HKB
60 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: reason and the intellect · the nature and attributes of God · perception and the senses · the fear of death · logic, method, and demonstration · the passions and the emotions · fate, destiny, and necessity · the problem of evil and theodicy · medicine, disease, and healing · language, naming, and meaning · religious persecution and toleration · justice as a virtue
Usually: argument (142) · detachment (110) · skepticism (54) · curiosity (32) · reflection (26) · confronting death (26) · crisis of belief (21) · commentary or gloss (15) · exhortation (15) · reverence (15)
“I think, therefore I am (COGITO ERGO SUM),” was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it.” René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's · insight
“And I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing.” René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's · insight
“But, when a thousand rolling years are past, (So long their punishments and penance last,) Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god, Compell’d to drink the deep Lethaean flood, In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares Of their past labours, and their irksome years, That, unrememb’ring of its former pain, The soul may suffer mortal flesh again.” Virgil, The Aeneid · insight
“In cases in which a State might happen to be a party, it would ill suit its dignity to be turned over to an inferior tribunal.” Alexander Hamilton; John Jay; James Madison, The Federalist Papers · observation
“if the multiplication is completed, living 729 times more pleasantly, and the tyrant more painfully by this same interval.” Plato, The Republic · observation
“Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the body—it groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None · insight
“For Thou hadst not forgiven me any of these things in Christ, nor had He abolished by His Cross the enmity which by my sins I had incurred with Thee.” Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, The Confessions of St. Augustine · insight
“The memory then is, as it were, the belly of the mind, and joy and sadness, like sweet and bitter food; which, when committed to the memory, are as it were passed into the belly, where they may be stowed, but cannot taste.” Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, The Confessions of St. Augustine · vivid
“When living faith becomes lifeless, faith is not changed, but its subject, the soul, which at one time has faith without charity, and at another time, with charity.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) · observation
“The first of which is, that they could never have the use of speech, nor of other signes in framing it, as we have, to declare our thoughts to others.” René Descartes, A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reas · observation
“And herein I particulary insisted, to make it appear, that if there were such Machines which had organs, and the exteriour figure of an Ape, or of any other unreasonable creature, we should finde no means of knowing them not to be altogether of the same nature as those Animals.” René Descartes, A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reas · insight
“Whereas, when we know how different they are, we comprehend much better the reasons which prove that ours is of a nature wholly independing from the body, and consequently that it is not subject to die with it.” René Descartes, A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reas · insight
Hamilton argues that the U.S. Supreme Court should have original jurisdiction only for disputes involving ambassadors, public ministers, consuls, and cases where a state is a party, while other federal cases go first to inferior courts.
a great defect in the plan. Let us now examine in what manner the judicial authority is to be distributed between the supreme and the inferior courts of the Union. The Supreme Court is to be invested with original jurisdiction, only "in cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which A STATE shall be a party." Public ministers of every class are the immediate representatives of t…
Anchises gives a philosophical account of the cosmos and the soul, arguing that a single animating power fills all life, that vice clings to souls requiring penance in fire or water, and that souls drink Lethe after a long cycle.
design’d.” “O father, can it be, that souls sublime Return to visit our terrestrial clime, And that the gen’rous mind, releas’d by death, Can covet lazy limbs and mortal breath?” Anchises then, in order, thus begun To clear those wonders to his godlike son: “Know, first, that heav’n, and earth’s compacted frame, And flowing waters, and the starry flame, And both the radiant lights, one common…
Kant describes how reason forms regulative ideas about the ego and the soul, using them to unify internal phenomena while denying that these ideas yield knowledge of what the soul is in itself.
merely the schema of a regulative principle, by means of which Reason, so far as in her lies, extends the dominion of systematic unity over the whole sphere of experience. The first object of an idea of this kind is the ego, considered merely as a thinking nature or soul. If I wish to investigate the properties of a thinking being, I must interrogate experience. But I find that I can apply none of the categories to …
After conspiracy collapses, the National Assembly publishes the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, setting out freedoms, legal protections, sovereignty by the nation, and property and resistance rights.
