De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 8: The Soul's Activities, Passions, and Separability from Body

Transcript
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You have to know what the mind is for you to know what the understanding is, or you have to know what the understanding is for you to know what the mind is. And it's the soul, you know, what is able, or that to which the body is able to understand or sense or grow and so on. And you've got to understand the soul first with power, isn't it? Now notice, the more fundamental order in our knowledge is you should go from what is more known to us towards what is less known to us, right? So which is more known to us, digesting or food? Well, if that's so, then we have to begin with the object and go to the act, right? Which is more known to us? Do we have the ability to see what do we see? If that's so, then we have to investigate the act before the, what? Power, right, huh? Again, which is more known to us? The soul, what the soul is able to do, what the body is able to do through the soul. Which is more known to us? Well, notice, you're raising a question there now, right? See? But that's a question about the road to follow, right? Okay? So, you know, you can say paragraph five, definitely, right? And paragraph four in the number, the first part of it, right? He's asking about the road we should take to define, or how we should go about defining this, right? He's explicitly asking questions of the order in our knowledge, right? The road in our knowledge, right? And otherwise, your mind's just going to wonder about these things, right? Now, as we kind of hinted before, if the soul is something of another, right? And you're going to investigate what the soul is by divisions, as he will start to do in the second book, huh? He's going to divide both on the part of the soul and the part of that of which it is the soul. You see? Which would have to do, if you weren't defining the soul as something of another, right? You see? So those things are connected, right? Okay? Now, just say a few more things about error. I was mentioning how when Thomas talks in the text in the commentary of Timothy and so on, he speaks of the causes of deception on the side of the desire and the side of the knowing powers, which is like the divisory that Pius X is, but it's a slightly different language, right? And he usually gives pride or envy, you know, as examples of causes on the side of desire there. But on the side of the knowing powers, he often gives something called false imagination. Okay? Rather than ignorance, right? Although other texts, when Thomas says, talk about ignorance as a cause of deception, huh? False imagination, huh? Now, Shakespeare has another expression here for false imagination in King Lear. It's interesting, you know, sometimes the same thing is stated in different ways, right? Like what it is is sometimes called nature as we saw, sometimes it's called substance. And I'm very familiar when I taught the love and friendship course with the Greek proverb. In fact, when I was studying Greek the first time, they had that Greek proverb in the Greek book. Hophilus estenalis autos. A friend is another, what? Self. And Aristotle will talk about that. Proverb in Plato will talk about it. You know? What's Shakespeare's phrase, instead of calling a friend, another self? It's a very, a very beautiful way, a very good way of thinking about a friend, right? A friend is another self, right? You can see that in the commandment to love your neighbor, right? Love your neighbor, what? As yourself, right? So you're loving your neighbor as, what? Another self, right? Your neighbor is not yourself. But you have to be looking at your neighbor as another self, right? You know, what is Shakespeare's a little phrase for this, another self? Something with soul, another soul. No, you keep keeping the word self. Self. Instead of saying another self, you have another word. I see it in the... Second self? Yeah, yeah. Second self, yeah. That shows a certain, what? Ordered, too, among the two, right? Before and after, right? Oh, yeah. So everything is at home, right? You know, less you have to compare to a friend as a second self, right? It's interesting, right? There's another word for false imagination here in King Lear. Now, Lear goes kind of mad, right? And to some extent, you know, Closter, who has similar cause for going mad, because his own son, he thinks, is a traitor, right? If a man goes mad, he's kind of out of his misery because he doesn't know where he is, right? Or when he's undergone, right? So Closter says in this passage here, The king is mad, you know, Lear is raging out there in the... The king is mad. How stiff is my vile sense that I stand up and have ingenious feeling of my huge sorrows, right? He hasn't got mad, right? So he's much more aware of what's happening, you know? That's what he's thinking. Better I were to distract, right? So should my thoughts be severed from my grief, huh? And woes... That's his miseries, right? And woes, by wrong imaginations, lose the knowledge of themselves, huh? Now, sometimes people do go mad, right? In sorrow or something like that, right? And it's like God's nature trying to take us away from something, you know, we can't face, right? So you imagine yourself to be somebody other than you are, right? But notice that, huh? And woes, by