Augustinian Puzzles about Body, Soul, Flesh, and Death

Author(s):  
Sarah Catherine Byers

Augustine’s employment of some (ultimately) Aristotelian concepts and distinctions, such as from the work On the Soul, helped him to develop his own account of the human being as a single-substance body-soul compound, and a correlative theory of death. The recovery of his view involves some work, because he does not always explain how he thinks the core theses to which he is committed play out in detail. Nevertheless it is possible when we use his Literal Meaning of Genesis to illuminate the City of God, Book 13. The former text contains the most extended presentation of Augustine’s natural philosophy. It employs concepts from classical metaphysics—such as matter, body, form, and potentiality—which, along with some of the Aristotelian categories, are recognizable again in the City of God, a work that he commenced as he was completing the Genesis commentary.

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Clucas

The Animadversiones in Elementorum Philosophiae by a little known Flemish scholar G. Moranus, published in Brussels in 1655 was an early European response to Hobbes’s De Corpore. Although it is has been referred to by various Hobbes scholars, such as Noel Malcolm, Doug Jesseph, and Alexander Bird it has been little studied. Previous scholarship has tended to focus on the mathematical criticisms of André Tacquet which Moranus included in the form of a letter in his volume. Moranus’s philosophical objections to Hobbes’s natural philosophy offer a fascinating picture of the critical reception of Hobbes’s work by a religious writer trained in the late Scholastic tradition. Moranus’s opening criticism clearly shows that he is unhappy with Hobbes’s exclusion of the divine and the immaterial from natural philosophy. He asks what authority Hobbes has for breaking with the common understanding of philosophy, as defined by Cicero ‘the knowledge of things human and divine’. He also offers natural philosophical and theological criticisms of Hobbes for overlooking the generation of things involved in the Creation. He also attacks the natural philosophical underpinning of Hobbes’s civil philosophy. In this paper I look at a number of philosophical topics which Moranus criticised in Hobbes’s work, including his mechanical psychology, his theory of imaginary space, his use of the concept of accidents, his blurring of the distinction between the human being and the animal, and his theories of motion. Moranus’s criticisms, which are a mixture of philosophical and theological objections, gives us some clear indications of what made Hobbes’ natural philosophy controversial amongst his contemporaries, and sheds new light on the early continental reception of Hobbes’s work.


Author(s):  
Therese Scarpelli Cory

This chapter explores the fundamental vision of the human being at the core of Aquinas’ anthropology. Aquinas has typically been construed as defending a fundamentally ‘Aristotelian’ vision of the human being. I show that this label has generated a skewed reading of Aquinas. Accordingly, this chapter does not lay claim to identify what it would take for an anthropology to be authentically ‘Thomistic’. Instead, it makes a proposal concerning what I argue is the ‘guiding vision’ of Aquinas’ anthropology: namely the ‘distinctive unity of the human’. Aquinas prioritizes this notion of distinctive unity in the different areas of his anthropology. I explore how this distinctive unity is expressed (a) in Aquinas’ account of the human soul as the ‘horizon’ of the bodily and spiritual worlds, and (b) in his definition of the human being as ‘rational animal’.


2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 497
Author(s):  
Pedro Trigo

RESUMEN: Ponemos el núcleo de la modernidad en el descubrimiento de la individualidad, entendido como un proceso emancipatorio respecto de las co­lectividades que pautaban su vida. Sus dos modos básicos, en pugna constante, serían desarrollar su individualidad autárquicamente o entenderse como un ser humano, autónomo y único, pero referido a la única humanidad. Parecería que se ha impuesto el individualista, objetivando su dominio en los sistemas económico y político, pretendidamente autoconstruidos y autorregulados. Siempre hubo cristianos modernos, pero debieron soportar la contradicción de la institución eclesiástica. El Vaticano II discernió que el ser humano es histórico y que al hacer la historia se hace a sí mismo; reconoció que los bienes civilizatorios propician la vida humana, pero no equivalen al desarrollo propiamente humano. Sólo éste es escatológico. La responsabilidad ante los hermanos y la historia, que se ejerce en la encarnación solidaria, es el nuevo humanismo. La superación de la modernidad se da en el paso del individuo solo o en relación, al ser humano constitutivamente relacional, que se hace persona al actuar como hijo y hermano desde su insobor­nable individualidad.ABSTRACT: We put the core of Modernity in the emerging phenomena of indi­viduality, understood as a process of emancipation from the ruling groups. Its two ways, always in tension, would be to develop an individuality autocratically or to understand the individual as a unique and autonomous human being, but only in reference to humankind. It looks like that the individualist model has imposed itself dominating the economical and political systems, supposedly self-made and self-regulated. Modern christians have always existed, but they had always to deal with the contradiction of the Church as institution. The Vatican II discerned that the human being is historical and while making history we form themselves; rec­ognized that the civilizing benefits propitiate human life, but they do not equate to true human development. This is only eschatological. The responsibility towards brothers and history, that we perform in our caring incarnation, is the new hu­manism. We go beyond modernity when we pass from the individual alone or in relation to humankind intrinsically relational, that becomes a person by acting as a son and brother while anchored in indelible individuality. 


