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Project

Medieval Theories of the Powers of the Soul (ca. 1255–1315)

Philosophers of the thirteenth and fourteenth century generally acknowledged that we differ from non-living beings by virtue of being alive. So, there must be something, they reasoned, that we have that inanimate beings lack. They held that this was the soul. All living beings, plants, animals, and human beings, have souls, on their view. According to thirteenth- and fourteenth-century thinkers, a soul is a kind of structure that arranges the body of a living being in such a way as to make it alive. In addition, thinkers of this period held that the soul endows an organism with certain causal powers, specifically with powers to engage in life-operations, such as digesting, seeing, and thinking. They referred to these powers as the “powers of the soul.” This project investigates medieval accounts of the powers of the soul. The key question that the project examines is: how do the soul and its powers relate? Is the structure making an organism alive, i.e., the soul, the same as the abilities that the organism has to perform its life-operations, or do they differ? This question concerns the very meaning of ‘life.’ Is being alive the same as being able to do certain things, or is it something different? In the course of my investigation, I will also consider whether the scholastic approach to powers of the soul provides useful conceptual resources for the contemporary debate about causal powers, which has so far neglected the connection between life and powers.
 

Date:1 Oct 2018 →  2 Jun 2020
Keywords:the soul, medieval theories
Disciplines:Other philosophy, ethics and religious studies not elsewhere classified, Theory and methodology of philosophy, Philosophy, Ethics