wrong imaginations, lose the knowledge of themselves, huh? So, wrong imagination, right? You can imagine something correctly, or you can imagine it wrongly, right? You can imagine something truly, as it is, right? And imagine something, you know, falsely, as it is not, right? Now, how is that related to the other causes of error that we spoke about, right? Well, Aristotle spoke of likenesses that caused a deception, right? And, of course, you look at Shakespeare's play, The Comedy of Errors, I don't know if you know the play. But The Comedy of Errors is a take-off from a Latin comedy, which is a take-off from a Greek comedy. It's a comedy about, what, twin brothers, right? Who, at an early age, get separated, right? And then, by chance, end up in the same city, and one being, what, infused for the other, right? And all these, you know, things you tell, you have to be the play, but it's very funny, right? And, but they're deceived because of their, what? Likeness, yeah. You see? Likeness is a cause of error. That's some of the poet was, as well as the philosopher, right? Mm-hmm. See? Well, is there a connection between imagination and likeness? Yeah. In fact, the word image is almost a synonym for the word, what? Likeness, huh? Sure. And, as, shall you want to quote? I guess it shall, yeah. The one who says that, you know, the imagination delights the likenesses of things, right? My reason wants to see the difference between things. So, the imagination kind of being caught with the likeness of things will what? Be a source of deception, right? Because likeness is the cause of deception, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. But as we'll learn when we get to the third book on the soul, we never think without, what, at the same time, imagining in this life. And so there's an image always associated with that thinking. And if we judge by what we imagine, and imagine things other than they are, or if we're trying to imagine something like the soul, that you cannot be imagined, you're going to be necessarily false, whatever you imagine the soul to be. And the common person, you know, like the poets, imagine the soul as being kind of a ghost-like thing, in the shape of you or me. And that's the way you recognize the soul of somebody, but he's separated from his body, right? Because it has the same shape as you. You know, that's obviously false as to what the soul is, huh? But that's the way the poet, you know, represents this in the Odyssey, right? When the souls of the dead come up with this, the Odysseus, right? Or when, to that comedy, right? When he meets the souls of those who died before him, he recognizes them, he tries to hug them, you know, but can't hug somebody who's all here, right? But he recognizes them by their shape, right? But that's false imagination, right? But it goes back to lightness there. Take it up with that. But also the fact that we can't think without imagining, so we have to negate what we're imagining to understand what is not imaginable. So we say God is not a body, right? We say thoughts are not continuous, and so on. The soul is not continuous, right? So we're imagining a continuous thing, and we're saying the soul is not continuous. It's hard to not be deceived by imagination, especially about something like the soul, because you can't imagine the soul. You can't sense it. So in actual philosophy, usually we go back to senses to judge things, right? What we can sense. And mathematics, we go back to imagination here, but the soul can be neither sensed nor imagined. So how is that a cause? Is that a root cause? Okay, now, I'm going to find another connection here. One connection I was making between this and my place, right? Okay. But now what's the other word for error? Mistake. Yeah, yeah. What's the etymology of mistake? Rasping. Yeah, yeah. Misapprehension, that's it. Misunderstand, huh? But it comes to me to miss in what? Thinking. Now, it's interesting. In Shakespeare, you'll see, it's very common, and maybe in other half of the time, that the word aim is often used as a synonym for guess. So I can show many texts of Shakespeare where the word aim means guess. Okay? That's interesting, right? When I aim at the target, right, I'm trying to hit the target, right? But sometimes I, what, miss the target, right? Okay? And so when I guess, I'm in the end of the truth, right? But I often, what? Miss. Miss, yeah. And Plato speaks of that, you know, in one of the dialogues, you know, where the, you've got a cage, you think you reach in and you get the wrong thing, right? I see. You know, sometimes at the dinner table or something, if you're not paying attention, you know, when you're talking to somebody, you reach and you might knock something over, right? Yeah. Kind of embarrassing sometimes, you knock a white glass over or something, that's kind of tough to begin with, right? But sometimes you take the wrong thing, don't you? Sometimes when you're grabbing, too miss and taking, right? Okay? So, there's a connection between imagination and guessing. It's imagination and the good disposition of imagination which enables people to guess. That's why in experimental science, as the great Einstein said, one year, 1905, right? He produced three papers, right? All of which are regarded as worth the Nobel Prize. Most scientists never have a paper worth the Nobel Prize, right? Let alone three in one