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History of the Concept of the Mind, v. 2 - Introduction (view source)
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, 02:13, 2 August 2007New page: Introduction:The Heterodox Tradition in Western Philosophy There are two (or three) main highways along which western speculation about the nature of the world and the human soul have t...
Introduction:The Heterodox Tradition in Western Philosophy
There are two (or three) main highways along which western speculation about the
nature of the world and the human soul have traveled: the Platonic dual nature
account, the Aristotelian matter-form account, and the Epicurean materialist
hypothesis (interrupted for 1500 years and not taken up again until the mid-17th
century). But there are also other roads, ones less traveled; some twist and turn in
unusual directions, some are cul-de-sacs. They are not so much unorthodox, ‘not-
right belief’, as heterodox, ‘other-belief’, that is, other than the mainstream.
Homeric and ancient Hebrew ideas about the human soul squarely situated its
principle and power in the life-force which originated with an individual’s birth and
vanished with its death. Plato’s mature thought marks a watershed, since in the
Phaedrus, the Republicand the Timaeus, he builds in an exogenous shamanistic
concept of the soul as an immortal, autonomous entity contingently joined with its
host’s body. As the ‘ruling part’(or aspect) of this immensely influential and fruitful
doctrine, the Platonic rational soul begins to lead a life of its own (so to speak) and
reaches its highest state in a perfectly ordered cosmic hierarchy under Plotinus’
mystagogic teaching. Augustine syncretized this divinely ‘inspired’soul with NT
Christian ideas and propelled it forward through the Renaissance Hermeticism of
Ficino and Pico. The Platonic and Augustinian rational soul finds its modern home
in Descartes’thinking thing, the human mind elevated to the status of a god in its
own domain. Where for Plato the rationality of the rational (logismos) soul is the
result of its inception in and participation with a divine mind (or power), for
Descartes the cognitive power (vis cognitiva) of the human mind is due to its
attainment of a godlike rationality.
Aristotle’s concern to account for the conditions a concrete substance must realize
in order to have a soul as its form relied on a matter-form model of explanation. He
complained that the ‘mystics’expounded only upon the nature of the soul itself and
not on the nature of the body that is needed to receive or house the soul. For the
mystics, the body might be anything, and thus it would really be irrelevant to its
having a soul; in principle the soul might be taken into or housed in any kind of
body. In contrast, since Aristotle’s idea of the soul is property-like, the soul is
dependent upon its body, but not as another bodily part upon the whole body, since
the soul is not any kind of body at all. Despite its official dominance in schools for
five centuries or longer, it lost ground to the Neo-Platonist innovators and
disappeared from the Latin West. Under the curatorship of Arabic and Persian
scholars the Aristotelian model was made complete and consistent. This internal
philosophical completeness was a distinct advantage when Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas reconciled the matter-form account with the Christian doctrine of
personal immortality. The third stream of tradition about the human soul had its
source in Stoic and Epicurean physical theory and materialist ontology. This
alternate route was rendered heretical by the Church Fathers for its overt denial of
the human soul’s immortality and its alleged tendency toward atheism. It was not
revived until the early seventeenth century under the tutelage of Pierre Gassendi and
Kenelm Digby who thought that some version of atomism was more amenable to
the new mechanistic theories of matter in motion.
But there are other less well-remarked paths, trodden usually by the few or the
chosen alone. These are the distinctive features of heterodox lines of thought about
mind, soul and spirit. (1) They are arcane, esoteric teachings, kept secret from the
public, open only to insiders. (2) Their emphasis is not on an explanatory account
of nature, but on techniques for the soul’s ascent. (3) They are formed in close
alliance with magical ideas and lend themselves readily to various occult theories:
(a) some aspect of these ideas can be externalized in some form, such as rituals,
spells, etc.; (b) these external forms can become detached from the theoretical base
which explains them. (4) Their diagnostic, therapeutic and practical effects are
achieved by natural and/or demonic magic. One of the earliest and most influential
statements of the esoteric, hidden teaching is made by Plato in the ‘Second Letter’.
