Sorglose Nacht

Overview

The Monadology the most comprehensive and succinct statement of Leibniz’s mature philosophy. It is ninety points, which I’ve grouped into the following subsets (following George MacDonald Ross): Simple substances, Change, Perception and appetition, Unconscious perceptions, Animals, Reason, Contingent truths, The existence and nature of God, Causality, Possible worlds, Interconnectedness, Soul and body, Infinite divisiblity, Birth and death, Soul and body, the City of God.

It should further be indicated that many of the notes emerged or were directly copied from the very helpful (and freely available) commentary of George MacDonald Ross, and many thanks are due to him for making this text comprehensible for me. Of course, any failings in my reading are in spite of his excellent commentary and not attributable to it. Indeed, his commentary is a significantly better pedagogy, and I can’t imagine why you’d read mine, unless you’re me. Please don’t confuse that admonition with scholarly modesty: I am almost certain his will make better sense to you.

Outline

1. Simple Substances (1-9)
   1. §1: Monads are nothing other than simple substances (without parts) which make up compounds.
      1. How are monads are supposed to make up, or “enter into” compounds?
      2. Either (a) they are literally the smallest parts of compound bodies (literal) or (b) compound bodies are constructed out of the perceptions of monads (metaphorical).
   2. §2: There must be simple substances since there are compounds (which by definition are aggregates of simples).
      1. Later, the distinction between mere compounds and organic bodies - which are also compounds, but such that the whole is more than just the sum of its parts - will become crucial.
      2. Leibniz’s argument is that since a (non-organic) compound is the sum of its parts, it is only real in so far as its parts are real. But the same is true of the parts of the parts.
   3. §3: Extension, shape, and divisibility are possible only where there are parts. So these monads are the genuine atoms of Nature, and (in a word) the elements of things.
      1. Here we learn that monads are ultimate entities which do not have the properties of matter - this is to escape the infinite regress of material atomism.
   4. §4: There is no conceivable way in which a simple substance could be broken up or naturally cease to exist.
      1. “naturally” = in accordance with the laws of mechanics.
   5. §5: There is no conceivable way in which a simple substance could naturally come into being, since it could not be “built” (mechanically).
   6. §6: Summary: Monads come into being only by creation, and go out of being only by annihilation. Compounds come in our out of being through their parts.
   7. §7: This is two arguments: (1) there is no way of explaining how a monad could be internally altered or changed by some other created being, and (2) monads have no windows to let anything in or out by.
      1. First: The only type of influence we can conceive of is when one piece of matter is moved by another piece of matter in accordance with the laws of motion. In compounds this will - or at least can - cause some internal change. In monads it cannot, as they have no parts.
      2. Second: One of the ways in which one substance might be influenced by another is by perceiving it. The problem here is the question about how sense-data might enter the soul and influence it. The brain may have windows, but the soul doesn’t.
      3. In the second argument, we also note that Leibniz was in complete agreement with Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza, in that accidents are modes of substances, and cannot exist independently of them.
   8. §8: On the other hand, monads must have some qualities (cf. 1.c: they have no quantitative differences), insofar as they (a) are beings, (b) the compound things they make up are differentiable (cf. 1.h.i below).
      1. Note that Leibniz makes a caveat here about his belief that there’s no empty space. If there were, things could be differentiable by being encoded with monads and empty space (note also here is Leibniz figures out you can encode data in binary).
   9. §9: It is even necessary for every monad to be different from every other monad.
      1. This is qua Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII), although his argument is pretty flabby. In this passage he both fails to account for both:
         1. the fact that even though no two macroscopic objects are identical, they might still be made out of a small set of identical sets of microscopic objects.
         2. the fact that we are regularly confronted with indistinguishable objects (take, e.g. this: eeee).
      2. Elsewhere, he provides two main arguments for PII:
         1. (1:1) In the Leibnizian double-aspect (body/soul) program, the soul is the only genuine unity (and therefore the only fully real part).
         2. (1:2) Hence, its individual existence cannot depend on its body or matter. It is thus like an Aquinan angel: there cannot be two with exactly the same set of properties.
         3. (2:1) Space and time are ultimately nothing other than relations.
         4. (2:2) Therefore, they must be defined in terms of the things they relate, not the other way around.
         5. (2:3) This means that you can’t distinguish one monad from another by holding one in your left hand and one in your right hand.
2. Change (10-13)
   1. §10: Every created being (including every monad) is subject to change, and this change is continuous in each of them.
      1. Note that now, not only are the qualities of one monad different from those of every other monad at any given time, but the qualities of the same monad are different from one moment to the next.
      2. Also note that the change is /continuous/ as well as continual.
   2. §11: These natural changes to which monads are subject come from an internal principle (following 1.g.i).
   3. §12: In addition to the source of change, there must be something which specifies precisely what all those changes are going to be. This precise specification (or complete concept, cf. 2.c.i below) which makes each monad different from every other monad.
      1. Elsewhere Leibniz tells us that this is the complete concept of the monad, which includes all the predicates it will ever have.
   4. §13: A unitary simple substance must contain multiplicity (i.e. a multiplicity of qualities): Given that monads change, and given that the change is gradual, there must be some continuity between one state and the next. In other words, some aspects must remain the same while others change.
      1. Note that this argument is invalid for a given monad with one quality. That’s probably okay, though, as this really just recapitulates (1.h).
3. Perception and apperception (14-17)
   1. §14: These affections and relations are perceptions. By definition, perceptions are representations of a multiplicity within the unity of a simple substance.
      1. Note: It was only in the 17th century that people started using the word “consciousness” in the modern sense. To fill the gap in the French language, Leibniz coined the term apperception.
      2. Leibniz then criticises Descartes for failing to recognise the existence of unconscious perceptions. This isn’t wholly fair, since Descartes did recognise the existence of images in the brain of which we might not be conscious. But Leibniz’s point is that the soul can have unconscious as well as conscious perceptions.
      3. He also details his departure from the Cartesian schemata for souls, which included only humans and angels. Leibniz admits three kinds of souls, which are sharply distinct:
         1. Spirits: Have self-consciousness and reason;
         2. Animals: Have sensation, emotion, and motivation;
         3. Monads and entelechies (cf. 4.a): merely express the universe confusedly, and have an appetition towards a better state.
      4. Finally he eludes to his later point that the “folk” (and Descrates) are wrong to think of death as a complete separation of the immaterial soul from the body, since it is not separable from the body. For Leibniz, what we call “death” is a prolonged period of unconsciousness in a smaller body.
   2. §15: The transition from one perception to another can be called appetition. Appetition is directedness towards greater perfection, and while no monad can completely acheive perfection (of perception), but every appetition makes some progress.
   3. §16: We should have no difficulty over the concept of multiplicity within a simple substance (i.e. despite the fact that it has no parts), since every time we have a thought, we are conscious of variegation in what we are thinking about, and our souls are simple substances.
   4. §17: Perceptual states - caused by appetition (cf. 3.a.i) - cannot be caused by mechanical causation in matter.
      1. This is because if you imagine a walking around inside a big brain machine, you cannot imagine seeing a perception being produced by its parts.
      2. Secondly, Leibniz asserts, there is “nothing to be found in simple substances, apart from perceptions and their changes.”
4. Unconscious perceptions (18-24)
   1. §18: “Entelechy” is an alternate word for monad. It comes from the Greek meaning “they have perfection” or “completeness”, in the sense of “self-sufficiency”. They only have a certain perfection, otherwise they would be God. But leaving aside their dependence on God, they are self-sufficient in that they act entirely independently of all other beings.