year, right? Never been a mind that way. But Einstein says that these hypotheses are what? Freely imagined, right? What's interesting is that these scientists, they usually make their great discoveries whether they're in their 20s or their, what, 30s, maybe, right? And if you take Einstein in a later age, all these pies come out and they'll never need more. But the imagination declines after the 20s or the 30s, right? And what reason, you know, gets better until the age of 49, at least. You see? But the imagination declines, huh? But the imagination is what enables you to, what? To guess, right? Just like in the practical area, my brother Mark's joke, you know, he was in Quebec there, he had two friends. One of them could think of all kinds of things to do. Very magical guy. But he don't judge them, this one you should do. My brother Mark was like, if you judge, this is the thing to do. But he's being like a philosopher, a little lethargic, you need the third guy to get them going, right? But he used to joke about the three acts of kudas, right? Are divided amongst the three men, right? Command, this last guy to get them going, you know? But the judgment of my brother Mark, and the possibilities, right? I think he had to make a possibility, oh, wow, wow, you have things to do, but he couldn't decide what he should actually do. But it's imagination, as Calvin says, the good decision of imagination, it was one to guess well, right? It's kind of, you know, these scientists, the way they guess, you know, the DNA, or what it was, you know? They're guessing, right? But they're kind of interesting things, huh? And, Sherlock Holmes, you know, before he gets down, he's already imagining what it happened, right? So, but that's the connection there between that use of the word aim there for guess. Very common Shakespeare. It's showing me a text where he does that, a place where he does that. Well, it's one reason it's guessing that it is apt to be, what? To guess wrongly, right? To be deceived, huh? And this is especially true of the wild guess, right, huh? Okay. But even educated guesses are often wrong, huh? The economist, you know, is making educated guesses, but he's often wrong. The weatherman is making guesses, educated guesses, but he's often wrong, right? That's what actually happens, huh? So it's tied up with the word mis-take, right? The mis-taking, huh? But no, it's a different way which this is a cause of error because you're aiming at the truth and you hit something other than the truth and so do it, right? It's like that guy who's drinking the wine to get, to satisfy his sweet tooth that he gets drunk. Well, I didn't know after a while, right? But if he has such an intense desire for what? For the sweetness of the wine that he's, you know, well, he's probably getting drunk even though he sees that. It's like, it's satisfying my sweet tooth is to drink enough wine to satisfy my sweet tooth. Well, then he's got to do that, right? So he's aiming at one thing and something else he's not aiming at happens, right? He's not aiming to get drunk, but he's going to get drunk. He's aiming to get satisfied sweet tooth in the wine. So out of curiosity or in some cases out of pride, he aims at something above his mental powers, right? And then easily fails, right? Not that he's intending to fail, but it's not unusual that you fail when you aim to know something beyond your capacity to know one. Notice how Socrates was deceived in the way in the youth you fro, right? When he tries to help youth you fro define piety and piety seems to be a form of justice, right? Until he's trying to see a quid pro quo between man and God, right? And that's not what piety is. But piety is like justice, isn't it? because in piety because in piety you're always because in piety somebody something right but unlike justice you can't be you can't give them the equivalent of what you receive right so what's his name uh cicero says that the son is always in debt to his father right so there's never justice in strict sense to your father my mother tells me her father came to your side and said no after i'm gone you say you haven't done nothing you know that's about the saving of my parents right and uh kind of you know that's that's the way things are right so maybe get through the premium next time okay there's a little bit of excursion there you know thinking a little bit about mistakes and errors right and we'll come up again in the dialogue in the thing here when he gets to the second book you know he says it's very common kind of kind of frightening passage in the sense of the scene it's like a friend of my brother richard's you know he went went got a medical degree they went to you know psychological degree and got a degree in psychiatry you know and of course you're studying all these mental ailments and so on and of course to hear it looked like everybody around him you know was just you know on the brink you know kind of scared you to hear this guy talking you're like we're all kind of you know very close to going over the deep end you know and uh but when you read this passage on air you know you see how common air is right and just the diversity of opinion is enough to show you that most philosophers are mistaken right maybe all of them you know you get to realize how necessary to proceed wisely and slow so allegedly this shakespeare you're going to give