not volitionand intention that make him liable to punishment but the act itself. . . .In the absence of a distinction between inner core and outer behavior,a distinction between will and act cannot be made. . . . Thus there is noinconsistency in Agamemnon’s offering to pay huge damages for whathe did, while at the same time insisting on his innocence.” (Man’s Mea-sure, p. 15) See Shein: The Mortal Hero, p. 58.

15 See Daniel Robinson: Wild Beasts and Idle Humours, Cambridgeand London: Harvard University Press, 1996, pp. 8-33.

16 Odyssey. 11.468-499 (Achilles who would rather be a servant onearth than the king of the dead in Hades). “Down in the mirky under-world they now float unconscious, or, at most, with a twilight half-con-sciousness, wailing in a shrill diminutive voice, helpless, indifferent.(. . .) To speak of an ‘immortal life’ of these souls, as scholars bothancient and modern have done, is incorrect. They can hardly be said tolive even, any more than the image does that is reflected in the mir-ror.”(E. Rohde: Psyche, p. 9). See also B. C. Dietrich: Death, Fate, andthe Gods, p. 42; J. Bremmer: The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, pp.70-124. Griffin: Homer on Life and Death, pp. 90-92. B. Russell: A His-



motion but it is devoid of purpose; it has a voice, but only that of asqueaking; it is smoke-like, filmy, vaporous in nature. Some psychesstill possess “consciousness” and are effected by emotions; but mostsouls have lost “consciousness”, “memory”, etc. They live on in anunsubstantial reflection of their life: Orion still pursues his quarry,Achilles is still the lord of the dead, Minos still pronounces judgment.The gloomy view of after-life state (we could call it ‘Homeric hopeless-ness’) is due to the inseparability of life, body, and person in Homer.The person is the living man with the complexity of his being: hiswords, quick legs and strong arms, gleaming eyes, noble acts, etc. Lifeis inseparable from the body. Existence is primarily physical or bodilyexistence. The person cannot be reduced to a ‘permanent core’ thatwould represent him.17

If we ask if the living body or its counterfeit, the psyche, is the “real”man, we find an inconsistent view in Homer.18 Not infrequently thebody is contrasted, as the “man himself” with the psyche; in otherpassages it is the psyche, hastening to Hades, which is referred to bythe person’s proper name. Even if the proper name is ascribed to thepsyche, we cannot mistake its weak, shadow-like existence as life.19 Thetotality of the human being is lost at death. Only an aspect of his being,his psyche, does not cease to exist. The disembodied psyche is stillcapable of “feeling”, “sensation”, etc., as long as the body is unburnt.The psyche can regain capacities associated with the living, whole per-son after the symbolic reinstitution of physical functions: e.g., by drink-ing blood.20 Living as a human being, a person, is essentially connectedwith living in/as a body. The idea of life after death for Homer is con-

tory of Western Philosophy, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945, pp.146-147.

17 Cf. J. Bremmer: The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, p. 71, 5thfootnote.

18 Cf. E. Rohde: Psyche, p.6. Smyth: Harvard Essays on ClassicalSubjects, p. 243. “In the introductory verses to the Iliad we are told thatthe heroes’ death-souls go to Hades . . . Whereas they themselves, thewriter says, are left behind on the field of battle. Straight after death,therefore, it is not the death-soul but the corpse which has the betterclaim to be regarded as the man’s self.”(Peursen: Body, Soul, Spirit, p.88).

19 F. Lenard contends that the Homeric psyche, this shadowy, dream-like image, was not different from the body in kind. The body and thepsyche represented different ‘degrees’ of the same reality. The bodywas stronger, more real, whereas the psyche was just a weak copy ofthe living organism. (Lenard: A lelektan utjai, [The Ways of Psychol-ogy], p. 11.)