Plato said that he would transmit ‘a secret teaching hat must be written in riddles
in case someone might read the letter while en route. The true doctrine, he said, ‘is
like this:it is in relation to the king of all things and on his account that everything
exists, and that fact is the cause of all that is beautiful. In relation to a second, the
second kind of thing exists, and in relation to a third, the third kind’(312e). This
enigmatic statement was to become one of the cornerstones of Plotinus’ strange
philosophy and a key text in the Neo-Platonists’ efforts to expound their theurtgy,
working on the god within each human. In addition to philosophical, natural-
scientific and religious texts; the ancient world bequeathed to the early Christian
world an abundance of works on magic by Greek, Egyptian and Roman writers.
Empirical and medical accounts helped to explain what was possible and impossible
in the physical world, at the same time that fabulaetold stories about magical
persons and events; some of the apocryphal texts of the NT also contributed to this
magical repertoire.
The Christians writers of the early centuries carried out a continuous diatribe
directed against all magical practices, and routinely issued condemnations and
prohibitions against such ‘evil’ and heretical activities. Richard Kieckhefer
forcefully argues that the conflict between Christians and pagans rested on their
differing notions about magic and its place in society: ‘For pagans who opposed
magic, it was reprehensible because it was secret and antisocial. It was a force that
worked against society, from within society itself, and for that reason it had to be
uprooted.’The pagans worshipped their gods in the open and did not call on them
for help in carrying out evil deeds; moreover,the pagans were not intolerant of other
gods and other forms of devotion than their own. On the other hand, ‘for the
Christians,magic was reprehensible because it was the work of demons. These were
evil spirits, ultimately subject to God, but they paraded as gods and received
veneration.’The Christians could not complain about secretive behavior because
they themselves were secretive; in addition, they were intolerant of other gods and
other forms of devotion except their own. Thus Kieckhefer concludes that, in
sharply distinguishing between Christianity as the true religion and paganism as a
parcel of false religions:
early Christian writers in effect introduced a distinction between religion and magic which
had not previously been made and which was not easily understood except from a
Christian viewpoint. It was a short step from saying that paganism was inauthentic
religion to maintaining that it was no religion at all, but mere idolatry and magic ... In
short, the pagan definition of magic had a moral and a theological dimension but was
grounded in social concerns; the Christian definition had a moral and a social dimension
but was explicitly centered on theological concerns. Between these two different models
there was little room for discussion. 1
Secrecy, exclusiveness and ‘right-opinion’(orthodoxy) help to define the criteria
that allowed for the separation of (true) religion and magic; the hidden (occult),
dynamic and unnatural helped to define the criteria that separated the demonic,
spiritual dimension from the natural dimension.2 The distinction between ordinary,
manifest powers and occult powers could be subjective, that is, a power that is little
known and arouses wonder, unlike those powers that are well known and taken for
granted. But it could also be a power in a more objective sense, that is, one that
resides in the object itself and which cannot be explained, but only educed through
spells and charms. Natural magic was the ‘science’of such occult powers and was
strictly segregated from demonic magic which invoked the assistance of spiritual
agents in bringing about the desired changes:‘That which makes an action magical
is the type of power it invokes:if it relies on divine action or the manifest power of
nature it is not magical, while if it uses demonic aid or occult powers in nature it is
magical.’There is an alternate way of defining magic in terms of the intended action
the operations are designed to elicit instead of the powers they invoke. According to
this theoretical approach, the central feature of religion is that it supplicates God or
the gods, and the main feature of magic is that it attempts to coercespiritual beings
or hidden forces.3
The history of magic is above all a crossing-point where the exploitation of natural forces
and the invocation of demonic powers intersect. One could summarize the history of
medieval magic in capsule form by saying that at the popular level the tendency was to
conceive magic as natural,while among the intellectuals there were three competing lines
of thought: [1] an assumption, developed in the early centuries of Christianity, that all
magic involved at least an implicit reliance on demons; [2] a grudging recognition,
fostered especially by the influx of Arabic learning in the twelfth century,that much magic
was in fact natural; and [3] a fear, stimulated in the later Middle Ages by the very real
exercise of necromancy,that magic involved an all too explicit invocation of demons even
when it pretended to be innocent.4
One could distinguish between the wisdom of the magus and the learning of the
philosopher, but they are actually interdependent aspects of the same enterprise.