me back by the shakespeare's or you still got them you still look at them i could give them back to you but that's okay next time next time this is an example of one of the what they call the ardent edition you know because you know sometimes it'll touch upon religion right and the reason they usually give whether they're not a christian is well why should i be christian just because i was born here you know if i was born in in india i'd be hindu right you know so he's you know i know there's some similarity there right if you're born in ireland you'd be a catholic if you're born in india you'd be a hindu and maybe you'd be you know buddhist if you were born in the better someplace right there's some truth to that right you know and uh so you kind of see if i was born down in satiribia i'd be in mohammedan or something right probably it would be you know but um it's just like this right you say well i'm not going to be hindu so i'm born india right no i'm not going to be a buddhist if i was born you know i should be a christian then right you know this is the same thing right but you you're kind of really seeing a likeness there but not seeing any difference between you know being a christian or being mohammedan do you know anything about the university of bayton i have three nieces and nephews attend So today, maybe we'll look at the second half here of the third part of the premium, which is on the difficulties as far as the properties of the soul, and starting with number seven there. He says there's a difficulty also about the passions of the soul, whether they are all common as well as to what has soul, or is there something of the soul proper to it? What problem is he going to consider mainly here? Yeah, well, that's going to be involved, I suppose, but he's going to talk really about whether things like, what we would call in English the emotions, right? Whether there's something bodily or not, right? And you could ask the same thing about, what, sensing, right? You could ask the same thing about understanding eventually, right? But he's mainly talking here about the emotions. So he says, To grasp this is necessary, but not easy. Need paragraph. But it seems that of most, there is not one suffering or doing which is without the body. To be angry, to take courage, to desire, to sense in any way, as if these are clearly involving the body. Thinking seems most to be proper, meaning proper to the what? Soul, yeah. But if even this is some imagination, or is not without imagination, not even this could be without the body. And notice how we often use interchangeably the word to imagine and the word to think. And that's so. That's so. As if they were the same, right? Now in the third book, there's also going to distinguish between imagining and thinking, huh? But there's a likeness between imagining and what? Thinking. And when I imagine something, I form a, what, image of it, huh? And when I think about something, I form a thought about it. And in English, you'll find that people will use the word idea in a confused way. Sometimes meaning a what? Image. And sometimes meaning a what? Thought, huh? Even those who know the difference between image and thought, or imagining and thinking, sometimes, as we said before, use these words interchangeably, huh? If you look at Shakespeare there, the fifth there, and he has the chorus and so on, and they're kind of apologizing for trying to reproduce the Battle of Orange and Court on this little wooden stage, right? And he's asking the audience, right, to help them with their what? Imagination. Imagination, right? Before you see two or three guys on the stage, imagine you've got, you know, two or three hundred people, you know? So, but you'll sometimes say, you know, help us with your what? Imagining, right? Other times with your what? Thinking as if the two were the what? Same thing, right? And the English philosophers, huh? They use the word idea, and they're not too sure whether they're talking about an image or a what? Thought, huh? Okay? So if the philosopher has an idea, it should be a thought, right? But if the girl says to the guy, don't get ideas, it's probably images that she's talking about, right? He's probably not doing too much thinking at this time, huh? Okay? So you find people using the word idea in English, sometimes for an image, sometimes for a thought, huh? I've got an idea. What do you mean? You know, it's the image or a thought, huh? And even if they are something different, there's a certain connection between the two that we'll see when we get to the third book, huh? And eventually we learn that imagining is something in the body, but thinking and the sense of understanding is not in the body. At this point, we don't know that yet. So he's raising a difficulty to question about it. Now, the ninth paragraph is showing the importance of this question, huh? In regard to something that man naturally wants to know. is not in the body. And if you read the famous dialogue with Plato, the one called the Phaedo, Phaedo is the dialogue that takes place in the last day of Socrates' life. He's in prison, he's going to die that day, right? And he gets involved in several conversations, but the longest conversation is a conversation about whether the human soul survives death, or whether the human soul perishes with the body. And Socrates, in getting involved in that discussion, he