Aristotelian and Stoic Ideas - Thesis Example

Aristotelian and Stoic Ideas This paper presents a comparison of Aristotelian and Stoic ideas relating to the soul of men, and proceeds to trace the social and political organizational models or paradigms that flow from the two psychological frameworks. This paper also examines the ways in which the Stoic framework can be considered as Hellenistic. In Stoic philosophy the emphasis with regard to the soul is that of the soul being the function of adult human development, of the mind as being its core, and of rationality, and adult assent as its chief characteristics or abilities. The adult soul has mind as its center, and the organizing principle that is located in the heart. The soul, moreover, in the Stoic sense is isolated to its psychological or its mind functions, those related to mental activities, whereas there are two other lower categories of pneuna, or breath, that are related first to the formation of a cohesive and characteristic whole, as in the case of non-animate objects such as the soil and rocks, and secondly to what the Stoics refer to as the natural pneuma, which is the pneuma associated with the life force in plants. The soul is the highest pneuma, of which plants do not share, and that soul has for its functions or characteristics the categories of desire, the ability to gather impressions from the senses, and cognition and the life of the intellect, rationality, the ability to give or to hold back assent to natural impulses. The soul is the higher principle in the Stoic sense (Lorenz). From the Aristotelian perspective on the other hand, the soul is that organizing principle that governs all of the activities and actions of all life forms, including plants. This all-encompassing view of the soul posits in essence that all kinds of activities that are to be associated with living things find their root in the activity or the essence of the soul. This is a comprehensive take on the nature of life and of the soul, in that all kinds of activities, from the very function of the individual cells, to the ability of organisms to make food from sunlight to swallowing food, to swimming or drinking or reproducing, to healing themselves, to making all kinds of noises, have for their foundation the abilities and functions that are enabled by the presence of the soul. On the other hand, because the soul is the essence of these activities, they are not to be found in the bodies that the soul inhabits per se. but that at any rate the soul cannot exist apart from the body. In other words, the soul is able to perform the different things that it is able to do, such as flap the wings of the bird, without the wings that are present for such functions, in the same way that in essence the thinking processes of the soul are inextricably linked to the brain. The gist of this is that for Aristotle, there is no existence for the soul apart from the context of the body that it inhabits. The soul in Aristotelian philosophy is a body’s form, whereas the body itself is the matter that enables the soul to perform its work. Therefore for Aristotle, the living thing is one unitary entity, with body and soul, and that soul is the essence of the thing, its usefulness or function, that cannot exist without the body. The body is the soul’s context for being in other words, but this also implies that the soul is not eternal as its existence is bound to the existence of the body. The two make up the reality of a being (Cohen; Lorenz). In the above general overview we see crucial distinctions between the Stoic and Aristotelian views of the soul, as well as some overlaps too. In both systems there are gradations of pneuma or soul, from non-animate to animate forms, to the human soul, which is characterized and differentiated by reason. On the other hand, in the Stoic sense only humans have a proper soul, whereas plants, rocks and other animate forms only have some kind of instinctive impulses and lower-order soul-like activities that have no proper soul in them. Moreover, in the Stoic sense only those aspects of pneuma relating to the use of the mind, rationality, the intellect and the faculty of cognition are the proper characteristics of soul, whereas the the other characteristics of the lower pneumas are not of the soul. Moreover, for the Stoics, the soul is characterized by rationality, and so nothing that is not rational can be an aspect of soul, even as soul itself is something that has the ability to survive the death of the body, but not eternal in its nature. Such distinctions, what kinds of systems of organization in politics and in society flow from the two philosophies, and the ties of the Stoic views to the Hellenistic system re explored in the rest of this paper (Lorenz; Cohen; Baltzly). Discussion From the preceding discussion one gets from the Stoic views on the human soul a perspective on the nature of soul as that which is distinctly attributable to humans only, and that is the rationality aspect of men. That rationality is solely attributed to the soul, or that the soul is totally rational, so that the irrational aspects of a human being’s total makeup is excluded. On the