Philosophical Perspectives on the Soul, Mind, and Life

Saint Thomas Aquinas (Aristotelian Standpoint)

• The soul is the form of the body.
• The soul does not pre-exist the body; it is created by God at the same time it informs the body.
• There is no transmigration.
• The soul is immortal.

Descartes (Plato's Standpoint)

Descartes aligns with Plato's standpoint of efficient causality because:

• He rejects the concept of substantial forms.
• He considers the soul to be a thinking and self-sufficient substance.
• The body is an extended, mechanical substance.

The 18th Century: Julien Offroy de La Mettrie

• If the complexity of a plant, animal, or human body can be totally explained through mechanical terms, the whole world can be explained through those terms.
• There is no thinking self; there is only the extended thing.
• This represents a materialistic and mechanical theory.
• Man is one of the many things that exist in the universe.

Rationalism and Idealism

• If man is a being that thinks, and thought is self-sufficient, then nature is a thought object: the world is an image that I build—it is an idea. Reality is a thought.
• In Idealism: if thought is the only thing that exists and it is universal, individualities disappear into one and only thought.

Reaction Against Idealism: Kierkegaard

• Man is a personal and individual being, possessing an absolute value.
• The human person is the most important thing after God.

The 20th Century: Existentialism

• There is a deep lack of confidence in any conceptual definition of man (it rejects the aspiration to understand what man is).
• There is a lack of confidence toward the idea of man as being made of body and soul.
• Man is a lived corporeal nature.
• Man has no essence and makes himself in time.

I. Life in General and Vegetative Life

Life in general:

A. Preliminary Ideas

B. Definition of "Life"

1. Empirical: "Spontaneous movement"
2. Scientific:
   • "Overall phenomena that are common to all living beings"
   • "Overall functions that resist death"
   • "Organization, nutrition, reproduction, conservation, and evolution"
3. Metaphysical: "The name of life is referred to a substance to which, by nature, self-movement belongs"

Features of the Vital Movement

• (i) Spontaneity: Not absolute
• (ii) Immanence: No transitive movement / not absolute