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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 the evolution of the concept of psyche from Homer to Aristotle that show striking dissimilarities with our modern understanding of the soul/mind. In my analysis I will give more room to the problem of the Homeric soul-words, for Homers picture of the soul seems to be especially challenging for our conceptual schemes. My guiding suspicion during this study is that there is a temptation for modern students of this subject (like myself) to suppose a greater continuity between their understanding of what it is to be a soul or mind and ancient thinkers grasp of the same experiential field than is warranted by available textual evidence. I will focus on some of the astonishing features of the concept of psyche from Homer to Aristotle - features that I was, hopefully, able to reconstruct in spite of the assimilating force of my prejudices. 1. THE HOMERIC
PSYCHE

The first problem we face when entering the Homeric texts is the lack of a center or spiritual core of mans behavior that could be the equivalent of our soul or mind.1 Instead there are several soulCorrespondence 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 Views of Human Nature in the Context of Ancient Greek Society, Values, and Beliefs, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970, pp. 15-16. David B. Claus: Toward the Soul: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Psyche Before Plato, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, pp. 1-7. Jan Bremmer:

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words denoting different aspects of behavior. They refer to physical organs, mental functions, or the results of those functions. Which of the following terms should be rendered as soul: thymos, nous, menos, phrenes, psyche, ker, ethor, or kardie? What are we looking for when we try to identify a concept of the soul in Homer? Of course, tradition suggests that out of all available soul-words we concentrate on psyche, since, due to later developments following Homer, psyche became the core-concept of what is meant by the mental. But does such a later development warrant our choice of singling out psyche as the soul in Homer? Laying this question aside in this essay, I rather pursue the following line of thought: What kind of transformations had this early, Homeric, anthropology undergone until it reached Platos comprehensive personal soul which is (a) the immortal, divine part of man, (b) the center of his whole being, (c) the seat of rational judgment and moral choice, and (d) an antagonist of the body, related to it as 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 know genuine personal decision4, did not yet know of the will as an ethical The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, pp. 3-12. Daniel N. Robinson: Aristotles Psychology, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989pp. 4-5. Ferenc Lenard: A lelektan 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 see Daniel D. Robinson: Aristotles Psychology, New York: Columbia University 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 University 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 Homeric Imagination: A Study of Homers Poetic Perception of Reality, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970, p. 35. 4 B. Snell: Discovery of the Mind, pp. 20, 31. Cf. Laszlo Versenyi : Mans Measure: A Study of the Greek Image of Man from Homer to Sophocles, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974, p. 12.

