In Chapter 7 I discuss the consequences, as regards the theory of virtue, of Plotinus’ denial that ‘spirit’ (thumos) and ‘desire’ (epithumia) are parts of the nature of soul. This denial contrasts with Plato’s tripartition of the soul (which includes spirit and desire) in the Republic, where the tripartition serves to define the four cardinal virtues. However, Plotinus defines these ‘political’ virtues in a different way, as the knowledge and the measure and order brought by rational soul to the affects which arise in the living body. Plotinus introduces furthermore a higher level of virtues, the ‘greater’ virtues. I discuss the relation between these two levels of virtue, in particular as regards the nature of this scale. I argue that in Plotinus the lower (‘political’) virtues are imperfect if possessed without the greater virtues

This chapter illustrates how Greek and Arabic sources influenced the thinking of early scholastic theologians working on the topic of human nature in four main areas. These are debates about the powers of the soul, the composition of the soul, the relationship between the body and the soul, and the theory of knowledge.

Hippocratic doctors discussed two forms of total loss of consciousness. The most common one, where they equated fainting with a separation of the soul, and another form - independent from the psuchê - where they saw the concurrence of numerous independent bodily symptoms that ended up in a swoon. The momentary disruption of cognitive functions that occurred during fainting, and their definite cessation with death made them conceive the soul as both a broad notion that subsumed numerous mental capacities (which transiently separated from the body during swoons) and as a life force that abandoned the body for good with death.

The analysis of total loss of consciousness illustrates the varied ways in which the different authors resolved - in their corresponding periods and contexts - the tension between body and soul. Despite their diverse approaches, all the medical writers under scrutiny took for granted the existence of a soul, its intervention in this kind of conditions, and its bonds to the body as determiner of the clinical presentation. Particularly, they grappled to organise the mental capacities and explain how they were affected in the different forms of impaired consciousness.

Total loss of consciousness is nowadays mostly framed as a global alteration of brain activity. In antiquity, doctors often alluded to this symptom with compound terms of psuchê or anima, and they understood the body and the soul to be involved - to different extents - in the phenomenon. Consequently, by exploring how they conceived this condition, it is possible not only to better understand their idea of consciousness, but also to get a hint of how the envisaged the relation between body and soul.

Unlike the other presentations, Galen associates both forms of total loss of consciousness, lepipsuchiê and sunkopê, with an affection (whether direct by sympathy) of the heart. Namely he localises the problem in the seat of the spirited part of his tripartite soul. Nevertheless, the loss of pneuma provides a link with the affection of the rational soul, whereby both conditions cause total loss of movement and perceptions. The idea of the soul as a life principle is also present in this author, because although total loss of consciousness is associated with the temporary depletion of pneuma (and finishes when it is replenished), the separation of the soul does cause death.

Post-Hellenistic authors took some Hippocratic ideas and terminology to build their own theories about the different forms of losing consciousness, and about the relationship between body and soul. Also, they presented a clearer distinction between the two forms of total loss of consciousness (to the extent that they described a new disease, where the body was primarily affected but not the soul). Celsus’ description of fainting suggests that his idea of soul was influenced by Epicurean corpuscular theories with a rational and an irrational component. Aretaeus, in his turn, was majorly concerned with the mechanisms that produced fainting, where he included a tangle of ideas that included loss of heat, loss of tension, affection in the blood or in the heart, and sometimes, the separation of the soul. However, his idea of psuchê was rather erratic, and his way of organizing mental capacities was not consistent throughout the treatise.

This chapter opens with the discussion of vital unity, a problem at the intersection of medicine and philosophy. Broadly speaking, medicine is concerned with the preservation of a living whole, but for many ancient thinkers, like Galen, the practice of medicine was informed by a highly theoretical understanding of the relationship between the parts and the whole. The first section of the Introduction sets out the key preoccupation of the study: Galen’s understanding of the role that different body parts and systems have in maintaining the functioning of the living whole. Subsequent sections contextualise Galen’s work within the phusiologia tradition, as well the debate between empiricism and rationalism, and briefly outline key classifications to be discussed in later chapters, before turning to the content of individual chapters, situating the present study within the existing scholarship and, finally, briefly explaining how this work approaches the much-debated problem of the substance of the soul.

This introduction establishes the overarching claim of this book: that Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists consistently focus on the disastrous consequences of willing and will-making, while simultaneously emphasizing the vital role that wills played in defining one’s sense of identity and self-worth. English Renaissance drama can be understood, in one way, to be preoccupied with considering the influence that wills exert over human life.

Here, I provide an overview of how both the faculty of the will and the last will and testament were conceived of in the period. The will was primarily thought to be an unruly part of the soul that hinders our ability to achieve what we desire, though the performance of the will was not merely localized to the body or psyche. One way of enacting one’s will upon the world was achieved for some through the production of a last will and testament. Last wills acted as tools for testators to impose their will upon the living, dictating who will, and who will not, benefit from their death. In their immaterial and material forms, wills shaped the quality and conditions of one’s life and afterlife.