According to Angela Voss, ‘the magus is a scientist, as he investigates the hidden
laws of the cosmos, learns of the correspondences between all things, and seeks to
understand the world from the perspective of the Creator himself. But he is also a
diviner, as he does this through action, perfecting the techniques and rituals which
may lead him to the deeper level of insight required to reap divine gifts.’5 Marsilio
Ficino declared, ‘the perfect efficacy of ineffable works, which are divinely
performed in a way surpassing all intelligence, and the power of inexplicable
symbols, which are known only to the gods, impart theurgic union.’6 Voss draws a
salutary lesson from this attitude:
Thus images, prayers, invocations, talismans – in whatever ritual use appropriate for the
particular condition of the individual – may all contribute to the process of realigning his
or her soul. It is important to understand that divination does not originate from the
energies used in everyday life, or from human fabrications or ingenuity. Rather, the
devotion,intent and desire of the operator will allow a superior power to ‘perfect’the ritual
and impart its authority to it. In other words, human beings may partake of Divine
Revelation through their own efforts.
In their final summary statement about Giordano Bruno, Copenhaver and Schmitt
admirably characterize the central attitude of the magic-inspired heterodox view of
human nature. They claim that Bruno did not care about individual human beings,
but thought that particular things of any kind were no more distinct than ripples in
the calm sea of being. ‘Nature thrives and breeds transitory forms out of living
matter through her own internal force of soul. The single universal form is the
world-soul that drives things from within as their principle. Causes that act
externally are superficial; a deeper dynamism belongs to principles that move
inside. Matter and form unite in the infinite substance that comprehends all ...
Individual souls ... cannot be discrete specific forms because soul is really one;
what enlivens a human and a fly are fragments of the same world-soul,which is like
a light reflected in a shattered mirror whose splinters are the souls of particular
beings.’8 Or, as Philip Batz said in 1876, in a now forgotten book, ‘humans are
fragments of a desperate god who destroyed himself at the beginning of time;
universal history is the shadowy death throes of those fragments.’9
The Cartesian-Galilean understanding of the mathematical order of the natural
world and the mechanical laws that govern change and motion would definitively
overthrow the fundamental principles of the late medieval and Renaissance picture
of a dynamic, spiritual nature. The model of a world-machine would supplant the
model of a world-spirit,imbued with celestial and terrestrial intelligences that could
be intuited and handled by wisdom-seekers. Wisdom would no longer be the special
endowment or privilege of a few initiates, but a collective achievement that can be
realized through cooperative endeavors, pieces of which can become available to
anyone with the right scientific education. The occult philosophy and its many
heterodox variants are not so much driven underground as channeled into side-
roads, away from the main highway; dusty roads traveled by amateur alchemists,
juridical astrologers, counterfeiters, and the other conjurers and tricksters
commonly satirized by the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights. This work
investigates both the richness and the strangeness of these less well-traveled paths
in their speculations about the nature,function and structure of the human mind and
soul.