took not a Part in the National Assembly, the life of the king would be endangered": on which they quitted their chambers, and mixed with the Assembly, in one body. At the time this declaration was made, it was generally treated as a piece of absurdity in Count D'Artois calculated merely to relieve the outstanding members of the two chambers from the diminutive situation they were put in; and if nothing more had fol…
Responding to Burke’s claim about the English king holding the crown by contempt of the Revolution Society’s “choice,” Paine argues the Nation—not a faction—has the right to choose and change government, and Parliament’s authority is only delegated.
each in their time and order, will come to the Crown with the same contempt of their choice, with which his Majesty has succeeded to that which he now wears." As to who is King in England, or elsewhere, or whether there is any King at all, or whether the people choose a Cherokee chief, or a Hessian hussar for a King, it is not a matter that I trouble myself about--be that to themselves; but with respect to the doctr…
Freud argues that people differ in congenital sexual constitution depending on how strongly different sources of sexual excitement develop, and that sexual excitation can both disrupt other functions and enable sublimation through reversible pathways.
that the nature of the sexual excitement is entirely unfamiliar to us. Nevertheless, I will not forbear speaking about two points which promise to open wide prospects in the future. *Diverse Sexual Constitutions.*--(*a*) We have considered above the possibility of establishing the manifold character of congenital sexual constitutions through the diverse formation of the erogenous zones; we may now attempt to do the …
He argues the primitive soul is not fully distinct from the body, since it is tied to bodily organs and even shares form and manifestation, implying deeper unity than Tylor’s dualism.
still remains. His hypotheses on the dream and the origin of the ideas of the soul and of spirits are still classic; it is necessary, therefore, to test their value. First of all, it should be recognized that the theorists of animism have rendered an important service to the science of religions, and even to the general history of ideas, by submitting the idea of the soul to historical analysis. Instead of following…
Durkheim explains the soul’s close but imperfect relation to the body: wounds affect it, it can be dispersed into multiple organs, and funeral rites gradually send it to the land of souls.
with the greatest clarity. While the body no longer exists and no visible traces of it remain, the soul continues to live: it leads an autonomous existence in another world. But howsoever real this duality may be, it is in no way absolute. It would show a grave misunderstanding to represent the body as a sort of habitat in which the soul resides, but with which it has only external relations. Quite on the contrary, …
Durkheim sets up his explanation of the soul by focusing on Central Australian tribes (Spencer & Gillen vs. Strehlow), arguing the underlying social cause should generalize beyond Australia.
the idea that souls, or at least some souls, enter the skies after death appears to be quite indigenous; for it is found again in other parts of the continent.[778] In general, all the souls meet the same fate and lead the same life. However, a different treatment is sometimes accorded them based on the way they have conducted themselves upon earth, and we can see the first outlines of these two distinct and even op…
Durkheim argues that ancestral souls are sacred because men’s souls are ancestral souls reincarnated, and these ancestral souls are made of a shared substance with the totemic principle.
nearly gods. So their souls also have a divine character. And since the souls of men are these ancestral souls reincarnated in the human body, these are sacred beings too. In the second place, these ancestors were not men in the proper sense of the word, but animals or vegetables, or perhaps mixed beings in which the animal or vegetable element predominated: "In the Alcheringa," say Spencer and Gillen, "lived ancest…
Durkheim describes myths where clans originate from one or two ancestral beings, whose substance produces all human souls, then compares this with Strehlow’s account of Arunta soul trajectories after death.
it would not exist; it is they who put it into things. So it must of necessity be divided and distributed among them. Each of these fragments is a soul. A myth which is found in a rather large number of the societies of the centre, and which, moreover, is only a particular form of the preceding ones, shows even better that this is really the matter out of which the idea of the soul is made. In these tribes, traditio…
Durkheim argues that Strehlow’s ratapa and namatuna schemes match Spencer and Gillen’s themes: souls are made of the same substance as totems, and sacred ancestors, their churinga, and sacred sites are equivalent.
