Philosophy: Mind, Soul, Consciousness, Body - Part 4
Aristotle has further developed his concept described in part 3 of this essay; however, I do not want to go into more details here. I'd rather describe Plato's idea of the soul now.
Plato, by the way, was Aristotle's teacher and mentor, and he was also a friend and disciple of Socrates who in 399 BC was killed by the hemlock (more precisely, he was sentenced to take the hemlock). Plato taught that the soul was something beyond the material world and had nothing to do with sensing or emotions. Rather, the real soul is pure intellect or pure reason in an ideal world. Our human souls are incomplete corrupted copies, he taught, of this one ideal soul. The soul as the pure intellect, as pure ratio: that may sound a bit astonishing for isn't Plato usually associated with an idealistic philosophy and often also with mysticism but not necessarily with terms such as "the power of reason"? The latter may make one think rather of modern scientific rationalism and materialism.
In fact, Plato was the founder of idealism; the inventor, if you will, of the concept of idealistic philosophy or, in short, of the idealistic concept. In order to resolve this apparent contradiction, I have to go a little further.
In the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, the term "ratio", which today is equated with reason, is actually derived from what we nowadays call numerology (though "numerical mysticism" may fit better in this context). The culture of ancient Greece began to flourish in the sixth century BC and it was "discovered" that humans have an intellect that allows them to recognize the ultimate truth about the world purely rationally by using this very intellect.
Greek philosophy developed the art of logics as well as the foundations of mathematics, in particular of geometry and arithmetic, and also the foundations of number theory. Gradually, Greek philosophers began to assume that nature functions according to a "rational" plan and therefore started describing her by means of logic and mathematics.
The Pythagorean school, named after its founder Pythagoras (who became famous with the a^2 + b^2 = c^2 formula), recognized that a multitude of phenomena showed the same mathematical properties. Soon numbers, and in particular numerical ratios, were considered by the Pythagoreans as the fundamental or underlying principle of nature. This led them to link numbers to geometrical figures (forms), which they considered the "fundamental forms" from which all more complex forms were composed.
On this basis they discovered harmonics and they were able to describe the behavior of vibrating strings by means of the ratios of integers. Since (almost) all basic forms could be constructed from the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4, these numbers were considered sacred, and they found them throughout the universe known at the time.
These four numbers played, and still play, a fundamental role in music, astronomy, geography and metaphysics, and they were not only considered as abstractions but as "really existing", actually as the stuff the world was made of. This conviction led the Pythagoreans to believe that the movements of the celestial bodies produced sounds, the so-called "sphere music", the tone pitch of which was determined by their distances to the earth and their orbital periods (note that this idea was based on the geocentric system with the earth in the center and all celestial bodies revolving around it). The ratios of distances and orbital periods could then be expressed by the ratio of integers. However, the sphere music should not be audible to humans.
The ratio of two integers was called "ration". From this root, words such as "rational" and "ratio" (in the sense of "reason") are likely to have derived. In this sense of "ratio = ratio of two integers", Greek philosophy to Plato's lifetime understood the (then known) universe as being "rational".
It's worth mentioning that in the course of her research on the similarities and parallels between Jungian depth psychology and modern physics, in particular quantum mechanics, Marie-Luise von Franz, a colleague and pupil of Carl Gustav Jung, published a treatise on the meaning of the first four integers (1, 2, 3, and 4) as archetypes that point to a basic unity of psyche and physis, or soul and body, or an underlying entity that encompasses both (Marie-Luise von Franz, Number and Time, Reflections Leading Toward a Unification of Depth Psychology and Physics; Ernst Klett 1986; original German edition 1970).
On this concept of, one could almost say "magic numbers", Leuccip and Democrit built up their doctrine of the atoms, namely that real matter consisted from the smallest ideal, indivisible, imperishable, indestructible, eternally existing building blocks, the so-called atoms (Greek atomos = indivisible).
These ideal properties of the atoms were considered objective. The ideal atoms were considered to be the building blocks that make up all really existing matter. However, so they taught, we humans could perceive these ideal properties only incompletely, in a sense only through a veil or mist, because our connection to the outside world, namely our five senses, do not work ideally and therefore do not provide us with an ideal image of the world. In other words, in their opinion (which is not in accordance with Plato's view as we shall see later) the real world was also the ideal world, but we can not perceive it as ideal, at least not in its full authenticity. Our five senses are not in a position to recognize the ultimate truth, for this ultimate truth is objective, that is, contained in the ideal external world, which is just incompletely accessible to our sense organs. Therefore, we would remain trapped in our subjectivity if we did not use the ideal sacred numbers and there ratios to seek out, and ultimately to recognize, objective truth through our minds. According to this philosophy, the ideal objective external world was present, whether we perceive it or not; but if we perceived it with our sensory organs, it was a distorted, obscured perception.