   2. §19: Here Leibniz amplifies the distinction he made in (3.a), between animal souls and bare monads. All monads (i.e. spirits, animal souls, and bare monads) can be called “souls” in that they all have perception and appetite, but it is less misleading to distinguish between bare monads, which have “simple” perceptions, and animal souls which have “sensations.”
   3. §20: When we have a dreamless sleep or we faint, our soul is not distinguishable from a bare monad; it is still different, nonetheless, in its capacity to leave that state.
      1. Leibniz’s purpose here is to explain how we can conceive of what bare perception is like, by analogy with our conscious experience.
   4. §21: Recap (2.a, 1.h): Simple substances must have a continued existence, but they cannot exist unless they are characterised by some affections, i.e. perceptions.
      1. Leibniz then introduces, without explanation, the expression “little perceptions,” which will mean “perceptions of which we are unconscious.” (Unconsciousness is, by definition, a state in which everything is confused. For us to be conscious, we have to be conscious of something. If everything is confused, we are not conscious of one thing rather than another.)
   5. §22: Since monads cannot be influenced by other monads, their whole history must be determined by their internal law of change. At any given time, their present state is completely determined by their immediately preceding state, and any future state can be deduced from it.
   6. §23: Since (4.e) and the fact that when you wake up, you become conscious of your perceptions, it follows that you must have been perceiving before too (albeit in an unconscious way). the natural course of events,
      1. Here: A perception can only arise from a previous perception.
      2. Elsewhere: You can’t be woken up by something, unless you perceive it before you wake up. Consequently, it must have been perceived unconsciously.
   7. §24: Recap (3.a.iii,4.b): Bare monads have no sensations, since nothing is distinguished from anything else.
5. Animals (25-28)
   1. §25: The perceptual state of animals differs from that of bare monads because their sense organs concentrate information (like the lens of a camera to film). In an aside, Leibniz makes the suggestion that there may be senses of which we are unaware.
   2. §26: In addition to sensation, animals have something analogous to reasoning in humans. It is some association of an image with a memory: some whip equals pain (Hobbes, Hume).
   3. §27: Associations are established more quickly if the images make more of an impression.
   4. §28: Most of the time, people are motivated by an animal-like (e.g. habitual, brute-associative) reasoning to behave certain ways. His example is the difference between the folk and astronomical flavors of the knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow.
6. Reason (29-35)
   1. §29: It is knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals. This is what in us is called the “rational soul,” or spirit.
   2. §30: It is also through the knowledge of necessary truths that we are capable of reflection. Thinking of ourselves, being, substance, monads, etc. we attain the objects of our reasonings.
      1. Descartes didn’t really distinguish reason from self-consciousness; there was just a faculty of human beings which contained abstract and universal ideas, and it did not concern itself with individual existences.
      2. Leibniz, on the other hand, makes a clear distinction between knowledge of eternal truths on the one hand, and self-consciousness on the other (and remember that he had to /invent/ the word “apperception” for this purpose).
      3. This point is about order of discovery. For Descartes, we first had to strip away our preconceptions till we arrived at pure knowledge of the thinking self, and then build everything up in the order: self, God, eternal truths, the material world. Leibniz, on the other hand, sees no need to doubt that we perceive individual things (even if they are not as they seem), and that we have knowledge of eternal truths.
      4. Leibniz even seems to imply that we could get by without self-consciousness at all: we could navigate round the world of experience using our senses, and we could do mathematics, by concentrating our whole attention on eternal truths, and what can be deduced from them.
   3. §31: Our reasoning is grounded on two great principles. “One is the principle of contradiction, by virtue of which we judge false anything which involves a contradiction, and true anything which is the opposite or contradictory of the false.”
      1. Note 1: Leibniz is about to distinguish between “truths of reasoning” and “truths of fact”; but before he has explained the distinction, he introduces the two great principles by which we establish them. The principle of contradiction is what we use to establish truths of reasoning.
      2. Note 2: His definition of the Principle of Contradiction is rather awkward, it merges what we now call the principle of non-contradiction ((p && !p)==false) and the law of the excluded middle (if it’s not p, it’s not-p, and vice versa).
   4. §32: The other is the principle of sufficient reason: an event cannot occur unless there is a sufficient cause; and by “sufficient” he means a complete and fully determinate set of preconditions, such that if they are present, it is inconceivable that the event should not occur.
   5. §33: There are also two sorts of truths: those of reasoning (necessary) and those of fact (contingent). You can break down necessary truths into smaller and smaller ones, until you reach primary ones.
      1. Fun fact: One of Leibniz’s big projects (called the “universal characteristic”) was to list all the primary concepts, and devise a notation for all complex concepts which would make explicit how they were derived from the primary ones. Once that had been achieved, all reasoning would become a matter of straight calculation, which could be done by a machine.
   6. §34: He now claims that the geometrical method of Euclid is the same as the process of analysis he has just described. Note that if so, axioms and postulates would not be necessary. -GMR
   7. §35: Finally, there are simple ideas which cannot be defined and there are also axioms and postulates - in a word, primary principles - which cannot be proved (and do not need to, as they are assertions of identity).
      1. Again, assuming there are simple (primary) ideas, and we know what they are, it is difficult to see what role there can be for primary principles, or axioms. If they are explicit assertions of identity, they will all be of the form A=A, where A is any primary idea. -GMR
7. Contingent truths (36-37)
   1. §36: The principle of sufficient reason (6.d) applies to contingent truths as well. Reasoning is analysis, and what is being analyzed is the complete concept of an individual (he doesn’t explicity say this here), which is infinite.
      1. This is what is meant by Leibniz’s doctrine (not mentioned herein) that all truth is analytic (that in every true proposition the concept of the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject). While it seems paradoxical to claim that contingent truths are analytically true, what Leibniz means is that if we had the complete concept of an individual, then every truth about that individual would be analytically true. Or, if we already knew everything, we would have nothing new to learn. Meanwhile, only a tiny proportion of possible complete concepts have been actualised, and it cannot be proved, even by an infinite analysis, whether a concept has been actualised or not.
   2. §37: Since any sequence of contingent things is infinite, it is never possible to arrive at the sufficient reason for anything within this sequence.
8. The existence and nature of God (38-48)
   1. §38: This is why the ultimate reason for things must lie in a necessary substance (one who’s existence is not contingent on anything else), ‘God’. However, in this God-substance, “the detail of changes exists only eminently”: the sufficient reason for the changes in a created monad lies in the monad itself, but there is something different and superior in God, which is the source of the principle of change within the monad.
      1. This is a strategy to distance himself from Spinoza, for whom the cause of change was within God himself.
   2. §39: If this God-substance is a sufficient reason for all the changes in all the stuff in the created universe, and all this stuff and all these causal chains are interconnected, “there is only one God, and this God is sufficient.”
   3. §40: Since all that stuff is dependent on God, it follows that none of it could restrict him in any way, and hence he is infinite.
      1. Secondly, Leibniz argues that God must be incapable of having any limits. This actually depends on an argument below (8.g).
      2. Finally, God must contain absolutely as much reality as is possible. This is true if we grant Leibniz the unstated metaphysical assumption (which he did believe) that possibility strives to existence, and will become actual unless something prevents it.
   4. §41: And, since God is infinite positive reality, God is perfect. Perfection = infinite positive reality.
   5. §42: God gives created things what perfection (=reality, being) they have. Their imperfection (=lack of reality, nothingness) comes from their own nature as created things.
   6. §43: Like Spinoza, Leibniz regards God as the source of essences (ideas, concepts, possibilities) - insofar as they are real* - as well as of existences.
      1. * The concept of something possible isn’t real in the way that something which actually exists is real. Nevertheless, it must have some sort of reality, otherwise there would be no possibility of the thing.