20 Odyssey. 11. Cf. A. W. Adkins: From the Many to the One, p. 15.



tinued existence rather than the immortality of an immaterial core ofthe person. That the bodily features are indispensable in the compre-hension of the person is shown in the translation myth (Odyssey. 4.560-568). Some privileged heroes are given immortality, and they are sentto the Islands of the Blest.21 Translation is an instantaneous emerginginto a new form of existence without a soul-idea that would mediatethis transition.22 It is a more consolatory picture of after-life, but itscomforting nature to the Homeric man is due, as Smyth puts it, to “theperpetuation of that complete existence, which in the belief of Homericage, lay in the undissevered coexistence of soul and body” (Smyth, 1968,248). Immortality in the Homeric sense is not the immortality of a“soul” capable of surviving the body’s death, but the translation of thewhole person into a new mode of existence shared with gods; thewhole person continues living in a new existence.23 Robinson claimsthe translation myth represents a step in the movement towards mind-body dualism.24

1.3. Understanding the soul-words

In Homer there is a comprehensive, hardly differentiated flow of“psychic” activities. Functions of “mental agents” denoted by the soul-words overlap to the extent that we cannot speak of separate facultieslike the faculty of thought, the faculty of emotion, or the faculty ofvolition. Interpreters agree that nous in Homer is especially concernedwith what we call “intellectual functions”, “thinking.” Yet, it also needsto be emphasized that “thinking” in Homeric terms is not our distilled,ethereal process of cognition.25 Agamemnon “rejoiced in his nous”

21 See E. Rohde: Psyche, pp. 54-79. Cf. J. Bremmer: The Early GreekConcept of the Soul, p. 77, pp. 82-83.

22 Cf. A. Hultkrantz: Conceptions of the Soul among North AmericanIndians, Stockholm, 1963, pp. 464-480.

23 The translated are not disembodied souls but men “whose soulshave not been separated from their visible selves — for only thus canthey feel and enjoy the sense of life. The picture . . . here is the preciseopposite of the blessed immortality of the soul in its separate exis-tence.”(E. Rohde: Psyche, p. 56).

24 Daniel N. Robinson: Aristotle’s Psychology, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1989, pp. 11-12.

25 “Thus, like phrenes, it (nous) gets something of the value of ‘intelli-gence’ or ‘intellect’ but . . . it is not mere intellect; it is dynamic . . . andemotional. . . . We can thus better understand its function in Greekphilosophy, e.g. for Anaxagoras as the dynamic ordering factor in theuniverse. (Onians: The Origins of European Thought, p. 83.) Vivanteobserves: “Homer sees an elemental force at the roots of feeling,thought, action. The very fiber of man or woman is continually at stake



(Odyssey 8.78), and Paris says of Hector that “the nous in his chest isfearless” (Iliad 3.63). The nous is also mentioned in contexts of rousingmen to action (Iliad 14.61). Difficulties arising from trying to catego-rize functions of the soul words according to our distinctions are mani-fest in opposing interpretations of thymos. Snell, Adkins, andBremmer claim that thymos is mainly in charge of (e)motional issues26,whereas Onians, Peursen, and Kon maintain that thymos is the closestamong the Homeric soul words to our concept of “consciousness.”27 Innumerous passages thymos is the seat of joy, pleasure, love, sympathy,etc.28 It is also the organ of “reflection.”29 Thymos is the abode ofknowledge: for instance, Menelaos “knew in his thymos that his brotherwas beset by the trouble.”(Iliad 2.409)

1.4. Ontological commitment inherent in the soul-words

Regarding the ontological commitment of Homeric soul-words Ihave identified three different positions represented by various com-mentators. I call the first undifferentiated identity. In terms of this viewthe Homeric soul words denote physical organs or functions of theseorgans. Mental acts like “thinking”, “feeling”, and “desiring”, areascribed to physical organs. This view is represented by Onians, Peur-sen, and Adkins.30 The identity is undifferentiated because it is not amonistic position reached by the reduction of the “mental” to the

. . . Whatever they feel or do comes as the manifestation of a sustainingpower that wanes or rises according to circumstance, and each instanceaffects their lives like a stroke of fate.” This underlying quality orpower is “sheer vitality”. (Vivante: The Homeric Imagination, pp. 38-39, 42.)

26 Snell: Discovery of the Mind, pp. 12-13. A. W. Adkins: From theMany to the One, pp. 17-22. J. Bremmer: The Early Greek Concept ofthe Soul, pp. 54-55.

27 Onians: The Origins of European Thought, pp. 23-84, Peursen:Body, Soul, Spirit, p. 89, I. Sz. Kon: Enunk nyomaban (Quest for theSelf), p. 45.

