This chapter is devoted to On Regimen, the longest and by far most complex work by a cosmological doctor to have survived from the Classical period. Topics discussed include the “self-sufficiency” (autarkeia) of fire and water, the pendular movement of various cycles, the two-way “resemblance” (apomimesis) between the body and the cosmos, and the use of both cosmological principles and “prodiagnosis” as a solution to the problem of individualization. This chapter also considers On Regimen’s theories about the soul, which is concentrated in the sun and separates off into other, smaller souls to give movement, life, intelligence, and divinity to everything it inhabits.

In this chapter, I present Aristotle’s arguments in his books on Physics defending the claim that there is purposiveness in nature independent of thinking, foresight and deliberation. Hegel’s arguments for objective purposiveness are correctly understood only in light of those of Aristotle. In fact, I argue that the sense in which teleology is for Hegel the truth of mechanism (and, ultimately, of causality) is the sense in which, for Aristotle, final causes are the cause of ‘that which comes to be by nature’ and the cause of other kinds of causes (matter, efficient causes and even form) being where they are and having the effects that they eventually have. The chapter revises Aristotle’s understanding of this connection.

Focusing on the Republic, this chapter argues that Plato regards psychological health, or the virtue of justice, as the necessary – and sufficient – condition of a human life worth living. This healthy condition amounts to a good exercise of soul’s function (ergon), which is premised on a good exercise of an individual’s function, or job, in the city. This account allows even peasants or craftsman in Plato’s ideal city to have a life worth living, even though they fall short of the best possible human life lived by the rulers-philosophers. It is argued that this non-elitist account of a life worth living is compatible with the famous claim from Plato’s Apology that an unexamined life is not worth living for humans. For in the ideal city all citizens live an examined life, at the very least in the sense of being ruled by the wise philosophers. At the same time, Plato decisively denied the possibility that the mere fact of being alive, or the fact of having a soul, would be a good. It can be a good, if a life is lived well, or it can be an evil, if a life is lived badly.

There were psychologists who insisted that psychology was a natural science and that the soul as a concept was essential to the science, which was to be as philosophical as it was experimental. Neoscholastic psychology illustrates well that a psychology has roots in a way of life, in a culture. The Neoscholastics represented—Edward A. Pace, Michael Maher, Desiré Mercier, and Albert Farges—supported the development of scientific psychology, although among this group only Pace actually conducted experiments, having studied with Wundt. Pace and Mercier addressed Catholic critics of psychology, critics who feared it would be materialistic. Not so, said these Neoscholastics, who articulated an empirical psychology with a Scholastic philosophical foundation. While the soul is not a phenomenon, its existence could be grasped from its effects, especially conceptual thinking and freedom of the will. These thinkers also addressed their peers in psychology who rejected metaphysical considerations in this new science.

Despite psychology having no place for the soul, there are reasons to reconsider the soul. Soul has a place outside of psychology in many cultures. So we look at formulations of the soul from a variety of cultures. Then we turn to developmental cognitive studies of contemporary folk psychology. These studies explore intuitions in children about the existence of the soul. A final example of experiential dualism comes from studies of people dealing with severe pain and illness, who can experience that their bodies are something that they have and feel at a distance, albeit an oppressive distance. The soul addresses the “phenomenological experience” that people are not simply objects in the physical world. These studies suggest that psychology “with a soul” is the suppressed double of psychology without a soul. The former has not disappeared, it has been marginalized.

After the return to the defense, Simmias and Cebes raise objections to Socrates’ kinship argument, Socrates warns them to avoid misology, and then he responds to Simmias’ objection. These objections and this warning simultaneously serve as the climax of the first half of the dialogue and set the agenda for the second. I argue that misology is a more specific problem than it is typically taken to be, a problem that aspiring philosophers (like Socrates’ companions) are especially at risk of suffering, one that involves not merely becoming cynical about arguments but positively hating them. I then turn to Simmias’ objection and Socrates’ response to it. I argue that, as Socrates interprets Simmias’ theory that the soul is a harmonia, it makes the soul a properly fitted together composite, not the formal structure possessed by such a composite. This means that Socrates is not arguing against a type of supervenience theory or epiphenomenalism, as is frequently claimed. Socrates’ arguments against Simmias’ theory highlight how it cannot explain basic ethical features of the soul that the kinship argument’s account can explain.

This argument (typically called the “affinity argument”) is central to the structure of the Phaedo, setting up much of the remainder of the dialogue. Moreover, it develops the dialogue’s most detailed account of the forms and of ordinary objects, and it argues for an innovative account of the nature of the soul, which is relied upon in Socrates’ ethical account in the next section. Despite this, the argument has received very little scholarly attention, supposedly because scholars widely view it as an especially bad argument. This chapter shows that the argument is much more precise and stronger than has been appreciated. In doing so, it argues that Socrates describes here a new, fundamental feature of the forms: they are simple in a way that makes them partless – in strong contrast to ordinary objects, whose complex structure allows them to have opposing features at the same time.

Cebes’ cloakmaker objection presents an alternative model of the soul according to which it is ultimately destroyed in the process of providing life to the body. Socrates’ final argument rejects this model by arguing that the soul’s bringing life to the body, far from destroying the soul, is precisely what ensures that it must be immortal and imperishable. In doing so, the argument identifies a way in which the soul has a characteristic of the divine – immortality – thereby specifying one way in which it is akin to the divine, as Socrates claimed in the kinship argument. Thus, the final argument responds to Cebes’ cloak maker objection in a way that further fills in the kinship argument’s account of the soul. The final argument also includes an important discussion of forms and ordinary objects. I argue that Socrates here identifies the most basic reason why forms cannot be ordinary, perceptible things: ordinary objects are receptive of opposites, whereas forms cannot be.

