Abstract
In this synoptic paper I should like to contribute to the formation and defence of a secular conception of the soul through elucidating the relation between the mind and the soul , as well as the relations between mind and body , and soul and the flesh. Drawing on a Platonic conception of the soul , but stripped of its metaphysical and ontological trappings, the paper argues that this conception fills a lacuna in the Aristotelean concept of the rational psuche, through its insight into human beings and their potentiality for evil-doing. This, then, is answering to a need of forming a practical and secularised conception of the soul as part of human nature.
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Notes
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Judaism is equivocal about an after life, the belief sitting more comfortably with Kabbalistic mystical Judaism (post eleventh century AD) than with traditional mainstream rabbinical Judaism. Hints of an afterlife of sorts occur in the Pentateuch, she’ol being mentioned a few times. Replete with twittering shades, it was evidently akin to the Homeric Hades but played no evident role in the ethics of the Pentateuch. During and after the period of the Second Temple subordinate movements within Judaism display elements of Zoroastrian principles assimilated during the Babylonian exile, including belief in eternal life, apocalyptic beliefs, and dualist beliefs concerning the powers of good and the powers of evil, and, in the fullness of time, beliefs in demons. But all these, though they characterized mainstream Christianity, were not part of dominant rabbinical Jewish belief.
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Of course, the term used is psuchē, but the Socratic and Platonic conception of the psuchē is quite distinct from the Aristotelian one. The latter is primarily a biological concept, the former is largely a metaphysical and ethical one.
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The soul also incorporates aesthetic sensibility, but the latter appears to be independent of moral sensibility. It will not be discussed here.
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‘We consider this man, and everything he stands for, with justified fear. We belong to the same species. Is the human race able—at any time, anywhere—to spew up others like him? Why not? Adolf Eichmann is the most dire warning to us all. He is a warning to guard our own souls; to refuse utterly and forever to give allegiance without question, to obey orders silently, to scream slogans.’ Gellhorn (1962, 52–59) Her report is far more thoughtful than Hannah Arendt ’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt 1963).
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Hacker, P.M.S. (2019). On the Soul, the Death of the Soul, and the Nature of Evil. In: Christensen, B. (eds) The Second Cognitive Revolution. Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26680-6_18
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