28 Iliad. 3.139; 4.43; 5.243; 9.343; 11.608; 12.174. Odyssey. 4.71; 5.126;6.155; 7.55.

29 Onians: The Origins of European Thought, p. 13. See Iliad. 1.429;2.5; 2.36; 10.355; 10.491; Odyssey. 1.33; 2.116; 2.156; 4.187; 5.444; 9.424;10.50. Cf. “Whenever the Homeric heroes communed within them-selves, they held colloquy with their thymos.”(Peursen: Body, Soul,Spirit, p. 89.)

30 Onians: The Origins of European Thought, pp. 32-33, p. 44, pp. 51-52, pp. 67-68, pp. 109-123. Peursen: Body, Soul, Spirit, p. 88. A. W.Adkins: From the Many to the One, pp. 15-18. Cf. Vivante: TheHomeric Imagination, p. 36.



“physical” or vice versa, but it is a stage in which the very dichotomy of“mental” versus “physical” is still unknown.31 Onians maintains thatthe organ of mind in Homer is the lungs; the mind or the “stuff ofconsciousness” is identical with breath; and psyche is the cerebra-spinalmarrow. The second position, analogical identity, holds that theHomeric “soul-words” had originally (in pre-Homeric Greek) denoteddistinct physical organs or processes, but by the time of Homer theywere only analogically related to bodily organs and functions. Snellargues that the soul-words denote agents that function by analogy tothe visible organs of the body.32 Claus also maintains that the soul-words are “psychological agents” that are described by analogy tophysical organs.33 According to the third, dualistic account, some or allof the soul-words refer to immaterial agents or functions. Rohde main-tained that the soul-words denote immaterial functions;34 and Homerrepresented the tendency to “dematerialize psychological concepts.”Bremmer also claims that psyche has non-physical mode of existence(Bremmer, 1983, 16-18), and nous is “never conceived as somethingmaterial (Bremmer, 1983, 57). Given the difficulties present inPresocratic texts to conceive immaterial, incorporeal agencies andfunctions, I do not regard this third, dualistic view tenable.

31 J. E. Raven and G. S. Kirk claim before Plato the “material versusimmaterial” dichotomy was not yet conceived.

32 On Homer’s “materialization of psychic processes” see Vivante:The Homeric Imagination, pp. 36-39.

33 D. B. Claus: Toward the Soul, p. 7, pp. 16-17, pp. 25-27. “In theHomeric texts themselves there is little evidence for the active reten-tion of consistent physical referents for these words. . . . In fact, theetymologies in question are often vague or impossible to interpret inthe light of Homeric usage, the physical referents are not, on thewhole, either precise or self-consistent, and the mental and emotionalfunctions in question are not easily distinguishable from word toword.” Claus: Toward the Soul, pp. 14-15.

34 “The words of the poet often show that as a matter of fact hethought of these functions and emotions as incorporeal, though theywere still named after parts of the body. And so we often find men-tioned side by side with the ‘midriff’ and in the closest conjunction withit, the thumos, a name which is not taken from any bodily organ andshows already that it is thought of as an immaterial function. In thesame way many other words of this kind (noos-noein-noema, boule,menos, metis) are used to describe faculties and activities of the will,sense, or thought, and show that these activities are thought of as inde-pendent, free-working, and immaterial.”(E. Rohde: Psyche, p. 30).



2. “OPEN SELF” AND MATERIAL PSYCHE IN THE PRESOCRATICS

Before continuing with Socrates, I would like to say a few words onpsyche in some Presocratic authors, namely, Heraclitus, Anaxagorasand Diogenes of Apollonia. A surprising feature of their soul-descrip-tions is the difficulty to conceive soul as an immaterial or incorporealagent. Something that seems almost commonsensical to us baffled thegreatest minds of antiquity. Probably, this difficulty was in part due totheir ontology. As Kirk et al. observe concerning the Mind in Anaxag-oras: “Anaxagoras in fact is striving, as had several of his predecessors,to imagine and describe a truly incorporeal entity. But as with them, sostill with him, the only ultimate criterion of reality is extension inspace.”35 Corporeal images attaching to descriptions of the soul are notproblematic in authors like Leucippus or Democritus who are knownas representing a materialist conception of the soul. These imagesbecome somewhat embarrassing, however, when we are told that evenPythagoras, a renowned advocate of reincarnation and the soul’s inde-pendence of the body, resorted occasionally to materialistic images ofthe soul. According to one fragment, Pythagoras envisioned the soul asmade up of small particles that we see dancing in the air in sunlight.36

It is, of course, always a question with Presocratic thinkers how muchwe can trust certain fragments; especially in the case of Pythagoraswho did not leave any manuscripts behind whatsoever.