and Gillen. But in reality it differs only in the letter of the formulæ and symbols, while in both cases we find the same mythical theme in slightly different forms. In the first place, all the observers agree that every conception is the result of an incarnation. Only according to Strehlow, that which is incarnated is not a soul but a ratapa or a namatuna. But what is a ratapa? Strehlow says that it is a complete e…
He claims each individual is linked to a specific Alcheringa ancestor by a churinga that shares the ancestor’s body and the child’s essence, concluding that this principle is the child’s soul.
the way for it.[811] The fact that these two themes exist side by side in the same myth completes the proof that one is only a doublet of the other. Moreover, in whatever way the conception may have taken place, there can be no doubt that each individual is united to some determined ancestor of the Alcheringa by especially close bonds. In the first place, each man has his appointed ancestor; two persons cannot have …
He argues that because churinga unites ancestor, individual, and totem animal into a “solid unity,” the language ties ratapa and totem to the same child, making ancestors fragments of the totem.
form of a group of ideal beings or mythical personages who are more or less indistinct from the ancestors. In a word, the ancestors are the fragments of the totem.[825] But if the ancestor is so readily confused with the totemic being, the individual soul, which is so near the ancestral soul, cannot do otherwise. Moreover, this is what actually results from the close union of each man with his churinga. In fact, we …
Durkheim broadens the argument beyond Central Australia by listing reincarnation-like beliefs across Australian groups and then North America, concluding that these support his general explanation of the soul.
in human form when a favourable occasion presents itself."[836] Mathews even affirms that "the belief in the reincarnation or transmigration of souls is strongly enrooted in all the Australian tribes."[837] If we pass to the northern regions we find the pure doctrine of the Arunta among the Niol-Niol in the north-west; every birth is attributed to the incarnation of a pre-existing soul, which introduces itself into …
He claims that since individuals belong to sacred species, the “double” recognized in animal or vegetable form must be the soul; he cites blood as a seat of soul and examples where totems act as inner spirits.
we have deduced from them, that is, to the explanation of the idea of the soul which we have proposed. Its general acceptability is also proved by the following facts. We know[845] that each individual contains within him something of that anonymous force which is diffused in the sacred species; he is a member of this species himself. But as an empirical and visible being, he is not, for, in spite of the symbolic de…
Durkheim adds that souls are often represented as animals—before taking human form, at death, and through metempsychosis—and argues this is expected if souls share the totem’s animal substance.
never have been attributed to the soul if men did not think that it was made out of the same substances as the plants and animals of the totemic species. Thus the soul is frequently represented in an animal form. It is known that in inferior societies, death is never considered a natural event, due to the action of purely physical causes; it is generally attributed to the evil workings of some sorcerer. In a large n…
Durkheim explains that the soul’s sacred character comes from beliefs about sacred beings, since the soul is treated as divine or a spark of divinity opposed to the profane body.
IV Thus the notion of the soul is a particular application of the beliefs relative to sacred beings. This is the explanation of the religious character which this idea has had from the moment when it first appeared in history, and which it still retains to-day. In fact, the soul has always been considered a sacred thing; on this ground, it is opposed to the body which is, in itself, profane. It is not merely disting…
He argues the soul is not mere illusion because society permanently inhabits people with moral ideas and sentiments, making people feel a dual inner world that grounds the soul concept.
that is within us; if it is made of the same mental matter as the sacred beings, it is natural that it should become the object of the same sentiments. And the sacred character which men thus attribute to themselves is not the product of a pure illusion either; like the notions of religious force and of divinity, the notion of the soul is not without a foundation in reality. It is perfectly true that we are made up …
Durkheim claims the individual soul is a portion of the group’s collective soul (mana), sometimes shaped by dreams and ailments, but fundamentally explained by what society makes people.
