## 1. The Greek Notion of Soul



 The Homeric poems, with which most ancient writers can safely be
assumed to be intimately familiar, use the word 'soul' in
two distinguishable, probably related, ways. The soul is, on the one
hand, something that a human being risks in battle and loses in
death. On the other hand, it is what at the time of death departs from
the person's limbs and travels to the underworld, where it has a more
or less pitiful afterlife as a shade or image of the deceased
person. It has been suggested (for instance, by Snell 1975, 19) that
what is referred to as soul in either case is in fact thought of as
one and the same thing, something that a person can risk and lose and
that, after death, endures as a shade in the underworld. The
suggestion is plausible, but cannot be verified. In any case, once a
person's soul has departed for good, the person is dead. The presence
of soul therefore distinguishes a living human body from a
corpse. However, this is plainly not to say that the soul is thought
of as what accounts for, or is responsible for, the activities,
responses, operations and the like that constitute a person's
life. Homer never says that anyone does anything in virtue of, or
with, their soul, nor does he attribute any activity to the soul of a
living person. Thus, though the presence or absence of soul marks out
a person's life, it is not otherwise associated with that
life. Moreover, it is a striking feature of Homeric usage that, in
Furley's words (Furley 1956, 4), to mention soul is to suggest death:
someone's soul comes to mind only when their life is thought, by
themselves or others, to be at risk. Thus Achilles says that he is
continuously risking his soul (*Iliad* 9.322), and Agenor
reflects on the fact that even Achilles has just one soul
(*Iliad* 11.569). It should also be pointed out that in the
Homeric poems, only human beings are said to have (and to lose) souls.
Correspondingly, Homer never envisages shades or images of non-human
creatures in the underworld. These two facts taken together suggest
that in whatever precise way the soul is conceived of as associated
with life, it is in any case thought to be connected not with life in
general, or life in all its forms, but rather, more specifically, with
the life of a human being.


 
 Several significant developments occurred in the ways Greeks thought
and spoke about the soul in the sixth and fifth centuries. The
questions about the soul that are formulated and discussed in the
writings of Plato and Aristotle to some extent arise from, and need to
be interpreted against the background of, these sixth and fifth
century developments. One factor that is of central importance is the
gradual loss of the Homeric connection between mentioning a person's
soul and the thought that their life is vulnerable or at risk
(*contra* Burnet 1916, 253). In ordinary fifth century Greek,
having soul is simply being alive; hence the emergence, at about this
time, of the adjective 'ensouled' [*empsuchos*] as
the standard word meaning "alive", which was applied not
just to human beings, but to other living things as well. There is
some reason to think that the word 'soul' was used in this
straightforwardly positive way already in the sixth century. Thales of
Miletus, who is credited with successfully predicting a solar eclipse
occurring in 585, reportedly attributed soul to magnets, on the
grounds that magnets are capable of moving iron (Aristotle, *De
Anima* 1.2, 405a19-21). Thales' thought was presumably that since
it is distinctive of living things to be able to initiate movement,
magnets must in fact be alive or, in other words, ensouled. Thus,
while Homer spoke of soul only in the case of human beings, in sixth
and fifth century usage soul is attributed to every kind of living
thing. What is in place, then, at this time is the notion that soul is
what distinguishes that which is alive from that which is not. 



 However, it is not just that soul is said to be present in every
living thing. It is also the case that an increasingly broad range of
ways of acting and being acted on is attributed to the soul. Thus it
has come to be natural, by the end of the fifth century, to refer
pleasure taken in food and drink, as well as sexual desire, to the
soul. (For detailed discussion, see Claus 1981, 73-85.) People are
said, for example, to satisfy their souls with rich food (Euripides,
*Ion* 1170), and the souls of gods and men are claimed to be
subject to sexual desire (fragment assigned by Nauck to Euripides'
first *Hippolytus*). In contexts of intense emotion or crisis,
feelings like love and hate, joy and grief, anger and shame are
associated with the soul. "Nothing bites the soul of a man more
than dishonor", says Ajax in a fragment from a tragedy of
unknown authorship, just before he commits suicide (Nauck, *TGF,
Adesp.* fr. 110). Oedipus says that his soul laments the misery of
his city and its inhabitants (*Oedipus Tyrannus* 64). Moreover,
the soul is also importantly connected with boldness and courage,
especially in battle. Courageous people are said, for instance in
Herodotus and Thucydides, to have enduring or strong souls
(cf. Laches' second definition of the virtue that is courage, in
Plato's *Laches* 192c, as "strength of the soul";
also relevant is Pindar, *Pythian* 1.47-8, "standing in
battle with an enduring soul"). In the Hippocratic text
*Airs, Waters, Places*, the soul is thought of as the place of
courage or, as the case may be, its opposite: in the case of lowland
inhabitants, courage and endurance are not in their souls by nature,
but must be instilled by law (ch. 23); similarly in benign climates,
men are fleshy, ill-jointed, moist, without endurance and weak in soul
(ch. 24). 



 The connection between the soul and characteristics like boldness and
courage in battle is plainly an aspect of the noteworthy fifth century
development whereby the soul comes to be thought of as the source or
bearer of moral qualities such as, for instance, temperance and
justice. In Pericles' funeral oration that Thucydides includes in his
account of the Peloponnesian War, he says that those who know most
clearly the sweet and the terrible, and yet do not as a result turn
away from danger, are rightly judged "strongest with regard to
soul" (2.40.3). This text, and others like it (cf. also
Herodotus 7.153), indicate a semantic extension whereby
'soul' comes to denote a person's moral character, often,
but not always, with special regard to qualities such as endurance and
courage. While the connection with courage is obvious in a number of
texts, there are other texts in which the soul is the bearer of other
admirable qualities, such as a Euripidean fragment that speaks of the
desire characteristic of a soul that is just, temperate and good (fr.
388). Hippolytus, in Euripides' play named after him, describes
himself as having a "virgin soul" (*Hippolytus*
1006), obviously to evoke his abstinence from sex. In Pindar's second
Olympian, salvation is promised to those who "keep their souls
from unjust acts" (2.68-70). The last two texts mentioned may
well be influenced by Orphic and Pythagorean beliefs about the nature
and immortality of the soul, to which we will turn in due course. But
it would be a mistake to think that the moralization of the soul
(i.e. its association with moral characteristics) wholly depended on
Orphic and Pythagorean speculation. It would, at the very least, be to
disregard the soul's connection with courage in poetry, the historians
and in Hippocratic writings.