1 Kieckhefer 1990 pp. 35–7.
2 Conditions of secrecy are emphasized by Stroumsa 1996 pp. 1–7.
3 Kieckhefer rejects this approach for several reasons, 1990 pp. 15–16.
4 Kieckhefer 1992 pp. 16–17; also Jolly 2001 pp. 13–26.
5 Voss 2001 p. 5.
6 Ficino, quoted in Voss 2001 p. 5.
7 Voss 2001 p. 7.
8 Copenhaver & Schmitt 1992 p. 315.
9 Philip Batz quoted in Culianou 1992 p. 56.
There are two (or three) main highways along which western speculation about the
nature of the world and the human soul have traveled: the Platonic dual nature
account, the Aristotelian matter-form account, and the Epicurean materialist
hypothesis (interrupted for 1500 years and not taken up again until the mid-17th
century). But there are also other roads, ones less traveled; some twist and turn in
unusual directions, some are cul-de-sacs. They are not so much unorthodox, ‘not-
right belief’, as heterodox, ‘other-belief’, that is, other than the mainstream.
Homeric and ancient Hebrew ideas about the human soul squarely situated its
principle and power in the life-force which originated with an individual’s birth and
vanished with its death. Plato’s mature thought marks a watershed, since in the
Phaedrus, the Republicand the Timaeus, he builds in an exogenous shamanistic
concept of the soul as an immortal, autonomous entity contingently joined with its
host’s body. As the ‘ruling part’(or aspect) of this immensely influential and fruitful
doctrine, the Platonic rational soul begins to lead a life of its own (so to speak) and
reaches its highest state in a perfectly ordered cosmic hierarchy under Plotinus’
mystagogic teaching. Augustine syncretized this divinely ‘inspired’soul with NT
Christian ideas and propelled it forward through the Renaissance Hermeticism of
Ficino and Pico. The Platonic and Augustinian rational soul finds its modern home
in Descartes’thinking thing, the human mind elevated to the status of a god in its
own domain. Where for Plato the rationality of the rational (logismos) soul is the
result of its inception in and participation with a divine mind (or power), for
Descartes the cognitive power (vis cognitiva) of the human mind is due to its
attainment of a godlike rationality.
Aristotle’s concern to account for the conditions a concrete substance must realize
in order to have a soul as its form relied on a matter-form model of explanation. He
complained that the ‘mystics’expounded only upon the nature of the soul itself and
not on the nature of the body that is needed to receive or house the soul. For the
mystics, the body might be anything, and thus it would really be irrelevant to its
having a soul; in principle the soul might be taken into or housed in any kind of
body. In contrast, since Aristotle’s idea of the soul is property-like, the soul is
dependent upon its body, but not as another bodily part upon the whole body, since
the soul is not any kind of body at all. Despite its official dominance in schools for
five centuries or longer, it lost ground to the Neo-Platonist innovators and
disappeared from the Latin West. Under the curatorship of Arabic and Persian
scholars the Aristotelian model was made complete and consistent. This internal
philosophical completeness was a distinct advantage when Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas reconciled the matter-form account with the Christian doctrine of
personal immortality. The third stream of tradition about the human soul had its
source in Stoic and Epicurean physical theory and materialist ontology. This
alternate route was rendered heretical by the Church Fathers for its overt denial of
the human soul’s immortality and its alleged tendency toward atheism. It was not
revived until the early seventeenth century under the tutelage of Pierre Gassendi and
Kenelm Digby who thought that some version of atomism was more amenable to
the new mechanistic theories of matter in motion.
But there are other less well-remarked paths, trodden usually by the few or the
chosen alone. These are the distinctive features of heterodox lines of thought about
mind, soul and spirit. (1) They are arcane, esoteric teachings, kept secret from the
public, open only to insiders. (2) Their emphasis is not on an explanatory account
of nature, but on techniques for the soul’s ascent. (3) They are formed in close
alliance with magical ideas and lend themselves readily to various occult theories:
(a) some aspect of these ideas can be externalized in some form, such as rituals,
spells, etc.; (b) these external forms can become detached from the theoretical base
which explains them. (4) Their diagnostic, therapeutic and practical effects are
achieved by natural and/or demonic magic. One of the earliest and most influential
statements of the esoteric, hidden teaching is made by Plato in the ‘Second Letter’.