      2. Similarly, there can’t be any eternal truths unless the concepts they involve have some reality. (This is all pretty Cartesian.)
   7. §44: If essences have any reality, this reality must be grounded in something which actually exists (an essence or a possibility is not a self-subsistent entity, a substance). But in the case of contingent beings, their actual existence depends on the realisation of their essence or possibility = essences are logically prior to existences. Consequently, essences cannot be grounded in any contingent being, but must be grounded in a necessary being.
   8. §45: Leibniz now gives us three arguments for the existence of God.
      1. The Ontological Argument (a priori): Only the necessary being (God) must exist if he is possible (8.g). Since nothing can prevent the possibility of an unlimited being (8.c), we know God exists.
      2. The Cosmological Argument (a posteriori): The created universe exists, it must have been created by God.
      3. The Argument from the Middle (a priori*): Eternal truths exist (8.f); hence God exists (8.g). * Eternal truths seem to be co-existent with God’s nature, and therefore belong to the cause rather than to the effect.
   9. §46: Eternal truths depend on God but are not arbitrarily determined by his will, they are the internal objects of his understanding. On the other hand, contingent truths do depend on his will, since his understanding can /entertain/ alternative possibilities; that they are chosen as they are is for his purpose of a harmonious universe.
      1. Note that this toes the line between Descartes (all truths depend on God’s will) and Spinoza (none do).
   10. §47: God is the unity or original simple substance (he has no parts). He creates all monads and, just like Descartes thinks, continually re-creates them moment to moment. In other words, for the state of the universe at any given instant (p): God brings (p) into existence. The the reason for (p) is the immediately preceding state of the universe (p’).
       1. Because monads are finite, they are “bounded” in what they can receive from God.
   11. §48: God has power, knowledge, and will. Monads mirror these faculties in substance (b/c created by God’s power?), perception, and appetition. The faculty-to-faculty relationship is infinite:imitation of the infinite.
9. Causality (49-52)
   1. §49: Given that there is no direct interaction between monads, a monads can act insofar as their perceptions are distinct (active, spiritual aspect, Leibniz here says “have perfection”) and be acted upon insofar as their perceptions are confused (passive, material aspect).
      1. Basically one acts when one has intention. If I run up behind you and yell boo, I am acting. Your confused reaction is your being acted upon.
      2. The relationship between the active, spiritual power of monads and action is unclear, but it’s nonetheless there in the text.
   2. §50: Moreover, it’s not merely that one monad has more distinct perceptions than another, it provides the a priori explanation of what happens in the other. Of course, not being God, no monad’s perceptions are /perfectly/ clear.
   3. §51: But these inter-monad influences are not “real”: only God can have a real influence on things. The gist of this seems to be that when God was creating the universe (remember that there is no contingency to the eye of God for Leibniz), and selecting which monads would exist, he picked them in proportion to their “harmony.” Their perfection is in their ability for coordination, harmony. Therefore, given that God decided to include me in the best possible universe, he organized in advance that when my monad yelled “Boo”, your monad would have the simulataneous perception of being yelled at.
      1. Again, the parallels between Leibniz’s universe and the one that you can program on your computer are completely remarkable.
   4. §52: Every action is an interaction: When I yell, and you jump, your jump causes a reaction in me in turn.
10. Possible worlds (53-55)
    1. §53: God chose our world out of an infinity of possible ones, and there had to be a reason for his choice. (Hence, the set of possible universes required that each member be unique. E.g. Choose the best “1″: [1,4,203,1]. You can’t do it.)
    2. §54: This reason can be found only in harmony, or the degrees of perfection which these worlds contain.* Thus nothing is entirely arbitrary.
       1. * Confusing: If degree of perfection is the amount of positive reality (8.d), and also the amount of distinct perception (9.a). Harmony is the accommodation of the perceptions of monads to each other (9.c).
       2. So, for example, the universe would have more perfection if the person I yelled at had a distinct rather than a confused perception of the event; but it would be less harmonious, since their passivity has to be accommodated to my activity. Cf. (11.c) for the fix.
    3. §55: So God must choose the best universe out of the goodness of his will.
11. Interconnectedness (56-61)
    1. §56: The perceptions of monads are expressions of their relations to every other; this must be the case because of the harmony of the universe. Although monads don’t really have any causal influence on each other, it is just as if they did. (Like gravity, which Leibniz didn’t believe in.)
       1. In reflecting every other, each monand is a permanent living mirror of the universe.
    2. §57: If we consider monadic perceptions, there are infinitely many universes (insofar as there are infinitely many perspectives on the universe), although these are each only a representation of the one universe.
       1. Although Leibniz doesn’t go into this here, the concept of a monad’s unique point of view is crucial to his account of space: Space is a logical construction out of monadic perceptions. Monads are not in space, but space is in them. However, one can talk of monads as if they were in space, since their point of view gives them a unique position in relation to all other monads.
    3. §58: This is the means for obtaining as much variety as possible, but with the greatest order as possible. In other words, it is the means for obtaining as much perfection as possible. This is a new definition of perfection: maximum variety (which includes quantity of reality as well as differentness), together with the maximum order (or harmony).
    4. §59: Leibniz now claims that his hypothesis does the most justice to God. Potential rivals followed by their problem:
       1. Descartes: too capricious
       2. Spinoza: no goodness or freedom
       3. Malebranche: too much miraculous interference
       4. Newton: too hands off. (God built the clock, but has to wind it up from time to time since he wasn’t clever enough to make it go on for ever.)
    5. §60: An apriori argument for universal harmony, proceeding from cause (God’s creative act) to effect (the created universe), and not from effect to hypothetical cause.
       1. Since monads are by nature representative, nothing can restrict them from representing everything. (This depends on two additional premises:)
          1. Whatever exists in essence is actualised unless something prevents it (again, a classical Leibnizian assumption). So since monads are essentially representative, they will represent everything unless stopped.
          2. Nothing (apart from God) can influence the inside of monad. Consequently, nothing can block a monad’s representations (except God, who’s goodness - expressed as a desire for harmony - would have prevented him from doing so, cf. [10.c]).
       2. However, it is a common sense that we don’t actually perceive everything. Leibniz suggests that we do in fact, but not distinctly (a very, very large percentage of our total perceptions are “little perceptions” cf. [4.d.i]).
          1. Hence, the subset of clear perceptions is both very small and distinct on a per-monad basis (I suppose insofar as monads are “positioned”, and have a certain perceptual filter which responds to the proximity and size of other monads).
       3. Hence, what distinguishes us from God is that only some of our perceptions are distinct; and what distinguishes us from each other is the variations in our distinct perceptions.
    6. §61: Total conservation of information
       1. The universe is full of matter (note that he assumes this, but his argument might go): In the material universe, the interconnectedness of everything is mediated by one piece of matter pushing against its neighbours in accordance with the laws of motion. If there were any gaps, the causal chains would be broken, and the universe wouldn’t be interconnected. Consequently, there cannot be a vacuum.
       2. If the universe is full of matter, and obeys the laws of mechanics, then every motion in it is transmitted between monads in every direction. The force of the shock wave diminishes with distance as it spreads more widely. But given that there are no smallest quantities in Nature, the wave will spread to infinity.
       3. Hence, a sufficiently detached and intelligent observer could read the entire state of the universe off any given monad.
12. Soul and body (62-64)
    1. §62: What makes my body my body is that it is represented more distinctly than surrounding bodies. Then it seems like he says that the soul represents the whole universe only because it represents its body, which represents the whole universe.
       1. GMR: I’m sure this is inconsistent with what he said earlier about the creation of monads, especially if monads are logically prior to bodies in space. What he should be saying is that the two go hand in hand: that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the distinct and confused representations of the whole universe in the soul, and the infinitely complex motions in the body.