 To educated fifth century speakers of Greek, it would have been
natural to think of qualities of soul as accounting for, and being
manifested in, a person's morally significant behavior. Pericles acts
courageously, and Hippolytus temperately (or chastely), because of the
qualities of their souls from which such actions have a strong
tendency to flow, and their actions express and make evident the
courage, temperance and the like that characterize their souls. Once
we are in a position properly to appreciate the connection between
soul and moral character that must already have been felt to be
natural at this stage, it should come as no surprise that the soul is
also taken to be something that engages in activities like thinking
and planning. If the soul is, in some sense, responsible for
courageous acts, for instance, it is only to be expected that the soul
also grasps what, in the circumstances, courage calls for, and how, at
some suitable level of detail, the courageous act must be
performed. Thus in a speech of Antiphon, the jury is urged to
"take away from the accused the soul that planned the
crime", in striking juxtaposition of the ideas of life-soul (as
in Homer) and of soul as responsible for practical thought. Somewhat
similarly, in a Sophoclean fragment (fr. 97) someone says that
"a kindly soul with just thoughts is a better inventor than any
sophist" (cf. also Euripides, *Orestes* 1180). Moreover, it
is easy to see that there are connections between familiar uses of
'soul' in emotional contexts and attributions to the soul
of cognitive and intellectual activities and achievements. There is,
after all, no clear-cut and manifest difference between, say, being in
the emotional state of fear and having a terrifying thought or
perception. When Oedipus' soul laments, or Ajax's soul is bitten by
dishonor, emotion obviously goes hand in hand with cognition, and if
it is natural to refer the one to the soul, there should be nothing
puzzling about attributions to it of the other. Thus in
non-philosophical Greek of the fifth century the soul is treated as
the bearer of moral qualities, and also as responsible for practical
thought and cognition. For further discussion, see this supplement
on the contrary claims of Burnet 1916: 



> 
> Burnet on the Greek Notion of Soul
> 



 From Homer to the end of the fifth century, the word
'soul' undergoes remarkable semantic expansion, in the
course of which it comes to be natural not only to speak of soul as
what distinguishes the living from the dead and (not the same
distinction) the animate from the inanimate, but also to attribute to
the soul a wide variety of activities and responses, cognitive as well
as emotional, and to think of it as the bearer of such virtues as
courage, temperance and justice. As a result of these developments,
the language made available something that Homeric Greek lacked, a
distinction between body and soul. Thus the Hippocratic author of
*Airs, Waters, Places* writes of "endurance in body and
soul" (ch. 23). Antiphon says of a defendant who is sure of his
innocence that though his body may surrender, his soul saves him by
its willingness to struggle, through knowledge of its innocence. For
the guilty, on the other hand, even a strong body is to no avail,
since his soul fails him, "believing the vengeance coming to him
is for his impieties" (Antiphon 5). Homer, by contrast, knows
and speaks of a whole lot of different sources and bearers of
psychological predicates, but lacks a word to pick out the soul as a
single item to which the predicates in question can, in some way or
other, be referred and which can be distinguished from, and in
suitable contexts contrasted with, the body (cf. Snell 1975,
18-25). 


## 2. Presocratic Thinking about the Soul



 The semantic expansion of 'soul' in the sixth and fifth
centuries is reflected in the philosophical writings of the
period. For instance, once it becomes natural to speak of soul as what
distinguishes the animate from the inanimate, rather than as something
that is restricted to humans, it becomes clear that the domain of
ensouled things is not limited to animals, but includes plants as
well. Empedocles and, apparently, Pythagoras (cf. Bremmer 1983, 125)
thought that plants have souls, and that human souls, for instance,
can come to animate plants. (Note, though, that Empedocles, in extant
fragments, rarely uses the word 'soul', preferring the
word *daimon*.) Empedocles in fact claimed to have been a
bush in a previous incarnation, as well as, among other things, a bird
and a fish (fr. 117, Kirk, Raven & Schofield 1983 [in what
follows KR&S], 417). Incidentally, Empedocles, like Anaxagoras
and Democritus, referred to plants as animals, presumably precisely
because they are alive (*zen*, from which the word for
animal, *zoon*, derives) (for details, cf. Skemp 1947,
56). In this he was followed by Plato (*Timaeus* 77b), but
emphatically not by Aristotle (*De Anima* 2.2, 413b1f).



 There is, moreover, some reason to think that philosophical activity,
notably Pythagorean speculation (beginning around mid-sixth century),
contributed to the semantic expansion of 'soul'. As we
have seen, at least some of the earliest extant texts that associate
with the soul moral virtues other than courage suggest Pythagorean
influence. It is, in fact, not difficult to see how Pythagoreanism may
have furthered the expansion of 'soul'. Pythagoreanism
was concerned with, among other things, the continued existence of the
person (or something suitably person-like) after death. It is obvious
that against the Homeric background, 'soul' was an
eminently appropriate word to use so as to denote the person, or
quasi-person, that continued to exist after death; there was, after
all, the familiar Homeric use of 'soul' as that which
endures in the underworld after a person's death. To make the
continued existence of this soul significant as the continued
existence of the person in question, at least some of the states,
activities, operations and the like that seemed crucial to the
identity of the person had to be attributed to the soul (following
Furley 1956, 11, who goes further than that, writing of the need for
the soul "to include *all* the functions of
personality"; cf. Barnes 1982, 103-6; Huffman forthcoming). This
tendency is well illustrated by a story about Pythagoras, reported by
Xenophanes (fr. 7, KR&S 260): "Once, they say, he was
passing by when a puppy was being whipped, and he took pity and said:
'Stop, do not beat it; it is the soul of a friend that I
recognized when I heard its [i.e., the soul's!] voice.'"
It is not just that the soul of Pythagoras' friend accounts for the
character of the yelping (or whatever). Pythagoras is in fact quoted
as saying that it is his friend's soul that is doing the yelping! 



 Heraclitus (fl. around 500 BC), who repeatedly mentions Pythagoras,
attributes wisdom to the soul provided that it is in the right state
or condition: "a dry soul", he claims, "is wisest
and best" (fr. 118, KR&S 230). He may have been the first
thinker to articulate a connection between soul and motor
functions. "A man when he is drunk", Heraclitus remarks,
"is led by an unfledged boy, stumbling and not knowing where he
goes, having his soul moist" (fr. 117, KR&S 231). On the
most plausible construal of Heraclitus' sentence, he is saying that
the drunken person stumbles because his perceptual abilities have been
impaired, and this impairment is due to moistness of soul (Schofield
1991, 22). Like many (or indeed all) sixth and fifth century thinkers
who expressed views on the nature or constitution of the soul,
Heraclitus thought that the soul was bodily, but composed of an
unusually fine or rare kind of matter, e.g. air or fire. (A possible
exception is the Pythagorean Philolaus, who may have held that the
soul is an 'attunement' of the body; cf. Barnes 1982,
488-95,
 and Huffman.)
 The prevalence of the idea that the soul is bodily explains the
absence of problems about the relation between soul and body. Soul and
body were not thought to be radically different in kind; their
difference seemed just to consist in a difference in degree of
properties such as fineness and mobility. 


## 3. Plato's Theories of Soul



 The various developments that occurred in the sixth and fifth
centuries in how Greeks thought and spoke of the soul resulted in a
very complex notion that strikes one as remarkably close to
conceptions of the soul that we find in fourth century philosophical
theories, notably Plato's. There is thus some reason to think that
the philosophical theories in question are best interpreted as working
with, and on, the relatively non-theoretical notion of the soul that
by the end of the fifth century has come to be embedded in ordinary
language. In what follows our main concern will be to characterize
some of the theories in question. But we should also attend, wherever
this seems appropriate and helpful, to ways in which familiarity with
the ordinary notion of the soul might enable us better to understand
why a theory or an argument proceeds the way it does. In addition, we
should note ways in which philosophical theories might seem to clarify
and further articulate the ordinary notion. We begin with Plato, and
with a question that is intimately tied up with the ordinary notion of
the soul as it developed from the Homeric poems onwards, namely
whether a person's soul does indeed survive the person's death. 