To be continued
Plato, by the way, was Aristotle's teacher and mentor, and he was also a friend and disciple of Socrates who in 399 BC was killed by the hemlock (more precisely, he was sentenced to take the hemlock). Plato taught that the soul was something beyond the material world and had nothing to do with sensing or emotions. Rather, the real soul is pure intellect or pure reason in an ideal world. Our human souls are incomplete corrupted copies, he taught, of this one ideal soul. The soul as the pure intellect, as pure ratio: that may sound a bit astonishing for isn't Plato usually associated with an idealistic philosophy and often also with mysticism but not necessarily with terms such as "the power of reason"? The latter may make one think rather of modern scientific rationalism and materialism.
In fact, Plato was the founder of idealism; the inventor, if you will, of the concept of idealistic philosophy or, in short, of the idealistic concept. In order to resolve this apparent contradiction, I have to go a little further.
In the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, the term "ratio", which today is equated with reason, is actually derived from what we nowadays call numerology (though "numerical mysticism" may fit better in this context). The culture of ancient Greece began to flourish in the sixth century BC and it was "discovered" that humans have an intellect that allows them to recognize the ultimate truth about the world purely rationally by using this very intellect.
Greek philosophy developed the art of logics as well as the foundations of mathematics, in particular of geometry and arithmetic, and also the foundations of number theory. Gradually, Greek philosophers began to assume that nature functions according to a "rational" plan and therefore started describing her by means of logic and mathematics.
The Pythagorean school, named after its founder Pythagoras (who became famous with the a^2 + b^2 = c^2 formula), recognized that a multitude of phenomena showed the same mathematical properties. Soon numbers, and in particular numerical ratios, were considered by the Pythagoreans as the fundamental or underlying principle of nature. This led them to link numbers to geometrical figures (forms), which they considered the "fundamental forms" from which all more complex forms were composed.
On this basis they discovered harmonics and they were able to describe the behavior of vibrating strings by means of the ratios of integers. Since (almost) all basic forms could be constructed from the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4, these numbers were considered sacred, and they found them throughout the universe known at the time.
These four numbers played, and still play, a fundamental role in music, astronomy, geography and metaphysics, and they were not only considered as abstractions but as "really existing", actually as the stuff the world was made of. This conviction led the Pythagoreans to believe that the movements of the celestial bodies produced sounds, the so-called "sphere music", the tone pitch of which was determined by their distances to the earth and their orbital periods (note that this idea was based on the geocentric system with the earth in the center and all celestial bodies revolving around it). The ratios of distances and orbital periods could then be expressed by the ratio of integers. However, the sphere music should not be audible to humans.
The ratio of two integers was called "ration". From this root, words such as "rational" and "ratio" (in the sense of "reason") are likely to have derived. In this sense of "ratio = ratio of two integers", Greek philosophy to Plato's lifetime understood the (then known) universe as being "rational".
It's worth mentioning that in the course of her research on the similarities and parallels between Jungian depth psychology and modern physics, in particular quantum mechanics, Marie-Luise von Franz, a colleague and pupil of Carl Gustav Jung, published a treatise on the meaning of the first four integers (1, 2, 3, and 4) as archetypes that point to a basic unity of psyche and physis, or soul and body, or an underlying entity that encompasses both (Marie-Luise von Franz, Number and Time, Reflections Leading Toward a Unification of Depth Psychology and Physics; Ernst Klett 1986; original German edition 1970).
On this concept of, one could almost say "magic numbers", Leuccip and Democrit built up their doctrine of the atoms, namely that real matter consisted from the smallest ideal, indivisible, imperishable, indestructible, eternally existing building blocks, the so-called atoms (Greek atomos = indivisible).
These ideal properties of the atoms were considered objective. The ideal atoms were considered to be the building blocks that make up all really existing matter. However, so they taught, we humans could perceive these ideal properties only incompletely, in a sense only through a veil or mist, because our connection to the outside world, namely our five senses, do not work ideally and therefore do not provide us with an ideal image of the world. In other words, in their opinion (which is not in accordance with Plato's view as we shall see later) the real world was also the ideal world, but we can not perceive it as ideal, at least not in its full authenticity. Our five senses are not in a position to recognize the ultimate truth, for this ultimate truth is objective, that is, contained in the ideal external world, which is just incompletely accessible to our sense organs. Therefore, we would remain trapped in our subjectivity if we did not use the ideal sacred numbers and there ratios to seek out, and ultimately to recognize, objective truth through our minds. According to this philosophy, the ideal objective external world was present, whether we perceive it or not; but if we perceived it with our sensory organs, it was a distorted, obscured perception.
To be continued