    2. §63: Following (12.a), a body belongs to either an entelechy (in a living being) or, more specifically, a soul in an animal.
       1. Note that he has defined dead matter out of existence: the only real beings are living beings.
    3. §64: The organic body of a living being is a divine machine. The difference between a divine machine and one of ours is that divine machines’ parts are manufactured at a single source, whereas we may make a cog, but we don’t make the parts that make the cog.
       1. For Leibniz, divine machines are organic machines from top to bottom: Organic bodies have organs (heart, lungs), which are themselves organic bodies with organs (cells); and they in turn have an organic structure (nuclei, cell walls), and their parts have an organic structure (chromosomes). He didn’t know these things specifically, but was pretty sure it was turtles all the way down.
13. Infinite divisibility (65-69)
    1. §65: The material world is built up out of infinitely small parts. If it weren’t, “it would be impossible for each portion of matter to express the whole universe.”
       1. What are the parts? As we saw in Spinoza, matter cannot be constructed out of mathematical points, since infinitely many mathematical points are still at one point.
    2. §66: “From this you can see that there is a world of created things…in the smallest part of matter.” This is the “universe-in-every-electron” idea, which seems fanciful, but is nonetheless a logical consequence of infinitely divisible matter coupled with the assumption that the laws of nature are the same everywhere.
    3. §67: Leibniz waxes poetical: “Each portion of matter can be conceived as like a garden full of plants, or like a pond full of fish.”
    4. §68: If you were to probe deep enough, you would find that ultimately there was no intervening dead matter at all, and everything would be full of living bodies. (The water in the pond contains the fish, Leibniz says.)
    5. §69: Things seem inert or chaotic because our perception is confused: When we have a distinct perception of anything, we can see that it is composed of tiny living organisms.
14. Birth and death (70-77)
    1. §70: Each living body has a “dominant entelechy,” a soul. (Monads can’t be parts of each other, so the relationship is one of dominance.) In other words, my soul dominates the monads which are the principles of the unity of the organs of which my body is composed. They in turn dominate the monads which are the principles of the unity of the parts of their bodies; and so on to infinity.
       1. He doesn’t actually say what this dominance consists in, but GMR conjectures that the dominant monad is the more active partner in a given interaction.
    2. §71: There is no particular piece of matter to which a monad is permanently attached. (He echos the principle of Heraclitus that “everything flows,” like a river, so that bodies [organic and inorganic?] are constantly losing and gaining particles.)
       1. What he doesn’t say explicitly is that when a subordinate organism joins or leaves a larger organism, it must be somehow transformed. E.g. when I eat food, it becomes part of me.
    3. §72: Souls gradually lose parts of their body, but are never completely deprived of a body. This is contra to two popular theories of the immortality of the soul:
       1. Platonic/Pythagorean: That the soul leaves the body (rendering it dead) and moves to another, theretofore soulless body.
       2. Cartesian: That the soul can survive without the body.
    4. §73: As such, (a) death is not the annihilation of the soul, and (b) birth is not its creation. Generation/birth is “unfolding and growth”, and death is “infolding and shrinkage.”
    5. §74: Not merely that there is a seed before the generation or conception of the new animal, but the animal itself (body plus soul) pre-exists in it. On conception, the infolded form or soul becomes dominant,
    6. §75: Just as only a tiny proportion of acorns become oaks, so only a tiny proportion of spermatozoa are “chosen” to pass through to a “larger theatre.”
    7. §76: Now on to death: At death, the animal is transformed back into a seminal animal, or something similar.
    8. §77: So it’s not merely that the soul or monad is immortal (on the apriori grounds that it is a mirror of the indestructible universe); the animal itself is immortal: It always has /some/ body.
15. Soul and body (78-81)
    1. §78: The soul and the body each follow their own laws, and they coincide by virtue of the pre-established harmony between all substances (since they are all representations of one and the same universe).
       1. Elsewhere, Leibniz gives the analogy of two clocks which keep perfect time. The perfect clockmaker made them so well that neither of them ever goes wrong.
    2. §79: The laws for souls and bodies:
       1. “Souls act in accordance with the laws of final causes” - they are constantly striving for greater perfection.
       2. “Bodies act in accordance with the laws of efficient causes” - e.g. with the laws of mechanics, and are pushed from behind by blind forces acting on them.
       3. God has brought it about that the two are in perfect harmony.
    3. §80: Cartesian mechanics
       1. Leibniz gives a clever explanation of how Descartes might have thought that the soul could influence the body without contravening the laws of mechanics.
       2. Descartes believed in a law of conservation of “motion,” so that its quantity in nature could be neither increased nor diminished.
       3. If the soul could make a particle of matter in the brain move faster, this would contravene the law.
       4. On the other hand, if it merely deflected the particle, so that it travelled into a different nerve ending, the total quantity of motion would be conserved.
       5. What Descartes couldn’t understand was that what is conserved is motion in a given direction, and that it requires an input of energy to change the direction of motion of a particle.
    4. §81: “This system means that bodies act as if there were no souls…and that souls act as if there were no bodies; and that the two act as if there were an influence of the one upon the other.”
16. The City of God (82-90)
    1. §82: Existentially, humans are in the same position as other living beings: from the creation of the universe they have existed with body and soul, and they will continue to do so to eternity.
       1. During the periods when they are not actual, living human beings, but only seminal animals, they have distinct perceptions (like other sensing animals), but it is only when they become actual human beings through the act of conception that they become rational souls (reasoning, spiritual).
    2. §83: Among the characteristics already specified (in 6.a-b) - knowledge of necessary truths, self-consciousness, a concept of God - and whereas all monads are images of the created universe, human souls are also images of God.
    3. §84: Since humans are images of God himself, they can have a kind of social or personal relationship with him: He is not just their creator, but he is also like their king (in respect of his power) and father (in respect of his love).
    4. §85: “From this it is easy to conclude that the congregation of all spirits must constitute the City of God (Augustine), the most perfect state possible under the most perfect of monarchs.”
    5. §86: Introducing the moral dimension
       1. God couldn’t be glorious without the City of God, since otherwise there wouldn’t be any creatures capable of glorifying him.
       2. If God had merely created a huge machine of a universe, you could admire his cleverness and power, but the machine would be morally neutral. God needs rational and moral beings in order to manifest goodness (justice, mercy, and so on).
    6. §87: Like the perfect harmony between the realms of efficient and final causes, there is also a perfect harmony between the physical realm of nature and the moral realm of grace. Here is the contrast between humans (moral organisms, rational souls) and the rest of Nature.
    7. §88: The purely mechanical laws of Nature will bring about a destruction of the earth, exactly when the moral laws of the City of God require some people to be punished, and others rewarded.
       1. Leibniz seems to eqivocate between his Platonism and his Christianity here:
       2. Plato believed the universe is cyclical, so that there is a succession of holocausts followed by a new beginning.
       3. Christians believe here will be a single Last Judgment, when the world is overturned, and sinners die a second death. The world will then be restored, and the elect will live in eternal bliss under Christ’s reign.
       4. Leibniz seems to believe that the earth will be destroyed periodically, but each period will be better than the previous one, because the universe is becoming ever more perfect.
    8. §89: God doles out rewards and punishments, which will be felt by our living bodies in a continuation of the present universe, and not by disembodied souls in some extra-terrestrial heaven or hell.
    9. §90: The best of all possible worlds
       1. As with Spinoza, virtue consists in the pure and disinterested love of God.
       2. Also like Spinoza, Leibniz holds the view that we should be indifferent to our own sufferings, and see them as contributing to the good of the whole, governed by a divine providence.
       3. Provided that we align ourselves with the will of God, we will find that this is not only the best possible world in general, but that it is the best possible for ourselves in particular.