### 3.1 The *Phaedo's* Theory of Soul



 It is probably true that in mainstream fifth century Greek culture,
belief in an afterlife of the soul was weak and unclear (Claus 1981,
68; Burnet 1916, 248-9). If so, it is fitting that Socrates' arguments
for the immortality of the soul, most prominently in the
*Phaedo*, are offered to interlocutors who, at the outset of the
discussion, are by no means convinced of the idea. (In fact, in the
*Apology*, 40c, Socrates himself is presented as being
noncommittal about what happens to the soul at death, and even about
whether it survives at all.) "Men find it very hard to
believe", Cebes says at *Phaedo* 70a, "what you said
about the soul. They think that after it has left the body it no
longer exists anywhere, but that it is destroyed and dissolved on the
day the man dies." This view is restated by Simmias (at 77b) as
the opinion of the majority (cf. 80d); note that the view includes the
idea that the soul is a material thing, and is destroyed by being
dispersed, "like breath or smoke" (70a). Glaucon, in the
last book of the *Republic* (608d), is taken aback by
Socrates' question,



> 
> 
> "Haven't you realized that our soul is immortal and never
> destroyed?"
> 
> He looked at me with wonder and said: "No, by god, I
> haven't. Are you really in a position to assert that?"
> 
> 
> 



 Moreover, apart from the question of immortality or otherwise, there
is the further question whether the soul, if it does have some form of
existence after the person has died, "still possesses some power
and wisdom" (*Phaedo*, 70b; cf. 76c). Answering both
questions, Socrates says not only that the soul is immortal, but also
that it contemplates truths after its separation from the body at the
time of death. Needless to say, none of the four main lines of
argument that Socrates avails himself of succeeds in establishing the
immortality of the soul, or in demonstrating that disembodied souls
enjoy lives of thought and intelligence. The arguments have been
discussed in some detail, for instance in Bostock 1986, and for our
purposes there is no need to state and analyze them systematically. It
will suffice to comment selectively on aspects of the arguments that
bear directly on Plato's conception of the soul. The argument that
sheds most light on what Plato takes the nature of the soul to be is
the affinity argument (78b-80b). This argument confronts head-on the
widespread worry that the soul, at or soon after death, is destroyed
by being dispersed. It begins by distinguishing between two kinds of
things: on the one hand, things that are perceptible, composed of
parts, and subject to dissolution and destruction; on the other hand,
things that are not perceptible, but intelligible (grasped by
thought), not composed of parts, and exempt from dissolution and
destruction. These two categories are obviously mutually exclusive. It
is not clear whether or not they are meant to be exhaustive.
Moreover, the category of imperishable, intelligible being is
exemplified, but not, it seems, exhausted, by Platonic forms such as
equality, beauty and the like (*contra* Bostock 1986, 118).
Intelligible being evidently includes what Socrates calls the divine,
whose nature it is to rule and to lead (80a), and there is no
indication that the forms exhaust the divine, or even include the
divine, so understood. Thus the argument leaves room for the idea
that souls are not forms, but are nevertheless intelligible, partless
and imperishable (*contra* Robinson 1995, 29). In fact, in
framing the argument in the way he does Plato furnishes the conceptual
framework needed for saying that body and soul differ in kind, the one
being perceptible and perishable, the other being intelligible and
exempt from destruction. However, the argument does not support such a
strong conclusion, and Socrates is aware of this. 



 What he does, in fact, conclude is that the soul is *most like*,
and *most akin to*, intelligible being, and that the body is most
like perceptible and perishable being. To say this is plainly neither
to assert nor to imply (as Robinson 1995, 30, appears to think) that
soul in some way or other falls short of intelligible, imperishable
being, any more than it is to assert or imply that body in some way or
other falls short of, or rather rises above, perceptible, perishable
being. The argument leaves it open whether soul is a perfectly
respectable member of intelligible reality, the way human bodies are
perfectly respectable members of perceptible reality, or whether,
alternatively, soul has some intermediate status in between
intelligible and perceptible being, rising above the latter, but
merely approximating to the former. Socrates does seem to take his
conclusion to imply, or at least strongly suggest, that it is natural
for the soul either "to be altogether indissoluble, or nearly
so", but, in any case, that the soul is less subject to
dissolution and destruction than the body, rather than, as the popular
view has it, more so. If this position can be established, Socrates is
in a position to refute the popular view that the soul, being composed
of ethereal stuff, is *more* liable to dispersion and destruction
than the body. However, as Cebes points out (88b), unless Socrates
can establish that the soul is altogether exempt from destruction,
confidence of survival in the face of death is misplaced. Socrates'
soul may be a great deal more durable than his body, but as long as it
is not truly imperishable, there can be no guarantee that it will
survive Socrates' impending death. For it might have experienced any
number of incarnations already, and the current one might be its
last. So Socrates launches his most elaborate and final argument for
the immortality of the soul, which concludes that since life belongs
to soul essentially, the soul must be deathless -- that is,
immortal. 



 The affinity argument is supposed to show not only that the soul is
most like intelligible, imperishable being, but also that it is most
akin to it. Socrates argues that the soul is like intelligible being
on the grounds that it is not visible and, in general, not perceptible
(anyhow to humans, as Cebes adds at 79b), and that it shares its
natural function with the divine, namely to rule and lead (the body in
the one case, mortals in the other). There is a separate argument for
the kinship of the soul with intelligible being. When the soul makes
use of the senses and attends to perceptibles, "it strays and is
confused and dizzy, as if it were drunk" (79c). By contrast,
when it remains "itself by itself" and investigates
intelligibles, its straying comes to an end, and it achieves stability
and wisdom. It is not just that the soul is in one state or another
depending on which kind of object it is attending to, in such a way
that its state somehow corresponds to the character of the object
attended to. That would not by itself show that the soul is more akin
to the one domain rather than the other (this is the point of
Bostock's criticism, Bostock 1986, 119). To understand the argument
properly, it is crucial to note that when the soul attends to
perceptibles, it is negatively affected in such a way that its
functioning is at least temporarily reduced or impaired ("dizzy,
as if drunk"), whereas there is no such interference when it
attends to intelligibles (cf. Socrates' fear, at 99e, that by studying
things by way of the senses he might blind his soul). The claim that
the soul is akin to intelligible reality thus rests, at least in part,
on the view that intelligible reality is especially suited to the
soul, as providing it with a domain of objects in relation to which,
and only in relation to which, it can function without inhibition and
interference and fully in accordance with its own nature, so as to
achieve its most completely developed and optimal state, wisdom.



 It hardly needs pointing out, then, that the soul, as Plato conceives
of it in the *Phaedo*, is crucially characterized by cognitive
and intellectual features: it is something that reasons, more or less
well depending on the extent to which it is disturbed or distracted by
the body and the senses; something that regulates and controls the
body and its desires and affections, "especially if it is a wise
soul" (94b), presumably in a way that involves, and renders
effective, judgments about what it is best to do, and how it is best
to behave; and something that has, as the kind of adornment that is
truly appropriate to it, virtues such as temperance, justice and
courage (114e f.). However, it should be clear that the soul, as it is
conceived of here, is not simply the mind, as we conceive of it. It is
both broader and narrower than that. It is broader in that Plato
evidently retains the traditional idea of soul as distinguishing the
animate from the inanimate. Two of the four main lines of argument for
the immortality of the soul rely not on cognitive or indeed
specifically psychological features of the soul, but simply on the
familiar connection between soul and life. According to the cyclical
argument (70c-72d), being alive in general is preceded by, just as it
precedes, being dead. Socrates takes this to show that a creature's
death involves the continued existence of the soul in question, which
persists through a period of separation from body, and then returns to
animate another body in a change which is the counterpart of the
previous change, dying. According to the last line of argument that
Socrates offers in the *Phaedo*, the soul is immortal because it
has life essentially, the way fire has heat essentially. It is plain
that both of these arguments apply to the souls of all living things,
including plants (cf. 70d, 71d). And in the final argument, Socrates
explicitly appeals to the idea that it is the soul that animates the
body of a living thing (105c): 



> 
> What is it that, when present in a body, makes it living? -- A
> soul.