is double; there really is a particle of divinity in us because there is within us us a particle of these great ideas which are the soul of the group. So the individual soul is only a portion of the collective soul of the group; it is the anonymous force at the basis of the cult, but incarnated in an individual whose personality it espouses; it is *mana* individualized. Perhaps dreams aided in determining certain se…
He links soul and mana through shared attributes and argues that disputes over whether churinga are sacred due to residences or impersonal virtues miss a shared sociological root: collective respect.
adhere to his different bones; and this implies that he is believed to be able to diffuse himself, subdivide himself and incorporate himself in all sorts of different things simultaneously. Just as the characteristic attributes of the mana are found in the soul, so secondary and superficial changes are enough to enable the mana to individualize itself in the form of a soul. We pass from the first idea to the second …
Durkheim rejects the idea of a purely preanimist period, insisting that soul and mana coexist in the same communities, differing only in logical relation rather than chronology.
common to the individual, the ancestor and even the totemic being. It is his way of expressing the identity of the sentiments of which these different things are the object. However, it does not follow from the fact the idea of the soul is derived from the idea of mana that the first has a relatively later origin, or that there was a period in history when men were acquainted with religious forces only in their impe…
He argues the individual’s personality derives from an impersonal collective spiritual principle plus an individualizing bodily factor, and he connects this to philosophical accounts by Leibniz and Kant.
ideas and sentiments which brings about the moral unity of the group, they do not all see it from the same angle; each one expresses it in its own fashion. Of these two equally indispensable factors, the former is certainly not the less important, for this is the one which furnishes the original matter for the idea of the soul. Perhaps some will be surprised to see so considerable a rôle attributed to the impersonal…
Durkheim maintains the soul’s autonomy is grounded sociologically, not biological mysticism: social ideas and sentiments form a part of us held in common, freeing us from bodily constraint.
way when he said that the monad was completely closed to the outside. Now our analysis permits us to see how this conception was formed and to what it corresponds. In fact, the soul, a symbolic representation of the personality, has the same characteristic. Although closely bound to the body, it is believed to be profoundly distinct from it and to enjoy, in relation to it, a large degree of independence. During life…
In introducing Chapter IX, Durkheim distinguishes soul, spirit, and ghost among Australian religions, saying souls are bound to organisms while spirits can roam and ghosts are weaker and vagabond.
THE IDEA OF SPIRITS AND GODS When we come to the idea of the soul, we have left the circle of purely impersonal forces. But above the soul the Australian religions already recognize mythical personalities of a superior order: spirits, civilizing heroes and even gods who are properly so-called. While it will be unnecessary to enter into the detail of the mythologies, we must at least seek the form in which these thre…
Durkheim describes Arunta ancestral spirits (Alcheringa) as souls with mana who recruit the clan, govern conception, and later guard, hunt with, and protect children in life through duplicated presence.
is defined; it is set over a certain order of cosmic or social phenomena; it has a more or less precise function to fulfil in the system of the universe. But there are some souls which satisfy this double condition and which are consequently spirits, in the proper sense of the word. These are the souls of the mythical personages whom popular imagination has placed at the beginning of time, the Altjirangamitjina or t…
He claims the improvement of the soul is tied to the body, since humans’ appetites resemble animals’ but humans can elevate them using the soul, so any weakening of the soul harms both.
Welfare There is a closer tie than is commonly supposed between the improvement of the soul and the amelioration of what belongs to the body. Man may leave these two things apart, and consider each of them alternately; but he cannot sever them entirely without at last losing sight of one and of the other. The beasts have the same senses as ourselves, and very nearly the same appetites. We have no sensual passions wh…
He claims the improvement of the soul is tied to the body, since humans’ appetites resemble animals’ but humans can elevate them using the soul, so any weakening of the soul harms both.
