TABLE OF
CONTENTS
TITLE………………………………………………………………….i
CERTIFICATION…………………………………………………...
ii
DEDICATION…………………………………………………..……iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………....
iv
GENERAL INTRODUCTION……………….……………………...x
CHAPTER ONE
EXPLICATION OF TERMS
1.1 The
Concept “Man”…………………………………….1
1.1.1 The
Ancient Notion of Man……………….….1
1.1.2 The
Medieval Notion of Man……………….…..3
1.1.3 The
Modern Notion of Man……………….……4
1.1.4 The
Contemporary Notion of Man……………..5
1.1.5 Igbo
Notion of Man…………………………………….7
1.2 The body
and Soul…………………………………...8
1.2.1 The Soul
And Body Problem……………………...9
1.2.2 Soul And
Body Functions……………………………10
1.2.3 The
Relationship Between the Soul and the Body…….11
1.3 The
Origin of Man……………………...12
1.3.1
Psychological Cum Biological Thought……………..12
1.3.2 The
Theological Thought……………………….13
1.3.3
Philosophical Thought………………………….14
CHAPTER TWO
PLATONIC
NOTION OF MAN
2.1 Soul and
Body in Plato………………………………17
2.2 Parts of
the Soul………………………………………..20
2.2.1 The
Rational Soul………………………………………21
2.2.2 The
Spirited Soul……………………………………….21
2.2.3 The Appetitive
Soul………………………………21
2.3 Notions
about Dualism as applied to Man…….22
2.3.1
Interactionism………………………………………….23
2.3.2
Psychophysical Parallelism…………………………24
2.3.3
Occasionalism……………………………………….24
2.3.4
Epiphenomenlaism…………………………………..24
2.4
Immortality of the Soul………………………………25
2.5
Neo-Platonism……………………………………….30
CHAPTER THREE
ARISTOTELIAN NOTION OF MAN
3.1 Hylemorphism……………………………………………34
3.2 Act and
Potency………………………………………….36
3.3 Parts of
the Soul……………………………………….38
3.3.1
Vegetative/Natural Soul…………………………….39
3.3.2 The
Sensitive or Sentient Soul…………………...40
3.3.3 The
Rational/Intellective Soul………………...41
3.4 Man a
unity in diversity……………………….42
CHAPTER FOUR
PLATONIC-ARISTOTELIAN
NOTION OF MAN
4.1Similar
notions between Plato and Aristotle ………..45
4.2 Dissimilarities between Plato and Aristotle………46
4.3 Nature
of the Soul and its activities…………………47
4.3.1
Immateriality…………………………………………………..47
4.3.2
Simplicity……………………………………………………..51
4.3.3
Immortality……………………………………………………52
4.3.4 Other
philosophers View…………………..53
CHAPTER
FIVE
EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
5.0 Critical
Evaluation………..……………………………………56
5.1 Conclusion……………….……………………………………59
BIBLIOGRAPHY………..………………………………………61
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Right down the years past, the search and enquiry into
the very nature of man, “What is man? Has remained both central and elusive to
philosophers. In one of such searches, Socrates confessed this. “I cannot as
yet know myself.” Heidegger considers it as a gateway toward understanding
other realities. The considerations of philosophers as to what man really is,
notwithstanding, one fact is basic, that man exists by nature within a world.
Such that by this fact of his ontological existence, man beholds himself
catapulted in a world in which he is bound to live, survive, participate
generate, etc whilst armed with nothing but himself.
For the time, let us descend to our work, the Platonic
and Aristotelian notions of man, and their comparative analysis.
Following the Pythagoreans, Plato, Places more
emphasis on the spiritual aspect of the being “man.” For him the soul
pre-existed before its union with the body. According to Plato, the soul
pre-existed in the world of forms before it came into the world and got
imprisoned in the body (The body is its prison) from which it exercises its
activities. Therefore, for Plato, man is composed of both soul and body, but
the soul is real in man. So that for him furthermore, the concept “man” the
visible man is a reflection of the ideal, perfect human nature in varied
degrees. Nonetheless, the unity (union) of the body and the soul is as a result
of the sin committed by the soul in its former life. So that the relationship
becomes that of the prisoner and the prison.