 Now, as we have seen in some detail, the Greek notion of soul
included the idea of soul as animating body probably as early as the
sixth century, when Thales attributed soul to magnets. Connections
between the soul and morally significant characteristics such as
courage, temperance and justice, and with cognitive and intellectual
functions, notably with planning and practical thought, are firmly
established in fifth century Greek usage. But it is obviously far from
clear whether the ordinary notion of soul, as it develops from the
Homeric poems down to the end of the fifth century, is a well-formed,
coherent notion, one that can suitably support the very prominent role
that Plato assigns to the soul, in the *Phaedo* as well as in
other dialogues. Perhaps most pressingly, it is far from clear whether
what distinguishes the animate from the inanimate is the very thing
that, in the case of some animate organisms, is responsible for
cognitive functions such as sense-perception and thought, and that,
specifically in the case of human beings, is the bearer of moral
qualities such as justice, courage and the like. The question is
neither explicitly raised nor, of course, resolved in the
*Phaedo*; but a passage in the *Republic* (352d-354a), with
which we will be concerned in section 3.2, suggests that Plato took
the ordinary notion of soul, in all its richness and bewildering
complexity, to be well-formed and coherent, and to be capable of
supporting the requirements of his own theory.



 Given the idea that soul is the distinguishing mark of all living
things, including plants, the Greek notion of soul is, as we have seen
already, broader than our concept of mind. For it is at least
conceivable, and probably true as a matter of fact, that there are
living (hence ensouled) organisms without minds, without, that is to
say, desire and cognition by sense or intellect. (Plato appears to
think that plants do have minds in this sense, because he takes them
to exhibit desire and sense-perception (*Timaeus* 77b), but that
is presumably supposed to be a matter of empirical fact or inference,
rather than simply a consequence of the fact that plants have souls.)




 In another way, the conception of soul that is in evidence in the
*Phaedo* is significantly narrower than our concept of mind, in
that the soul, as conceived of in this particular dialogue, is not, in
fact, responsible, or *directly* responsible, for all of a
person's mental or psychological activities and responses, but only
for a rather severely limited subset of them. Socrates attributes a
large variety of mental states (etc.) not to the soul, but to the
(animate) body, such as, for instance, beliefs and pleasures (83d),
and desires and fears (94d). At the same time, the soul is not
narrowly intellectual: it too has desires (81d), even passionate ones
(such as the nonphilosophical soul's love [*eros*] of the
corporeal, 80b), and pleasures as well, such as the pleasures of
learning (114e). Moreover, the soul's functions are, as we have seen
already, not restricted to grasping and appreciating truth, but
prominently include regulating and controlling the body and its
affections (such as beliefs and pleasures, desires and fears), no
doubt in light of suitable judgments, arrived at, or anyhow supported
and controlled, by reasoning. The soul of the *Phaedo* in fact
seems to be precisely what in *Republic* 4 is identified as just
one part of the soul, namely reason, whereas the functions of the
lower parts, appetite and spirit, are assigned, in the psychological
framework of the *Phaedo*, to the animate body. And just as the
functions of reason (in the *Republic*) and of the soul (in the
*Phaedo*) are not restricted to cognition, but include desire and
emotion, such as desire for and pleasure in learning, so the functions
of non-rational soul (in the *Republic*) and of the body (in the
*Phaedo*) are not restricted to desire and emotion, but include
cognition, such as beliefs (presumably) about objects of desire,
'descriptive' or (rather) non-evaluative ("there's
food over there") as well as (*contra* Lovibond 1991, 49)
evaluative ("this drink is delightful") (cf. *Phaedo*
83d).



 One somewhat surprising, and perhaps puzzling, feature of the
*Phaedo* framework is this. On the one hand, Socrates evidently
takes the soul to be in some way responsible for the life of any
living organism, and hence presumably for *all* the various
activities (etc.) that constitute, or are crucially involved in, any
organism's life. On the other hand, he also takes it that there is a
restricted class of activities that the soul is responsible for *in
some special way*, such that it is not actually the case that the
soul is responsible in this special way for all of the relevant
activities that living organisms engage in. Thus, given the idea that
the soul is responsible, in some way or other, for all the life of any
living organism, one would certainly expect it to be responsible, in
some way or other, for (say) the desires, emotions and beliefs of
organisms whose lives include such psychological states -- and
not just for some restricted subset of these desires, emotions and
beliefs, but in fact for all of them. However, Socrates' attribution
to the soul of all and only desires, emotions and beliefs *of
reason* (to use the *Republic* framework) is actually quite
compatible with the view that the soul is responsible for all the
life-activities organisms engage in, including, of course, the desires
(etc.) of what in the *Republic* framework is the non-rational
soul. What Socrates needs is something that can certainly be supplied,
some suitable articulation of the different ways in which the soul can
be said to be responsible for relevant activities of a living
organism. One such way is that to be capable of engaging in the
activity in question at all, an organism has to be ensouled, perhaps
ensouled in a certain way (for instance, in the way animals are rather
than in the way plants are). Another (stronger) way in which the soul
can be responsible for an activity is *directly*: rather than
being the thing in virtue of which the organism can do or undergo
something or other (for instance, becoming thirsty and forming the
desire to drink on that basis), the soul can also perform activities
in its own right (for instance, contemplating mathematical truths).
So, to restate somewhat more clearly: the *Phaedo*'s conception
of soul is narrower than our concept of mind in the following way. The
range of activities (etc.) that the soul is directly responsible for,
and which may be described as activities of the soul strictly
speaking, is significantly narrower than the range of mental
activities. It does not include all of a person's desires, nor need it
include all emotional responses, or even all beliefs. One plainly
could not have (for instance) 'bodily' desires such as
hunger and thirst without being ensouled, but that does not mean that
it must be the soul itself that forms or sustains such desires. 



 Once we properly understand the *Phaedo*'s theory of soul, then,
we are in a position to see that it offers a psychological framework
that is coherent, though far from fully articulated. But we should
also note that the theory is somewhat unsatisfactory, in that it
appears rather strikingly to fail to do justice to the unity of the
mind. The various activities (etc.) that we characterize as mental or
psychological, such as (most importantly) desire and cognition, seem
to be, or manifest themselves to us as being, the activities of a
single integrated subject; they do not (ordinarily) appear to belong
to a plurality of distinct items that operate more or less separately
from one another. When Socrates' contemplation of mathematical truths
is disrupted by an intense desire for food, it does not seem to be the
case that it is one thing (say, his soul) that has been doing the
contemplating and another thing (say, his body) that now wants to get
something to eat. It is rather that both contemplation and desire to
eat seem to belong to one integrated subject, regardless of whether we
wish to say that the subject in question is Socrates' mind, or whether
we prefer to say that it is Socrates insofar as he has a mind (or
something like that). As things are, the psychological theory of the
*Phaedo* assigns Socrates' contemplation directly to his soul,
but leaves his desire for food curiously remote from it, apparently
taking 'bodily' desire (for instance) to be related to the
soul in much the same way in which the operations involved in (say)
metabolism and growth are so related. (Those too take place only
because his body is ensouled.) It is plausible, though not certain,
that Plato felt the force of this problem. It is, in any case,
resolved by the new theory of soul that the *Republic*
presents. 


