The theory of middle lines
Based on Plato’s division of the human soul, the psychic activity is divided into upper lines (nous) middle lines (synaesthima or thymos) and low lines (epithimia).Plato does understand the soul (psychi) as a different entity than the body, although he does not establish it’s exact nature nor relationship to the body. His general theory says that soul does wander somewhere in heavens and falls down to the earth as a kind of punishment, where it is imprisoned in body for a lifetime.
Plato seems to think that there is life before and after biological existence, reason why his theories are adopted by Christian thinkers in order to justify and explain the possibility of eternal life.
The nature of soul will cause theoretical questioning all over the Middle Ages and specially in the XVIIth century (Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza), but it’s existence will be finally rejected as a theoretical subject of thought. Based on Hume’s results, Kant does not even consider the possibility of definition of the concept, even though he is able to think other a priori concepts.
The concept of soul is reconsidered in the XIXth century and early XXth from a medical point of view as designing the source of mental illness, and then rebaptized ‘psychi’, in order to differentiate it from the religious eternal soul. Definition lacking, the most extensive approach in order to determine the logic of functioning of the same will be made by Freud in his theory of the unconscious.
The problem in the definition of the concept appears while considering different theories of knowledge, having as a result different approaches of what can be known, and consequently of the possibility of existence of something.
It is an evidence that an empirical approach does not allow to think the existence of something whose reality seems not to be depending on senses. The empirical approach though does show quickly limits, as Kant proofs, as it has to consider in order to establish these very conclusions a logical process of thought which can hardly be perceived by senses either. It is though strange, that Kant restrains the a priori (not depending on senses) field to the knowledge of understanding without considering a broader territory of application.
In fact, it is obvious that the biggest problem is to think the relationship between the ‘I’ as identity, the concept as conveying meaning and knowledge, and the empirical senses. The two main currents do just show the extreme complexity of the problem: Plato thinks that knowledge is somewhere, fix and eternal and perceived by the ‘intelligence’ (nous), while Aristotle, who refuses to think the world of ideas, does derive all knowledge from senses.
Neither the one nor the other approach does allow to properly think the soul. In the first, you can almost imagine a detached soul somewhere in heavens, and in the other, it can hardly exist.
Although Kant does seem to touch a solution with his frozen Prussian fingers, he gets stuck when he defines ‘universal and necessary a priori forms of sensitivity and understanding’. His great step, to transfer the forms of organization of reality to the subjective human intelligence, and thus, neither in heavens, neither directly empirical, reaches the abyss when he fixes these forms in universal and necessary forms, which do allow to talk of scientific truth, but do confine this truth to objective sentences concerning only subjects related to outer senses. If considered in a symbolic way, he gives the final struck to soul, which dies in a conceptual trap a little earlier than Nietzsche’s God.
Freud, who is no philosopher and does little care about the accuracy of definitions, does though use of a main logical tool, the demonstration through the absurd, in order to establish the validity of the unconscious. ‘As the effect is,’ he says, ‘the cause is.’ Which can be considered as valid. The problem is that his theory is not depending on a theory of knowledge, on the one hand, nor on determined definitions. How does he define the ‘I’, and how valid is his definition? Where is the realm of the unconscious and how is it linked to the consciousness or understanding? The lack of a proper metaphysical context does make of Freud’s theories a little boat in the middle of the ocean, with two or three logical demonstrations as only guides through the waves.
If the mind takes a certain distance in order to consider the problem, it does soon discover that the whole problem in the determination of the phenomenon is the difficulty in introducing the notion of ‘process’ or ‘time’ in a general theory of knowledge. Thinkers do tend to want their knowledge eternal and absolutely valid, which is to say, timeless. If it is though timeless, the very fact of wanting to think a process in the getting of knowledge does make it relative to the process and thus it seems ‘less true.’ Aristotle, who thinks knowledge as the result of a recurrent print left by empirical impression on the brain, admits that this kind of knowledge is relative and can’t be said true in such, so that he is obliged to transfer eternal truth to mathematics and logic and eventually to the realm of stars, which, to his understanding, do divinely move in mathematical order and thus escape the apprehension through process, as they can only be thought through ideal mathematics.
