19. The Five Powers, Four Grades, and Three Souls

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

The Five Powers Reduced to Four Grades and Three Souls #

• Five Powers of Life: Nutritive (threptikon), Sensitive (aesthetikon), Appetitive (oreptikon), Locomotive (kinetikon katatopikon), and Thinking (dianoetikon)
• Four Grades of Life: Plants (nutritive only); Animals without locomotion (nutritive + sensitive); Animals with locomotion (nutritive + sensitive + locomotive); Humans (all five powers)
• Three Souls: Plant soul, Animal soul, Rational soul—distinguished by degrees of rising above matter
• The appetitive power does not constitute a separate grade because it necessarily follows sensation and thinking

Why Appetitive Powers Don’t Create a Separate Grade #

• Sense desire (epithumia/thumas) automatically accompanies sensation: where there is touch and sensation, there is necessarily pleasure/pain and desire
• Rational desire/will (bulesis) automatically accompanies understanding: those with understanding necessarily have will
• Therefore, appetitive powers depend on and presuppose other powers; they add no independent level

The Three Souls and Immateriality #

• Plant Soul: Barely rises above matter; exhibits control over organized matter in growth and reproduction, but operates largely through material processes
• Animal Soul: Much more elevated; consciousness of surroundings, retention of sensory impressions, and directed activity represent significant departure from blind materialism
• Rational Soul: Most elevated; possesses completely immaterial knowledge through understanding and reason
• The distinction among three souls reflects three noteworthy degrees of immateriality, not merely five different powers

Hierarchical Ordering of Powers (Second Sense of “Before”) #

• Nutritive can exist without sensitive (plants)
• Sensitive cannot exist without nutritive (all sensing animals feed)
• Locomotive cannot exist without sensitive (all moving animals sense)
• Thinking cannot exist without lower powers (all understanding beings have sensation and nutrition)
• This ordering follows the principle: one can be without the other, but not vice versa

Key Arguments #

Why the Reduction from Five to Four to Three #

1. The appetitive power necessarily follows sensation and understanding, so it does not add an independent grade of life
2. The locomotive power, while present only in some animals, still represents creatures that have sensation
3. Not all creatures with sensation have locomotion (some ocean creatures); not all with locomotion have understanding
4. The three souls are distinguished primarily by their degree of immateriality/rising above matter
5. The locomotive power does not represent as significant a rise above matter as the transition from sensation to understanding

The Soul’s Immateriality #

• Even the plant soul rises above pure materialism: the chemical changes in living things are “ordered” to growth and reproduction, unlike blind chemical reactions
• The sensing powers rise further above matter: awareness of surroundings and retention of impressions
• The understanding power is completely immaterial: knowledge itself is immaterial
• Therefore, three souls adequately capture the noteworthy degrees of immateriality

Important Definitions #

The Appetitive Powers (Orexis) #

Sense Desire (Epithumia/Concupiscible Appetite)

• Concerned directly with what is pleasant or painful to the senses
• Emotions: liking/love, desire, joy/pleasure; dislike, aversion, sadness
• Examples: hunger, thirst, desire to reproduce, preference for flavors

Irascible Appetite (Thumos)

• Arises when there is difficulty in obtaining what is desired or avoiding what is painful
• Emotions: hope (confidence in overcoming difficulty), despair (belief in inability), boldness (confidence in one’s strength), fear (weakness before threatening evil), anger (capacity to overcome what causes pain)
• Named from anger (thumos can mean both anger and boldness) because anger is most manifest
• Represents emotions that hear reason imperfectly, pursuing even painful things through difficulty

Rational Desire (Bulesis/Will)

• Desire that follows from deliberation and counsel (bule)
• A “chosen love” or “deliberate love”
• Present in humans and in understanding beings (God, angels)
• Involves election/choice (alexio/electio), which requires discernment of reason

The Soul’s Relationship to Matter #

• The soul is truly immaterial in a way, yet something of the body too
• Common misconception: thinking of the soul as air-like or fire-like substance (more subtle material, not truly immaterial)
• The soul is understood through degrees of immateriality/rising above limitations of matter

Examples & Illustrations #

The Oak Tree #

• Thousands of leaves growing in a certain pattern and shape
• Exhibits control and ordering of matter, coordination of cells
• Plant soul organizes matter but barely rises above it

Sensory Powers and Immateriality #

• Touch (most fundamental sense, present in all animals): retains awareness of painful/pleasant
• Higher senses (sight, hearing, smell): not necessary in all animals, represent greater immateriality
• A creature with only touch and perhaps taste may not move from place to place (e.g., ocean creatures Aristotle observed)

Animal Behavior #

• Two animals wanting the same food or mate: difficulty arises, leading to fighting (irascible appetite overcoming difficulty)
• Cat and large dog: cat’s fear response (shivering, running up tree, hiding under bed), showing fear as irascible emotion
• Running for dinner vs. running for life: fear gives strength and aids escape
• Tabitha the cat (“Queen of Bumblebee Circle”): boldness/fearlessness illustrated through charging at other cats
• The legend of Sleepy Hollow: Ichabod Crane (talks, lacks physical strength) vs. Brom Bones (physically dominant, bold toward Katrina)

Anger and Strength #

• A man seeing his neighbor abuse his children or steal his car would arouse anger
• A father approves when a man punishes his child for deliberately breaking a plant
• Anger can give strength (like the running man escaping danger)

Questions Addressed #

Why Five Powers but Only Four Grades of Life? #

• Because appetite (desire) does not constitute an independent level; it necessarily accompanies both sensation and understanding
• The appetitive power is like a dependent modifier that follows upon other powers without adding an autonomous grade

Why Three Souls Rather Than Five? #

• Because souls are distinguished by their degree of immateriality/rising above matter
• The plant soul barely rises above organized matter
• The animal soul rises much more through sensation and awareness
• The rational soul rises most through completely immaterial understanding
• The locomotive power does not represent as significant a rise above matter as these three transitions

Why Does Boldness Relate to Fear? #

• Both are irascible emotions concerning difficulty
• Fear arises when one doubts ability to overcome threatening evil
• Boldness arises when one is confident in one’s strength to overcome a difficulty
• They represent opposite judgments about one’s capacity in the face of difficulty

How Do We Know the Different Natures of Souls? #

• Through their operations and what they do (a tree grows and reproduces; a stone does not)
• Different grades of consciousness and activity reveal different grades of life
• The immateriality evident in an animal’s awareness differs from a plant’s blind growth
• The immateriality evident in human understanding far exceeds animal sensation

Notable Quotes #

“The feeding powers can be without the sensing powers but not vice versa. The sensing powers can be without the moving powers but not vice versa. The moving powers can be without the power of understanding but not vice versa. But you can’t have the sensing powers without desiring power. You can’t have understanding without some desiring power.”

“[The soul’s] order and its stability doesn’t make much sense from the point of view of physical science alone… there’s something there besides that.” (Heisenberg, cited by Berquist on the organism’s organization)

“Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, and could have been distinguished, her election has sealed me for herself.” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, on chosen love requiring reason’s discrimination)