Welfare There is a closer tie than is commonly supposed between the improvement of the soul and the amelioration of what belongs to the body. Man may leave these two things apart, and consider each of them alternately; but he cannot sever them entirely without at last losing sight of one and of the other. The beasts have the same senses as ourselves, and very nearly the same appetites. We have no sensual passions wh…
In “Backworldsmen,” Zarathustra claims he once believed in a suffering God and beyond-man realms, but now says God and “other worlds” are created from human bodily despair and weariness.
This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction’s image and imperfect image—an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:—thus did the world once seem to me. Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth? Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods! A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a ma…
As his condition worsens, he discusses the mind’s role in suffering others’ pain, fails to speak his thoughts, asks his brother for comfort, and bids farewell to his wife.
with pleasure and fortitude." And then, as they were holding his mouth open by force to give him a draught, he observed to M. de Belot: "An vivere tanti est?" As the evening approached, he began perceptibly to sink; and while I supped, he sent for me to come, being no more than the shadow of a man, or, as he put it himself, 'non homo, sed species hominis'; and he said to me with the utmost difficulty: "My brother, m…
Montaigne, citing Cicero, argues that studying philosophy means preparing to die, since contemplation separates the soul from the body and ultimately teaches us not to fear death.
THAT TO STUDY PHILOSOPY IS TO LEARN TO DIE Cicero says--[Tusc., i. 31.]--"that to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die." The reason of which is, because study and contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us our soul, and employ it separately from the body, which is a kind of apprenticeship and a resemblance of death; or, else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world do in the e…
He reflects that nature gradually prepares us for death by diminishing our faculties, comparing youth-to-old-age decline with the final end, and urges the soul to stand firm against fear.
["Alas, to old men what portion of life remains!"---Maximian, vel Pseudo-Gallus, i. 16.] Caesar, to an old weather-beaten soldier of his guards, who came to ask him leave that he might kill himself, taking notice of his withered body and decrepit motion, pleasantly answered, "Thou fanciest, then, that thou art yet alive."--[Seneca, Ep., 77.]--Should a man fall into this condition on the sudden, I do not think humani…
He claims that if sleeping thoughts are rational yet never remembered, they are pointless like a looking-glass; he argues the soul cannot benefit from thinking that leaves no retrievable traces.
15. Upon this Hypothesis, the Thoughts of a sleeping Man ought to be most rational. To think often, and never to retain it so much as one moment, is a very useless sort of thinking; and the soul, in such a state of thinking, does very little, if at all, excel that of a looking-glass, which constantly receives variety of images, or ideas, but retains none; they disappear and vanish, and there remain no footsteps of t…
He claims that if sleeping thoughts are rational yet never remembered, they are pointless like a looking-glass; he argues the soul cannot benefit from thinking that leaves no retrievable traces.
15. Upon this Hypothesis, the Thoughts of a sleeping Man ought to be most rational. To think often, and never to retain it so much as one moment, is a very useless sort of thinking; and the soul, in such a state of thinking, does very little, if at all, excel that of a looking-glass, which constantly receives variety of images, or ideas, but retains none; they disappear and vanish, and there remain no footsteps of t…
Locke compares the obscurity of thinking and extension: people may claim they can’t comprehend a thinking thing, but they can’t comprehend extended solidity either, since knowing the “substance” remains impossible.
26. The cause of coherence of atoms in extended substances incomprehensible. The little bodies that compose that fluid we call water are so extremely small, that I have never heard of any one who, by a microscope, (and yet I have heard of some that have magnified to ten thousand; nay, to much above a hundred thousand times,) pretended to perceive their distinct bulk, figure, or motion; and the particles of water are…
Locke says his strange suppositions about the self are pardonable because people don’t know how thinking works; he argues it’s not absurd that the same soul could be united to different bodies.
