Tag Archives: soul

Liber Tertivs: On the Nature of the Soul

Eikas cheers to all! We recently became aware of the book Epicurean Philosophy: An introduction from the “Garden of Athens”, edited / written by Christos Yapijakis, Panagiotis Panagiotopoulos, and others from the Epicurean Gardens in Greece.

The book Epicurus and His Influence on History, by Ben Gazur is available for pre-order. He has, in the past, written the essays An Epicurean Cure and Why Epicurus Matters Today.

This month, Revista Horizonte’s YouTube channel published the lecture “Perspectiva política de la filosofía epicúrea” by Estiven Valencia Marín. This is in Spanish, and the facilitator argues that Epicurean philosophy does not strictly forbid political engagement.

In Mahsa Amini: the new Iphianassa, we discussed that Lucretius opens his poem De rerum natura by giving various reasons for writing the poem, among them the perceived need for a new social contract that was not oppressive because of the corruption of religion. Near the opening, he also mentions that death and the nature of the soul are serious enough threats to human happiness, that they too were reasons for writing his poem.

For what the soul may be they do not know,
Whether ’tis born, or enter in at birth,
And whether, snatched by death, it die with us,
Or visit the shadows …
– Lucretius, De rerum natura, Liber Primus

Ergo, clarifying the nature of the soul is one of the intended purposes of De rerum natura. In the third of the six books, after summarizing Books 1 and 2 (verses 31-33), Lucretius introduces Liber Tertivm, the entirety of which (like Philodemus of Gadara’s wonderful scroll “Peri Thanatos” / “On Death”) contains meleta on Principal Doctrine 2, and which deals with both death and the nature of the soul. In fact, there are some parallels with the Philodeman scroll, and around verse 884 we see Lucretian criticism of being angry that one has to die and of worrying about various ways of dying, which is reminiscent of Peri Thanatos. The reason why he chose this particular subject (as per verses 36-93) is that he says that fear of hell and death lead to degrading or fear-based forms of religion, zeal (fanaticism), evil, greed, murder, and the quest for fame and of other vain and empty desires.

In verse 55, Lucretius says that when men are in doubt or in anger, we get to see what they’re made of, because they tend to use “the mask” of religious zeal. This is a profoundly insightful commentary on the nature of religiosity, and applies a Philodeman logic–where we diagnose some neurosis or what he calls “disease of the soul” based on signs.

Will hate of living and beholding light
Take hold on humankind that they inflict
Their own destruction with a gloomy heart-
Forgetful that this fear is font of cares,
This fear the plague upon their sense of shame,
And this that breaks the ties of comradry
And oversets all reverence and faith …

For just as children tremble and fear all
In the viewless dark, so even we at times
Dread in the light so many things that be
No whit more fearsome than what children feign,
Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.
This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,
Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
Nor glittering arrows of morning sun disperse,
But only nature’s aspect and her law.

Defining the Natural Soul

Further Reading: The Concrete Self
Lucretius Book 3 – Death of the Soul, and Other Good Things

Epicurus instructs at the opening of his Epistle to Herotodus, that we must first define the object of our investigation, before we begin any discourse. We generally think of the natural soul as the condition of the living flesh that gives us life and sentience. As Epicureans, we are unconcerned with any supernatural or Platonic conception of the soul. Instead, we speak of the nature of the soul, even of the health of the soul, in wholly physical terms. Lucretius defined the soul as part of the body, and connects it with the head or the intellect from where the organism governs itself.

The mind (animus / sometimes translated as soul) which oft we call the intellect (mentem), wherein is seated life’s counsel and regimen, is part no less of man than hand and foot and eyes are parts of one whole breathing creature. – Liber Tertivs, 94-95

In Liber Tertivs, Lucretius is expounding the same theories that Epicurus expounds in his Letter to Herodotus (portions 63-68), and in more detail. To be clear, the soul is physical. Lucretius explains that the soul is mortal (416, 603-614) and that it gets sick and ages with the body (445-491), that wine gets the soul drunk, and that the soul’s diseases can be treated with medicine (510-525). We also learn that the soul has no weight (230), that the five senses are among the soul’s faculties (624-633), and that the first atomists imagined that the atoms of the soul were particularly subtle or tiny because neural activity happens so fast (177-205), and in this he uses the analogy of how water moves faster than honey because it’s less dense.

