8. The Soul's Activities, Passions, and Separability from Body

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

The Problem of the Soul’s Passions and Properties #

• Central Question: Are the emotions (passions) common to both body and soul, or is there something proper to the soul alone?
• Aristotle distinguishes between:
  • Emotions that clearly involve the body: anger, courage, desire, sensing
  • Thinking, which seems most proper to the soul
• Critical uncertainty: Even thinking may involve imagination, which requires the body
• This question’s importance: Whether the soul can be separated from the body depends entirely on whether the soul performs any activity not in or through the body

The Relationship Between Being and Acting #

• Principle: To do something, a thing must first be
• If the soul has being only in the body → it can do nothing except in and through the body
• If the soul does something not in the body → its existence is not limited to the body
• Therefore: We must investigate what the soul does (its operations) to understand what it is
• This reasoning proceeds “backwards” from effects to causes, as Sherlock Holmes notes

Imagination and Error #

• False Imagination: The capacity to imagine something wrongly, “as it is not”
• We can imagine things truly (as they are) or falsely (as they are not)
• Shakespeare (King Lear): “Woes by wrong imaginations lose the knowledge of themselves”
• The Paradox of the Soul: The soul cannot be imagined (it is immaterial), yet we cannot think without imagining in this life
• Consequence: Whatever we imagine the soul to be is necessarily false
• Common poetic error: The soul imagined as a ghost-like thing in the shape of a body (as in Homer’s Odyssey)

Imagination and Likeness as Sources of Deception #

• Connection: The word image is almost synonymous with likeness
• The imagination delights in likenesses; reason seeks differences
• Consequence of this disparity: Being caught by likeness, imagination becomes a source of deception
• Example: The poisonous mushroom deceives because it resembles an edible one
• Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors: Twin brothers deceive people because of their likeness
• The deception works only because people fail to perceive the difference

Imagination and Guessing #

• Etymology of “aim”: In Shakespeare, “aim” often means “to guess”
• When we guess, we aim at truth but often miss the target
• Good imagination enables good guessing (as Einstein’s freely imagined hypotheses in experimental science)
• Scientists typically make great discoveries in their 20s or 30s (when imagination is strong); imagination declines after this, though reason improves until age 49
• Even educated guesses are often wrong (economists, weathermen)
• Connection to error: The apt tendency is to guess wrongly, especially in wild guessing

The Importance of This Question for Immortality #

• Fundamental Issue: Does the soul survive death?
• The answer depends on: Does the soul perform any activity not dependent on the body?
• Aristotle’s argument (Paragraph 9):
  • If the soul has something proper to it (an act not in the body) → the soul can be separated
  • If nothing is proper to it → the soul cannot be separated
• Analogy of the Shape of a Glass: We can speak of the shape in separation from the glass, but it cannot exist in actual separation
• The Candidate Activity: Understanding/thinking, particularly understanding universals (which are immaterial)

Distinction Between Imaging and Thinking #

• English philosophers confuse the term “idea” — sometimes meaning an image, sometimes a thought
• Shakespeare illustrates this: In the Prologue to Henry V, the chorus asks the audience to help with their “imagination” (to imagine 300 soldiers where 3 stand), yet also says “help us with your thinking”
• These words are used interchangeably in English, though they are different
• There is, however, a certain likeness between imaging and thinking
• When we imagine: We form an image of something
• When we think: We form a thought about something

Key Arguments #

Argument: The Soul’s Separability Depends on Its Proper Activity #

1. If the soul performs an activity not in the body and not through the body, then the soul can be separated from the body (and exist after the body perishes)
2. If the soul performs no activity except those involving the body, then there is no reason to think the soul exists independently
3. Therefore: Investigation of the soul’s operations is the key to determining its ontological status

Argument: Why Understanding the Soul Is Methodologically Difficult #

1. The soul cannot be sensed (it is immaterial)
2. The soul cannot be imagined (it is non-corporeal)
3. Therefore: In philosophy, we normally judge by what we can sense, but the soul evades both sense and imagination
4. Consequence: We must reason negatively — saying what the soul is not — which makes error nearly inevitable

Argument: False Imagination and Likeness as Causes of Deception #

1. Imagination delights in likeness and is caught by likeness
2. Reason seeks differences
3. Therefore: When we rely on imagination rather than reason, we are prone to deception
4. This is especially true for immaterial realities that cannot be imagined

Important Definitions #

Passions of the Soul (Emotions) #

• Operations that appear to involve both body and soul
• Examples: anger, courage, desire, sensing
• Question: Which are merely bodily effects, and which reveal something proper to the soul?