Aristotle on the other hand had an opinion contrary to
that of Plato. For him, man is a solitary being. A substantial whole. He is
“one” as in Parmenides monism and not separate as Plato’s man precisely in
Heraclites’ flux. Man is a rational being that possesses the soul, which is the
form of the body. The soul has two parts: the rational and the irrational. The
rational soul has power to scientific thought whilst the other has not.
Consequently, the different opinions of man have been
given. He is a soul; He is a solitary being etc, all is more or less necessary
to the being of man. But the most important fact is that man exists. He has a
body that actuates him in the empirical world and has the soul that
spiritualizes him. He is categorically higher when compared with other classes
of being.
In this memoir, however, we shall look at five
chapters. The first chapter will be concerned with the explication of terms,
the second shall explain in details, Plato’s idea of man, whilst the third
chapter shall deal with Aristotle’s notion of man. The chapter four, the
comparative analysis of both the Platonic and the Aristotelian notions of man.
Finally comes the chapter five, which will be evaluation and conclusion.
CHAPTER ONE
EXPLICATION OF TERMS
1.1 The
concept “Man”
Man by his very nature is an inquisitive being. The
innate desire, says Aristotle, is both for pragmatic motives and for the sake
of knowing. Man wants to know and conquer the realities around him and beyond
him. But has not been able, even to unveil the mysteries of his own being
“existence.” These various obscurities of man to himself, varied concepts and
images of man have been presented according to various ages as below.
1.1.1 The Ancient Notion of Man
The Greek
philosophers, interpreted man from ontological perspectives Democritus and
other atomists conceived man as wholly composed of atoms and matter. Man is a
material reality and possesses characteristics such as singularity,
individuality, and concreteness in its being. It is universal and abstract in
its qualities.
Plato, the
scribe of Socrates on the other hand laid more emphasis on the spiritual aspect
of the being man. For him, the soul pre-existed the body before its union with
the body. According to him, the soul pre-existed in the world of forms before
it came into the world where it got imprisoned in the body, a vessel and from
within this prison exercises its activity.
For
Aristotle, however, man is the only being that has rationality: he reasons,
deliberates, imagines etc and so is the only being, animal that possesses the
soul, which is in the form of the body. He writes:
Man is a soul. The soul has
two parts: the rational and the irrational. The rational soul has the power of
scientific thought. The reason is capable not only of distinguishing between
different kinds’s of things, which is the power of analysis. It is able also to
understand the relationships of things to each other, able to deliberate and
discover as well the guides for human behaviour.1
Irrespective
of the fact that, no universal concept has been accepted, even the notion of
science that man is a machine. Moreover, that man is a composite of cells
predetermined by genes. This Aristotelian solution proves most satisfactory.
1.1.2 The Medieval Notion of Man
This is the
period of the confluence of philosophy, and theology but more theologically
dominated. The Christians, interpreted man as coming from God. For Augustine,
because man is unique and unrepeated, he sees him as single specie. Boethius
helped him by completing that concept to differentiate man from other animals
such as rats, goats etc. For Him, man is not only an individual person but also
a rational being. He said; The person is an individual substance of rational
nature.2
For
Aquinas, man is a rational subsistent. He is composed of body and soul in his
capacity as a “physical substance.”3 He has his
highest capacity in the intellect and this makes him a rational animal or a
“subsistent rationale” (a rational subsistent).
Gaurdini in
his elegant thought saw man as an autonomous being that decides for him. His
notion about man is:
Person means that I, in my
being definitively cannot be in habited by any other, but that in relation to
me, I am only with myself, I cannot be represented by another, but I am guaranteed
to myself.4
1.1.3 The Modern Notion of Man
Anthropomorphism
rules this period. Here man is seen as man and later on, as a Supreme Being. He
is the measure of all things. It is based on the gnoseological phase since it
is all about psychological perspectives.