### **3.2 The *Republic***'s Theory of Soul



 The *Phaedo* was also known to ancient readers as Plato's *On
the Soul*, whereas the *Republic* has *On Justice* as an
alternative ancient title. Plato, however, conceives of justice as the
excellent state of the soul, and so it is not surprising that the
*Republic* sheds a great deal of light on Plato's conception of
the soul. One way in which it does so is by explicitly integrating a
number of central features of the ordinary notion of soul, features
which, in the *Phaedo*, coexist somewhat uneasily: namely,
responsibility for the life of an organism (that is, in the human
case, responsibility for its being and remaining alive as a human
being), for cognitive and (especially) intellectual functions, and for
moral virtues such as courage and justice. Towards the end of
*Republic* 1, Socrates offers Thrasymachus an elaborate argument
to the conclusion that "injustice is never more profitable than
justice" (354a). If we set aside, as irrelevant to the
dialectical context, the possibility that injustice and justice are
*equally* profitable, it is clear that the conclusion here is
equivalent to the position that the *Republic* is designed to
establish, in response to Glaucon's request, at the beginning of Book
2, to be convinced by Socrates "that it is better in every way
to be just than to be unjust" (357a). The argument at the end of
Book 1 proceeds by attempting to prove an interim conclusion that is
unnecessarily strong, namely that the just person is happy, whereas
the unjust person is wretched. To establish the desired conclusion, it
is enough to prove that the just person is always *happier* than
the unjust person, which, unlike the unnecessarily strong interim
conclusion, is compatible with the view that justice is not sufficient
for (fully completed) happiness, since that requires suitable external
circumstances in addition to justice. Nothing in Socrates' long answer
to Glaucon (and Adeimantus) commits him to the view that justice is
sufficient for (complete) happiness (cf. Irwin 1999). However, that
view is not implied by the conception of the soul that Socrates relies
on in this (Book 1) argument. Moreover, nothing in the
*Republic* contradicts or modifies this conception of the soul
(on the contrary: cf. 445a9f., 609b f.), and so there is no reason
not to take it seriously as a contribution to Plato's on-going
reflection on the soul, even though the argument that surrounds it is
designed to support a conclusion that Socrates subsequently succeeds
in avoiding. 



 The argument begins with the premise that things perform their
function well if they have the virtue appropriate to them, and badly
if they have the relevant vice (353c). It then attributes to the soul
the function of "caring for things, ruling and deliberating (and
all the things of this kind)", and adds that *living* is
also part of the function of soul (353d). This yields an interim
conclusion, that a good soul cares, rules, deliberates (etc.) and
lives well, whereas a bad soul does these things badly. A third
premise is that justice is the virtue appropriate to the soul,
injustice being its vice. Hence another interim conclusion: a just
soul lives well; an unjust one, badly. But living well, says the next
premise, is being happy (and living badly is being wretched). And so
Socrates can draw the interim conclusion that we have encountered
already, which is that the just person (the person, that is, whose
soul is just) is happy, whereas the person whose soul is unjust is
wretched.



 We make nonsense of the argument if we suppose (with Robinson 1995,
36) that when Socrates introduces *living* as part of the
function of soul, he has *being alive* in mind. The idea of being
good (or bad) at being alive is, obviously, very odd, as is the idea
of being alive well or badly. But there is no need to suppose that
such ideas are involved here, or that Socrates passes from one sense
of 'living' [*to zen*] to another. It is, after
all, open to us to interpret what Socrates is saying in terms of a
conception that integrates the things that Socrates attributes to the
soul as functions, or as parts or aspects of its function, namely in
terms of the conception of living a life, and not just any kind of
life, but a distinctively human one. Caring for the right sorts of
things in the right way, ruling or regulating oneself and (when
appropriate) others, and deliberating about how to act are not just
necessary, but central aspects of living a human life, and all of
these things can be done well or badly. Depending on the condition of
their soul, a person can be better or worse at doing these things. The
just person, whose soul is in the best condition, is truly excellent
at living a human life, in that they are excellent at doing the
various things that are importantly involved in leading a
distinctively human life. If this is along the right lines, we might
be in a position to see Plato's answer to the question how it can be
that one thing, the soul, accounts for the life of an organism as well
as for its cognitive and intellectual functions, and is also the
bearer of virtues or excellences. The answer suggested by the Book 1
argument is this. The way in which the human soul accounts for the
life of a human organism is by accounting for the distinctively human
life that the individual in question leads. But to account for such a
life, it must also account for the cognitive and intellectual
functions which guide and shape such a life. Moreover, the dramatic
differences in how good people are at leading lives, and relatedly the
dramatic differences in how well they exercise their cognitive and
intellectual functions, are due to differences in the conditions of
their souls, namely the presence or absence of the virtues of justice,
wisdom, courage and temperance. This answer significantly clarifies
(the relevant aspects of) the ordinary Greek notion of soul (see
section 1).


The *Republic* also puts forward a new theory of soul, which
involves the claim that the embodied human soul has (at least) three
parts or aspects, namely reason, spirit and appetite. The argument for
this claim is presented in Book 4, and proceeds in roughly the
following way. Socrates begins by enunciating a principle to the
effect that opposite actions, affections and states cannot be assigned
to one thing in respect of the same part of it, in relation to the
same object and at the same time. It is then agreed that desiring and
being averse are opposites, and hence that desiring to do something
and being averse to doing that same thing are opposites in relation to
the same object. But it does frequently happen, Socrates points out
and Glaucon agrees, that the soul desires to do something and at the
same time is averse to doing that same thing. This happens, for
instance, when a person is thirsty and on that basis wants to drink,
but at the same time wishes not to drink, on the basis of some
calculation or deliberation, and in fact succeeds in refraining from
drinking, thirsty though they are. It follows from the premises stated
that the human soul includes at least two distinct subjects, so that
one opposite (the desire to drink) can be assigned to one of them and
the other (the aversion to drinking) can be assigned to the
other. Taking himself to have identified reason and appetite as
distinct parts of the soul, Socrates draws attention to other kinds of
conflict between desires, which are meant to bring to light spirit,
the third part of the soul. 