Overview

To Aristotle, there is no higher moment of Natural Philosophy than the study of the Soul. In Book One, we get an overview of the historical thought about the soul. The three principles of the soul handed down to us historically are that (a) it is the source of movement and (b) sensation, and that (c) it is composed of elements. Aristotle refutes (a) and (c) in turn, and we seem to be left in the position of “starting over”.

In Book Two, we do in fact start over, trying to understand the Soul phenomenologically. We find that the soul has certain faculties: the nutritive, the appetitive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the power of thinking. All besouled things have at least one of these, and some have all. The plan moving forward is to analyze each of these faculties in turn. The remainder of Book Two addresses the nutritive, appetitive, and sensory functions of the soul.

Book Three treats, in turn, (1) “common sense”, or that which allows us to discriminate between sense objects of different sensory domains, (2) the imaginitive function of the mind (the name which marks out the domain of the “knowing soul”, as opposed to the sensing soul), (3) the practical function of the mind, and (4) the motive function. At the conclusion, it is decided that the Touch is “the essential mark of [animal] life.”

1. BOOK ONE
   1. The dignity, usefulness, and difficulty of Psychology.
      1. Knowledge of the soul is knowledge with the higest dignity. Knowledge of the soul tells us something about truth, and something about Nature, insofar as it is in some sense the principle of animal life.
      2. This knowledge, though, is nefariously difficult to attain. First, we need to know which summa genera (categories) the soul lies (is it a substance, quantum, etc). Is it potential or actual? Is it divisible? Are all souls part of one soul? Etc.
      3. Also, are all the dispositions of soul actually dispositions of the soul/body complex?
         1. It seems they are: passion, joy, fear, pity, courage, loving and hating, etc. are all produced in varying intensities that are not strictly correlative to the stimuli; apparently, this entails that these dispositions rely in some sense on an already-existing bodily state, at least in degree.
         2. Even clearer, we sometimes find ourselves, in the absence of any external cause of terror, feeling terrified.
      4. This seems to entail that soul-based dispositions are definable materially.
   2. The opinions of early thinkers about the soul.
      1. Historically, movement and sensation have been thought to be the reliable indicators of a soul-infused object.
         1. Many philosophers have viewed soul as the condition of possibility for all movement, or as the self-moving thing.
            1. Also, many of these philosophers have thought that soul and mind were the same thing.
         2. Other philosophers took perception itself to be the most characteristic attribute of the soul.
         3. Generally, those in both camps define the soul as constructed by an element (e.g. fire) or elements.
   3. Refutation of the view which assigns movement to the soul.
      1. Not only is (1.b.i.i) impossible, but it is in fact impossible that movement be an attribute of the soul.
      2. Things can be moved in two ways: (a) indirectly - by something else, or (b) directly - by its own power.
      3. Further, there are four species of movement: (a) locomotion, (b) alteration, (c) diminution, and (d) growth.
      4. If the soul is self-moving, its “moving-itself-ness” must be essential to it, and if so, because all (1.c.iii.a-d) above require place, the soul requires place.
      5. Since the soul moves the body, and the body moves by locomotion, it would seem to entail that the soul is itself moveable in space:
         1. If it is self-moving, it seems that it could aka. leave the body, which would imply the possibility of the resurrection of animals from the dead.
         2. It seems most likely that if the soul is at best incidentally moved by the body.
      6. In the sense where we think of mind and soul as the same thing, we realize that if infinite movement were coextensive with the soul, the mind would be infinitely moving (circularly, as Plato wants it in the Timaeus), which doesn’t seem to be the case as all practical instances of thinking possess very definite limits.
      7. If we can now agree that movement is not essential to the soul, movement must be contrary to the soul’s nature.
      8. Also, all views of the soul want to join it to a body without adding any specification of the reason of their union.
   4. The soul not a harmony.
      1. Another account is that the soul is a harmony: (a) a blend or composition of contraries, and (b) the body is compounded out of contraries. This is absurd because:
         1. There are many composite parts, variously compounded.
         2. All body parts (bone, muscle, etc) are different ratios of elements, so in order for the soul to be the composition of these elements, we appear to require multiple souls/harmonies to compose a body.
         3. E.g.: Is the soul identical with the ratio of elements, or is it something “above” this? Is love the cause of any and every mixture, or only those in the right ratio? Is love this ratio itself, or something “above” it? Etc.
      2. And now we know that the soul cannot be a harmony (1.d.i) nor can it be moved in a circle (1.c.vi). Yet it seems that it can be moved incidentally, and further it can power its vehicle (the body). In no other sense can the soul be moved.
         1. Qua those who say that the soul can be angered ([self-]moved to anger), this is as inexact as saying that the soul weaves webs or builds houses.
   5. The soul not moved with non-local movement.
      1. The case of mind is different, but in order to understand the mind as properly material, we only have to make the analogy to sight; both of these men lose with age, as their material elements disintegrate.
         1. So it seems clear that a disposition of the soul is not responsible for the incapacities of old age, but one of the body.
      2. Thus, finally, it is clear that the soul cannot be moved at all, and as such, certainly cannot be self-moving.
   6. The soul not a self-moving number.
      1. This hypothesis is by far the most unreasonable one yet, as it falls prey not only to the fallacy that the soul can be moved, but also to the ontological confusion that the soul is a number.
         1. How could a unit be moved? By what agency? What sort of movement would it be?
         2. Also, 1 divided in half equals a different unit, but plants and animals, when divided, are thought to retain the same soul in each segment.
   7. The soul not composed of elements.
      1. At this point, (1.b.i.i-1.b.i.ii) are refuted. What remains is to examine 1.b.i.iii. The reason for this doctrine is that its proponents think that only like can know like (i.e. only something composed of elements can know something composed of elements, i.e. bone or man).
      2. There’s nothing to be gained by the soul being composed of elements unless there are also various formulae of proportion consummate to the “recipe” for a soul. Even worse is that the recipe would have to contain the recipes of all the objects of its knowledge, which seems very unlikely.
         1. An ugly consequence of this is that it makes mortal souls more complete than the God-soul, as the God-soul is unable of knowing strife, but the mortal soul is.
         2. Continuing with the argument forwarded in (1.g.ii), we now ask: Why not just say everything has a soul? If everything is formed out of elements, each thing must certainly /know/ one or several or all of the elements.
         3. The anti-materialism argument: Mind is the primary thing, and these elemental-souls require matter to be more primary than mind!
      3. Secondly, if the soul is (i.e.) a substance, how will it know other types of beings (qua Categories: qualia, etc.)?
      4. Continuing the argument of (1.b.i.i-1.b.i.ii), then:
         1. If you consider the soul as the source of movement, and souls as the province of animals, you aren’t accounting for animals that don’t move/locomote.
         2. Further, if you want the soul as the perceptive faculty, you have to contend with the fact that while plants live, they aren’t endowed with either locomotion or perception, and most animals have no reason.
   8. The soul not present in all things.
      1. Some thinkers say that the soul is intermingled in the whole universe, but if so:
         1. Why/by what mechanism does it in some cases form an animal and not in all cases?
         2. Both ways you can answer this question lead to a paradox.
   9. The unity of the soul.
      1. Finally, some hold that the soul is divisible. But if this is the case, what holds its parts together? Surely not the body, it seems clear that the contrary is true (when the soul departs, the body decays).
      2. This argument also falls victim to the third man argument. If some unifying agency holds the soul together, is /that/ one or multipartite? Etc.
      3. From the plants argument (1.g.iv.ii), we know then that the soul is homogenous (it doesn’t have distinct parts) and that it is divisible (i.e. the smallest bit of soul is still homogenous soul).
      4. Finally, it seems that this principle in plants is a kind of soul, since it seems to be the only principle holding plants and animals together. Therefore, while it appears that soul is /necessary/ to perception, perception does not constitute soul. Neither locomotion, needless to say.
2. BOOK TWO
   So much for our predecessors’ views. Let’s make a completely fresh start:
   1. First definition of soul.
      1. Substance (determinate “what is”) is: (a) matter/potentiality - the stuff that makes up stuff - and (b) form/actuality/essence - that in virtue of which ‘this’ is ‘this’ as such, and (c) the combination of both.
         1. Of form/actuality, there are two grades, e.g. knowledge and the exercise of knowledge.
      2. Bodies are substances in the sense of (2.a.i.c: a composite) above.
      3. But, the body cannot be soul; the body is the subject or matter to the soul’s form. But form is actuality, and thus the soul is the actuality of a body thus characterized.
         1. In the first sense: of knowledge possessed; as waking corresponds to actual knowing (the exercise of knowledge).
         2. In the second sense: of knowledge possessed but not employed; sleeping.
      4. Thus the soul is the “first grade of actuality of a natural organized body.” Hence the soul/body distinction is meaningless: It is like asking whether the wax and the shape of the wax are one.
      5. More simply, soul is the essence of the thing. But this still requires having in itself the power to move itself.
         1. This power (”soulness”) is first-grade (essential) actuality, contra (2.a.iii.i), which is more second-grade (instrumental) actuality - more like the actuality of the axe.
      6. So, as the pupil + the power of sight constitutes the eye, so the body + soul constitutes the animal.
         1. From which it follows that (at least parts, if it has parts, of) the soul is inseparable from the body.
         2. Which leaves us with the problem of whether the soul is the actuality of the body in the sense that the sailor is the actuality (i.e. actuator) of the ship.
   2. Second definition of soul.
      1. Let’s now see what emerges from (a): we’ve discovered the conclusion of the syllogism, but we need to prove the ground (middle term).
      2. We know that what has soul differs from what doesn’t insofar as it displays life.
         1. Displaying life seems to be constituted by the power of self-nutrition.
         2. Displaying animal life seems to be constituted by sensation, namely touch.
      3. We have no evidence as yet about mind, which seems to be a very different kind of soul (eternal vs. perishable: “it alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers.”).
      4. However, we are quite sure at this point that the soul (a) cannot be without a body (it is the actuality of the body), and (b) cannot be a body (it is something relative to a body), so:
         1. We can say that soul is an formulable essence of something that possesses a potentiality of being “besouled”.
         2. This leaves us needing a specification of what kind of body can be “besouled”.