Besides difficulties of grasping an incorporeal agent, Presocraticthinkers depict the soul of the “individual” as being essentially con-nected with [or even being a part of] a larger, cosmic order or elementoutside. They present us with a uniquely or even strangely “open self-construct.” This self is not self-contained, rounded up within the con-fines of a body but it is constantly under the influence of elements(aither, fire or air) from outside. According to Heraclitus “we becomeintelligent by drawing in this divine reason [logos] through breathing,and forgetful when asleep, but we regain our senses when we wake upagain. For in sleep, when the channels of perception are shut, our mind

35 G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield: The Presocratic Philoso-phers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 364.

36 Lenard mentions that not even Pythagoras who clearly distin-guished between body and soul (emphasizing the immortality andsuperiority of the soul) was exempt from the notion of the ‘materialsoul’. “The Pythagoreans taught that the small, shiny particles of dustmoving in the air composed the soul when they got into a body. ThePythagoreans represented an extremely advanced view when theymade the number, this abstract element, the center of their system. Yetthey still believed that the soul was the harmony of the body, com-posed of small dust-particles.”( A lelektan utjai, p. 21.): A lelektan utjai(The Ways of Psychology), Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1986, p. 14.



is sundered from its kinship with the surrounding, and breathing is theonly point at attachment to be preserved.”37 Diogenes of Apolloniagrants air with the status of arche. In his descriptions air is not only alife-giving element for living creatures that participate in it by breath-ing, but it is also the principle of intelligence.38 All sensitive and cogni-tive processes are dependent on air. We sense and think by theinteraction between air within and without. Aither (fiery air) in Hera-clitus and air in Diogenes, however, are not simply elements mediatingbetween the external world and us. Logos and air contain the divinestructure, design, order that we, humans, are supposed to assimilate.Becoming intelligent means sharing in this higher order. It is not arelationship based on “mirroring” or “representing.” Humans get toknow this larger order not by representing it but by being permeated byit.

3. PSYCHE IN SOCRATES

In the Presocratics we witness a process of unifying man’s percep-tual-cognitive-emotive acts in a more coherent concept of psyche. Thisforming coherence is striking when compared to the fragmented,multi-soul-word descriptions of Homeric man. In Socrates we arrive atthe idea of psyche as a unified core of behavior, a representative of theentirety of the person after death, and an antagonist of the body. Soc-rates has no difficulty of grasping the soul as an incorporeal agent. Hedoes not need the body any more to save the wholeness of the humanbeing. We usually take Socrates/Plato as presenting us with a coherentpicture of the soul and a clear-cut dualism of body and soul; neverthe-less some difficulties and even inconsistencies surface in his dialoguesconcerning the nature of the soul and its relation to the body. In cer-tain dialogues Socrates/Plato identifies the real self with the soulimprisoned in the body.39 In the introductory paragraphs of thePhaedo, Socrates is trying to sooth his disciples by claiming that thereal task of the philosopher is to get ready for death, i.e., the separa-tion or liberation of soul from the body. The Phaedo suggests that pas-sions, emotions, desires are attributes of the body, and they are inopposition with aspirations of the soul [which, to a great extent, isidentical with nous]. McPherran calls this position Socratic intellectual-

37 Fragment 234. (G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield: ThePresocratic Philosophers, p. 205). See also Fragments 194, 196.

38 Air “is for them both soul [i.e., life-principle] and intelligence. . . .And it seems to me that that which has intelligence is what men callair, and that all men are steered by this and that it has power over allthings.”(Fragments 602, 603.)

