Earlier, in Book IV of the Republic, the various elements, or parts, of the individual soul had been sketched: the highest is reason, the lowest is appetite, and in between is thymos. The latter term is translated as any vehement passion, anger, or wrath, and in the good sense as spirit or courage.127 Now, in the Timaeus, Plato depicts the creation of the soul’s elements, as at least being a likely account (72d). The highest element, reason, is the immortal part of the soul and is therefore situated in the head, which is “the most divine part of us, and the master of all our other parts” (44d). This is followed by the creation of the mortal parts of the soul: the spirited part which is situated in the chest, and the appetitive part which is placed in the lower abdomen (69c–71a).
As a reflection of the intelligible and sensible realms of the cosmos, Plato thus conceives of the human being as consisting of two main components that differ essentially. On the one hand, there is the soul which participates in the realm of Ideas, and which is immortal and the bearer of Intellect. On the other hand, there is the body which is part of the sensible world, and which is mortal and represents the principle of Necessity in the human being.128 This anthropology would exercise an immense influence on Christian thought, in both the Greek and Latin traditions.
It has often been stated that the human body is a marvel of design, and in the case of religious believers this design is attributed to God. Now, if one considers the immense complexity and intricacy of organs such as the brain, the heart, and the eye, then the human body does appear to be marvellously designed. If, on the other hand, one considers the extreme susceptibility of the human body to an almost infinite range of illnesses and injuries during the entire lifespan between conception and death, a rather different picture emerges. One only has to think of the plethora of childhood diseases and bone fractures, the debilitating conditions appearing later in life, such as multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and arthritis, and the horrors of a whole range of cancers, as well as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
There are two possible explanations for this organic ambivalence: either the human body was designed by God, in which case He would have to be held responsible for the prevalence of disease and physical suffering among humans; or the human body is the product of the interaction between the divine Intellect and irrational Necessity, in which case there is no blame or responsibility involved in this matter. We contend that the latter alternative, as taught by Plato and Aristotle, is the more accurate one, and in fact the only explanation that does justice to both the existential reality and the divine Goodness. In contrast, the human soul is of divine origin—in particular, the rational dimension of the soul, which is also the seat of its immortality.
107. Moore, Plotinus.
108. Camus, Christian Metaphysics, 98.
109. Ferguson, Pythagoras, 130.
110. LSJ, 535; Wheeler, Latin, 529.
111. Alfeyev, Mystery, 27.
112. Quoted in Alfeyev, Mystery, 43–44.
113. Perry, Treasury, 672–673.
114. Cohen, “Plato’s Cosmology.”
115. Gerson, Aristotle, 219.
116. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 54, 57.
117. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 118, 141.
118. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 11.
119. LSJ, 58.
120. McKirahan, Philosophy, 177.
121. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 160, 165, 171–172, 174.
122. Zeyl, “Plato’s Timaeus.”
123. Ross, Aristotle, 81.
124. Gerson, Aristotle, 122.
125. Ross, Aristotle, 82.
126. Ross, Aristotle, 130.
127. Lee, Republic, 207–208; LSJ, 323.
128. Dreyer, Wysbegeerte, 102.
Soul and Matter
In the traditional Indo-European conception, each manifested being is a composite of form and matter (Greek, eidos and hylē), these terms being the equivalent of the Sanskrit nāma and rūpa. Such a composite being could therefore be described as an embodied form, or nāma-rūpa. In addition, since nāma means idea, archetype or form, it is the efficient cause of the individual as nāma-rūpa. In the case of living beings this composition appears as the two levels of formal manifestation, namely the psychic and the corporeal (Greek, psychikos and somatikos), or soul and body respectively. And since Spirit, which is associated with Intellect, can never be individual or corporeal, it is transcendent in relation to the combination of soul and body. Therefore, a human being cannot speak of ‘his’ or ‘her’ Spirit, as can indeed be predicated of the soul and body.129
Incidentally, this differentiation between Spirit and soul enables one to understand certain biblical passages that would otherwise be problematic. For instance, we read of Christ saying that only someone who hates his own soul (eautou psychēn) can become His disciple (Luke 14:26). This verse is usually translated as ‘hates his own life,’ which literally means the same, but it is evident from the context that the lower soul is meant. We also find a statement by St Paul in his letter to the Hebrews (4:12) that the word of God pierces even to the division of soul and spirit (psychēs kai pneumatos), of which the latter term refers to the higher power of the soul, which is really the Spirit as the ‘royal guest’ of the soul.130
Plato
In the Platonic understanding, the World-soul and all individual souls partake of both being and becoming. The reason for this ambivalence is that Soul is like the Forms due to being eternal and of one substance, but unlike the Forms in that it is alive and intelligent.131 Plato writes that “by our bodies and through perception we have dealings with coming-to-be, but we deal with real being by our souls and through reasoning” (Sophist, 248a). We notice in this passage that sense-perception is a function of the body (albeit