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

factor5, and he constantly felt himself decisively influenced (guided or impeded) by gods6 (lack of personal decision thesis). Concerning the fragmentary thesis, the different interpretations boil down to two basic types: (1) The Homeric self is dualistic; (2) the Homeric self is multiple. According to (1) the different soul-words fall under two comprehensive categories. Rohde opted for the duality of the visible man (the body and its functions) and psyche (the other self, the double of the self, etc.).7 Bremmer distinguished between body souls endowing the body with life and consciousness and the free soul representing the individual. The free soul is psyche in Homer; it is active during unconsciousness. The body souls (thymos, nous, menos) are active during waking life. Claus maintains that the Homeric soul-words express two types of underlying semantic categories: thought words and life-force words. Among the eight soul-words analyzed by Claus, nous and phren/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 fragmented according to the different soul-words employed to grasp different aspects of the field we unifyingly call the mental. The self is the B. Snell: Discovery of the Mind, pp. 30-31. Cf. A. C. Fellman & M. Fellman: The Primacy of the Will in Late Nineteen-Century American Ideology of the Self, Historical Reflections, 1977/4, pp. 26-45. 6 B. Snell: Discovery of the Mind, p. 20, pp. 29-32. Cf. Peursen: Thus there is no room within man for an individual, personal soul. Where modern man would wish to speak of a highly personal action or thought, Homeric man sees other forces at work, divine powers. Frankel puts a particular emphasis on this point, describing archaic man as an open field for these forces, in which the I and the non-I are hardly separated and the frontiers between them as yet scarcely defined.( Body, Soul, Spirit, p. 91). See also Charles Taylor: Sources of the 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 University Press, 1957, pp. 213-214. 7 Erwin Rohde: Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality Among 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 manifestations of the belief in the Doppelganger. For a critique of Rohdes the ory see D. B. Claus: Toward the Soul, pp. 1-2. J. Bremmer: The Early Greek Concept of the Soul,pp. 6-7. Herbert Weir Smyth: Harvard Essays on Classical Subjects, Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1968, p. 244.
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open field of internal and external forces that determine behavior. In Homer we witness the immediate flux and fusion of feelings, actions, thoughts, gestures, inner and outer worlds.8 The thesis of the fragmentary, battleground-like Homeric self, however, seems untenable in the light of the following: Homeric heroes had no difficulty saying I wish or I thought, therefore they must have had a sense of a psychic whole, a psychic coherence implied by the use of the personal pronoun.9 Achilles urges: But let us allow these things to be over and done with, having subdued our thymos in our chest.10 In this situation it is the whole personality expressed by the personal pronoun that inhibits impulses. The lack of personal decision thesis emphasizes that in most cases the action of a Homeric hero is instigated by his thymos or nous, or feet and hands11 instead of by a representative core of personality that 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 : Mans Measure, 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 California Press, 1971, p. 9. K. J. Dover: Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle, Oxford, 1974, p. 151. J. Bremmer: The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, pp. 66-67. Taylor, on the contrary, claims: To the modern, this fragmentation, and the seeming confusion about merit and responsibility, are very puzzling. Some have been tempted to make light of Snells thesis, and to deny that Homeric man was all that different from us in his way of understanding decision and responsibility.(Sources of the Self, p. 118.) Versenyi observes: It is not that the self in Homer has absolutely no unity. To begin with it has the same kind of loose unity that the episodic epic as a whole has: one that barely holds the separate and discrete aspects of a mans personality together. (Mans Measure, p. 12.) 10 Homer: Iliad, 19.65. (Homer: The Iliad, translated by Stanley Lombardo, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishers, 1997.) See also Iliad, 1.188 where Achilles controls his thymos. Cf. A. W. Adkins: From the Many to the One, p. 22. 11 For body parts as instigating factors see Iliad. 1.166. For Homer the feet, the knees, the hands, the eyes are not simply parts of the body, but instruments or agents charged with an overflowing energy, and single acts are often represented as self-developing processes almost independent of a persons control: it is then the feet that steps out, the knees that move and carry away, the hands that crave for action, the eyes that look and gaze. (P. Vivante: The Homeric Imagination, pp. 35-36.)
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would hold all thoughts and feelings under purview. Further, the givenness of motivating factors is manifest in the intervention of gods.12 Gods cause the hero to do what he would not otherwise do or give him a sudden surge of strength and vigor.13 Yet, this divine meddling does not absolve the hero from being responsible for his

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. Dietrich emphasizes that the group of Olympic gods is just a machine, a convenient tool at the poets disposal to impose his own will on the action of the poem. This machine often deteriorates to an empty device. The Olympian Gotterapparat is an artifice of the poet, and it was not part of the popular belief. (B. C. Dietrich: Death, Fate, and the Gods: The Development of A Religious Idea in Greek Popular Belief and in Homer, London: Athlone Press, 1965, pp. 297-299.) Vivante disagrees: the gods constantly help men because of their deep and continuous concern for mans life. (Vivante: The Homeric Imagination, 1970, p. 43.) See also Versenyi: Mans Measure, pp. 21-23, and Jasper Griffin: Homer on Life and Death, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1980, p. 93. 13 Homers characters routinely claim to be compelled, moved, distracted, or deceived by the gods. The world of the ancient Greeks, long before the classical period and before written law, recognized madness as exculpatory. The most ancient of the generic terms for the grossly distorted mind, entheos, refers to a god within. The victim or vessel of entheos is thereby irresistibly enthralled. (Daniel Robinson: Wild Beasts and Idle Humours, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 9) The Homeric hero is always ready to attribute the cause of an event to a deity, if that happening should noticeably assist or retard him, or if it should occur contrary to his expectation or planning. (Dietrich: Death, Fate, and the Gods, p. 301.) Versenyi claims that Homeric man attributes an act to the gods if it seems out of his character or whose consequences do not cohere with the desired ones. (Mans Measure, p. 12.) Shein holds that in the Iliad a god is manifest on any occasion on which a person seems to be or to do something more than would be normally expected. (Seth L. Shein: The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homers Iliad, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, p. 57.) Dodds used the Freudian term overdetermination to explain the mixture of divine and human motivation. (Eric Robertson 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.