Descartes,
the rationalist posited that there are two separated substances: the res
cogitans et res extenza – The mind and body or the spiritual and corporeal. He
says man cannot be composed of mind and body as in the scholastic sense but rather
that the mind makes use of the body, as a pilot, would the Plane. He concluded,
therefore, that man is the mind. His idea should not be accepted since the mind
needs the body to actualize its activities hence function well.
Freud,
thought man, the true “I” to be the subconscious. For in the subconscious, the
requirements of the society and the subconscious meet.
1.1.4 The Contemporary Notion of Man
This is the
period of dialogical concepts. It attacks vehemently the Psychological and
ontological theories of man. Mounier, in his essay “le personalisme”
(personalism) condemned the psychoanalysts, idealists and the Empiricists, who
maintained either the concreteness or the spiritual substance of man alone.
Rather, he embraced incorporate existence or incarnate existence of thought and
body.
Other
concepts are analyzed thus: economic man (Marx), existent man (Heideggar),
symbolic man (Cassirer), Utopic man (Block), Problematic man (Marcel), Cultural
man (Gehlem), A thinking reed (Pascal), An image of God (Origin), Will of Power
(Nietzsche), Anguished man (Kierkegaard)5 etc.
We say
then, that whether Psychological or ontological, all human beings whether, he
or she, white or black, Christian or Moslem, is globally a person made up of
four indubitable fundamental elements: autonomy in being, self-consciousness,
communication, and self-transcendence. He is free and social. In communication,
he intersubjectivises with others in correspondence to love, friendship etc. In
self-transcendence, he climbs the ladder of God. He meets the real absolute and
eternal.
Nonetheless,
Man as man, as Higgins formulates, means nothing less than the fact that man is
also a moral being. He summarized man by the means of Aristotle’s four causes:
the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. These four causes make the
boldest attempt at satisfying every branch of study that claim to have the
concept man. Higgins sees man, in Aristotle’s sense, as a unified whole, a
complete substance formed by infusion of two widely differing constituents. One
of this is the material element, the undetermined and determined part of
him-his body.
…by union with a formal or
determined cause, this material element put life into a human body, of which
its end is a rational animal. This formal cause or soul is a life principle,
the absolute, internal reason where man performs his vital action.6
As for
theologians, the efficient and final causes may be regarded as indispensable
aspects of man. Augustine (St.), for instance
believed that our souls will never rest until, they find rest in Him from whom
they come.
1.1.5 Igbo Notion of Man
In every
age, every culture around the world has a certain picture of man, vis-à-vis his
essential nature.
Conceptually,
the Igbo equivalent meaning for “man” is “mmadu.” Dr. E. M.P. Edeh gives an
analysis of the concept mmadu (mma-di), meaning “good that is.”7 Implying that he shares in the
being of his maker, the highest good (God).
Another
school of thought gives the analysis of “mmadu” as “mma-ndu,” “the goodness of
life.” Here, the concept “the good” is a quality associated with man. He is
considered the highest good of all creatures. This concept has a profound
implication for the Igbo. If “man” (mma-ndu) is the greatest good,” it follows
that for the Igbo, the being of man is an indubitable fact since His life (ndu)
is an issue for him (man)8
Concisely,
there is one indubitable truth about man:
There is man. He is there, I
am here. Man is a man in the world as J.F. Douceel, noted of the trend of
contemporary philosophy. Man does not simply live in the world. He also made us
live in it.9
Thus he writes:
Man essentially lives in the
world that is made up of complex sets of horizons. Man lives in a certain
situation in which he can generally not change. It is up to him to assume this
situation and make the most use of it.10
The
Platonic-Aristotelian notion of man is therefore crucial with regards to the
human existential understanding and our discussion that will be made clear as
we proceed.
1.2 Body and Soul
The body is
one of the elements of man that is naturally sensible and clear in existence.
It is the concrete part of man, yet it does not constitute the human reality
absolutely. It exists with the soul to make the actual human being. With this
fickle nature of the body and soul, we shall look into, the body and soul as a
problem; it’s relationship and functions.