 The *Republic* contains a great deal of information that we can
rely on in characterizing the three parts of the soul that Socrates
introduces, information that can be found not only in Book 4 itself,
but also (among other places) in the catalogue of corrupt forms of
city and soul in Books 8 and 9. Here is an outline of what
emerges. Reason is the part of the soul that is, of its own nature,
attached to knowledge and truth. It is also, however, concerned to
guide and regulate the life that it is, or anyhow should be, in charge
of, ideally in a way that is informed by wisdom and that takes into
consideration the concerns both of each of the three parts separately
and of the soul as a whole (442c); these concerns must be supposed to
include a person's bodily needs, presumably *via* the concerns of
appetite. The natural attachment of spirit is to honor and, more
generally, to recognition and esteem by others (581a). As a motivating
force it generally accounts for self-assertion and ambition. When its
desires are frustrated, it gives rise to emotional responses such as
anger and indignation, and to behavior that expresses and naturally
flows from such responses. Socrates takes spirit to be a natural ally
of reason, at least part of its function being to support reason in
such conflicts as may arise between it and appetite (440ef, 442ab). To
assign it this function is neither to say nor to imply that spirit
cannot, in the case of a corrupt and de-natured soul, turn against
reason, even if well brought-up individuals like Glaucon are not
familiar with such corruption either in their own case or in the case
of others (440b). (*Pace* Robinson 1995, 45, who thinks Socrates
is contradicting himself here.) Appetite is primarily concerned with
food, drink and sex (439d, 580e). It gives rise to desires for these
and other such things which in each case are based, simply and
immediately, on the thought that obtaining the relevant object of
desire is, or would be, pleasant. Socrates also calls appetite the
money-loving part, because, in the case of mature human beings at
least, appetite also tends to be strongly attached to money, given
that it is most of all by means of money that its primary desires are
fulfilled (580e-581a). The idea must be that given suitable
habituation and acculturation in the context of a life lived in human
society, appetite tends to become attached to money in such a way that
it begins to give rise to desires for money which in each case are
based, simply and immediately, on the thought that obtaining money is,
or would be, pleasant; and this idea is natural and plausible
enough. (Irwin 1995 & Price 1995, 57-67, offer an alternative and
incompatible interpretation.)



 Viewed from the perspective of the theory of soul presented in the
*Phaedo*, the *Republic* theory involves not so much a
division of soul as an integration into soul of mental or
psychological functions that had been assigned, somewhat
problematically, to the body. In both dialogues, Socrates appeals to
the same *Odyssey* passage (*Od*. 20.17-18 at *Phaedo*
94d, *Od*. 20.17 at *Republic* 4, 441b), in which Odysseus
prevails over his own anger: in the *Phaedo*, to exemplify a
conflict between soul and body; in the *Republic*, to exemplify a
conflict between two parts or aspects of the soul, reason and spirit.
What the *Republic* offers is a theory of soul which, among other
things, allows attribution of (in principle) all mental or
psychological functions to a single subject, the soul. The theory thus
respects the unity of the mind, in a way that the *Phaedo* theory
does not. Moreover, the *Republic* theory also offers an
attractive and well-supported articulation of desire into different
kinds, which has profound implications both for what it is to have
one's soul (or mind) in optimal condition and for how it is that this
condition is best brought about. (To see that Plato is acutely aware
of these implications, one only needs to look at what the
*Republic* has to say about virtue and education.) However, it
may be worth insisting once more that we should not disregard the fact
that the conception of the soul that features in the *Republic*
is broader than our concept of mind, in that it continues to be part
of this conception that it is soul that accounts for the life of the
relevant ensouled organism. But if it is soul that accounts for the
life of, say, human organisms, there must be some sense in which the
human soul accounts not only for mental functions like thought and
desire, but also for other vital functions such as the activities and
operations of the nutritive and reproductive systems. To the extent
that it leaves unclear how exactly it is that the soul is related to a
broad range of activities (etc.) that are crucially involved in the
lives of ensouled organisms, Plato's theory of the soul, in the
*Republic* and beyond, remains incompletely developed. It is, of
course, not surprising that the *Republic* does not confront the
question how it is that the soul is related to life-functions that, as
Aristotle recognizes (*Nicomachean Ethics* 1.13, 1102b11-2), are
irrelevant to the ethical and political concerns of the
*Republic*. However, context and subject matter impose no such
constraints on the 'plausible myth' of the *Timaeus*,
and also that dialogue, in presenting a somewhat revised version of
the *Republic*'s account (*Tim*. 69c ff.), fails to address
the question how the soul is related to non-mental vital
functions.


## 4. Aristotle's Theory of Soul



 Aristotle's theory, as it is presented primarily in the *De
Anima* (for a complete account,
 see Aristotle's Psychology),
 comes very close to providing a comprehensive, fully developed
account of the soul in all its aspects and functions, an account that
articulates the ways in which all of the vital functions of all
animate organisms are related to the soul. In doing so, the theory
comes very close to offering a comprehensive answer to a question that
arises from the ordinary Greek notion of soul, namely how precisely it
is that the soul, which is agreed to be in some way or other
responsible for a variety of things living creatures (especially
humans) do and experience, also is the distinguishing mark of the
animate. According to Aristotle's theory, a soul is a particular kind
of nature, a principle that accounts for change and rest in the
particular case of living bodies, i.e. plants, nonhuman animals and
human beings. The relation between soul and body, on Aristotle's view,
is also an instance of the more general relation between form and
matter: thus an ensouled, living body is a particular kind of
in-formed matter. Slightly simplifying things by limiting ourselves to
the sublunary world (cf. *De Anima* 2.2, 413a32; 2.3, 415a9), we
can describe the theory as furnishing a unified explanatory framework
within which all vital functions alike, from metabolism to reasoning,
are treated as functions performed by natural organisms of suitable
structure and complexity. The soul of an animate organism, in this
framework, is nothing other than its system of active abilities to
perform the vital functions that organisms of its kind naturally
perform, so that when an organism engages in the relevant activities
(e.g., nutrition, movement or thought) it does so in virtue of the
system of abilities that is its soul. 



 Given that the soul is, according to Aristotle's theory, a system of
abilities possessed and manifested by animate bodies of suitable
structure, it is clear that the soul is, according to Aristotle, not
itself a body or a corporeal thing. Thus Aristotle agrees with the
*Phaedo*'s claim that souls are very different from bodies.
Moreover, Aristotle seems to think that all the abilities that are
constitutive of the souls of plants, beasts and humans are such that
their exercise involves and requires bodily parts and organs. This is
obviously so with, for instance, the abilities for movement in respect
of place (e.g., by walking or flying), and for sense-perception, which
requires sense-organs. Aristotle does not, however, think that there
is an organ of thought, and so he also does not think that the
exercise of the ability to think involves the use of a bodily part or
organ that exists specifically for this use. Nevertheless, he does
seem to take the view that the activity of the human intellect always
involves some activity of the perceptual apparatus, and hence requires
the presence, and proper arrangement, of suitable bodily parts and
organs; for he seems to think that sensory impressions
[*phantasmata*] are somehow involved in every occurrent act of
thought, at least as far as human beings are concerned (*De
Anima* 3.7, 431a14-7; 3.8, 432a7-10; cf. *De Memoria* 1,
449b31ff.). If so, Aristotle in fact seems to be committed to the view
that, contrary to the Platonic position, even human souls are not
capable of existence and (perhaps as importantly) activity
apart from the body (cf. *De Anima* 1.1, 403a3-25,
esp. 5-16).



 It is noteworthy that Aristotle's theory does not mark off those
vital functions that are mental by relating them to the soul in some
special way that differs from and goes beyond the way in which vital
functions in general are so related. It is certainly not part of
Aristotle's theory that the soul is specially and directly responsible
for mental functions by performing them on its own, whereas it is less
directly responsible for the performance by the living organism of
other vital functions such as growth. As this aspect of his theory
suggests, Aristotle is confident that once one has a proper
understanding of how to explain natural phenomena in general, there is
no reason to suppose that mental functions like perception, desire and
at least some forms of thinking cannot be explained simply by
appealing to the principles in terms of which natural phenomena in
general are properly understood and explained (cf. Frede 1992,
97).