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actions.14 Robinson accepts the role of divine meddling in causation of behavior. However he argues against the view that would totalize the lack of personal decision in Homer. This view is present, for instance, in Snells interpretation of the Homeric self and Julian Jaynes bicameral hypothesis in terms of which Homeric characters were constantly under control of hallucinations, interpreted as alien agencies, arising from their not-yet-integrated nervous system. Robinson maintains that one of the earliest recorded insanity defenses can be found in Iliad 19. when Achilles and Agamemnon are reconciled. Agamemnons excuse for his action is a reference to Zeus and fate and the Erinys. If this explanatory strategy was available for Homeric heroes and if it was taken seriously enough to commend forgiveness, then it was a clear indication of a recognized distinction between personal agency [personal 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 following: the psyche lacks flesh, bones and sinews; it has the power of G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield: The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 9. Adkins tries to give an account for this paradox feature in terms of the Homeric society being both a results-culture and a shame-culture. (A. W. Adkins: From the Many to the One, pp. 28-48). Versenyi writes: The attribution by Homeric man of what we would call his own action to divine interference does not legally exculpate him. For it is not volition and 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 no inconsistency in Agamemnons offering to pay huge damages for what he did, while at the same time insisting on his innocence. (Mans Measure, p. 15) See Shein: The Mortal Hero, p. 58. 15 See Daniel Robinson: Wild Beasts and Idle Humours, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1996, pp. 8-33. 16 Odyssey. 11.468-499 (Achilles who would rather be a servant on earth than the king of the dead in Hades). Down in the mirky underworld they now float unconscious, or, at most, with a twilight half-consciousness, wailing in a shrill diminutive voice, helpless, indifferent. (. . .) To speak of an immortal life of these souls, as scholars both ancient and modern have done, is incorrect. They can hardly be said to live even, any more than the image does that is reflected in the mirror.(E. Rohde: Psyche, p. 9). See also B. C. Dietrich: Death, Fate, and the 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 His14

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motion but it is devoid of purpose; it has a voice, but only that of a squeaking; it is smoke-like, filmy, vaporous in nature. Some psyches still possess consciousness and are effected by emotions; but most souls have lost consciousness, memory, etc. They live on in an unsubstantial 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 hopelessness) is due to the inseparability of life, body, and person in Homer. The person is the living man with the complexity of his being: his words, quick legs and strong arms, gleaming eyes, noble acts, etc. Life is inseparable from the body. Existence is primarily physical or bodily existence. The person cannot be reduced to a permanent core that would 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 the body is contrasted, as the man himself with the psyche; in other passages it is the psyche, hastening to Hades, which is referred to by the persons proper name. Even if the proper name is ascribed to the psyche, we cannot mistake its weak, shadow-like existence as life.19 The totality 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 still capable of feeling, sensation, etc., as long as the body is unburnt. The psyche can regain capacities associated with the living, whole person after the symbolic reinstitution of physical functions: e.g., by drinking blood.20 Living as a human being, a person, is essentially connected with living in/as a body. The idea of life after death for Homer is contory of Western Philosophy, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945, pp. 146-147. 17 Cf. J. Bremmer: The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, p. 71, 5th footnote. 18 Cf. E. Rohde: Psyche, p.6. Smyth: Harvard Essays on Classical Subjects, p. 243. In the introductory verses to the Iliad we are told that the heroes death-souls go to Hades . . . Whereas they themselves, the writer 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 better claim to be regarded as the mans self.(Peursen: Body, Soul, Spirit, p. 88). 19 F. Lenard contends that the Homeric psyche, this shadowy, dreamlike image, was not different from the body in kind. The body and the psyche represented different degrees of the same reality. The body was stronger, more real, whereas the psyche was just a weak copy of the living organism. (Lenard: A lelektan utjai, [The Ways of Psychology], p. 11.) 20 Odyssey. 11. Cf. A. W. Adkins: From the Many to the One, p. 15.