   3. The faculties of the soul.
      1. We’ve mentioned the following powers of the soul: the nutritive, the appetitive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the power of thinking. All besouled things have at least one of these, and some have all.
         1. Certain of these entail others; i.e. all animals with the sense of touch have the appetitive power.
         2. There is no soul apart from the forms so enumerated. Hence, the desire for a general definition is destined to fail (qua. “figure”), and we must handle the problem on a species-level.
      2. So, the best way to define the soul is to give a definition of each of its forms.
   4. The nutritive faculty.
      1. Since nutrition (and reproduction, which he considers inseparable from the former) is the only factor common to all souls, we start there.
         1. Reproduction is an attempt to reach the divine, by the creation of an unbroken current of the same specific life flowing through a discontinuous series of individual beings united by descent.
      2. The soul is the cause of the body in three senses: It is (a) the source or origin of movement, (b) the end, (c) the essence of the whole living body.
         1. (c) is obvious since the essence of anything is the ground of its being, and in the case of living things, the ground of their being is life, and the soul is the source of life (by definition).
         2. (b) is manifest since Nature acts in a purposive way.
         3. (a) is maintained insofar as (i) qualitative change occurs via sensation, and (ii) quantitative change (growth and decay) occur via self-nutrition. Hence, all change comes from the soul.
      3. An account of food: The consumer of food transforms the food into itself.
         1. Historically, some thinkers have said that food is contrary to the thing which consumes it.
         2. Others have said that like is consumed by like.
         3. Aristotle will resolve this difference by saying that the former is undigested food, which is transformed into the latter by digestion.
      4. So, we can say that what is fed is fed because of the soul.
      5. The process of nutruition involves three factors: (a) what is fed, (b) that with which it is fed, and (c) what does the feeding.
         1. (c) is the first - earliest and most indispensible kind of - soul.
         2. (a) is the body, besouled.
         3. (b) is the food.
      6. But remember (qua 2.d.i.i) that the end of all this is reproduction, so the first soul is the reproductive soul, powered by a faculty of nutrition.
   5. Sense-perception
      1. Sensation in general relies on something outside itself as its object.
      2. Why do we not perceive the senses themselves as well as the external objects of sense?
         1. Or, why do the senses require objects since they are presumably made of the same elements as their objects?
         2. Sensitivity, then, must be a kind of potentiality (like, say, flammability).
      3. “Perceive” above as (a) the ability to perceive (a closed eye) and (b) actually seeing (something).
         1. Thus, sense must have both potential and actual senses too.
         2. Further, there are three “potentialities” here: The potential (e.g.) of a wild chimpanzee to communicate something linguistically, and the potential of someone sho speaks English to communicate something something linguistically, and someone actually saying something.
      4. Being “acted upon” by some (sense object, e.g.) also has two senses: (a) the extinction of two contraries (e.g. of food via digestion), or (b) the transformation of something like from potentiality to actuality by an actual thing (e.g. learning).
         1. The potentiality of (2.e.iv.b) also has two senses, e.g.:
            1. The way we might say that a boy may become a general.
            2. The way we say the same of an adult.
   6. The different kinds of sensible object
      1. There are three kinds of objects of sense:
         1. What is perceptible by a single sense (a “special object”: color, sound, flavor).
         2. What is perceptible by any and all senses (”common sensibles”: movement, number, figure).
         3. An “incidental object”: Something like “the son of Diares”, whose essence/concept is incidental to its perceptible qualities (i.e. a white object).
         4. (2.f.i.i-ii) are directly perceptible, (2.f.i.iii) is indirectly perceptible (or it relies on another facultly of perceptiblility -Pt).
   7. Sight and its object
      1. The object of sight is visible, which is to say that it is (a) color and (b) a certain kind of object that can be described in words but which has no single name (see below).
      2. If we want to understand color, we have to understand light:
         1. Light is the proper color of what is transparent (e.g. air, water), and exists wherever the potentially transparent is excited to actuality (by fire, he says; elements, we are thinking he means).
         2. Reflective things are bracketed here. Suffice it that what is seen in light is always color.
      3. The mechanics of seeing are like this: Color sets the air into movement, which comes into contact with the sense organ, which it sets in movement.
         1. This mechanism can be abstracted to describe the function of all senses: Sense object -> Medium -> Sense organ.
            1. The apparent difference between sight/smell/sound and touch/taste will be handled later.
   8. Hearing and its object
      1. Two kinds of sounds, actual (e.g. music) and potential (e.g. an instrument). Note that this distinction will be repeated for all senses, but not further noted.
         1. Actual sound requires two bodies with potential sound and a space between them.
      2. Voice is a kind of sound characteristic of what has soul in it.
         1. Voice is a sound with meaning.
   9. Smell and its object
      1. The reason why smell is more elusive to us than (2.g) and (2.h) is because our sense of smell is inferior (to our others, to that of other animals).
         1. This is evidenced by the fact that smell does not seem to give us clear knowledge (qua sight, hearing), but instead only the confused sensations of pleasure or pain.
         2. This is parallel to our sense of taste; the exception is that taste is more discriminating, since it involves touch.
         3. So much is our sense of smell confused, that we often describe smells out of a felt likeness to tastes (aka. we describe honey as smelling sweet because it tastes sweet and we end up associating that with smell, in absense of a “real” vocabulary of smells).
   10. Taste and its object
       1. Taste is directly reliant on touch. The thing that touches the tongue must be liquid/dissovable.
       2. The organ of taste must be able to become assimilated to its objects, so it must be a non-liquid capable of “liquidizing” - aka. becoming moist.
       3. Similar to the categories of smell, tastes are either (a) bitter/saline or (b) sweet/succulent. From (2.k.iii.a-b): Pungent, harsh, astringent, and acid.
   11. Touch and its object
       1. It is a problem whether touch is one sense or a group of senses.
       2. There is another problem about what the organ of touch is (the flesh? or is that the medium of touch, the real organ situated further inward?).
       3. A third problem is whether all senses are taking place in the same way (e.g. through touching the medium). Aristotle will say yes to this one.
          1. Basically, if you place a white thing on the eye, you can’t see the whiteness, etc. Hence, senses need media. Hence, the flesh is not the organ of touch, but rather the medium.
       4. Finally, we can’t percieve a mean of hotness and coldness (or, e.g. blackness and whiteness), we rather only percieve hotness exclusively or vice versa.
          1. This seems to imply that sense itself is a ‘mean’ between any two opposite qualities of objects as determined by that sense.
   12. General characteristics of the external senses
       1. Overview: What is a sense?
          1. A sense is that which has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter.
          2. An organ of sense is that in which (2.m.i) is seated.
       2. An explanation of plants, then, is that they don’t contain within themselves the means of contrary qualities.
       3. Finally, as to the question of whether objects of sense can affect bodies without the proper sense organs:
          1. Light, sounds, smells leave bodies quite unaffected, what does affect bodies is the media (the air, e.g.) of these objects of sense.
          2. For example, the visual effect of lightning doesn’t split a tree trunk, the air affected by the phenomenon does.
          3. Senses, then, are just observers of the resultant changes in the media of sense-object transmission.
3. BOOK THREE
   1. The number of external senses
      1. How can we be sure that there are just five senses?
         1. Touch covers any potential comers viz. sensation by contact, and thus all other senses are handled through a medium.
         2. Assume that for every sense there needs to be a sense organ, which is made of the same element as the medium through which the object of sense passes (eyes of water, ears of air, noses of one or the other).
         3. Given that no sense organs seem to be made of earth alone (except maybe those under the domain of touch), and further either none or all of them contain fire, then all the possible sense organs are possessed by well-formed animals.
         4. This argument assumes that the four elements are those of the world, and there is no other.
      2. The common sensibles (2.f.i.ii) are percieved by two qualities contemperanously. If there were special sense organs, our perception of the common qualities would always be incidental (aka. we couldn’t tie whiteness to Cleon’s son perceptibly).
         1. We do posess a general sensibility which enables us to perceive them directly.
         2. This “percipient sense” is what allows us to tie two individual sense-data (yellow, bitter) together in a single perception.
         3. That we have many senses instead of just one (a) provides determinacy, and (b) reveals the distinction between common sensibles and special sensibles.
   2. Common sense
      1. The question of whether a sense can be self perceptive (aka. is it by sight that we know we are seeing?)
         1. The appeal to hallucination: Sight (or the eye) itself must be colored, since it can experience color/vision without the material of the thing (think of a red apple).
      2. Further, like a thing may have a sound without (actively being) sounding, so a thing may have hearing without (actively) hearing.
         1. That said, actively sounding and hearing are the same event: “Since the actualities of the sensible object and of the sensitive faculty are one actuality in spite of the difference between their modes of being, actual hearing and actual sounding appear and disappear from existence at one and the same moment, while as potentialities one of them may exist without the other.”
         2. Hence, the relationship of actual sensation (between sensor/sensed) is a ratio: Objects of sense are pleasant in sensible extremes, and painful in excess.
      3. But how do we discriminate between sense objects of different sensory domains (aka. whiteness and sweetness)?
         1. There has to be some faculty that has access to the experience of both whiteness and sweetness.
         2. This has to be done simultaneously.
   3. Thinking, perceiving, and imagining distinguished.
      1. Remember our two faculties of the soul, (1) local movement and (2) thinking/perciving/discriminating.
      2. Thinking is akin to perceiving, for in both the soul discriminates and is cognizant of something that is.
         1. Thinking has - historically - even been identified with perceiving, although this doesn’t seem to account for the possibility of error. Unless:
            1. Whatever seems is true (there is no truth/appearance distinction).
            2. Error is contact with the unlike (although it is also widely accepted that only like can know like, and likewise error).
         2. Hence, perceiving and practical thinking are not identical. (Just think: the former is universal to all animals, the latter quite rare.)
         3. Further, speculative thinking (imagining) is also different from perceiving.
