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20 results

  • 9 - The Embodied Soul

  • from Part III - Psychology
  • Edited by Lloyd Gerson, University of Toronto, James Wilberding, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Companion to Plotinus
    Published online:
    25 May 2022
    Print publication:
    02 June 2022, pp 219-240

  • Summary

    The Greek word empsukhos (‘ensouled’) was used in ordinary language to describe something as alive.1 Philosophers from all major schools specified this linguistically marked connection between soul and life by postulating or arguing that the soul is the principle of life.2 The soul can be understood to be so in three ways. All life-constituting activities of a living being are activities of the soul, or they are activities of the composite of body and soul, or some are activities of the soul and others of the composite. Plotinus defends the first option.3

Plotinus on the Soul
  • Damian Caluori
  • Published online:
    05 July 2015
    Print publication:
    25 June 2015
  • Plotinus on the Soul is a study of Plotinus' psychology, which is arguably the most sophisticated Platonist theory of the soul in antiquity. Plotinus offers a Platonist response to Aristotelian and Stoic conceptions of the soul that is at the same time an innovative interpretation of Plato's Timaeus. He considers the notion of the soul to be crucial for explaining the rational order of the world. To this end, he discusses not only different types of individual soul (such as the souls of the stars, and human and animal souls) but also an entity that he was the first to introduce into philosophy: the so-called hypostasis Soul. This is the first study to provide a detailed explanation of this entity, but it also discusses the other types of soul, with an emphasis on the human soul, and explains Plotinus' original views on rational thought and its relation to experience.