Must we not grant that mind and soul consist of a corporeal nature? – 167

The Head, the Chest, and the Belly

Mind and soul (animum atque animam), I say, are held conjoined one with other, and form one single nature of themselves; but chief (caput) and regnant through the frame entire is still that counsel which we call the mind, and that cleaves seated in the midmost breast.

“Caput” means “head”, and indicates that the soul is the head of the body. He may have been working with, and translating from, the Greek word “psyche” in his sources.

Lucretius argues (147-160, and again in 395-415) that the mind is stronger than the flesh. This idea of the soul as the head of the body echoes the logic of Principal Doctrine 20, which we also find in the Wall Inscription of Oenoanda.

Emotions in antiquity were associated with the chest, so it’s not surprising that the ancient Epicureans believed the soul was partially in the chest. This is likely based on the process of “reasoning by signs”, and the observation that strong emotions increase the heart rate and that the heart stops beating at the moment of death. In reality, as Lucretius explains elsewhere, the soul or animating power is found embedded throughout the entire bodily frame.

The focus on the chest as seat of the natural soul might be part of the Epicureans’ insistence that man is more than a rational animal, that he has irrational faculties that are just as important as reason. Lucretius mentions some of these non-rational feelings and faculties of the soul (joy, terror, dismay, etc.)

There are many instinctive psychological processes that happen in the belly, and we know that many of the so-called “happiness hormones” are synthesized in the belly as well. Some yoga instructors teach focused exercises for what they call the “solar plexus”. Some (like Osho)–in a manner that may remind some of Metrodorus’ arguments with his brother–insist that we must “befriend the belly”. Current research shows that the belly has enough neurons to constitute a “second brain”. 

I do not wish to digress much into Taoism, but I wish to accentuate that one of its founders–Yang Chu, who was hugely influential among the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and many other later thinkers–based his entire philosophy on the body as our ultimate ontology. He is the author of several chapters of the second most important classic in Taoism, the Zhuang Tzu. The lack of a Platonic split between body and soul in Taoism has produced a vibrant philosophy that expresses itself in bodily practices related to preventive health, movement, and martial arts, with no boundary whatsoever between the so-called spiritual world and the body.

In Taoist martial arts and meditative practices, the belly is the focus of attention and breath-work, and considered an important means of grounding an stabilizing oneself. The belly, together with certain dietary practices, are important in other cultures’ regimens of self-care.

Treatments for Fear of Death

The main utility of studying the nature of the physical soul is to produce a theory and practice that works, and that can provide treatments for fear of death. These treatments, for the Epicureans, usually focus on arguments, repetition, placing before the eyes, and other similar techniques.

One such argument from Liber Tertivs (verse 904) consists of comparing death to being asleep. Another one is the symmetry argument, which compares the time after death with the time before birth of which we remember nothing, and so there is nothing to fear.

Other arguments are less therapeutic, and more about giving a more complete account of the nature of death in the context of our inter-existence with the other bodies that make up the cosmos. For instance, Lucretius says (in 970) that one thing grows from another, and since all bodies need the particles of other bodies in order to subsist, therefore we must accept that life is a loan.

Lucretian Reassessment of Myths

A naturalist redefinition of the soul and of death has the domino effect of dismantling much of the vulgar mythology that our ancestors have built around them. Lucretius argues that hell is on Earth, that Tartarus is not a place under the ground but represents fear of the gods and of fate, that Tityus is about the dangers of quick care and vague desire, and that the Sisyphus myth (which we discuss below) is about the tendency to seek power even if it does not add pleasure, which feels as if we were pushing a boulder up a hill.

The bottom line is that there is NO other world or afterlife, and that the only relevance of these myths is found in this world.

The Jar Parable

Although the Punctured Jar parable is treated in Liber Sextvs, in the third book we see that the imagery of the jar is an ongoing theme in Lucretius. Here, the body is compared to a jar that cracks open at the time of death and releases its vitality (verses 434-444). Around verse 793 we read that the mind requires the body as a “vessel”, again refuting the idea that a soul may exist without a host body. That the mind needs the body as a vessel is again mentioned around verse 555:

And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart,
Severed from us, can neither feel nor be,
But in the least of time is left to rot,
Thus mind alone can never be, without
The body and the man himself, which seems,
As ’twere the vessel of the same- or aught
Whate’er thou’lt feign as yet more closely joined:
Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds.