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tinued existence rather than the immortality of an immaterial core of the person. That the bodily features are indispensable in the comprehension of the person is shown in the translation myth (Odyssey. 4.560568). Some privileged heroes are given immortality, and they are sent to the Islands of the Blest.21 Translation is an instantaneous emerging into a new form of existence without a soul-idea that would mediate this transition.22 It is a more consolatory picture of after-life, but its comforting nature to the Homeric man is due, as Smyth puts it, to the perpetuation of that complete existence, which in the belief of Homeric age, 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 bodys death, but the translation of the whole person into a new mode of existence shared with gods; the whole person continues living in a new existence.23 Robinson claims the translation myth represents a step in the movement towards mindbody 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 soulwords overlap to the extent that we cannot speak of separate faculties like the faculty of thought, the faculty of emotion, or the faculty of volition. Interpreters agree that nous in Homer is especially concerned with what we call intellectual functions, thinking. Yet, it also needs to 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 Greek Concept of the Soul, p. 77, pp. 82-83. 22 Cf. A. Hultkrantz: Conceptions of the Soul among North American Indians, Stockholm, 1963, pp. 464-480. 23 The translated are not disembodied souls but men whose souls have not been separated from their visible selves for only thus can they feel and enjoy the sense of life. The picture . . . here is the precise opposite of the blessed immortality of the soul in its separate existence.(E. Rohde: Psyche, p. 56). 24 Daniel N. Robinson: Aristotles Psychology, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, pp. 11-12. 25 Thus, like phrenes, it (nous) gets something of the value of intelligence or intellect but . . . it is not mere intellect; it is dynamic . . . and emotional. . . . We can thus better understand its function in Greek philosophy, e.g. for Anaxagoras as the dynamic ordering factor in the universe. (Onians: The Origins of European Thought, p. 83.) Vivante observes: Homer sees an elemental force at the roots of feeling, thought, action. The very fiber of man or woman is continually at stake

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(Odyssey 8.78), and Paris says of Hector that the nous in his chest is fearless (Iliad 3.63). The nous is also mentioned in contexts of rousing men to action (Iliad 14.61). Difficulties arising from trying to categorize functions of the soul words according to our distinctions are manifest in opposing interpretations of thymos. Snell, Adkins, and Bremmer claim that thymos is mainly in charge of (e)motional issues26, whereas Onians, Peursen, and Kon maintain that thymos is the closest among the Homeric soul words to our concept of consciousness.27 In numerous passages thymos is the seat of joy, pleasure, love, sympathy, etc.28 It is also the organ of reflection.29 Thymos is the abode of knowledge: for instance, Menelaos knew in his thymos that his brother was beset by the trouble.(Iliad 2.409) 1.4. Ontological commitment inherent in the soul-words

Regarding the ontological commitment of Homeric soul-words I have identified three different positions represented by various commentators. I call the first undifferentiated identity. In terms of this view the Homeric soul words denote physical organs or functions of these organs. Mental acts like thinking, feeling, and desiring, are ascribed to physical organs. This view is represented by Onians, Peursen, and Adkins.30 The identity is undifferentiated because it is not a monistic position reached by the reduction of the mental to the . . . Whatever they feel or do comes as the manifestation of a sustaining power that wanes or rises according to circumstance, and each instance affects their lives like a stroke of fate. This underlying quality or power is sheer vitality. (Vivante: The Homeric Imagination, pp. 3839, 42.) 26 Snell: Discovery of the Mind, pp. 12-13. A. W. Adkins: From the Many to the One, pp. 17-22. J. Bremmer: The Early Greek Concept of the 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 the Self), 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 themselves, 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. 5152, 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: The Homeric Imagination, p. 36.

