Still pondering and chewing into the significance of the soul which Aristotle elucidated many years ago in De Anima He tells us that the inquiry in to the nature and kind of being that soul is requires a special care and patience to unfold. Granted everytime we predicate any 'thing' which the verb 'to be' our mind has a nasty habit of 'substantiating' it---not only with abstracted nouns like freedom---but with notions of beings such as God and the soul. Difficulty number one!
Another difficulty arises because the word 'soul' has taken on a life of its own through its abundant use in christian teaching and yet it is used in these cases dogmatically---that is it is presupposed as that which the magisterium has determined it to mean, etc., etc.
Owing to these chief difficulties and yet others, the notion 'soul' ends up in our thoughts as a thing, reified in the manner of other things, and it appears as the kind of thing christian teachers like St. Augustine have told us that it is!
To either reify a thing before we have determined whether indeed this thing is a thing is a common error as is the acceptance of dogma or or any other opinion without submitting this 'teaching' to the inquiry we undertake is is double jeopardy and most unbecoming to philosophy. Granted this happens at the speed of light! As soon as the word 'soul' is spoken the mind moves forward with an understanding that is very seriously lacking. Unfortunately, it is too late, the concept has already moved ahead!
Such unthinking tendency is the norm for all human discourse, in this case I am thinking of political speech---"The great Soul of this nation..." Such words glibly pour off of the naive orators tongue like an oily pig on a sliding board... And the citizens glibly understand the meaning of the word thus spoken and smile patriotically at their telescreen.
If we are going to get anywhere in this essay we will need a better way to get at this soul.
Personally I was raised with the religious, christian connotation of soul, having studied these things in catholic school and as an altar boy---discussing the mass with Father Mabon------exciting stuff for a young kid: transubstantiation, magisterium, etc... As a ten year old I was familiar with the meaning of soul---or so I thought. But as with all 'thoughts' in young minds, there is yet more to learn and often the earliest sedimentation of meaning is wanting.
Allow me to add one more difficulty in our interpretation of 'soul': the 'existential' difficulty---as I write, my soul is at work. As you read your soul is at work. That is to say that above and beyond discourses, teachings, sermons, we are souls and it is by virtue of this soul that we think. Soul is an extremely broad term that includes all sensing, feeling, thinking, knowing... It may even be the broadest term.
If you were to take God on the one hand and all this connotes, and then take the universe and all this connotes, you would still end up with a bifurcated ontology. Or you might say that God does not exist, or that that the universe is all there is and end up with monistic doggerel. However, if you were to take to enumerate the properties of the soul you would not be able to do so without speaking both of God and the universe in its very materiality. Perhaps concepts such as intelligence, thought, understanding fall into this pattern as well. On the other hand, soul in its meaning transcends all of these. If you were to account for God on the one hand and the universe on the other, you would not be able to establish a discourse without calling on the soul.
The reason why this is the case requires our attention. Modern philosophy is characterized by so-called subjectivity---Descartes' 'EGO COGITO'. Incidentally this term 'ego' supplanted the word 'soul' in the mass until Benedict XVI restored it! To make a long story short, the science of subjectivity has made no progress in understanding the essence of 'I think" and certainly not improved upon Aristotle's understanding. Neurobiology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, besides being pentasyllabic academic disciplines, have delivered little or no substantive understanding in of the phenomenon of intelligence.
To be sure, Thomas Aquinas' realist psychology is a far more subtle and adequate discourse concerning the soul and the nature of human intelligence, but owing to its medieval character is deemed unfitting by Billy Joe and Bobby Sue Smarty Pants in the contemporary academy. Such reflexive dismissals of the achievements of human science characterize the manner in which academics ply their trade today. While outwardly striking a pose of enormous open-minded liberality, they harbor a fascist mentality, incredibly narrow minded, in the practice of their 'discipline'. Technique and method have so far surpassed understanding that one finds databases full of peer-reviewed essays by the score which are unintelligible, not only to the layman, but also to these 'philosophers', 'educators' and 'scientists' who run dog and pony shows and carnivalesque conferences, grand spectacles of pomp and vanity unheard of since Attila the Hun. And they force every would be neophyte to climb aboard the mystery train of this collective ceremony and ritual of ignorance.
Let us in this case be a little more broad minded (megalapsukhe) and admit that just maybe Thomas and Aristotle had something to say that we might learn from in the contemporary milieu.