other hand, as far as Aristotelian views on soul are concerned, anything that is part of the animating principle, from the way the organism undertakes all of its bodily activities to the way the organism feels and interacts with the world, including rationality, the irrational aspects, intelligence, cognition, the emotions, the passions, and everything that characterizes life as opposed to death, are part of soul, are all one solitary unity that makes up the soul. Life is soul in other words for Aristotle, even as for the Stoics there are gradations of pneumas, but rationality is solely a differentiating aspect of the human soul, something that separates it from the rest. This is the same thing as to say that the cognitive aspects, intellect and rationality are the sole categories that characterize the soul, and that these aspects survive somewhat the death of the body. Along a gradient therefore, where Aristotle leans towards the view that the soul is not separate from the body, the Stoics say in essence that soul somewhat survives the body (Lorenz; Baltzly). On the modes of organization in society and politics that flow from the two views on the human soul, we get from Aristotle for one that the indivisibility of the soul and of the body, of the soul being contextualized in specific bodies and non-existent outside of that body, has implications for the existence of the individual within and outside of the context of the society where the individual belongs. Aristotle posits that the individual can only be good in essence, relative to the society where the individual operates. The social structure then, in a loose sense can be construed as the body in the Aristotelian discussion of the soul. The good citizen, on the other hand, can be considered in this same loose sense as the soul, or the animating principle of the body, or one of the animating principles, together with the other citizens. In this sense, the citizen can be good in context with its interactions with society, and cannot be construed as such without the social structure where it belongs. Implicitly therefore, this kind of thinking gives a positive nod to the possibility of the private citizen being trusted to do the social and political body good, when he decides and uses his rationality, his higher faculties, to decide on issues pertaining to the state. This line of thinking therefore opens up the possibility of the organization of a social and political body that together can decide on the course of action that the society can take. Collectively, therefore, this organization of citizens can be trusted to form a participative social and political organization, which is what Aristotle prescribes as something that can work in real life, where the middle classes can constitute this voting and participative class. At the same time, democratic organizational modes can also work, and can be argued to flow too from the above Aristotelian view of the soul (Miller). With regard to the Stoics, meanwhile, from a general perspective the emphasis on the faculty of rationality and of the intellect as being soul properties, and emphasizing the soul work or the rational work as the true work of man, there flows an emphasis on rationality as the natural foundation for organizing politics and society. This would place a large part of the trust in society on men of virtue, and that is, rational men, acting for the common good (Baltzly; Lorenz). In more concrete terms on the other hand, the literature tells us that the logical extension of the Stoics’ general respect for individual rights and the right of the person to possess his own body and person and to possess property separate from the rest give rise to social and political systems that in turn respect those twin human rights. Justice in a society and in politics then would consist of society respecting the right of man to ownership of property and the protection of that owned property, among other things. These attributes would place Stoic views on the soul and on politics in general to be compatible with the social and political systems that came to be normative in Ancient Greece(Mitsis; Baltzly). Finally, that the Stoic philosophy is Hellenistic owes to the fact that the philosophy has its roots in time to the Hellenistic period, and that its main proponents had their roots in that time period of history too, affecting the evolution of thought in that civilization. This latter reality is reflected in the way the Stoic view of the soul is classified in the philosophical literature as being part of the Hellenistic perspectives on the soul (Lorenz; Baltzly). Works Cited Baltzly, Dirk. “Stoicism”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2013. Web. 10 December 2014. Cohen, S. Marc. “Aristotle on the Soul”. University of Washington. 2004. Web. 10 December 2014. Lorenz, Hendrik. “Ancient Theories of Soul”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2009. Web. 10 December 2014. Miller, Fred. “Aristotle’s Political Theory”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2011. Web. 10 December 2014. Mitsis, Phillip. “The Stoics on Property and Politics”. NYU. n.d. Web. 10 December 2014. Read More