False Imagination (ψευδὴς φαντασία) #

• The imaginative faculty operating wrongly, presenting things as other than they are
• Distinguished from true imagination, which presents things as they are
• Connected to the classical principle that likeness is a cause of deception

The Proper Activity of a Thing #

• An operation that belongs to a thing by itself, not merely through another
• If the soul has a proper activity (one not dependent on the body), this indicates the soul’s being is not limited to the body
• The most likely candidate: understanding/thinking, especially the apprehension of universals

Examples & Illustrations #

The Shape of the Glass #

• We can abstractly discuss the shape of a glass separately from the glass itself
• However, the shape cannot actually exist in separation from the glass
• Application: Similarly, we may be able to discuss the soul in separation, but this does not mean the soul can actually exist in separation

Errors in Common Imagination of the Soul #

• Poetic Error (Homer’s Odyssey): The soul imagined as a ghost-like thing retaining the shape of the body
• Odysseus “recognizes” the souls of the dead by their shape and tries to embrace them
• But this is false imagination — the soul has no shape
• The error persists because common people, like poets, cannot help but imagine the soul as corporeal

The Twin Brothers (Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors) #

• Twin brothers separated in infancy meet in the same city
• Each is mistaken for the other due to their likeness
• This illustrates how likeness is a cause of deception
• The deception occurs precisely because people fail to notice the differences

Aiming and Missing (Guessing) #

• When one aims at a target, one sometimes hits and sometimes misses
• In guessing, one aims at truth but often misses
• Shakespeare uses “aim” as a synonym for “guess”
• This shows the connection between hypothesis/guessing and the possibility of error

The Man at the Dinner Table #

• When not paying attention in conversation, one reaches for something but takes the wrong thing
• Sometimes one knocks something over in the process
• Illustration: This shows how the imagination can guide one to the wrong object, just as it guides scientists to the right hypothesis

Notable Quotes #

“The king is mad…How stiff is my vile sense that I stand up and have ingenious feeling of my huge sorrows. Better I were distract, right? So should my thoughts be severed from my grief. And woes, by wrong imaginations, lose the knowledge of themselves.” — Shakespeare, King Lear (quoted by Berquist)

“If, therefore, there is something proper to the soul among the works or passions of the soul, it can happen that the soul be separated. If, on the other hand, nothing is proper to it, it would not be separable.” — Aristotle, De Anima, Book I, Paragraph 9

“It’s not unusual that you fail when you aim to know something beyond your capacity to know.” — Berquist (on the causes of error in pursuing knowledge beyond one’s powers)

Questions Addressed #

Q: What is the relationship between emotion and the body? #

A: Emotions like anger, courage, and desire clearly involve bodily changes and responses. However, this does not settle whether all operations of the soul involve the body, or whether the soul has some operation proper to itself alone.

Q: Why is investigating the soul’s operations more important than investigating its essence directly? #

A: Because the soul’s essence is hidden from us. We cannot sense or imagine it. Therefore, we must reason backwards from what the soul does to what it is. If the soul performs an activity not involving the body, this reveals that the soul’s being is not limited to the body.

Q: How does imagination lead to error about the soul? #

A: The soul cannot be imagined because it is immaterial and non-corporeal. Yet we cannot think without imagining in this life. Therefore, whatever we imagine the soul to be is necessarily false. The common imagination of the soul as a ghost-like thing with bodily shape is necessarily an error.

Q: What is the connection between likeness and false imagination as causes of deception? #

A: The imagination delights in likenesses; reason seeks differences. Image is almost synonymous with likeness. Therefore, when we rely on imagination rather than reason, and when things have a likeness to other things, we are easily deceived. We imagine the soul as similar to a body because bodies are all we can directly imagine.

Q: How does understanding the soul’s separability relate to the question of immortality? #

A: If the soul has no activity proper to itself (independent of the body), then when the body perishes, there is no reason to think the soul continues to exist. But if the soul has an activity not dependent on the body—particularly the understanding of immaterial, universal truths—then the soul’s existence is not exhausted by its embodied state, and it can potentially exist after bodily death.

Q: Why do scientists make their greatest discoveries in their 20s and 30s? #

A: Because imagination is at its strongest in these decades. Imagination enables good guessing and hypothesis-formation. However, imagination declines after the 30s, while reason continues to improve until about age 49. After imagination declines, even brilliant reasoners cannot make the creative leaps required for great scientific discoveries.

Q: What does Aristotle mean by calling the difficulty about the soul’s passions “not easy” to grasp? #

A: Because we must carefully distinguish between:

• Operations that are merely bodily (and thus do not reveal the soul’s independence)
• Operations that involve the body but are not exhausted by bodily causation
• Operations proper to the soul itself, not in the body This requires subtle reasoning and careful distinction.