6. Moral Rules. Of these moral rules or laws, to which men generally refer, and by which they judge of the rectitude or gravity of their actions, there seem to me to be THREE SORTS, with their three different enforcements, or rewards and punishments. For, since it would be utterly in vain to suppose a rule set to the free actions of men, without annexing to it some enforcement of good and evil to determine his will,…
Against materialistic atomism and especially soul-atomism, Nietzsche calls for expelling the belief in an indestructible, indivisible soul from science, while allowing refined hypotheses like mortal soul and soul as social structure of instincts and passions.
Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva, Cujus est natura sensus assoupire. But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI possible?" by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments necessary?"--in effect, it is high time that we should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation…
Freud rejects treating Leonardo as merely neurotic or inferior, outlines his psychoanalytic model of symptoms, and summarizes Leonardo’s development from illegitimate birth, infantile sexuality, repression, and sublimation.
greatness to study the sacrifices which his development from the child must have entailed, and to the compile factors which have stamped on his person the tragic feature of failure. Let us expressly emphasize that we have never considered Leonardo as a neurotic or as a "nervous person" in the sense of this awkward term. Whoever takes it amiss that we should even dare apply to him viewpoints gained from pathology, st…
Lyell discusses claims by Tiedemann and Serres that mammal foetal brains pass through fish, reptile, and bird-like stages, but then adds that Dr. Clark’s work with others disputes this anatomical analogy.
is said, of all those transformations which the primitive species are supposed to have undergone, during a long series of generations, between the present period and the remotest geological era. "If you examine the brain of the mammalia," says M. Serres, "at an early stage of uterine life, you perceive the cerebral hemispheres consolidated, as in fish, in two vesicles, isolated one from the other; at a later period,…
Marcus Aurelius argues that the rational soul is self-aware, self-governing, and can complete itself even when life ends, then concludes that justice—loving one’s neighbor—should be humanity’s chief goal.
THE ELEVENTH BOOK I. The natural properties, and privileges of a reasonable soul are: That she seeth herself; that she can order, and compose herself: that she makes herself as she will herself: that she reaps her own fruits whatsoever, whereas plants, trees, unreasonable creatures, what fruit soever (be it either fruit properly, or analogically only) they bear, they bear them unto others, and not to themselves. Aga…
He develops his creation-of-mind view, saying mind unfolds with the body and that God is constantly forming mind from matter through life’s impressions, explaining life’s roughness as formative.
Divinity, into a capacity of superior enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter in which he may be said to be born. It could answer no good purpose to enter into the question whether mind be a distinct substance from matter, or only a finer form of it. The question is, perhaps, after all, a question merely of words. Mind is as essentially mind, whether formed from matter o…
In Rome Augustine falls gravely ill, interprets it as a near descent to judgment because he believes Christ was a “phantasm,” and he reflects on his mother’s prayers as she remains near an oratory and intercedes.
had brought forth. And yet, after accusing my treachery and hardheartedness, she betook herself again to intercede to Thee for me, went to her wonted place, and I to Rome. And lo, there was I received by the scourge of bodily sickness, and I was going down to hell, carrying all the sins which I had committed, both against Thee, and myself, and others, many and grievous, over and above that bond of original sin, wher…
Augustine argues that memory stores not only experiences but also emotions, so past joy and sorrow can be recalled in the mind differently than they originally felt in the body.
remembered; as if hereafter I shall call to remembrance, that I have now been able to remember these things, by the force of memory shall I call it to remembrance. The same memory contains also the affections of my mind, not in the same manner that my mind itself contains them, when it feels them; but far otherwise, according to a power of its own. For without rejoicing I remember myself to have joyed; and without s…
Augustine argues that the physical theologians who attribute cosmic parts to gods should instead credit the one true God who made heaven and earth and every soul and body.
makes it evident that they are not able even to do this. Let them rather identify them with dead men and most wicked demons, and no further question will remain. 29. _That all things which the physical theologists have referred to the world and its parts, they ought to have referred to the one true God_. For all those things which, according to the account given of those gods, are referred to the world …
Augustine argues that demons cannot secure gods’ friendship because they share an eternal body like gods but a vicious soul like humans, binding them “head downwards” so that their bodily tie to heaven and spiritual tie to earth are both defective.