The De re publica contains a sophisticated strain of reflection on the place of the honor motive in a good life, and in particular in the good life of public service. Cicero finds a way for a conscientious public servant to be interested in receiving honor while still directing his actions at the public good and that only. Further, he finds a use for merited honor and merited shame in the moral education of citizens and political leaders. The chapter argues that Cicero’s account of how honor motivates a person, both ordinarily and in the normative case, is fundamentally more similar to the views on honor put forward by the Hellenistic Stoics than it is to the tripartite model of psyche used by Plato in his Republic. As so often in De re publica, what we have is Platonism filtered through and modified by subsequent Stoic thought. But Cicero’s own experience in politics has also given stimulus to his reflections; and conversely, the philosophical position on honor that he develops in his writing becomes part of his self-representation as a public figure.

While Wallace’s fiction is famously “about what it means to be a fucking human being,” there is a consistent strain of posthumanism in his writing that has formed a rich thread of scholarship, from Hayles’ technological lens and Giles’ sentimental reading through to Hayes-Brady’s consideration of the body as object, Hering’s examination of the self as a spatial nexus and Vermeule’s Schopenhauerian reading of mind/body dualism. Indeed, it is difficult to encounter Wallace at all without a consideration of the post-ness of his humanism. At the heart of this posthumanism is an ambivalence about the locus of the self in a deeply networked yet alienating world, where telephones and roads are as much a barrier to communion as they are conducive. Beginning with the most disembodied characters – Wallace’s many ghosts – the chapter draws attention to the ways in which the disembodied self in Wallace’s work – pure consciousness – is limited and impotent. The chapter also examines the representation of the most deeply embodied characters – babies – as the other side of this coin, incoherent and narcissistic. Engaging philosophies of dualism and embodiment as well as drawing on the more recent neuroscientific turn in literary studies, this chapter argues that consciousness for Wallace involves imagining the mind in and of the body. This chapter connects this section with the following one, reminding us that for Wallace the self exists always and only within the world.

Chapter 2 explores the circulation of masculinity through the lens of friendship and sensory rhetoric. Coordinating the language of Christian fellowship and classical friendship, the Cappadocians involved correspondents in an aesthetic based on a union of souls. Using imagery of the body to express affinity of soul, the Cappadocians engaged correspondents in an agōn predicated on mutual faith and/or shared manhood. These letters of affection mimicked the language of contest with the Cappadocians choreographing encounters based on reciprocal seeing, speaking/hearing, and touching. In portraying union of souls through corporeal imagination, the Cappadocians reordered the bodily senses as masculine. These friendships were reinforced through the care taken in the penmanship of the letters and careful selection of messengers, elements that reflected the performative nature of correspondence. And through framing correspondence as a form of gift-giving, the Cappadocians further underscored friendship and Christian fellowship as elements of masculinity rooted in the traditions of classical Greece.

In this chapter, the author sets out a unitive way of thinking about the relationship between spirituality, psychiatry and psychotherapy. An introduction to spirituality in mental health care is followed by a discussion of the meaning of ‘spirit’, ‘soul’ and ‘ego’ and how these terms may be understood with reference to ongoing developmental tasks. The poem I AM, written by the nineteenth-century poet John Clare, who suffered from enduring mental illness, is considered in depth from both psychoanalytic and Jungian approaches in order to illustrate different perspectives on Clare’s anguish and spiritual yearning. The evolution of transpersonal psychology, in which Jung’s concepts play an important part, is traced historically, with the increasing recognition of the value of spiritually orientated psychotherapy. The chapter concludes with several case studies by the author, illustrating how a range of soul-centred approaches can readily and helpfully engage with the spiritual reality of the patient.

Referencing the poem I AM by John Clare, who suffered from mental illness. Psychoanalytic and Jungian therapies are compared in order to illustrate different perspectives on Clare’s anguish and spiritual yearning. A brief history of the evolution of transpersonal theory and of spiritually oriented therapeutic approaches is provided, and the chapter concludes with case studies illustrating how soul-centred therapy can readily and helpfully engage with the spiritual reality of the patient.

This chapter focuses on religious and spiritual aspects of anxiety and depression. It begins by examining acedia, before moving on to critically reviewing studies on religiosity both in the religious and among atheists. It then considers the relationship between depression and the ‘Dark Night of the soul’. It appraises studies of the prevalence of anxiety in religious groups, with a focus on obsessive-compulsive disorder. Although spirituality/religion can have a positive impact on the experience of depression and anxiety, they can also have negative effects, and these are documented. The authors move away from the predominant focus on Christianity in the literature to discuss common mental disorders in relation to Judaism and Islam. Finally, the parallels between spiritual direction and psychotherapy are examined.

The Ghost of Clytemnestra is the first afterlife figure in extant Greek literature to call for vengeance instead of ritual burial. Speaking for the sake of her own soul (psychē), the Ghost cites the ethical wrongs done to her as a mother killed by her own son and as a queen dishonored in the afterlife. The Ghost’s claims, however, have never been seriously considered by scholars. By contrast, the Erinyes do take up her cause, chasing down Orestes and arguing a universal version of Clytemnestra’s case in the trial. This chapter delves into the specifics of the Ghost’s rhetoric, her metatheatrical self-awareness, and her first-person depiction of the afterlife. The living Clytemnestra has already proven manipulative, politically usurping, and murderous; she continues these behaviors after death. Further, the Ghost’s lack of substance (as image, soul, or dream of the Erinyes) distances her from the living world. How can a character so far outside of societal norms demand serious ethical consideration?