1.2.1 The Soul And Body Problem
Philosophy
and anthropology have problem on the usage of the term that designates the
psychological faculty in man. Anthropology speaks of mind, philosophers and
theologians refer to it as “spirit.” For the scientists, it is operational
(i.e. the both terms). It is then left to the philosophers, theologians, and
scientists to choose the best, concerning the nature and origin of man.
The issue
of body and soul, at one extreme is the attempt to separate the human body and
soul by the Platonic idealism, using the dualism of Descartes. At the other end
is the attempt to reduce the mind and body relationship to animal psychology
and behavior giving no acknowledgement to man’s soul as truly spiritual entity.
“Neither pure spirit nor brute animal, man is an organic spirit and spiritual
organism.11
1.2.2 Soul and Body Functions
The body
performs both external function as walking, talking, hearing, seeing, taste,
smell etc and internal activities as biochemistry and the metrics of genetical
informations etc. The somaticity of man transcends and develops into nuclear
operations. Mondin. B writes; “Man is able to manage his body, train it, and
render it capable of performing movement of admirable perfections”.12
He is a
symbolic being, which is a sign of life health, vigilance, and command.
However, man has some characteristics in common with the animals such as
growth, reproduction, movement etc.
Epistemologically,
the body is a vital instrument of acquiring knowledge to Aristotle and Hume, it
is through the body that the world manifests itself to me and I project myself
on the world (Phenomenology).
Lastly, the
body is the source of evil and likewise a curse to the soul according to the
Platonists and Manicheans doctrines.
1.2.3 The Relationship between the Soul and the Body.
The union
of the soul and the body originates as a single being-man. For Aristotle, being
soul alone is not man, nor to be body alone but the blend of these two
elements. Other supporters of this opinion include; Cajetan, Albert the great,
Aquinas and Rosmini. For Hume, their relationship is that of subjective and
reflection.
Plato
himself says that the soul is identified with the true essence of man. Freeing
the soul is a necessary condition to eliminating the body. Other proponents of
this opinion include: Spinoza, Augustine, and Descartes etc.
Kant, in
his agnosticism rejected all attempts and regarded all soul-body reports as
nothing but fallacious. At this point, we say that the soul-body relationship
is substantial because the body and the soul cannot operate in isolation. The
soul and the body is not a substance because neither the soul nor the body has
atoms of autonomous existence or self-initiation. Both of them participate
together at the moment of generation. Therefore cannot be identified as a simple
accident or a complete substance.
1.3 The Origin of Man
The search
for the origin of man dates back to at least the written history of man. This
gave rise to some evolutionary theories under Psychological cum biological,
scientific, theological, and philosophic thought.
1.3.1 Psychological Cum Biological Thought
In this
approach, man (Homo erectus, Homo vivens, Homosapiens, Homo volens etc) is
regarded as a unique composite of man and spirit, of body and soul.
For
Traducianism, the parents generated both body and soul through the instrumental
fission of the ovum and sperm alone. According to it, man originated from a
complex structure of molecules called DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid).
On another
note, the soul of man has a proximate spiritual source, the soul of the
offspring, must be the soul, which must be an emanation of the souls of the
parents.
1.3.2 The Theological Thought
According
to the theological thought, it is believed the supreme being (God) from whom
all things were made and who holds the entire universe in his hands also made
man.
Let us make man in our image
and likeness; let them have dominion over all other creatures… So God created
man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he
created them.13
Right down
the history, man is an indubitable being that exists in the world otherwise,
there would be no history for there would be no man to talk about the past, the
present or even predict the future.
1.3.3 Philosophical Thought
According to the emanation theory, human race emanated
from some live forces in the world and some great men fashioned by the gods of
Pantheon (The Early Greek pyramid text record). Also, the creationists,
pictured man to be descendants or rather, products of Gods so that all things
come from divine architecture and genealogy – Theory of creationism.
In the 19th
century, man was believed to have originated from animals not from gods. An
instance is the Darwin’s. “The Descent of man” Here Darwin treated man’s origin
and history in the context of animal origins or evaluation. In the
evolutionist, theory man is believed to have descended from common ancestors
among the primates by natural evolutionary process like isolation, adaptation,
natural selection, and mutation.
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