It seems like the punctured jar parable was part of a long string of meditations and parables on the physical nature of the soul, which in Liber Sextvs culminates in a salvific teaching.

Around verse 1000, while discussing the myth of Sisyphus, Lucretius makes another reference to the idea of the soul as a jar when he compared Sisyphus’ pushing a stone uphill to the behavior of someone who “feeds forever a thankless heart with good things yet never fills it”.

Here in this life also a Sisyphus
In him who seeketh of the populace
The rods, the axes fell, and evermore
Retires a beaten and a gloomy man.
For to seek after power- an empty name,
Nor given at all- and ever in the search
To endure a world of toil, O this it is
To shove with shoulder up the hill a stone
Which yet comes rolling back from off the top,
And headlong makes for levels of the plain.
Then to be always feeding an ingrate mind,
Filling with good things, satisfying never-
As do the seasons of the year for us,
When they return and bring their progenies
And varied charms, and we are never filled
With the fruits of life- O this, I fancy, ’tis
To pour, like those young virgins in the tale,
Waters into a sieve, unfilled forever.

In the jar metaphor, Lucretius is using poetic imagery as an expedient means to instruct us on the nature of the soul and its need for philosophy, while still employing poetry, parables, and myths. He does not dismiss these cultural devices, but employs them according to the study of nature. In doing this, Lucretius helps to construct a new spirituality, one that is fully physical and consistent with the scientific worldview and with the study of nature, but yet does not reject storytelling, poetry, imagery, parables, etc. In other words, he’s continuing Epicurus’ project of elaborating a complete worldview and cosmology–from the elemental particles all the way to the innumerable worlds–that yet satisfies and cares for the soul and all of its existential needs.

Further Reading:

The Concrete Self

The Punctured Jar Parable

Passages on the Soul, from Epicurus’ Epistle to Herodotus

The Letter to Herodotus is available here in its entirety. A commentary on the Epicurean Doctrine of the Psyche is here.

Also read: Some thoughts on the soul

Our canon is that direct observation by sense and direct apprehension by the mind are alone invariably true.

63

“Next, keeping in view our perceptions and feelings (for so shall we have the surest grounds for belief), we must recognize generally that the soul is a corporeal thing, composed of fine particles, dispersed all over the frame, most nearly resembling wind with an admixture of heat, in some respects like wind, in others like heat. But, again, there is the third part which exceeds the other two in the fineness of its particles and thereby keeps in closer touch with the rest of the frame. And this is shown by the mental faculties and feelings, by the ease with which the mind moves, and by thoughts, and by all those things the loss of which causes death. Further, we must keep in mind that soul has the greatest share in causing sensation.

64

Still, it would not have had sensation, had it not been somehow confined within the rest of the frame. But the rest of the frame, though it provides this indispensable condition for the soul, itself also has a share, derived from the soul, of the said quality; and yet does not possess all the qualities of soul. Hence on the departure of the soul it loses sentience. For it had not this power in itself; but something else, congenital with the body, supplied it to body: which other thing, through the potentiality actualized in it by means of motion, at once acquired for itself a quality of sentience, and, in virtue of the neighbourhood and interconnexion between them, imparted it (as I said) to the body also.

65

“Hence, so long as the soul is in the body, it never loses sentience through the removal of some other part. The containing sheath may be dislocated in whole or in part, and portions of the soul may thereby be lost; yet in spite of this the soul, if it manage to survive, will have sentience. But the rest of the frame, whether the whole of it survives or only a part, no longer has sensation, when once those atoms have departed, which, however few in number, are required to constitute the nature of soul. Moreover, when the whole frame is broken up, the soul is scattered and has no longer the same powers as before, nor the same motions; hence it does not possess sentience either.

66

“For we cannot think of it as sentient, except it be in this composite whole and moving with these movements; nor can we so think of it when the sheaths which enclose and surround it are not the same as those in which the soul is now located and in which it performs these movements. 

67

“There is the further point to be considered, what the incorporeal can be, if, I mean, according to current usage the term is applied to what can be conceived as self-existent. But it is impossible to conceive anything that is incorporeal as self-existent except empty space. And empty space cannot itself either act or be acted upon, but simply allows a body to move through it. Hence those who call soul incorporeal speak foolishly. For if it were so, it could neither act nor be acted upon. But, as it is, both these properties, you see, plainly belong to soul.

