Sorting out the Soul

[Akita Suggagaki]

I have been trying to correlate the Greek view with the scholastics. It gets a little confusing. Anyone care to contribute?


Anima Soul Psyche

Mens faculty of knowing Gnosis
Memoria remembering anamnesis
Ratio judging dianoetikón
Sensus perceiving aisthetikón
Voluntas Willing
Caritas loving eros, agape, and philia
Intellectus understanding Nous?


Plato admits three parts, forms, or powers of the soul,
the intellect (noûs),
the nobler affections (thumós),
and the appetites or passions (epithumetikón).


For Aristotle, the soul is one, but endowed with five groups of faculties (dunámeis):
the "vegetative" faculty (threptikón), concerned with the maintenance and development of organic life;
the appetite (oretikón), or the tendency to any good;
the faculty of sense perception (aisthetikón);
the "locomotive" faculty (kinetikón), which presides over the various bodily movements;
the reason (dianoetikón).

 

[zippy2006]

Which Greeks and which Scholastics?

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Which Greeks and which Scholastics?

Plato, Aristotle;Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas

 

[zippy2006]

As a rule the Dominicans (Albertus, Thomas) will keep closer to Aristotle and the Franciscans (Scotus, Bonaventure) will keep closer to Plato, though the relation between Aristotle and Plato is debated. Ockham was a Franciscan but was also writing a while after the others and doesn't strike me as very Platonic. Anselm and Abelard predate the rediscovery of Aristotle and were therefore probably relying on Plato, or rather, Christian Platonists. I don't know much about Alexander of Hales. He would have had early access to the wider Aristotelian corpus if he wanted it.