can't help but make a joke, huh? He says, they're always accusing us philosophers of talking about irrelevant things, right? And notice the expression that we have in English now. We call the question academic, right? That it's not somehow relevant to our real life or something. Your academic comes from Tegel's school, the academy. But Socrates makes a joke about this, right? Saying that they could hardly say that this question of whether our soul survives death is irrelevant to me, because I'm going to die today. But of course, it's relevant to us all our life, right? Because we're not going to live the same way, huh? Not just in the day we die. But all our life, we're not going to live the same way if we think that our soul survives death, right? Or we think that our soul, what? Yeah. Now, as Christians, we believe, of course, that the soul survives death. But if you didn't have the faith, right? And nothing but an actual reason to go on, you can see how this would be a very serious, what? Question. And Aristotle's pointing out in the ninth paragraph here the connection between the questions that we're asking here now and this question, right? He says, 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. Notice what he's saying. He's saying, if our soul does something, right? But not in the body. If our soul has some activity, right? Some operation, not in the body. Then the soul's existence is not tied to the body. But, if we find that the soul has no activity by itself, if we find that the soul has no activity except one that involves the, what? Body, right? Then, if the soul has no activity except in the body and through the body, then there's no reason to think that the soul's existence is, what? Independent of the body, huh? Okay? Now, everybody's heard the famous statement of Descartes, which was actually made by Augustine before him. I think, therefore, I am, right? Okay? But notice, now, you're going backwards there as far as reality is concerned. As Shaw Holmes says, right? We've got to reason backwards, he says. And Watson says to Shaw Holmes, what do you mean, reason backwards? We've got to reason from the effect back to the, what? Cause, huh? Now, something very similar to cause and effect, but maybe more tied up here with the second sense of before, and that is that you've got to be before you can do something. Okay? So that being is before, what? Doing, right? Perhaps something can be without doing something, right? But so they can't do something without being. But which is more known to us? The being of a thing or what it does, huh? Notice, when Descartes or Cousins says, I think, therefore I am, these, what? The order in our knowing there is the reverse of the order in being there. So notice, huh? If the soul has being, if the soul has existence, only in the body, right? Then the soul would not do anything except in the body and through the body, right? Okay? And what we want to know, as he says there, is does the soul have being only in the body? If the soul had being or existence only in the body, then when the body crops, right? If the body is destroyed, then the soul would cease to be too. Because it has being only in the body. But if the soul has being or existence, not only in the body, right? But in itself. Then it can be without the body, even after the body perishes. But the being of the soul is hidden from us. What kind of being it has, huh? Does it have being only in the body? Or does it have being in itself? Is it being, as we sometimes say, immersed in the body, right? Or does the body maybe partake or share it as the soul, but the soul is in existence in itself? Well, we have to reason to that backwards, as Shaq Holmes would say. If the soul has something that it does, not in the body. And the most likely one for this, candidate for this, if there is such one, would be what? Thinking or understanding. If the soul understands the universal, not in the body, right? Then its existence is not just what? In the body. Do you see that? So, Rastal is talking about the importance of this question now, right? The very question now, the immortality of the soul. Does the soul survive the death of the body? That depends upon the answer to this question, right? Does it do something not in the body? You can see the enormous importance of that question. Okay, number nine again. If, therefore, there is something proper to the soul among the works or passions of the soul, if the soul does something, right? By itself, right? And not in the body or through the body. It can happen that the soul be separated. If, on the other hand, nothing is proper to it, nothing is private to it, right? It would not be separable. But just as many things happen to what is straight is straight. You can talk about it, right? In separation. But it can't exist in separation, huh? That would be the same way as the soul, right? Okay? So I can talk about the shape of this glass in separation from the glass, can't I? But I can't really take the shape of this glass and put it over there and put the glass over here, can I? You see? So, although we can talk about the soul maybe by itself, right? It wouldn't be able to exist by itself, right? But if it does something, right? By itself, not in the body, then it must... But if it does something, right? So, if it does something, right? So, if it does something, right? So, if it does something, right?