68

“If, then, we bring all these arguments concerning soul to the criterion of our feelings and perceptions, and if we keep in mind the proposition stated at the outset, we shall see that the subject has been adequately comprehended in outline: which will enable us to determine the details with accuracy and confidence.

Further Reading:

A Concrete Self

Some thoughts on the soul

 

A Concrete Self

The following is a portion of a book review of Why Buddhism is True, by Robert Wright.

I’ve tackled some of the problems related to the Buddhist doctrine of anatta–which posits that there is no self–in my review of Sam Harris’ Waking Up. Is the self a thing? Is it a mental function or a process? Depending on how we define the self, we may or may not find a self. In Why Buddhism is True, in order to prove that there is no-self, Wright limits discussion of the self to “the conscious self”, not the body, not the whole self, which reminds me of Cosma Raimondi’s argument about taking into consideration the whole of the human being. When the author speaks of the self as a “rational charioteer”–presumably meaning “conscious”?–, we are expected to accept that emotions or feelings are perceived as unconscious insofar as they are irrational, and that therefore there is no self, only nature acting as a puppeteer.

Another error in attempting to prove the doctrine of anatta goes back all the way to Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, and appears to be tied to the original Vedic and Hindu context. In the Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu scriptures, we find a defense of the idea of atman (the soul, in Sanskrit) as “the eternal aspect” of our self. This atman is sometimes described, interestingly, as an atomic particle. If Buddha could prove that there was nothing eternal in the sentient being, he could refute the doctrine of atman with a doctrine of anatta (no-self, in Pali). But what if the self, like all else, was real, just temporary? Why does the temporary conglomeration of certain conditions imply non-existence or non-reality? This does not follow, and so the arguments for the doctrine of anatta were, from the onset, flawed, because there is no atman to speak of in the first place. Selfhood does not need to be eternal in order to exist and be experienced as real by sentient beings. If the doctrine of anatta is reinterpreted to say that the self does not exist as_we_imagine_it_to_exist, then there is much more merit to the doctrine.

Now, in nature we see that even seemingly stable things like stones and mountains undergo geological processes over the aeons. We see that the trees can not exist without seeds sprouting, without solar light, without water, soil, and other elements, and that all things inter-exist. We see that, like all animals, we have millions of micro-organisms in our bellies without which we would not be able to properly digest our food: nothing exists in a vacuum. We are constantly exchanging particles with the rest of nature via breathing, acting, and eating. This recycling of particles between all things is poetically detailed early in the first book of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, inferring from phenomena like how the sea is replenished by rains, rivers, and other sources of water, and concluding that–since “nothing comes from nothing”–all things must deteriorate into the primal “germs” (that is, particles) that will make up new things:

Whence may the water-springs, beneath the sea,
Or inland rivers, far and wide away,
Keep the unfathomable ocean full?

And out of what does Ether feed the stars?
For lapsed years and infinite age must else
Have eat all shapes of mortal stock away:
But be it the Long Ago contained those germs,
By which this sum of things recruited lives,
Those same infallibly can never die,
Nor nothing to nothing evermore return.

If all other things in nature exist as processes, ever-changing, why must a member of the homo sapiens species exist as a Platonic essence, an eternal soul, an abstraction, an idea? Why can’t the self also be a process, just like the body and embedded within it, ever-changing from birth to death? Why can’t there be a concrete self, rather than an abstract self? What if, rather than a noun (self), we started referring to a process of ever becoming, which would more aptly describe what we are referring to–and yet doesn’t deny its reality as a felt experience of the sentient being?

The reason why Buddhists have not found a self is because they are not LOOKING for a CONCRETE self. They are looking for an abstraction, a Platonic “essence”, a Hindu atman. I believe that, with the help of Epicurean and Lucretian descriptions, and drawing strictly from the study of nature, it is possible for contemporary materialists to posit a theory of self that is corporeal, scientific, satisfying, and dynamic, to counter the Buddhist, nihilist, and other theories out there.

For the sake of clarity, Epicurean philosophy finds itself in the realist camp of this discussion–our position is pragmatic: we argue that the reality of the self matters. Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and the Buddhists are on the anti-realist side of the debate.