Plato said that he would transmit ‘a secret teaching hat must be written in riddles
in case someone might read the letter while en route. The true doctrine, he said, ‘is
like this:it is in relation to the king of all things and on his account that everything
exists, and that fact is the cause of all that is beautiful. In relation to a second, the
second kind of thing exists, and in relation to a third, the third kind’(312e). This
enigmatic statement was to become one of the cornerstones of Plotinus’ strange
philosophy and a key text in the Neo-Platonists’ efforts to expound their theurtgy,
working on the god within each human. In addition to philosophical, natural-
scientific and religious texts; the ancient world bequeathed to the early Christian
world an abundance of works on magic by Greek, Egyptian and Roman writers.
Empirical and medical accounts helped to explain what was possible and impossible
in the physical world, at the same time that fabulaetold stories about magical
persons and events; some of the apocryphal texts of the NT also contributed to this
magical repertoire.
The Christians writers of the early centuries carried out a continuous diatribe
directed against all magical practices, and routinely issued condemnations and
prohibitions against such ‘evil’ and heretical activities. Richard Kieckhefer
forcefully argues that the conflict between Christians and pagans rested on their
differing notions about magic and its place in society: ‘For pagans who opposed
magic, it was reprehensible because it was secret and antisocial. It was a force that
worked against society, from within society itself, and for that reason it had to be
uprooted.’The pagans worshipped their gods in the open and did not call on them
for help in carrying out evil deeds; moreover,the pagans were not intolerant of other
gods and other forms of devotion than their own. On the other hand, ‘for the
Christians,magic was reprehensible because it was the work of demons. These were
evil spirits, ultimately subject to God, but they paraded as gods and received
veneration.’The Christians could not complain about secretive behavior because
they themselves were secretive; in addition, they were intolerant of other gods and
other forms of devotion except their own. Thus Kieckhefer concludes that, in
sharply distinguishing between Christianity as the true religion and paganism as a
parcel of false religions:
early Christian writers in effect introduced a distinction between religion and magic which
had not previously been made and which was not easily understood except from a
Christian viewpoint. It was a short step from saying that paganism was inauthentic
religion to maintaining that it was no religion at all, but mere idolatry and magic ... In
short, the pagan definition of magic had a moral and a theological dimension but was
grounded in social concerns; the Christian definition had a moral and a social dimension
but was explicitly centered on theological concerns. Between these two different models
there was little room for discussion. 1
Secrecy, exclusiveness and ‘right-opinion’(orthodoxy) help to define the criteria
that allowed for the separation of (true) religion and magic; the hidden (occult),
dynamic and unnatural helped to define the criteria that separated the demonic,
spiritual dimension from the natural dimension.2 The distinction between ordinary,
manifest powers and occult powers could be subjective, that is, a power that is little
known and arouses wonder, unlike those powers that are well known and taken for
granted. But it could also be a power in a more objective sense, that is, one that
resides in the object itself and which cannot be explained, but only educed through
spells and charms. Natural magic was the ‘science’of such occult powers and was
strictly segregated from demonic magic which invoked the assistance of spiritual
agents in bringing about the desired changes:‘That which makes an action magical
is the type of power it invokes:if it relies on divine action or the manifest power of
nature it is not magical, while if it uses demonic aid or occult powers in nature it is
magical.’There is an alternate way of defining magic in terms of the intended action
the operations are designed to elicit instead of the powers they invoke. According to
this theoretical approach, the central feature of religion is that it supplicates God or
the gods, and the main feature of magic is that it attempts to coercespiritual beings
or hidden forces.3
The history of magic is above all a crossing-point where the exploitation of natural forces
and the invocation of demonic powers intersect. One could summarize the history of
medieval magic in capsule form by saying that at the popular level the tendency was to
conceive magic as natural,while among the intellectuals there were three competing lines
of thought: [1] an assumption, developed in the early centuries of Christianity, that all
magic involved at least an implicit reliance on demons; [2] a grudging recognition,
fostered especially by the influx of Arabic learning in the twelfth century,that much magic
was in fact natural; and [3] a fear, stimulated in the later Middle Ages by the very real
exercise of necromancy,that magic involved an all too explicit invocation of demons even
when it pretended to be innocent.4
One could distinguish between the wisdom of the magus and the learning of the
philosopher, but they are actually interdependent aspects of the same enterprise.