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physical or vice versa, but it is a stage in which the very dichotomy of mental versus physical is still unknown.31 Onians maintains that the organ of mind in Homer is the lungs; the mind or the stuff of consciousness is identical with breath; and psyche is the cerebra-spinal marrow. The second position, analogical identity, holds that the Homeric soul-words had originally (in pre-Homeric Greek) denoted distinct physical organs or processes, but by the time of Homer they were only analogically related to bodily organs and functions. Snell argues that the soul-words denote agents that function by analogy to the visible organs of the body.32 Claus also maintains that the soulwords are psychological agents that are described by analogy to physical organs.33 According to the third, dualistic account, some or all of the soul-words refer to immaterial agents or functions. Rohde maintained that the soul-words denote immaterial functions;34 and Homer represented 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 something material (Bremmer, 1983, 57). Given the difficulties present in Presocratic texts to conceive immaterial, incorporeal agencies and functions, I do not regard this third, dualistic view tenable.

J. E. Raven and G. S. Kirk claim before Plato the material versus immaterial dichotomy was not yet conceived. 32 On Homers 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 the Homeric texts themselves there is little evidence for the active retention of consistent physical referents for these words. . . . In fact, the etymologies in question are often vague or impossible to interpret in the light of Homeric usage, the physical referents are not, on the whole, either precise or self-consistent, and the mental and emotional functions in question are not easily distinguishable from word to word. Claus: Toward the Soul, pp. 14-15. 34 The words of the poet often show that as a matter of fact he thought of these functions and emotions as incorporeal, though they were still named after parts of the body. And so we often find mentioned side by side with the midriff and in the closest conjunction with it, the thumos, a name which is not taken from any bodily organ and shows already that it is thought of as an immaterial function. In the same 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 independent, free-working, and immaterial.(E. Rohde: Psyche, p. 30).

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2.

OPEN

SELF AND MATERIAL PSYCHE IN THE

PRESOCRATICS

Before continuing with Socrates, I would like to say a few words on psyche in some Presocratic authors, namely, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras and Diogenes of Apollonia. A surprising feature of their soul-descriptions is the difficulty to conceive soul as an immaterial or incorporeal agent. Something that seems almost commonsensical to us baffled the greatest minds of antiquity. Probably, this difficulty was in part due to their ontology. As Kirk et al. observe concerning the Mind in Anaxagoras: Anaxagoras in fact is striving, as had several of his predecessors, to imagine and describe a truly incorporeal entity. But as with them, so still with him, the only ultimate criterion of reality is extension in space.35 Corporeal images attaching to descriptions of the soul are not problematic in authors like Leucippus or Democritus who are known as representing a materialist conception of the soul. These images become somewhat embarrassing, however, when we are told that even Pythagoras, a renowned advocate of reincarnation and the souls independence of the body, resorted occasionally to materialistic images of the soul. According to one fragment, Pythagoras envisioned the soul as made 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 much we can trust certain fragments; especially in the case of Pythagoras who did not leave any manuscripts behind whatsoever. Besides difficulties of grasping an incorporeal agent, Presocratic thinkers depict the soul of the individual as being essentially connected with [or even being a part of] a larger, cosmic order or element outside. They present us with a uniquely or even strangely open selfconstruct. This self is not self-contained, rounded up within the confines of a body but it is constantly under the influence of elements (aither, fire or air) from outside. According to Heraclitus we become intelligent by drawing in this divine reason [logos] through breathing, and forgetful when asleep, but we regain our senses when we wake up again. For in sleep, when the channels of perception are shut, our mind G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield: The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 364. 36 Lenard mentions that not even Pythagoras who clearly distinguished between body and soul (emphasizing the immortality and superiority of the soul) was exempt from the notion of the material soul. The Pythagoreans taught that the small, shiny particles of dust moving in the air composed the soul when they got into a body. The Pythagoreans represented an extremely advanced view when they made the number, this abstract element, the center of their system. Yet they still believed that the soul was the harmony of the body, composed of small dust-particles.( A lelektan utjai, p. 21.): A lelektan utjai (The Ways of Psychology), Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1986, p. 14.
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is sundered from its kinship with the surrounding, and breathing is the only point at attachment to be preserved.37 Diogenes of Apollonia grants air with the status of arche. In his descriptions air is not only a life-giving element for living creatures that participate in it by breathing, but it is also the principle of intelligence.38 All sensitive and cognitive processes are dependent on air. We sense and think by the interaction between air within and without. Aither (fiery air) in Heraclitus and air in Diogenes, however, are not simply elements mediating between the external world and us. Logos and air contain the divine structure, design, order that we, humans, are supposed to assimilate. Becoming intelligent means sharing in this higher order. It is not a relationship based on mirroring or representing. Humans get to know this larger order not by representing it but by being permeated by it. 3. PSYCHE
IN