 It might be thought that since Aristotle's theory treats mental
functions and other vital functions exactly alike, it obscures a
crucial distinction. This worry, however, turns out to be unjustified.
The theory treats mental and other vital functions alike only in that
it views both kinds of functions as performed by natural organisms of
the right kind of structure and complexity. Viewing mental and other
vital functions in this way is perfectly compatible with introducing a
distinction between mental and other functions if concerns of some
kind or other call for such a distinction. Aristotle is perfectly
capable, for instance, of setting aside non-mental vital functions as
irrelevant for the purposes of practical philosophy
 (*NE* 1.13, 1102b11-12).


## 5. Hellenistic Theories of Soul



 Coming from the theories of Plato and Aristotle, the first thing that
might strike us about the theories of soul adopted by the two dominant
Hellenistic schools, Epicurus' Garden and the Stoa, is the doctrine,
shared by both, that the soul is corporeal. A number of Stoic
arguments for the claim that the soul is a body have come down to us
(see Annas 1992, 39-41). The best one of these is that the soul is a
body because (roughly) only bodies affect one another, and soul and
body do affect one another, for instance in cases of bodily damage and
emotion. Epicurus employs the same argument in his *Letter to
Herodotus*, which provides an outline of his physical doctrines
(Long & Sedley 1987 [in what follows L&S] 14A7). In a way that
reminds one of Presocratic theories, both Epicurus and the Stoics hold
that the soul is a particularly fine kind of body, diffused all the
way through the perceptible (flesh-and-blood) body of the animate
organism. As if echoing the view of the soul that Simmias in the
*Phaedo* presents as the majority view, Epicurus thinks that the
soul is dispersed at death along with its constituent atoms, losing
the powers that it has while it is contained by the body of the
organism that it ensouls (L&S 14A6). The Stoics agree that the
human soul is mortal, but they also take it that it can and does
survive the person's death -- that is, its separation from the
perceptible body. Chrysippus apparently thought that the souls of wise
persons persist (as fine, imperceptible corporeal structures) all the
way to the next conflagration in the cosmic cycle, whereas the souls
of other people last for some time, and then get dispersed (Diogenes
Laertius 7.157; cf. L&S 53W). Thus Chrysippus can accept, at least
for the souls of the wise, Socrates' claim in the *Phaedo* that
the soul is "altogether indissoluble, *or nearly so*"
(*Phaedo* 80b), even though he plainly cannot accept all of
Socrates' argument for this claim. 


### 5.1 Epicurus' Theory of Soul



 Epicurus is an atomist, and in accordance with his atomism he takes
the soul, like everything else that there is except for the void, to
be ultimately composed of atoms. Our sources are somewhat unclear as
to exactly which kinds of materials he took to be involved in the
composition of soul. It is very probable, though, that in addition to
some relatively familiar materials -- such as fire-like and
wind-like stuffs, or rather the atoms making up such stuffs --
the soul, on Epicurus' view, also includes, in fact as a key
ingredient, atoms of a nameless kind of substance, which is
responsible for sense-perception. Thus it seems that while he thought
he could explain phenomena such as the heat or warmth of a living
organism, as well as its movement and rest, by appealing to relatively
familiar materials and their relatively familiar properties, he did
feel the need to introduce a mysterious additional kind of substance
so as to be able to explain sense-perception, apparently on the
grounds that "sense-perception is found in none of the named
elements" (L&S 14C). It is worth noting that it is
specifically with regard to sense-perception that Epicurus thinks the
introduction of a further, nameless kind of substance is called for,
rather than, for instance, with regard to intellectual cognition. What
this suggests, and what in fact we have independent reason to think,
is that on Epicurus' view, once one is in a position adequately to
explain sense-perception, one will then also be in a position to work
out an explanation of intellectual cognition, by appropriately
extending the explanation of sense-perception. Let us consider briefly
how such extension might work. 



 Perceptual beliefs, like the belief that 'there is a horse over
there', will be explained, in Epicurus' theory, in terms of
sense-impressions and the application of concepts
('preconceptions'; for discussion cf. Asmis 1999,
276-83), and concept-formation is in turn explained in terms of
sense-impression and memory. According to Diogenes Laertius' summary
(L&S 17E1-2), the Epicureans say that 



> 
>  preconception is, as it were, cognition or correct belief or
> conception or universal 'stored notion' (i.e. memory), of
> that which has frequently become evident externally:
> e.g. 'such-and-such a kind of thing is a man'. For as soon
> as the word 'man' is uttered, immediately its impression
> also comes to mind by means of preconception, as a result of
> antecedent sense-perceptions. 



 Moreover, sense-impressions, interpreted and articulated in terms of
concepts or preconceptions, yield experience concerning evident
matters, which in turn forms the basis for conclusions about
non-evident matters. For example, extensive experience can make clear
to one not only that the human beings one has interacted with have a
certain feature (say, rationality), but also (later Epicureans will
say, probably somewhat developing Epicurus' position) that it is
inconceivable that any human being could fail to have that feature
(cf. L&S 18F4-5). And so, experience will not only make one
expect, with a very great deal of confidence, that any human being one
will ever encounter anywhere will be rational. Experience also,
according to the Epicureans, supports the inference to, and hence
justifies one in accepting, the (non-evident) conclusion that all
human beings, everywhere and at all times, are rational (for detailed
discussion, cf. Allen 2001, 194-241). This obviously is an extremely
generous view of what experience, and ultimately sense-perception, can
do! Once we recognize the enormously powerful and fundamental role
Epicurus and his followers assign to sense-perception, we will not be
surprised to see that they feel the need to include in the composition
of the soul a very special kind of material that accounts specifically
for sense-perception, but apparently do not think that, in addition to
that, some further special material is needed to enable intellectual
or rational activity. 



 In the Epicurean tradition the word 'soul' is sometimes
used in the broad traditional way, as what animates living things
(e.g., Diogenes of Oenoanda, fr. 37 Smith), but the focus of interest,
so far as the soul is concerned, is very much on the mental functions
of cognition, emotion and desire. A view that is common in the
tradition and that very probably goes back to the founder is that the
soul is a composite of two parts, one rational, the other
nonrational. The rational part, which Lucretius calls mind
[*animus*], is the origin of emotion and impulse, and it is also
where (no doubt among other operations) concepts are applied and
beliefs formed, and where evidence is assessed and inferences are
made. The nonrational part of the soul, which in Lucretius is somewhat
confusingly called soul [*anima*], is responsible for receiving
sense-impressions, all of which are true according to Epicurus. Error
arises at a later stage, when sense-impressions are interpreted by the
rational part of the soul, in a way that, as we have seen, crucially
involves memory. Sense-perception, conceived of simply as the
reception of sense-impressions by the nonrational soul, does not
involve memory (cf. L&S 16B1). Since the formation and application
of concepts requires memory, sense-perception, so conceived of, does
not involve conceptualization, either. The nonrational part is also
responsible for transmitting impulses originating from the rational
part, as well as (presumably) for a wide variety of other vital
functions. (When Epicurus distinguishes between pleasures and pains of
the soul and those of the body, incidentally, the distinction he has
in mind must be between the rational part of the soul on the one hand
and the body animated by nonrational soul, on the other.) 