According to Angela Voss, ‘the magus is a scientist, as he investigates the hidden
laws of the cosmos, learns of the correspondences between all things, and seeks to
understand the world from the perspective of the Creator himself. But he is also a
diviner, as he does this through action, perfecting the techniques and rituals which
may lead him to the deeper level of insight required to reap divine gifts.’5 Marsilio
Ficino declared, ‘the perfect efficacy of ineffable works, which are divinely
performed in a way surpassing all intelligence, and the power of inexplicable
symbols, which are known only to the gods, impart theurgic union.’6 Voss draws a
salutary lesson from this attitude:
Thus images, prayers, invocations, talismans – in whatever ritual use appropriate for the
particular condition of the individual – may all contribute to the process of realigning his
or her soul. It is important to understand that divination does not originate from the
energies used in everyday life, or from human fabrications or ingenuity. Rather, the
devotion,intent and desire of the operator will allow a superior power to ‘perfect’the ritual
and impart its authority to it. In other words, human beings may partake of Divine
Revelation through their own efforts.
In their final summary statement about Giordano Bruno, Copenhaver and Schmitt
admirably characterize the central attitude of the magic-inspired heterodox view of
human nature. They claim that Bruno did not care about individual human beings,
but thought that particular things of any kind were no more distinct than ripples in
the calm sea of being. ‘Nature thrives and breeds transitory forms out of living
matter through her own internal force of soul. The single universal form is the
world-soul that drives things from within as their principle. Causes that act
externally are superficial; a deeper dynamism belongs to principles that move
inside. Matter and form unite in the infinite substance that comprehends all ...
Individual souls ... cannot be discrete specific forms because soul is really one;
what enlivens a human and a fly are fragments of the same world-soul,which is like
a light reflected in a shattered mirror whose splinters are the souls of particular
beings.’8 Or, as Philip Batz said in 1876, in a now forgotten book, ‘humans are
fragments of a desperate god who destroyed himself at the beginning of time;
universal history is the shadowy death throes of those fragments.’9
The Cartesian-Galilean understanding of the mathematical order of the natural
world and the mechanical laws that govern change and motion would definitively
overthrow the fundamental principles of the late medieval and Renaissance picture
of a dynamic, spiritual nature. The model of a world-machine would supplant the
model of a world-spirit,imbued with celestial and terrestrial intelligences that could
be intuited and handled by wisdom-seekers. Wisdom would no longer be the special
endowment or privilege of a few initiates, but a collective achievement that can be
realized through cooperative endeavors, pieces of which can become available to
anyone with the right scientific education. The occult philosophy and its many
heterodox variants are not so much driven underground as channeled into side-
roads, away from the main highway; dusty roads traveled by amateur alchemists,
juridical astrologers, counterfeiters, and the other conjurers and tricksters
commonly satirized by the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights. This work
investigates both the richness and the strangeness of these less well-traveled paths
in their speculations about the nature,function and structure of the human mind and
soul.
1 Kieckhefer 1990 pp. 35–7.
2 Conditions of secrecy are emphasized by Stroumsa 1996 pp. 1–7.
3 Kieckhefer rejects this approach for several reasons, 1990 pp. 15–16.
4 Kieckhefer 1992 pp. 16–17; also Jolly 2001 pp. 13–26.
5 Voss 2001 p. 5.
6 Ficino, quoted in Voss 2001 p. 5.
7 Voss 2001 p. 7.
8 Copenhaver & Schmitt 1992 p. 315.
9 Philip Batz quoted in Culianou 1992 p. 56.