SOCRATES

In the Presocratics we witness a process of unifying mans perceptual-cognitive-emotive acts in a more coherent concept of psyche. This forming coherence is striking when compared to the fragmented, multi-soul-word descriptions of Homeric man. In Socrates we arrive at the idea of psyche as a unified core of behavior, a representative of the entirety of the person after death, and an antagonist of the body. Socrates has no difficulty of grasping the soul as an incorporeal agent. He does not need the body any more to save the wholeness of the human being. We usually take Socrates/Plato as presenting us with a coherent picture of the soul and a clear-cut dualism of body and soul; nevertheless some difficulties and even inconsistencies surface in his dialogues concerning the nature of the soul and its relation to the body. In certain dialogues Socrates/Plato identifies the real self with the soul imprisoned in the body.39 In the introductory paragraphs of the Phaedo, Socrates is trying to sooth his disciples by claiming that the real task of the philosopher is to get ready for death, i.e., the separation or liberation of soul from the body. The Phaedo suggests that passions, emotions, desires are attributes of the body, and they are in opposition with aspirations of the soul [which, to a great extent, is identical with nous]. McPherran calls this position Socratic intellectualFragment 234. (G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield: The Presocratic 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 call air, and that all men are steered by this and that it has power over all things.(Fragments 602, 603.) 39 See Protagoras 312c, 313a-314b, 351a-b. Criton 47d-48a. Phaedo 65d, 115b-116a. Republic 469d6-9, 526a-b, 535b-d.
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ism.40 According to Dodds, the soul-concept emerging in the Phaedo was the result of the Socratic synthesis of two separate traditions: the idea of the detachable occult self of Shamanistic tradition and the idea of 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 affective elements of mental life? Where should emotions, desires, and passions 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 intellectualized view of the soul given in the Phaedo, Socrates locates the source of affective elements within the soul in The Republic 435a-444e, 589b2, The Sophist 228b, Timaeus 44, 70, and in the famous Chariot Analogy of the Phaidrus. In terms of these dialogues, contradicting Socratic intellectualism, the affective features of mental life fall on the side of the soul instead of the body. Vlastos points out that the very same quotation from Homer taken by Socrates of the Phaedo to depict the struggle between the body and the soul, reappears in The Republic as an illustration of a struggle within the soul itself.42 The Chariot Analogy of the Phaidrus describes the inner conflict of the soul after its separation from the body. The struggle between the two horses and the downpulling tendencies of the bad horse cannot originate in the body since the analogy depicts a disembodied state of the soul. If the body is not present to drag the soul down to its base level, from where do the disturbing impulses, affects, represented by the bad horse, arise? The struggle between body and soul in the early dialogues reappears as an inner struggle between different parts of the soul in later dialogues. 4. ARISTOTLES
COMPREHENSIVE SOUL-CONCEPT

