What is this thing called Spirit ? Various thoughts by other people on this subject ... George Berkeley was born in 1685 near Kilkenny, Ireland. Berkeleys philosophical notebooks (sometimes styled the Philosophical Commentaries), which he began in 1707, provide rich documentation of Berkeleys early philosophical evolution, enabling the reader to track the emergence of his immaterialist philosophy from a critical response to Descartes, Locke, Malebranche, Newton, Hobbes, and others. There was a young man who said God, must find it exceedingly odd when he finds that the tree continues to be when noones about in the Quad. The worry, of course, is that if to be is to be perceived (for non-spirits), then there are no trees in the Quad at 3 a.m. when no one is there to perceive them and there is no furniture in my office when I leave and close the door. Interestingly, in the Principles Berkeley seems relatively unperturbed by this natural objection to idealism. He claims that there is no problem for To this end, Berkeley emphasizes that we have a notion of spirit, which is just to say that we know what the word means. This purportedly contrasts with “matter,” which Berkeley thinks has no determinate content. Of course, the real question is: How does the term “spirit” come by any content, given that we have no idea of it? In the Principles, Berkeley declares only that we know spirit through our own case and that the content we assign to “spirit” is derived from the content each of us assigns to “I” (PHK 139–140). In the Dialogues, however, Berkeley shows a better appreciation of the force of the problem that confronts him: [Hylas.] You say your own soul supplies you with some sort of an idea or image of God. But at the same time you acknowledge you have, properly speaking, no idea of your own soul. You even affirm that spirits are sorts of beings altogether different from ideas. Consequently it follows that no idea can be like a spirit. We have therefore no idea of any spirit. You admit nevertheless that there is spiritual substance, although you have no idea of it; while you deny there can be such a thing as material substance, because you have no notion or idea of it. Is this fair dealing? To act consistently, you must either admit matter or reject spirit. To the main point of Hylas attack, Philonous replies that each of us has, in our own case, an immediate intuition of ourselves, that is, we know our own minds through reflection (3D 231–233). Berkeleys considered position, that we gain access to ourselves as thinking things through conscious awareness, is surely an intuitive one. Nevertheless, it is disappointing that he never gave an explicit response to the Humeean challenge he entertained in his notebooks: Mind is a congeries of Perceptions. Take away Perceptions & you take away the Mind put the Perceptions & you put the mind. A closely related problem which confronts Berkeley is how to make sense of the causal powers that he ascribes to spirits. 1 The simple idea calld Power seems obscure or rather none at all. but onely the relation ‘twixt cause & Effect. Wn I ask whether A can move B. if A be an intelligent thing. I mean no more than whether the volition of A that B move be attended with the motion of B, if A be be senseless whether the impulse of A against B be followd by ye motion of B. 2 What means Cause as distinguishd from Occasion? nothing but a Being wch wills wn the Effect follows the volition. Those things that happen from without we are not the Cause of therefore there is some other Cause of them i.e., there is a being that wills these perceptions in us. 3 There is a difference betwixt Power & Volition. There may be volition without Power. But there can be no Power without Volition. Power implyeth volition & at the same time a Connotation of the Effects following the Volition We feel it (mind) as a faculty of altering both our own state and that of other things, and that is properly called vital, and puts a wide distinction between soul and bodies. Berkeleys writings, however, are not generally characterized by deference to authority, quite the contrary, as he himself proclaims: … one thing, I know, I am not guilty of. I do not pin my faith on the sleeve of any great man. I act not out of prejudice & prepossession. I do not adhere to any opinion because it is an old one, a receivd one, a fashionable one, or one that I have spent much time in the study and cultivation of. SOUL Graeco-Roman philosophy made no further progress in the doctrine of the soul in the age immediately preceding the Christian era. None of the existing theories had found general acceptance, and in the literature of the period an eclectic spirit nearly akin to Scepticism predominated. Of the strife and fusion of systems at this time the works of Cicero are the best example. On the question of the soul he is by turns Platonic and Pythagorean, while he confesses that the Stoic and Epicurean systems have each an attraction for him. Such was the state of the question in the West at the dawn of Christianity. In Jewish circles a like uncertainty prevailed. The Sadducees were Materialists, denying immortality and all spiritual existence. The Pharisees maintained these doctrines, adding belief in pre-existence and transmigration. The psychology of the Rabbins is founded on the Sacred Books, particularly the account of the creation of man in Genesis. Three terms are used for the soul: nephesh, nuah, and neshamah; the first was taken to refer to the animal and vegetative nature, the second to the ethical principle, the third to the purely spiritual intelligence. At all events, it is evident that the Old Testament throughout either asserts or implies the distinct reality of the soul. An important contribution to later Jewish thought was the infusion of Platonism into it by Philo of Alexandria. He taught the immediately Divine origin of the soul, its pre-existence and transmigration; he contrasts the pneuma, or spiritual essence, with the soul proper, the source of vital phenomena, whose seat is the blood; finally he revived the old Platonic Dualism, attributing the origin of sin and evil to the union of spirit with matter. It was Christianity that, after many centuries of struggle, applied the final criticisms to the various psychologies of antiquity, and brought their scattered elements of truth to full focus. The tendency of Christs teaching was to centre all interest in the spiritual side of mans nature; the salvation or loss of the soul is the great issue of existence. The Gospel language is popular, not technical. Psyche and pneuma are used indifferently either for the principle of natural life or for spirit in the strict sense. THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS By Flavius Josephus circa C.E. 93 Moreover, Moses, after the seventh day was over begins to talk philosophically; and concerning the formation of man, says thus: That God took dust from the ground, and formed man, AND INSERTED IN HIM A SPIRIT AND A SOUL. [ We may observe here, that Josephus supposed MAN TO BE COMPOUNDED OF SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY, with St. Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, and the rest of the ancients: he elsewhere says also, that the blood of animals was forbidden to be eaten, as having in it SOUL AND SPIRIT, Antiq. B. III. ch. 11. sect. 2.] Now, for the Pharisees, They also believe that SOULS HAVE AN IMMORTAL RIGOR IN THEM, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this: That SOULS DIE WITH THE BODIES; The doctrine of the Essens is this: That all things are best ascribed to God. They teach the IMMORTALITY OF SOULS, and esteem the rewards of righteousness ...
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 15:10:48 +0000
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