To my knowledge, at least one scientific theory of concrete self has been advanced, and it has some of the features of the Buddhist doctrine of the aggregates (here described as “five dimensions”). It posits that the self is multitudinous and multi-disciplinary. Şerife Tekin presented her theory in an Aeon essay titled Self-Evident:

According to this model, the self is a dynamic, complex, relational and multi-aspectual mechanism of capacities, processes, states and traits that support a degree of agency. The multitudinous self has five distinct but functionally complementary dimensions: ecological, intersubjective, conceptual, private, and temporally extended. These dimensions work together to connect the individual to her body, her social world, her psychological world, and her environment.

Notice that Tekin mentions the feature of agency. Agency, or the ability to act over matter, is one of the attributes that proves the existence of a self Epicurean writings: a void can only be acted upon and has no agency. In other words, agency implies corporeal existence. In the Letter to Herotodus, Epicurus argues that the soul is made up of atoms, that it exists fully embedded into the body and provides it with sentience. As proof that it is corporeal, Epicurus cites how–unlike empty space–it can act and be acted upon.

There is the further point to be considered, what the incorporeal can be, if, I mean, according to current usage the term is applied to what can be conceived as self-existent. But it is impossible to conceive anything that is incorporeal as self-existent except empty space. And empty space cannot itself either act or be acted upon, but simply allows body to move through it. Hence those who call soul incorporeal speak foolishly. For if it were so, it could neither act nor be acted upon. But, as it is, both these properties, you see, plainly belong to soul.

What else does Epicurean tradition have to say regarding the concrete soul? In the Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus argues:

Next, keeping in view our perceptions and feelings (for so shall we have the surest grounds for belief), we must recognize generally that the soul is a corporeal thing, composed of fine particles, dispersed all over the frame … Still, it would not have had sensation, had it not been somehow confined within the rest of the frame.

Epicurus believed that the “soul” particles were finer or more subtle than other particles in the body. Contemporary science, instead, gives us the neurological system which, like the Epicurean soul, is entirely embedded into the body. It runs through the nervous system and is concentrated in two main organs: the brain, and the stomach–which contains enough neurons to be about the size of the brain of a small dog or cat. The Letter to Herodotus says that it is the soul that gives the body sentience.

But the rest of the frame, though it provides this indispensable conditions for the soul, itself also has a share, derived from the soul, of the said quality; and yet does not possess all the qualities of soul. Hence on the departure of the soul it loses sentience. For it had not this power in itself; but something else, congenital with the body, supplied it to body: which other thing, through the potentiality actualized in it by means of motion, at once acquired for itself a quality of sentience, and, in virtue of the neighborhood and interconnection between them, imparted it (as I said) to the body also.

Hence, so long as the soul is in the body, it never loses sentience through the removal of some other part. The containing sheaths may be dislocated in whole or in part, and portions of the soul may thereby be lost; yet in spite of this the soul, if it manage to survive, will have sentience. But the rest of the frame, whether the whole of it survives or only a part, no longer has sensation, when once those atoms have departed, which, however few in number, are required to constitute the nature of soul.

That the soul is corporeal and mortal, and leaves the body at the moment of death, is also argued by Lucretius in De Rerum Natura. There are other materialist theories of self that do not contradict, but in fact may add support to, the theories here presented. In a previous essay, I echoed a materialist conception of identity based on habitual behavior, which not only recognizes the concrete and changing self, but allows for the possibility of cultivation or sculpting of an ethically better self, that is, moral development–a subject that is very in tune with natural philosophy:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” –Will Durant

To the extent that habitual behavior is unconscious or subconscious, it can be said to be a crystallized–even if capable of change or evolution–part of the self. This is a different way of thinking about identity, and yet it does not contradict Tekin’s model.

FEELINGS AS ARBITERS OF THOUGHT

In Why Buddhism is True, feelings are explained as **the** value-setting faculty. The author is really a champion of the primacy of feelings over reason in human behavior, arguing that the cognitive and effective / emotional functions are very intertwined. This is the premise behind Epicurean cognitive therapy: that reason and feeling can coach each other.

Feelings are, among other things, your brain’s way of labeling the importance of thoughts, and importance (in natural selection’s somewhat crude sense of the term) determines which thoughts enter consciousness. – Why Buddhism is True (p. 119)

Feelings tell us what to think about, and after all the thinking is done, they tell us what to do. – Why Buddhism is True (p. 124)

Read the rest of the review here.