In Aristotles extant texts the concept of psyche is the object of highly systematic elaboration. He diligently reviewed and interpreted all the available soul-conceptions of his predecessors in the first book of De Anima. Aristotle summarizes, synthesizes and, to some extent, reconfigures previous developments of soul-theories by forging a psychological doctrine that would serve as the basis for further inquires concerning the mental for almost two thousand years. Descartes, when creating a paradigm of the soul still extremely influential in our days, Mark L. McPherran: Socrates on the Immortality of the Soul, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1994/January, p. 4. 41 E. R. Dodds: Plato and the Irrational Soul. Plato A Collections of Critical Essays, vol. II, edited by G. Vlastos, Notre Dame Press, 1971. 42 Plato: Phaedo 94d-e, and The Republic 441b-c. See Plato A Collections of Critical Essays, vol. II, edited by G. Vlastos, Notre Dame Press, 1971.
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was rebelling against Aristotles theory of psyche/anima. At the onset of the Cartesian theory of the mind, we witness attempts to overcome a tradition largely indebted to Aristotles systematizing efforts. Before examining what the Cartesians had to extirpate from Aristotle to form their own distinctive, modern theory of the soul [which, in fact, is a theory of the mind], I would like to say a few words on an inconsistency emerging in Aristotles doctrine of the soul. This inconsistency is concerned with the human being as an organic unity of body-and-soul. This inconsistency will also emerge in Thomas Aquinas discussion of the subsistence of the intellectual soul. Aquinas reasons for risking highly irreconcilable views [such as the substantial unity of body-andsoul and the independent subsistence of the intellectual soul] were probably different from Aristotles. Aquinas was committed to the immortality of the soul doctrine in Christianity, largely shaped along Augustinian lines. Whereas it is a fascinating question why Aristotle introduced the idea of an agent intellect [nous poetikos] as an immortal, immaterial element of the soul, thereby endangering the unity of man 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. The human being is the organic union of body-and-soul. The soul . . . is the primary act of a physical body capable of life.(De Anima, 412b)43 The soul 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 is neither the soul in itself nor the body but, rather, the organic unity of the two. This organic unity of body-and-soul, however, is endangered when Aristotle introduces the concept of the agent intellect (nous poetikos) in a much-disputed section of his De Anima (Book III, Chapter V, 430a10-430a25). This intellect is described as separable, uncompounded and incapable of being acted on. Also it alone is immortal and perpetual. It does not remember, because it is impassible. The question is how this agent intellect becomes attached to the individual as 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 agent intellect is separable and ontologically distinct? This problem had been dogging interpreters for centuries and it gave rise to quite contradictory views in the texts Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistios, Averroes and his followers like Siger of Brabant on the one hand, and Thomistic interpretations on the other. This passage on nous poetikus in the De Anima certainly came handy for those Christian commentators who were trying to synthesize Aristotelian texts with the immortality of the soul doctrine.
43 Aristotle: De Anima, translated K. Foster and S. Humphries, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965.