9. _Whether the intercession of the demons can secure for men the friendship of the celestial gods._ How, then, can men hope for a favourable introduction to the friendship of the gods by such mediators as these, who are, like men, defective in that which is the better part of every living creature, viz. the soul, and who resemble the gods only in the body, which is the inferior part? For a living creature or animal…
Augustine presses the argument further: if gods would be polluted yet demons are not, then demons are less polluted than gods; he denies that demons can cleanse humans if even they remain polluted.
should desire it, how could they accomplish their wish without the consent of the god or demon, when they cannot touch so much as a sparrow unless it be caged? There is, then, nothing to hinder the gods from mingling in a bodily form with men, from seeing and being seen, from speaking and hearing. And if the demons do thus mix with men, as I said, and are not polluted, while the gods, were they to do so, should be p…
He argues that for the blessed life humans need a mediator like Christ: united to them by mortal flesh yet able to heal through divine righteousness, since God cannot be polluted by flesh or by living among people.
17. _That to obtain the blessed life, which consists in partaking of the supreme good, man needs such mediation as is furnished not by a demon, but by Christ alone._ I am considerably surprised that such learned men, men who pronounce all material and sensible things to be altogether inferior to those that are spiritual and intelligible, should mention bodily contact in connection with the blessed life. Is that sent…
Augustine claims the human self reflects the Trinity by unity of being, knowing, and loving, arguing that even if deception were possible, the certainty of one’s existence persists when thinking.
26. _Of the image of the supreme Trinity, which we find in some sort in human nature even in its present state._ And we indeed recognise in ourselves the image of God, that is, of the supreme Trinity, an image which, though it be not equal to God, or rather, though it be very far removed from Him,--being neither co-eternal, nor, to say all in a word, consubstantial with Him,--is yet nearer to Him in nature than any …
He then turns to the difficulties of personal identity, saying his prior views on the self become inconsistent upon review, and he starts arguing against strict identity and simplicity of a thinking being.
a present impression. This is the whole of it. Every part is requisite to explain, from analogy, the more steady conception; and nothing remains capable of producing any distinct impression. Fourthly, The effects of belief, in influencing the passions and imagination, can all be explained from the firm conception; and there is no occasion to have recourse to any other principle. These arguments, with many others, en…
He sets limits: excommunication requires a church community with judging power, cannot discipline a sovereign’s authority, has no effect on Christians who obey their lawful rulers, and operates only within teaching and direction.
that they both have but one voice, and then they be but one Church; and the part Excommunicated, is no more a Church, but a dissolute number of individuall persons. And because the sentence of Excommunication, importeth an advice, not to keep company, nor so much as to eat with him that is Excommunicate, if a Soveraign Prince, or Assembly bee Excommunicate, the sentence is of no effect. For all Subjects are bound to…
Hobbes argues that university metaphysics produces supposed abstract essences and substantial forms, but he insists the universe is corporeal and that talk of incorporeal spirits and essence-names is a confusion of words with things.
Errors Concerning Abstract Essences From these Metaphysiques, which are mingled with the Scripture to make Schoole Divinity, wee are told, there be in the world certaine Essences separated from Bodies, which they call Abstract Essences, and Substantiall Formes: For the Interpreting of which Jargon, there is need of somewhat more than ordinary attention in this place. Also I ask pardon of those that are not used to t…
Emerson continues by explaining how love expands nature and courage, and he argues that beauty’s charm is elusive and incomprehensible, guiding the soul toward the divine rather than mere bodily satisfaction.
flowers ciphers and the air was coined into song; when all business seemed an impertinence, and all the men and women running to and fro in the streets, mere pictures. The passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. The notes are almost articulate. The clouds have faces as he looks o…
They use a numerical analogy to claim that the tyrant is vastly more distant from true pleasure than the king, then shift to arguing about justice by building an “inner” soul as a many-headed monster.