            1. In discrusive/practical thinking we are called to form judgements, in which we are constrained by truth and falsity, contra the more “free” terrain of imagination.
            2. Also, we can imagine things that will stimulate us similarly to perceptions, but which don’t endanger us.
         4. Hence, thinking is divided into thinking as judgement (3.e-h) and thinking as imagination (3.d).
   4. Imagination
      1. Imagination is not sense:
         1. Sense is either a faculty or an activity (sight, seeing), imagination takes place in the absense of both (e.g.: in dreams).
            1. Visions appear to us even when our eyes are shut.
         2. Sense is always present in animals; imagination is not.
         3. Sensations are always true; imaginations are for the most part false. (Saying that we “imagined it to be a man” is an indicator of its sense-falseness.)
      2. What is it?
         1. It’s not knowledge or intelligence, for it can be false, while the former cannot.
         2. It is not opinion, because opinion involves belief (which entails conviction, which entails reason).
            1. Hence imagination cannot be opinion in any way combined with or mediated by sensation.
         3. But, imagination is still held to be moved by sensation, and hence impossible without sensation.
            1. This movement must be necessarily (a) incapable of existing without sensation, and (b) incapable of existing except when we perceive.
            2. That in which it is found may contain phenomena both active and passive.
            3. It (the movement which spurs imagination) may be either true or false.
         4. The reason for (2.d.ii.iii) is that imagination relies on combined objects of common sense, so
            1. While single-sense-objects cannot be false (aka. whiteness is white).
            2. Second- (what is white is this or that) and third- (attributes of second-: movement, magnitude) degree objects of sense may be subject to sense-illusion.
         5. Hence, imagination must be a movement resulting from an actual exercise of sense.
   5. Passive mind.
      1. Now to turn to the thinking and knowing part of the soul. What differentiates this part, and how does thinking take place?
      2. Mind must be related to what is thinkable as sense is to what is sensible. Since (a) everything is thinkable, then, and if (b) like can only think like, and (c) the soul admits no admixture, then mind, “before it thinks, [is] not actually any real thing.”
         1. Hence, it cannot be blended with the body, lest it acquire some quality.
         2. Hence, the intellective soul is a place of potential forms.
      3. Extreme experiences of mind (very clear thoughts) seem to have the opposite effect of extreme experiences of sense (very loud music); they make the forthcoming thought more acute, and not confused.
         1. Once the mind has taken the shapes of all its objects of knowledge, it moves from the first kind of passivity to the second (cf. 2.e.iv.i): the mind is then able to think itself.
         2. Insofar as the realities the mind knows are capable of being separated from their matter (straightness vs. something straight), so also are the powers of the mind. (I wish I had an example here.)
      4. A possible objection: If mind is thinkable per se and what is thinkable is like the thinking thing, then either (a) mind belongs to everything, or (b) mind will contain some element common to all thinkable things.
         1. Qua (3.e.iv.a): Mind is /potentially/ like whatever is thinkable.
         2. Qua (3.e.iv.b): Mind is thinkable in exactly the same way its objects are: it is the potentiality of immanence as such that allows all things (speculative and materiality alike) to be thinkable. And what is mind if not the potentiality of immanence?
   6. Active mind.
      1. Since in every class of things we have (1) a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, and (2) a cause which is productive in the sense that it makes them all (e.g. 2:1 as art:material).
         1. In (3.e.ii) above, we described mind as something which takes the form of its objects.
         2. In addition to this, we need a positive state which “makes” things (like light makes colors).
      2. While potential knowledge is prior in time in a subject to actual knowledge, not so in the universe.
         1. “When mind is set free from its present conditions” (when is this?) “it appears as just what it is…this alone is immortal and eternal…and without it nothing thinks.”
         2. What on earth is that referring to? I have to guess that its point at the sort of disembodied cosmological mind - mind as such - that is God. Or maybe our individual minds join up to the universal mind at death? All our souls are part of one big soul-mass, which distributes itself amongst life?
         3. Note: In the “Generation of Animals” Aristotle speaks of an intellect that enters “from without” (GA 736 b 27).
   7. The double operation of mind.
      1. Falsehood always involves a synthesis of two objects of mind (single sense-perceptions are always true).
         1. The unifying/synthesizing faculty is mind.
      2. The mind is capable of identifying simple (indivisible objects) as well.
      3. This unification of (3.g.i) can occur with actually or theoretically unified/divided objects (note that dividing the unified and unifying the divided work the same way here):
         1. Actual: The mind can divide an actually undivided length (in a similarly undivided time): In this instance, it can (e.g.) divide it in half (the object has no parts until it is divided), which also divides the time into the time in which there are two and the time in which there is one.
         2. The object of thought and the time in which it is thought here are only incidentally divisible. They also contain some indivisible unity, which gives us the time and the length as such.
         3. The best thing I can come up with here is that to have a simple line (or two), you have to have a simple time. As soon as you complicate the line (by, say, splitting it) you need complex time or the relation of contraries (one and two lines).
      4. In overview: That which cognizes must be characterized actually by one and potentially by the other of two contraries. (E.g. the cognition of evil or black.)
   8. The practical mind, and the difference between it and the contemplative.
      1. Here we get some light on (3.f.ii.ii): “…in the universe [potential knowledge] has no priority even in time; for all things that come into being arise from what actually is.”
         1. So, simple objects of sense (2.f.i.i) and knowledge (3.g.ii) - perceptions - are like bare asserting or knowing.
         2. Complex objects of sense and knowledge (movement, pain) are arrived at by negation or “quasi-affirmation” (qua 3.g.iii).
      2. The thinking soul uses images as the contents of perception. (They are like, e.g. the air that modifies the pupil for the soul: (perception-objects -> images -> soul).
      3. Let the single-sense faculties unified by (3.b.iii) be C and D where A and B are their sense objects.
         1. A:B :: C:D (aka. sweet:hot :: taste:touch)
         2. This is ostensibly how the thinking soul uses images to create judgements, which in turn lead to actions (pursuit/avoidance).
         3. Note that this is a faculty exclusive to the speculative mind. (See 3.c.ii-iii)
   9. Comparison of mind with sense and with imagination.
      1. In summary, the soul is in a way all existing things:
         1. Sensation is in a way what is sensible
         2. Kowledge is in a way what is knowable
         3. Knowable and sensible things are exhaustive of all things.
         4. The question now is: What is the way in which this is true?
      2. Within the soul, the faculties of knowledge and sensation are potentially the knowable/sensible.
         1. These potentialities must be either the things themselves or their forms.
         2. The former is impossible (viz. the stone). It must be the forms.
         3. Hence, the soul is analogous to the hand: As the hand is a tool of tools (a tool for using tools), the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things.
      3. Hence (how?):
         1. No one can learn anything in the absence of sense.
         2. When the mind is actively aware of anything, it is so through an image.
      4. Imagination is different from assertion and denial, as the latter require a synthesis of concepts.
         1. In what way do concepts differ from images?
         2. Must we not say (he asks) that concepts are not images, though they necessarily involve them?
   10. Problems about the motive faculty.
       1. Remember (again, from [3.c.i]) our two faculties of the soul, (1) originating local movement and (2) discriminating.
       2. Now, what is it in the soul that originates movement? Is it a part or the whole thing?
          1. If we have to break up the soul we’re going to stick with the old schema (2.c.i):
             1. The Nutritive
             2. The Sensitive
             3. The Imaginative/Practical (3.c.ii-iii, 3.h.iii.iii)
             4. The Appetitive
       3. Let’s start with a restricted subset of movement: What generates forward movement in the animal?
          1. It seems like the appetitive and the imaginative faculties would motivate the animal to move.
          2. It can’t be the nutritive faculty (since plants share that), nor the sensitive (for there are animals with sensation which don’t move).
          3. It can’t be the calculative/specutlative mind, for this doesn’t think things which are practical.
          4. In short, it is desire that is moves us.
          5. But we observe that something else is required to produce action in accordance with knowledge, as appetite is “too incompetent to account fully for movement.”
   11. The cause of the movement of living things.
       1. In short, it appears that the appetites and the imaginative part of mind (shared by all animals, that is, the non-rational part) motivate all movement.
       2. The practical mind is stimulated by the object of an appetite. Both practical mind and appetite are end-oriented.
          1. This ultimately means that when the imaginative/practical facility originates movement, it does so on behalf of an appetite.
          2. Thus the origin of movement is the appetitive faculty of the soul.
       3. All movement involves (a) that which originates the movement, (b) that by means of which it originates it, and (c) that which is moved (the animal).
          1. (a) may mean either something which is itself unmoved (the realizable good) or else something which is at once moves and is moved (the faculty of appetite).
       4. To sum up, insofar as an animal is capable of appetite, it is capable of self-movement. It is not capable of appetite without possessing imagination (either calculative or sensitive).
       5. Three modes of movement are possible:
       1. That in which the appetites overpower wish (gluttony)
       2. That in which the wish overpowers the appetites (restraint)
       3. That in which appetites overpower appetites (the dog drops the bone in the water)
   12. The faculty of knowing is never moved but remains at rest.
       1. The domain of knowledge is the universal, not the particular.
4. The mutual relations of the faculties of the soul, and their fitness for the conditions of life.
   1. To wrap up: All besouled things have the nutritive faculty.
   2. All animals have the sensitive faculty.
      1. Further, animals require touch specifically in order to survive (touch is a condition of being embodied).
      2. That is why taste is a sort of touch; it is the sense of the tangible and nutritious.
   3. It is clear that the body of an animal cannot consist of a single element, as it requires touch.
      1. The element of touch is earth, so earth-constitution is a requirement for embodiment.
      2. Additionally, touch must be composed of other elements, since it is capable of perceiving (e.g. hot/cold).
      3. This will also explain why when an excess of sensation is presented to any other sense (very loud noise, etc.) it simply destroys the specific sense-organ, but when an excess of touch (burning, etc) is given, it destroys the animal.
   4. Touch is “the essential mark of [animal] life.”