Author(s):  
Tikhon V. Spirin ◽  

The article addresses the core anthropological concepts of Carl Du Prel’s philosophy and explores the significance of those concepts for the Russian spiritualism of the late 19th – early 20th century. The Du Prel’s theory built up upon the concept of Duality of the Human Being. Du Prel insisted on simultaneous co-existence of two subjects – one pertaining to the sensible world and the other related to the extrasensory (‘the transcendental subject’) – that are divided by the ‘perception threshold’. He argued that in dormant and somnambular state the threshold would shift and thus enable the Transcendental Subject to act in the Extrasensory World. Du Prel believed that the human evolution is not over yet. He suggested that one could estimate what the new form of the human life would be judging by the conditions in which the transcendental subject comes out. Like many other spiritualists, Du Prel foretold the upcoming dawn of a new era where the boundary between science and religion on the one part and the Sensible and Extrasensory World on the other part will vanish. Anthropological doctrine of Du Prel correlated well with the views on the future human being held by the Russian spiritualists, and therefore he became one of the most reputable authors for them


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Ladenthin

This introduction to pedagogy establishes the principles of pedagogical action. Based on the responsibility of every human being for him- or herself, fellow human beings and the environment, the core task of pedagogy is to convincingly substantiate justified claims. Instruction, education, care, discipline and just community are derived and developed as tasks of educational activity.


Author(s):  
Tita Chico

Late seventeenth-century natural philosophers inherited the conjunction of politics and science at the core of Francis Bacon’s experimental project. Thomas Sprat’s The History of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels use the conventions of literary knowledge to express their scientific-political visions, insisting that natural philosophy cannot be understood apart from the political institutions enabling and enabled by its practice and promulgation. These writers use the experimental imagination to envisage, in turn, civil government, absolutist monarchy, and imperialism. Sprat advances scientific triumphalism and a model for schooling gentlemen into civil society.


2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 20-57
Author(s):  
Annette Weissenrieder ◽  
Gregor Etzelmüller

In this paper we take issue with George H. van Kooten’s recent argument that Paul’s concept of inner human being has a background in ancient philosophical treatises as a metaphor of the soul. We argue that its Greco-Roman physiological meaning was decisive in its adoption by Paul and that the split between ancient medicine and philosophy was not essential in antiquity. Ancient medical-philosophical texts did not focus on the core or center of a person but rather sought a deep understanding of his or her inner aspects. These texts sought to understand how it is that we can discover bodily information about this inner person and to what degree the relationship between the inner and outer person can be interpreted. At the same time, however, we are discussing Walter Burkert’s evolutionary understanding of Pauline’s concept of the inner and outer human being. Paul’s definition of the inner human being corresponds to recent anthropological concepts of embodiment insofar as the visible outer human being has an inside which, according to Paul, is not detached from the body, but must be grasped from a physical perspective.


2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-338
Author(s):  
Lynda Gaudemard

AbstractThis paper explores the interaction between medicine and metaphysics in modern natural philosophy and especially in Descartes' philosophy. I argue that Descartes' hypothetical account of birthmarks in connection with his embryology provides an argumentative proof of the metaphysical necessity of a substantial union between mind and body, which however does not threaten his doctrine of the real distinction between these two substances. It would appear that his argument relies on a temporal conception of alethic modalities and provides a new answer to Henricus Regius who in 1641 claimed that, for Descartes, the human being is an ens per accidens.


Author(s):  
Ratna Muntiningsih

This paper presents the core of a descriptive theory of Indirect Speech acts, i.e. utterances used by the speaker to the hearer based on the three types of felicity conditions such as content condition, preparatory condition, and sincerity condition. The data examples takes from the English novel "The Cowboy's Secret Son" contains some of indirect speech act utterances that are included to the pragmatic study. The researcher explains and analyzes every utterance based on the theory of Yule (1996), Searle (1976, 1975), Austin (1962), Mey (1993), Bach and Harmish (1979), and Levinson (1983). The result of the research is founded that the speaker uses indirect speech act is to convey the request to the hearer to do something in the future. Moreover they use indirect speech act which has two meanings such as literal meaning and non-literal meaning or indirect meaning. In other words, they use indirect speech act to avoid the hearer to get upset, feel bad, angry and for politeness. And, generally they use indirect speech act because they have recognized the matters they are uttering.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Muhammad Irfan Helmy

Human personality depicts an individual’s behavior and it is a formal object of psychology. Understanding human behavior is a vital and fundamental subject to understand human’s essence. The typology of behavioral concept is multifaceted and varied. In fact, various definitions of personality arrive at a single substance. This paper analyses Sigmund Freud’s concept on personality through the eye of Qur’an. The Qur’an made a personality concept as part of its focus. Through a comparative method, this study concludes that both Freud and the Qur’an argue that human personality consists of three components or potentials with different characteristics, yet integrated, to create human behavior and its personality. Freud calls them consecutively as Id, Ego and Superego; while the Quran calls them as Nafs, Akal and Kalbu. The difference between Freud and Quran on personality concept lies on the source where these three potentials came from. In Freud’s view, they came from the human being themselves internally or being influenced by their surroundings. Freud did not count God’s influence in his theory. According to Quran, however, the third potentials (Kalbu)depicts God’s values embedded in human being. Kalbu is called as a God’s disposition (tendency). Thus, Quranic concept on personality is theocentric while Freud’s is anthropocentric which is much dependent on rationality and morality of human being.  


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