39 See Protagoras 312c, 313a-314b, 351a-b. Criton 47d-48a. Phaedo65d, 115b-116a. Republic 469d6-9, 526a-b, 535b-d.



ism.40 According to Dodds, the soul-concept emerging in the Phaedowas the result of the Socratic synthesis of two separate traditions: theidea of the detachable occult self of Shamanistic tradition and the ideaof a rational soul (nous) of Socrates’ ethical reflections.41

One of the perplexities arising from this “intellectual soul-concept”and its radical contrast with the body is how we can account for affec-tive elements of mental life? Where should emotions, desires, and pas-sions be situated: on the side of the soul or on the side of the body?Concerning this question we find inconsistent accounts in Socrates/Plato. As opposed to the clear-cut soul-body dualism and intellectual-ized view of the soul given in the Phaedo, Socrates locates the sourceof affective elements within the soul in The Republic 435a-444e, 589b2,The Sophist 228b, Timaeus 44, 70, and in the famous Chariot Analogyof the Phaidrus. In terms of these dialogues, contradicting Socraticintellectualism, the affective features of mental life fall on the side ofthe soul instead of the body. Vlastos points out that the very samequotation from Homer taken by Socrates of the Phaedo to depict thestruggle between the body and the soul, reappears in The Republic as anillustration of a struggle within the soul itself.42 The Chariot Analogy ofthe Phaidrus describes the inner conflict of the soul after its separationfrom the body. The struggle between the two horses and the down-pulling tendencies of the bad horse cannot originate in the body sincethe analogy depicts a disembodied state of the soul. If the body is notpresent to drag the soul down to its base level, from where do thedisturbing impulses, affects, represented by the bad horse, arise? Thestruggle between body and soul in the early dialogues reappears as aninner struggle between different parts of the soul in later dialogues.

4. ARISTOTLE’S COMPREHENSIVE SOUL-CONCEPT

In Aristotle’s extant texts the concept of psyche is the object ofhighly systematic elaboration. He diligently reviewed and interpretedall the available soul-conceptions of his predecessors in the first bookof De Anima. Aristotle summarizes, synthesizes and, to some extent,reconfigures previous developments of soul-theories by forging a “psy-chological” doctrine that would serve as the basis for further inquiresconcerning the mental for almost two thousand years. Descartes, whencreating a paradigm of the soul still extremely influential in our days,

40 Mark L. McPherran: Socrates on the Immortality of the Soul, Jour-nal of the History of Philosophy, 1994/January, p. 4.

41 E. R. Dodds: Plato and the Irrational Soul. Plato – A Collections ofCritical Essays, vol. II, edited by G. Vlastos, Notre Dame Press, 1971.

42 Plato: Phaedo 94d-e, and The Republic 441b-c. See Plato – A Col-lections of Critical Essays, vol. II, edited by G. Vlastos, Notre DamePress, 1971.



was rebelling against Aristotle’s theory of psyche/anima. At the onsetof the Cartesian theory of the mind, we witness attempts to overcomea tradition largely indebted to Aristotle’s systematizing efforts. Beforeexamining what the Cartesians had to extirpate from Aristotle to formtheir own distinctive, “modern” theory of the soul [which, in fact, is atheory of the mind], I would like to say a few words on an inconsis-tency emerging in Aristotle’s doctrine of the soul. This inconsistency isconcerned with the human being as an organic unity of body-and-soul.This inconsistency will also emerge in Thomas Aquinas’ discussion ofthe subsistence of the intellectual soul. Aquinas’ reasons for riskinghighly irreconcilable views [such as the substantial unity of body-and-soul and the independent subsistence of the intellectual soul] wereprobably different from Aristotle’s. Aquinas was committed to theimmortality of the soul doctrine in Christianity, largely shaped alongAugustinian lines. Whereas it is a fascinating question why Aristotleintroduced the idea of an agent intellect [nous poetikos] as an immor-tal, immaterial element of the soul, thereby endangering the unity ofman as body-and-soul? I need to give a short summary of the problem.