Overview

Socrates, on his deathbed, lays down four arguments for the immortality of the soul to his group of disciples and friends.

The Setup

Phaedo recounts the story of Socrates’ death. Socrates’ death took place so long after his trial because of an Athenian holy season, in which the city was not allowed to be “polluted by executions.” Many friends were present at Socrates’ deathbed, but Plato, apparently, was ill.

1. RHAPSODIZING

   1. The discussion starts with Socrates casually remarking on light things - the apparent attachment of pleasure to pain and why he’s suddenly taken to writing verse since he’s been in jail (he was told to in a dream!).
   2. Socrates then sends an envoy to the philosopher Evenus: Come along! Cebes, befuddled, asks Socrates why “a man ought not to take his own life, but that the philosopher will be ready to follow the dying”. Socrates claims that
      1. Our lives are the possessions of the Gods, and therefore we have no right to take them ourselves.
      2. However, a philosopher should not grieve at his death, as the rewards of the afterlife certainly make the experience of death a “far better thing for the good than for the evil.” He goes on to explain (c):
   3. Death is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body. Now, the philosopher should care not for the pleasures of the body, and hence, the wise man desires nothing more than to enact this very separation of the soul from the body.
      1. The senses deceive us when it comes to the quest for knowledge. The body is a hindrance, not a help.
      2. The philosopher gets the work of knowledge done best with the mind alone; the soul can attain truth best as revealed to her in thought.
      3. Further, our eyes cannot behold absolute (justice|truth|beauty|etc.) Again, our bodies hinder our souls’ progress toward truth. Thus, “either [absolute] knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death.”
      4. Hence, he who repines at death is hardly a philosopher. For at the end, all the vagaries of courage and temperance in the face of death (especially for the philosopher!) should be subsumed by the promises of wisdom in the afterlife.
   4. Cebes, thus, poses the question: “many arguments are required in order to prove that when the man is dead the soul yet exists, and has any force of intelligence.” Socrates is ready to respond.

2. THE FIRST ARGUMENT (THE CYCLICAL ARGUMENT)

   1. Socrates starts with an appeal to a Greek belief in reincarnation. However, in the same breath, he admits that there is no verification of this. So, he suggests starting with a broader appeal. Aren’t all opposites generated reciprocally? (aka. no good without evil).
      1. And this generation is actually “a passing from one to the other” - aka. heating and cooling, division and composition - that is, any opposites require an intermediate process.
   2. So, by analogy to sleep:waking, we are to understand death:life. The process of generation of sleep is falling asleep, and of waking is waking up.
   3. If this is true, by inference (and extension), we can believe in the birth of the dead to the world of the living. And hence the souls of the dead must continue to exist.

3. THE SECOND ARGUMENT (THE RECOLLECTIVE ARGUMENT)

   1. Cebes now offers that Socrates’ favorite doctrine of recollection seems to presuppose a previous time in which we learned what we can come to recollect. Cebes reminds us of the proof of this doctrine (from the Meno) of Meno’s slave remembering geometry.
   2. Socrates offers a second proof of this argument:
      1. If the image of one thing can bring to mind another (your lover’s garment, i.e.), and thus if recollection can be triggered either by things like or unlike.
      2. Extrapolating from here, if seeing particular pieces of wood and stone, and in identifying them as in some way equal, we are recollecting absolute equality, which we have never seen.
      3. Further, if things can only be understood sensually, we must have known about things like absolute equality before we were born, because we certainly haven’t seen/touched/smelled it in this lifetime. This implies absolutely that all knowledge is recollection.
      4. And the ability to access this knowledge implies an uninterrupted medium in which it was stored. This leads to only two possible conclusions. Either we had this knowledge since birth, and continued to know it throughout life, or else we received it after birth, and then lost it immediately, which doesn’t make any sense.

4. THE THIRD ARGUMENT (THE AFFINITY ARGUMENT)

   1. Now, everyone is sufficiently convinced that we’re born from the dead, but apparently not that when we die our souls don’t blow away in the wind and scatter. Socrates suggests here that it might be instructive to know something about the nature of the soul.
   2. Namely, Socrates wants to show that the soul is “uncompounded” and hence “indissoluble.”
      1. The aforementioned essences (Forms), it is agreed, must always be the same (unchanging). And the particulars that partake of Form F are contrawise always changing. Further, you can see and touch the particulars but not F.
      2. So, let’s assume that there are two sorts of existences, the seen and the unseen; these correspond to the changing and the unchanging.
      3. Now, if we are two parts, body and soul, and the body has a clear affinity to the changing/visible realm, meanwhile the soul is obviously unseen. The soul, we have argued, trapped by the body, only finds her home realm of the unchanging in wisdom. Hence, it seems that the soul has an affinity with the unchanging.
      4. Nature orders the soul to rule over the body, a nice analogy to the divine ruling over the mortal. Now, if all this is true, it must be admitted that the soul is “almost or altogether indissoluble.”
   3. This discussion now degrades into some crazy speculation about what kinds of animals the souls of the wicked will be reincarnated as. (Proportional justice: Drunkards as asses and pigs, etc.) Additionally, only philosophers are allowed to attain nirvana, with the Gods, and not be passed back into a new body.
   4. Cebes and Simmias both have some concerns with this line of argument, but are reticent to put them to Socrates. Socrates assures them that it’s cool. Simmias goes first. He poses the possibility that soul:body may be more like harmony:lyre. It seems to Simmias that if somebody cuts the lyre’s strings, it pretty much kills the harmony at the same time.
   5. Cebes then poses the problem that soul:body may be something like weaver:coat: That is, the soul may weave many bodies, and outlast them, but still it will die. He needs Socrates to prove that the soul is absolutely immortal to have any confidence.

5. THE FOURTH ARGUMENT: THE ARGUMENT FROM THE FORMS

   1. Socrates begins with Simmias: He takes umbrage starting with the idea that harmony is a compound. If “the soul is a harmony which is made out of strings set in the frame of the body,” it cannot be prior to the elements that compose it. But, granting (3) above, the soul must be prior to the body. Thus the analogy is false (harmony is made last and vanishes first).
      1. Additionally, harmony is absolute (not measured by degrees). So, if the analogy were true, souls would all be equally good (harmonious), as opposed to some being good, some being bad, etc.
      2. Finally, if the soul were a harmony generated by the physical, it wouldn’t caution us against the lusts of the bodily.
   2. So much for Simmias and Harmonia. Now on to Cebes and Cadmus. Socrates will argue from generation and decay. He will premise his argument on the existence of absolute beauty, goodness, etc. The Forms. He first attempts to set up his premises:
      1. He introduces the argument of Causality: Things that are F (other than the F) are F by virtue of partaking of the F. [Clearly stated, 100]
      2. He introduces the argument of Separation: The F is itself by itself, at least in the sense of being separate from, and hence not identical with, the things that partake of it. [end of 102]
      3. He introduces Impurity-S: Sensible things are impure inasmuch as they can (and, in fact, often do) have contrary properties. (Simmias is both tall and short.) This is also the corrolary to:
      4. Purity-F: Forms cannot have contrary properties. [74] (Whereas sensible things that are equal are also unequal, the equal is not unequal, and hence the equal is not identical to any equal sensible thing.)
      5. Also, Self-Predication: For any property F, the F is F. [100, 102] (Largeness)
   3. So, if all this is true, and things can reject a form completely, but not oppose it as such (3 rejects oddness), then G’s simple participation in F doesn’t necessarily mean that F is that whose inherence is essential to the being of G. So, since the soul brings life, as established above, it must participate in the Form of Life. And by Purity-F, this means that the Soul cannot participate in death. Now, the opposite of death is immortality, and if the soul does not admit death, then the soul is immortal.
      1. “The preceding argument shows that the soul will not admit of death…any more than three or the odd number will admit of the even, or fire…of the cold.”

6. CRAZY UNCLE SOCRATES’ GEOGRAPHY LESSONS

   1. Everyone is pretty happy with that, so now Socrates goes off on a wistful rant about the nature of heaven and earth. This includes:
      1. The earth is a round body in the center of the heavens.
      2. The earth is actually at the bottom of a sea of aether (the heavens), and we are deceived that we dwell atop the earth. If we could fly we could see the true earth/heaven.
      3. Rivers circle this true earth, going underground under the deserts, and this is purgatory.
   2. It is basically a charming overture to purity. After which, he goes to take a bath. Crito is sad. Socrates drinks the poison with good cheer. Everyone is sad.