### 5.2 The Stoic Theory of Soul



 Stoic physics allows for three different kinds of *pneuma* (lit.
'breath'), a breath-like material compound of two of the
four Stoic elements, fire and air. The kinds of *pneuma* differ
both in degree of tension that results from the expanding and
contracting effects, respectively, of its two constituents, and in
their consequent functionality. The lowest kind accounts for the
cohesion and character of inanimate bodies (e.g., rocks); the
intermediate kind, called natural *pneuma*, accounts for the
vital functions characteristic of plant life; and the third kind is
soul, which accounts for the reception and use of impressions (or
representations) (*phantasiai*) and impulse (*horme*:
that which generates animal movement) or, to use alternative
terminology, cognition and desire. Our evidence, which unfortunately
is fragmentary and often unclear, suggests strongly that according to
the Stoic theory, the body of an animal (human or non-human) contains
*pneuma* of all the three kinds, with the lowest kind responsible
for the cohesion and character of parts like teeth and bones, natural
*pneuma* in charge of metabolism, growth and the like, and
finally soul accounting for distinctively mental or psychological
functions, crucially cognition, by sense and (in the case of humans)
intellect, and desire (cf. Long 1999, 564, for discussion and
references). If this is indeed the picture that the theory presents,
the soul is no longer responsible for all vital functions, and for all
aspects of life, but only for specifically mental or psychological
functions. (Accordingly, the Stoics depart from the Platonic and
Aristotelian view that plants are ensouled organisms.) At the same
time, the Stoic theory does attempt to explain non-mental vital
functions as well, in terms of the activity of 'nature',
the intermediate kind of *pneuma*. In severing the deeply
entrenched, Greek ordinary-language connection between soul and life
in all its forms, the Stoic theory is taking an enormously momentous
step, one that obviously restricts rather dramatically the proper
subject matter of a theory of soul. In fact it is arguable that the
Stoics, in limiting the functions of soul in the way they did, played
an important role in a complicated history that resulted in the
Cartesian conception of mind, according to which the mind plainly is
not something that animates living bodies. This narrowing of the
conception of soul is one of two aspects of the Stoic theory that, for
our purposes, deserve particular notice. 



 The second noteworthy aspect is the insistence of the Stoic theory
that the mind of an adult human being is a single, partless item that
is rational all the way down. According to the Stoic theory, there are
eight parts of the soul, the 'commanding faculty'
[*hegemonikon*] or mind, the five senses, voice and
(certain aspects of) reproduction. The mind, which is located at the
heart, is a center that controls the other soul-parts as well as the
body, and that receives and processes information supplied by the
subordinate parts. The minds of non-human animals and of non-adult
humans have faculties only of impression and impulse. Achieving
adulthood, for humans, involves gaining assent and reason. Reason (it
would seem) makes assent possible, in that it enables the subject to
assent to or withhold assent from impressions, and it transforms mere
impressions and mere impulses, such as other animals experience, into
rational impressions and rational impulses. The rationality of an
impression (for example, of a tree one sees before oneself) consists
in its being articulated in terms of concepts, possession of which is
constitutive of having reason; the rationality of an impulse consists
in the fact that it is generated or constituted by a voluntary act of
assent of the mind to a suitable practical ('impulsive')
impression -- the impression, for instance, that something within
view would be nice to eat. Thus, depending on the type of impression
assented to, assent generates or constitutes belief (or knowledge)
concerning some matter of fact, or an impulse to act in some way or
other.



 It is crucially important not to misunderstand these various
faculties as parts or aspects of the mind, items that operate with
some degree of autonomy from one another and can therefore
conflict. On the Stoic theory, the faculties of the mind are simply
things the mind can do. Moreover, it is a central part of the theory
that, in the case of an adult human being, there is no such thing as
an impulse without an act of assent of the mind to a corresponding
practical impression. In a rational subject, the faculty of impulse
depends on the faculty of assent, which, like all faculties of such a
subject, is a rational faculty. This theory leaves no room for the
Platonic conception that the souls of adult human beings contain
non-rational parts which can, and frequently do, generate impulse and
behavior independently of, and even contrary to, the designs and
purposes of reason. Nor, relatedly, does it leave room for the shared
Platonic and Aristotelian view that desire, even in the case of adult
humans, comes in three forms, two of which are such that desires of
these forms do not arise from, or depend on, activities of reason.
The Stoic theory has the attractive consequence that each adult person
is, through their own reasoned assent, unambiguously and equally
responsible for all their voluntary behavior: there are no Platonic
nonrational parts, or Platonic-Aristotelian nonrational desires, that
could produce actions against one's own reason's helpless
protestations. However, the theory needed to be defended both against
rival philosophical theories and against pre-theoretical intuitions
that militate in favor of these theories. One such intuition is that
passion can, and frequently does, conflict with reason. To judge from
a report by Plutarch, it appears that the Stoics were able to explain
away this particular intuition, and also to disarm the argument for
tripartition of the soul in *Republic* 4, which depends on the
*simultaneity* of a desire for and an aversion to one and the
same thing. According to Plutarch (L&S 65G1),



> 
>  Some people [the Stoics] say that passion is no different from
> reason, and that there is no dissension and conflict between the two,
> but a turning of the single reason in both directions, which we do not
> notice owing to the sharpness and speed of the change.



 Introducing the idea of unnoticed oscillation of a single, partless
mind is highly ingenious and must have been dialectically effective at
least to some extent. However, the theory of the soul that we find in
classical Stoicism appears to be committed to the view that in the
case of adult humans, there simply are no motivational factors that do
not depend on reason and that can significantly affect, often for the
worse, how a person behaves and how their life goes. It must have been
difficult to defend this view against the Platonic-Aristotelian
position. And so it is not surprising that in an environment in which
interest in Plato's and Aristotle's writings was on the rise again, at
least one prominent Stoic philosopher, Posidonius (first century
B.C.), apparently gave up at least part of the classical Stoic
theory. The evidence that we have is not easy to interpret, but it
very much appears that Posidonius introduced into a basically Stoic
psychological framework the idea that even the minds of adult humans
include, to put things cautiously, motivationally relevant forces (of
two kinds) that do not depend on assent or reason at all and that are
not fully subject to rational control. (For detailed discussion,
cf. Cooper 1998, 77-111.)


## 6. Conclusion



 Ancient philosophy did not, of course, end with classical Stoicism,
or indeed with the Hellenistic period, and neither did ancient
theorizing about the soul. The revival of interest in the works of
both Plato and Aristotle beginning in the second half of the second
century B.C. prominently included renewed interest in Platonic and
Aristotelian conceptions of the soul, sparking novel theoretical
developments, such as, for instance, Plotinus' argument (directed in
particular against the Stoics) that the soul could not be spatially
extended, since no spatially extended item could account for the unity
of the subject of sense-perception (see Emilsson 1991). Christian
writers such as Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa were
heavily indebted to philosophical theories of soul, especially
Platonic ones, but also introduced new concerns and interests of their
own. Nevertheless, these and other post-classical developments in
every case need to be interpreted within the framework and context
furnished by the classical theories that we have been considering in
some detail.