SH1905

The Human Body as an Embodied Spirit

I. Terms to Remember

1. A substance is the unchanging essence of a thing, which exists by itself and has attributes and
modes that may change.

2. A causal interaction is a form of communication driven by causation.

➢ Causality is the law that states that each cause has a specific effect and that this effect is
dependent on the initial identities of the agents involved

3. An object is a thing, an entity, or a being that can have properties and bear relations to other
purposes. They are usually types of particulars, but there can also be abstract objects.
➢ A particular is an individual concrete object which cannot be copied without introducing new
distinct particulars

4. A phenomenon is a thing as it appears to be, as constructed by the mind and perceived by the
senses.

II. The Body

Philosophers believe the body as any material object is with our perception, though its actual
philosophical definition concerning the soul/mind is in question. Its basic properties are size,
mass, and impenetrability. Phenomenologists distinguish the human body, called body-subject
because it is related to subjectivity. The classic question is the relationship between body and
soul.

Philosophers provide their definitions of the body, utilizing the following quotations:

1. Lucretius: “Our body is the envelope of the soul, which, in turn, is the guardian and
protector.”

2. Plato: “The soul never reasons better than when it as completely isolated itself by sending
the body walk.”

3. Descartes: “The word body is very equivocal. When we speak of a body in general, we mean
a specific part of the material and set the amount in which the universe is composed. But
when we speak of the body of a man or woman, we hear any matter which is united with the
soul of man” (Passions of the Soul).

4. Spinoza: “I mean a mode that the body expresses the essence of God as it is regarded as
something heard, in a certain and determined.”

5. Leibniz: “Each organic body of living is a kind of divine machine, or natural automaton, which
infinitely surpasses all artificial automata” (Monadology).

III. Dualism (Having Bodies)

In Philosophy of Mind, dualism is the position that mind and body are in some definite way separate
from each other. That mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical.

History
Dualism can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle and the early Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu
philosophy.

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• Plato first formulated his famous Theory of Forms, distinct and immaterial substances of
which the objects and other phenomena that we perceive in the world are nothing more than
mere shadows. He argued that for the intellect to have access to these universal concepts or
ideas, the mind must itself be a non-physical, immaterial entity.

• Aristotle argued that if the intellect were a specific material organ (or part of one), then it
would be restricted to receiving only certain kinds of information (in the same way as the eye
is limited to receiving visual data). Since the intellect can receive and reflect on all forms of
data, then it must not be a physical organ, and so must be immaterial.

• Neo-Platonic Christians identified Plato’s Forms with souls. They believed that the soul was
the substance of each human being, while the body was just a shadow or copy of these
eternal phenomena. For St. Thomas Aquinas, the soul was still the substance of the human
being but, similar to Aristotle’s proposal, it was only through its manifestation inside the
human body that a person could be said to be a person.

However, Dualism was most precisely formulated by René Descartes in the 17th century. Descartes
was the first to develop the mind-body problem in the form in which it exists today, and the first to
identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness, and to distinguish this from the brain,
which was the physical set of intelligence. He realized that he could doubt whether he had a body
(it could be that he was dreaming of it or that it was an illusion created by an evil demon), but he
could not doubt whether he had a mind, which suggested to him that the mind and body must be
different things.

IV. Monism (Being Bodies)

Monism is the metaphysical and theological view that all is one, that there are no fundamental
divisions, and that a unified set of laws underlie all of nature. The universe, at the deepest level of
analysis, is then one thing or composed of one fundamental kind of stuff.

Monism is used in a variety of contexts (within Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Philosophy of

Mind, etc.), but the underlying concept is always that of “oneness.” Wherever Dualism distinguishes
between body and soul, matter and spirit, object and subject, matter and force, Monism denies such a
distinction or merges both in a higher unity.

The term “monism” itself is relatively recent, first used by the 18th-century German philosopher
Christian von Wolff to designate types of philosophical thought in which the attempt was made to
eliminate the dichotomy of body and mind.

References:
The Basics of Philosophy (n.d.). Dualism. Lifted and modified from
https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_dualism.html
The Basics of Philosophy (n.d.). Monism. Lifted and modified from
https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_dualism.html
The-Philosophy.com (n.d.). Body: Philosophical definition. Lifted and modified from https://www.the-
philosophy.com/body-philosophical-definition

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