This chapter explores Marcus’ concept of the soul and its main cognitive parts (hēgemonikon, nous, dianoia, daimon) and their relevance for the construction of a concept of the self that is closely interwoven with Stoic self-care. It also investigates Platonic influence on Marcus’ concept of the mind and its relation with the body. Selfhood, understood as an entity referring to itself, unfolds around the hēgemonikon and, to a lesser extent, the dianoia. Self-reference by cognitive acts is limited to the logical soul. These three rational elements are subordinated to the ‘I’ (or psychagogic subject) and serve as objects of its psychagogic self-(trans)formation, thereby construing its selfhood. The perfect starting point for mental self-transformation in Marcus is hypolēpsis ‘assumption’, a single mental act, similar to Epictetus’ prohairesis ‘choice’, to which Marcus’ concept of mental selfhood is heavily indebted. Platonising rhetoric supports the delineation and detachment of the soul’s rational part (esp. nous) from external entities and subordinate mental phenomena but offers no evidence for a dualist psychology or metaphysical concept of the mind. Instead, Marcus’ concepts of mind and body abide by Stoic orthodoxy and its materialist monism.

In the third chapter, I focus on the concept of self-motion, which is tied to the definition of soul in Plato. Aristotle famously criticises this view in De anima 1.3, showing that the soul is unmoved. I offer the first lengthy discussion of Proclus’ repudiation of Aristotle’s criticism which differs from other Neoplatonist responses. Most importantly, I demonstrate how Proclus develops his own views on self-motion by using Platonic and Aristotelian insights.

The second chapter concerns the origin of motion in the universe. While Plato assumes a self-moving soul as origin, Aristotle posits an unmoved intellect. Proclus brings these two views together by regarding the unmoved intellect as ultimate source of motion and the self-moving soul as an intermediary entity. I demonstrate that his harmonisation effort goes beyond previous Platonist attempts due to the philosophical reasoning he provides. I also defend Proclus’ assumption of both unmoved intellect and self-moving soul as sources of motion against concerns brought up in scholarship.

The chapter develops the question (raised in Chapter 4) about the precise way in which soul is supposed to play the role of the primary explanans of perception. It does so by bringing out the key difficulty that Aristotle faces and by analysing the three possible answers to this difficulty. The problem is that Aristotle seems to commit himself to three jointly inconsistent tenets: (i) the perceptive soul is the primary cause of perception; (ii) perception is passive; and (iii) the perceptive soul is impassive. These claims are inconsistent if it is true that (iv) there is no way for the soul of being the primary cause of φ-ing other than being the proper subject of whatever φ-ing consists in. Two dominant ways of resolving this problem, since antiquity, consist in denying Aristotle’s commitment to either (ii) or (iii). I argue that difficulties, both exegetical and philosophical, faced by each of these strategies are insurmountable. The third possible strategy starts from denying (iv). I trace such a strategy to the medieval idea of a sensus agens and argue that although the existing medieval (and later) versions cannot stand as such, the third strategy is nevertheless the most promising one.

The chapter starts by outlining the version of direct realism endorsed by Aristotle. I argue that he was committed to uncompromised realism about perceptible qualities and to the view that we immediately perceive the bearers of these qualities without any need of further synthetic acts. These features highlight the difficulty of capturing the explanantia of perception. Two notions key to that endeavour are those of mediation and discrimination. The chapter provides a novel analysis of mediation (for discrimination, see Chapter 6), arguing that, for Aristotle, media are – more or less perfect – qualitative conductors. Furthermore, the chapter addresses the existing debate about what, according to Aristotle, happens in the sense organs when we perceive. I argue that the dilemma governing this debate between spiritualism and materialism (either ‘literalist’ or ‘analogical’) is a false one. Tertium datur, and this alternative turns out to be precisely the view Aristotle embraced: perception consists of a thoroughly material process, but what this process results in must not be a standing material likeness (which would mark the end of perception because like cannot be affected by like), but a dynamic ‘phenomenal’ likeness – the presence of a quality of the perceived object which remains to be precisely a quality of that object.

The chapter provides a novel account of perceptual discrimination (krinein) in Aristotle. Against the widespread view that the most basic perceptual acts consist in noticing differences between two or more perceived qualities, I argue that discrimination is for Aristotle more like sifting, winnowing on a sieve: it consists in identifying – with an ultimate authority – the quality of an external object as distinct from any other quality of the given range that the object could have. The chapter further explores how the notion of discrimination is embedded by Aristotle within his causal assimilation model of perception. I argue that the central notion of a discriminative mean (mesotēs), introduced in An. 2.11, is intended to capture the role of the perceptive soul as the controlling factor of a homeostatic mechanism underlying perception. As such the notion lays the groundwork for resolving the apparent conflict between the passivity of perception and the impassivity of the soul (as analysed in Chapter 5). The prospect is further explored in Chapter 7. The present chapter concludes by arguing that Aristotle conceives perceptual discrimination as a holistic assessment of the external object acting on the perceiver, including those of its features which are not causally efficacious.

The Introduction articulates the central question about the nature of perception and sets it within the explanatory project of Aristotle’s De Anima. What makes Aristotle’s account attractive, I argue, is that it strives to accommodate causal, qualitative, and relational features of perception. A central insight of Aristotle’s account is captured under the notion of perception as a complete passive activity, but that notion has, since late antiquity, appeared paradoxical to readers of De Anima and was, thus, systematically disregarded. The Introduction analyses the historical and philosophical reasons for this disregard. It further articulates the key dilemma pertaining to Aristotle’s view of the role played in perception by the soul: it should be the primary cause of an essentially passive and receptive activity, but it should itself remain unmoved and impassive; how can that be? Although this question has received relatively little attention among recent scholars, it is argued to be more crucial than the much-discussed issue of what happens in the perceiver’s sense organs. The final section of the Introduction outlines the argument of the entire book.