Yes; the arithmetician will easily do the sum. Or if some person begins at the other end and measures the interval by which the king is parted from the tyrant in truth of pleasure, he will find him, when the multiplication is completed, living 729 times more pleasantly, and the tyrant more painfully by this same interval. What a wonderful calculation! And how enormous is the distance which separates the just from t…
He argues that mind and body are best known via thought and extension respectively, and that thought and extension are also understandable as modes of substance when not treated as self-subsisting things.
LXIII. How thought and extension may be distinctly known, as constituting, the one the nature of mind, the other that of body. Thought and extension may be regarded as constituting the natures of intelligent and corporeal substance; and then they must not be otherwise conceived than as the thinking and extended substances themselves, that is, as mind and body, which in this way are conceived with the greatest clearn…
Descartes claims we can clearly know sensations, affections, and appetites by attending only to what is immediately perceived, but we err by treating them as qualities existing beyond the mind in body.
LXVII. That we are frequently deceived in our judgments regarding pain itself. The same prejudice has place in all our other sensations, even in those of titillation and pain. For though we are not in the habit of believing that there exist out of us objects that resemble titillation and pain, we do not nevertheless consider these sensations as in the mind alone, or in our perception, but as in the hand, or foot, or…
In Part II Descartes argues material things can be known with certainty because perceptions arise from objects distinct from the mind; since God cannot deceive, there must exist extended body, and sensation reflects mind-body union.
LXXV. Summary of what must be observed in order to philosophize correctly. Wherefore if we would philosophize in earnest, and give ourselves to the search after all the truths we are capable of knowing, we must, in the first place, lay aside our prejudices; in other words, we must take care scrupulously to withhold our assent from the opinions we have formerly admitted, until upon new examination we discover that th…
Descartes argues the soul perceives only through the brain, not through each body part, supporting this with brain-targeted disorders, nerve obstructions, and phantom pains in amputated limbs.
CXCVI. That the soul perceives only in so far as it is in the brain. It is clearly established, however, that the soul does not perceive in so far as it is in each member of the body, but only in so far as it is in the brain, where the nerves by their movements convey to it the diverse actions of the external objects that touch the parts of the body in which they are inserted. For, in the first place, there are vari…
Descartes claims the motions of the body alone can excite thoughts in the mind, giving examples from speech and writing, and arguing that pain and titillation differ from the motions that cause them.
CXCVII. That the nature of the mind is such that from the motion alone of body the various sensations can be excited in it. In the next place, it can be proved that our mind is of such a nature that the motions of the body alone are sufficient to excite in it all sorts of thoughts, without it being necessary that these should in any way resemble the motions which give rise to them, and especially that these motions …
Archelaus interprets a dream about ten ripe ears devoured by oxen as signaling worsening rule and the end of his reign, while Glaphyra has a dream of Alexander accusing her of untrustworthy womanhood; Josephus then explains he records such stories for providence and soul-immortality.
dream. Now on the fifth day after this dream came first to Archelaus, the other Archelaus, that was sent to Judea by Cæsar to call him away, came hither also. 4. The like accident befell Glaphyra his wife, who was the daughter of king Archelaus, who, as I said before, was married, while she was a virgin, to Alexander, the son of Herod, and brother of Archelaus; but since it fell out so that Alexander was slain by hi…
The treatise on angels begins by distinguishing angels as purely spiritual creatures, and Question 50 argues angels are immaterial but still involve act and potentiality in their existence.
is in itself, and on its order to the whole universe, wherein every part has its own perfectly ordered place, as was said above (Q. 47, A. 2, ad 1). Likewise, because they found two contrary particular causes of two contrary particular effects, they did not know how to reduce these contrary particular causes to the universal common cause; and therefore they extended the contrariety of causes even to the first princi…