I taught a course in logic at Mount Aloysius when it was still a junior college. I used Jacques Maritain's little introduction to formal logic: Maritain's Formal Logic
Another difficulty arises because the word 'soul' has taken on a life of its own through its abundant use in christian teaching and yet it is used in these cases dogmatically---that is it is presupposed as that which the magisterium has determined it to mean, etc., etc.
Owing to these chief difficulties and yet others, the notion 'soul' ends up in our thoughts as a thing, reified in the manner of other things, and it appears as the kind of thing christian teachers like St. Augustine have told us that it is!
To either reify a thing before we have determined whether indeed this thing is a thing is a common error as is the acceptance of dogma or or any other opinion without submitting this 'teaching' to the inquiry we undertake is is double jeopardy and most unbecoming to philosophy. Granted this happens at the speed of light! As soon as the word 'soul' is spoken the mind moves forward with an understanding that is very seriously lacking. Unfortunately, it is too late, the concept has already moved ahead!
Such unthinking tendency is the norm for all human discourse, in this case I am thinking of political speech---"The great Soul of this nation..." Such words glibly pour off of the naive orators tongue like an oily pig on a sliding board... And the citizens glibly understand the meaning of the word thus spoken and smile patriotically at their telescreen.
If we are going to get anywhere in this essay we will need a better way to get at this soul.
Personally I was raised with the religious, christian connotation of soul, having studied these things in catholic school and as an altar boy---discussing the mass with Father Mabon------exciting stuff for a young kid: transubstantiation, magisterium, etc... As a ten year old I was familiar with the meaning of soul---or so I thought. But as with all 'thoughts' in young minds, there is yet more to learn and often the earliest sedimentation of meaning is wanting.
Allow me to add one more difficulty in our interpretation of 'soul': the 'existential' difficulty---as I write, my soul is at work. As you read your soul is at work. That is to say that above and beyond discourses, teachings, sermons, we are souls and it is by virtue of this soul that we think. Soul is an extremely broad term that includes all sensing, feeling, thinking, knowing... It may even be the broadest term.
If you were to take God on the one hand and all this connotes, and then take the universe and all this connotes, you would still end up with a bifurcated ontology. Or you might say that God does not exist, or that that the universe is all there is and end up with monistic doggerel. However, if you were to take to enumerate the properties of the soul you would not be able to do so without speaking both of God and the universe in its very materiality. Perhaps concepts such as intelligence, thought, understanding fall into this pattern as well. On the other hand, soul in its meaning transcends all of these. If you were to account for God on the one hand and the universe on the other, you would not be able to establish a discourse without calling on the soul.
The reason why this is the case requires our attention. Modern philosophy is characterized by so-called subjectivity---Descartes' 'EGO COGITO'. Incidentally this term 'ego' supplanted the word 'soul' in the mass until Benedict XVI restored it! To make a long story short, the science of subjectivity has made no progress in understanding the essence of 'I think" and certainly not improved upon Aristotle's understanding. Neurobiology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, besides being pentasyllabic academic disciplines, have delivered little or no substantive understanding in of the phenomenon of intelligence.
To be sure, Thomas Aquinas' realist psychology is a far more subtle and adequate discourse concerning the soul and the nature of human intelligence, but owing to its medieval character is deemed unfitting by Billy Joe and Bobby Sue Smarty Pants in the contemporary academy. Such reflexive dismissals of the achievements of human science characterize the manner in which academics ply their trade today. While outwardly striking a pose of enormous open-minded liberality, they harbor a fascist mentality, incredibly narrow minded, in the practice of their 'discipline'. Technique and method have so far surpassed understanding that one finds databases full of peer-reviewed essays by the score which are unintelligible, not only to the layman, but also to these 'philosophers', 'educators' and 'scientists' who run dog and pony shows and carnivalesque conferences, grand spectacles of pomp and vanity unheard of since Attila the Hun. And they force every would be neophyte to climb aboard the mystery train of this collective ceremony and ritual of ignorance.
Let us in this case be a little more broad minded (megalapsukhe) and admit that just maybe Thomas and Aristotle had something to say that we might learn from in the contemporary milieu.
I taught a course in logic at Mount Aloysius when it was still a junior college. I used Jacques Maritain's little introduction to formal logic: Maritain's Formal Logic