The unity of the human self is a central doctrine in Aristotle. Thehuman being is the organic union of body-and-soul. “The soul . . . is theprimary act of a physical body capable of life.”(De Anima, 412b)43 Thesoul is the substantial form of the body. As a unity of matter and form,body and soul constitute the substance called “this man.” The self isneither the soul in itself nor the body but, rather, the organic unity ofthe two. This organic unity of body-and-soul, however, is endangeredwhen Aristotle introduces the concept of the agent intellect (nous poe-tikos) in a much-disputed section of his De Anima (Book III, ChapterV, 430a10-430a25). This intellect is described as “separable, uncom-pounded and incapable of being acted on.” Also it “alone is immortaland perpetual. It does not remember, because it is impassible.” Thequestion is how this agent intellect becomes attached to the individualas a composite of body-and-soul? If it is separable and incorruptible,how does it take part in the substantial life and unity of the individual?How can we save the substantial unity of body-and-soul if the agentintellect is separable and ontologically distinct? This problem had beendogging interpreters for centuries and it gave rise to quite contradic-tory views in the texts Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistios, Averroesand his followers like Siger of Brabant on the one hand, and Thomisticinterpretations on the other. This passage on nous poetikus in the DeAnima certainly came handy for those Christian commentators whowere trying to synthesize Aristotelian texts with the immortality of thesoul doctrine.

43 Aristotle: De Anima, translated K. Foster and S. Humphries, NewHaven and London: Yale University Press, 1965.



Etienne Gilson expresses his appreciation of Aristotle’s attempt toidentify a principle in the workings of the psyche that could guaranteethat our soul was more than just the substantial form of the body. Aris-totle’s aspiration especially deserves our attention since he did nothave to subscribe to such a view because a specific religious doctrinetold him so.44 Richard Rorty makes a similar observation: “So evenAristotle, who spent his life pouring cold water on the metaphysicalextravagancies of his predecessors, suggests that there probably is some-thing to the notion that the intellect is ‘separable,’ even though nothingelse about the soul is. Aristotle has been praised by Ryleans andDeweyans for having resisted dualism by thinking of ‘soul’ as no moreontologically distinct from the human body than were the frog’s abilitiesto catch flies and flee snakes ontologically distinct from the frog’s body.But this ‘naturalistic’ view of soul did not prevent Aristotle from arguingthat since the intellect had the power of receiving the form of, for exam-ple, froghood . . . and taking it on itself without thereby becoming a frog,the intellect (nouς) must be something very special indeed.”45

Finally, I would like to return to another specialty of the Aristoteliansoul-concept that made Descartes balk and demand radical reinterpre-tation. Following the idea of soul as the substantial form of the body,Aristotle introduced different kinds of souls or different levels of thesoul’s operations in the second book of his De Anima. He did not wantto identify the soul with the intellect. He did not even want to restrictthe realm of the soul to mental operations. Soul, as the first actuality ofthe body, was also the principle of life, nutrition, reproduction, andlocomotion. Aristotle’s soul concept is amazingly liberal and incompa-rably less anthropocentric than Descartes’.46 His sensitivity to the mul-tiple forms of soul probably emerged from meticulous observations of

44 E. Gilson: The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, New York: CharlesScribner’s Son, 1940, p. 177.

45 Richard Rorty: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1979, p. 40.

46 Concerning Descartes’ redefinition of anima and his separation oflife from consciousness see: R. Sorabji: Animal Minds and HumanMorals, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. R. McRae: Descartes’Definition of Thought, in Cartesian Studies, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress. Ch. H. Kahn: Sensation and Consciousness in Aristotle’s Psy-chology, in Articles on Aristotle, New York: St. Martin Press, 1979. F.Solmsen: Antecedents of Aristotle’s Psychology and Scale of Beings,American Journal of Philology (76), 1955. N. Malcolm: ThoughtlessBrutes, in The Nature of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.W. Matson: Why Isn’t the Mind-Body Problem Ancient, in Mind, Mat-ter, and Method, Minneapolis, 1966. G. B. Matthews: Consciousnessand Life, Philosophy, 1977/January.



the animal kingdom. Aristotle’s resistance to draw “exact lines ofdemarcation” between species representing different levels on thescale of being is also manifest in his inclusive soul-concept.47 The Aris-totelian discourse on vegetative and locomotive souls may seem some-what strange or archaic for us. In fact, we are not talking about soul-body dualism any more but our problem is mind-body dualism. We donot have a “philosophy of soul” but we do concern ourselves with phi-losophy of mind. It is also reasonable to ask whether the discipline“psychology” should instead be called “nousology” or “mensology”?These questions can be a topic of further investigations.

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