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Etienne Gilson expresses his appreciation of Aristotles attempt to identify a principle in the workings of the psyche that could guarantee that our soul was more than just the substantial form of the body. Aristotles aspiration especially deserves our attention since he did not have to subscribe to such a view because a specific religious doctrine told him so.44 Richard Rorty makes a similar observation: So even Aristotle, who spent his life pouring cold water on the metaphysical extravagancies of his predecessors, suggests that there probably is something to the notion that the intellect is separable, even though nothing else about the soul is. Aristotle has been praised by Ryleans and Deweyans for having resisted dualism by thinking of soul as no more ontologically distinct from the human body than were the frogs abilities to catch flies and flee snakes ontologically distinct from the frogs body. But this naturalistic view of soul did not prevent Aristotle from arguing that since the intellect had the power of receiving the form of, for example, froghood . . . and taking it on itself without thereby becoming a frog, the intellect (nou) must be something very special indeed.45 Finally, I would like to return to another specialty of the Aristotelian soul-concept that made Descartes balk and demand radical reinterpretation. Following the idea of soul as the substantial form of the body, Aristotle introduced different kinds of souls or different levels of the souls operations in the second book of his De Anima. He did not want to identify the soul with the intellect. He did not even want to restrict the realm of the soul to mental operations. Soul, as the first actuality of the body, was also the principle of life, nutrition, reproduction, and locomotion. Aristotles soul concept is amazingly liberal and incomparably less anthropocentric than Descartes.46 His sensitivity to the multiple forms of soul probably emerged from meticulous observations of E. Gilson: The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, New York: Charles Scribners 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 of life from consciousness see: R. Sorabji: Animal Minds and Human Morals, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. R. McRae: Descartes Definition of Thought, in Cartesian Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch. H. Kahn: Sensation and Consciousness in Aristotles Psychology, in Articles on Aristotle, New York: St. Martin Press, 1979. F. Solmsen: Antecedents of Aristotles Psychology and Scale of Beings, American Journal of Philology (76), 1955. N. Malcolm: Thoughtless Brutes, in The Nature of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. W. Matson: Why Isnt the Mind-Body Problem Ancient, in Mind, Matter, and Method, Minneapolis, 1966. G. B. Matthews: Consciousness and Life, Philosophy, 1977/January.
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the animal kingdom. Aristotles resistance to draw exact lines of demarcation between species representing different levels on the scale of being is also manifest in his inclusive soul-concept.47 The Aristotelian discourse on vegetative and locomotive souls may seem somewhat strange or archaic for us. In fact, we are not talking about soulbody dualism any more but our problem is mind-body dualism. We do not have a philosophy of soul but we do concern ourselves with philosophy 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. References Adkins, Arthur: From the Many to the One: A Study of Personality and Views of Human Nature in the Context of Ancient Greek Society, Values, and Beliefs, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970. Aristotle: De Anima, translated K. Foster and S. Humphries, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965. Aristotle: History of Animals, in The Mind Oxford Readers, edited by Daniel Robinson, Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Bremmer, Jan: The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Claus, David: Toward the Soul: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Psyche Before Plato, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Dietrich, B. C.: Death, Fate, and the Gods: The Development of A Religious Idea in Greek Popular Belief and in Homer, London: Athlone Press, 1965. Fellman, A. C. & Fellman, M.: The Primacy of the Will in Late Nineteen-Century American Ideology of the Self, Historical Reflections, 1977/4, pp. 26-45. Gilson, E.: The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, New York: Charles Scribners Son, 1940. Griffin, Jasper: Homer on Life and Death, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1980. Homer: The Iliad, translated by Stanley Lombardo, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishers, 1997. Homer: The Odyssey, translated by E.V. Rieu, London-New York: Penguin Books, 1991. Aristotle, the systematic observer of nature, writes: Just as in man we find knowledge, wisdom and sagacity, so in certain animals there exists some natural capacity akin to these. . . . Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation . . .(Aristotle: History of Animals, in The Mind Oxford Readers, edited by Daniel Robinson, Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 237.)
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Kahn, Charles H.: Sensation and Consciousness in Aristotles Psychology, in Articles on Aristotle, New York: St. Martin Press, 1979. Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E. and Schofield, M.: The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Kon, Sz.: Enunk nyomaban (Quest for the Self), Budapest: Kossuth Konyvkiado, 1989. Lenard, Ferenc: A lelektan utjai (The Ways of Psychology), Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1986. Malcolm, N.: Thoughtless Brutes, in The Nature of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Matson, W.: Why Isnt the Mind-Body Problem Ancient, in Mind, Matter, and Method, Minneapolis, 1966. Matthews, G. B.: Consciousness and Life, Philosophy, 1977/January. McPherran, Mark L.: Socrates on the Immortality of the Soul, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1994/January. Peursen, C. A.: Body, Soul, Spirit, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. Plato: Works, London: Bell, 1888-1890. Raven, J. E. & Kirk, G. S.: The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957. Rohde, Erwin: Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks, Freeport, N.Y., Books for Libraries Press, 1972. Richard Rorty: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Russell, B.: A History of Western Philosophy, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1947. Shein, Seth: The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homers Iliad, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Smyth, Herbert Weir: Harvard Essays on Classical Subjects, Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1968. Snell, Bruno: Discovery of the Mind, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1953. Solmsen, F.: Antecedents of Aristotles Psychology and Scale of Beings, American Journal of Philology (76), 1955. Sorabji, R.: Animal Minds and Human Morals, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Taylor, Charles: Sources of the Self, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989. Versenyi, Laszlo: Mans Measure: A Study of the Greek Image of Man from Homer to Sophocles, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974. Vivante, Paolo: The Homeric Imagination: A Study of Homers Poetic Perception of Reality, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970.