In all cases it seems clear that the thinker either refuses either is incapable to think the relationship in process between the knowing ‘I’ and the known object. And this mainly because of the extreme difficulty in thinking an ‘I’ as separated from the mass of empirical impressions which does configure the body linked to the determined ‘I’, although the very logic should very quickly impose such separation. ‘I’ is a word, and as such in nature can only be linked to other words, so as to understand the ‘I’ as the relationship of a determined identity (name) to a whole number of words and sentences that can be said belief or conviction, or impression, or whatever. The ‘I’ thus considered is obviously empirical, as the human consciousness does allow the awareness of thought.
In main thinkers the incapability of separating the ‘I’ as word from a sum of empirical impressions which appear in the mirror in a whole body, does make the solution to the problem of knowledge impossible, and does thus put heaviest barriers to the definition of soul. The only thinker trying himself on this direction, Descartes, saying ‘cogito, ergo sum’ (I think, thus I’m), linking for the first time the verb ‘to be’ to the ‘I’ through thought, does not solve the problem of how then to link his thoughts to the empirical impressions they are somehow related to, restraining himself to the association of his thinking ‘I’ to a certain number of logical conclusions that can be said, for him, true.
The possible solution to this extremely complex problem, consisting in relating an empirical ‘I’ as perceived by consciousness in thought to senses through a ‘factor’ which is derived through the absurd, called spirit, and having as a result a ’synthesis’, does cause an enormous amount of shifts in the definition of concepts as traditionally transmitted. A synthesis is the word resulting from an operation or process which does need of an ‘actor’ in order to appear. Considering the difference between an impression as left by senses and a word, the essential difference can be said that the second has an identity the first has not. Consequently the ‘actor of process’ or spirit can be said ‘conveying identity’, and is extremely easy to be associated to the principle of identity, which is thus not formal (Kant) but an active principle appearing only in determined biological configurations (brain) to the extent to allow thought.
Logically, the very fact of introducing a process in the very acquisition of knowledge, whose most simple form is the word as linked to something through a certain number of criteria, does seem to avoid the thought of universal truth as such. Why should a human being make the same synthesis than another, using the same criteria and parameters? A priori there is no reason, which makes it of need to introduce a new factor in order to explain why usually though, human beings do use at least similar criteria or associate the same meaning to words: understanding.
Contrary to what seems the consequence of Plato’s thought, where necessarily knowledge is an enriching of the personal soul in order to get a good visa for the other world (knowledge as related to the self in self realization), this approach does oblige to think knowledge as a bridge of communication to others in order to configure an ordered whole (society). Why does Plato’s world become tyrannical for the people of Syracuse, who sell him as a slave? Because he thinks that he can impose knowledge on others, those can not get by themselves. The impossibility of thinking knowledge as means of communication does necessarily lead while confronted to the other obligation of establishing social order, to tyrannical imposition, people do naturally reject.
As such, knowledge seems to be a precarious balance between a synthesis made by a human and an agreement with others in it’s use, which does slowly lead to the determination of formal criteria allowing clearing up in cases of confusion, this criteria being certainly based on most common subjective forms (Kant), which on the other hand does not allow to say that they are universal. It is thus true that a human being as a concept does have two hands and two feet, which does not imply all human having them. Thus, it is possible to say, that the human understanding does in concept function on given logical structures which are proper to his nature, which does not necessarily imply that all have them, on the one hand, nor that they are the only one’s universally possible for the organization of reality.
Is this accepted, than it is easier to understand what human beings have understood as soul for hundreds of years, in an undetermined cloud of definition, making reference to aspects which can be summed in a definition as possible through a new approach. If the human being considers himself as an ‘I’ in word, he will be able to make the difference between two kinds of words he keeps to determine his identity: the one’s that do allow him to order outer reality and the one’s that do affect his mood or inner disposition. The second compound of words seems to need of some kind of ‘container’ in which they can be effective. Although I know that the thought ‘it’s not that bad’ is much more positive than the one saying ‘all is horrible’, it is an evidence that even if I make an effort, I can’t believe the first if it is not embedded somewhere. This somewhere seems to be a general compound of logics, thoughts, memories, stories that do make the field that allows something to be believed or not. As this compound though does affect the affectivity and even the lower realms of desire, it can’t be thought just as a logical compound as situated in brain, for example. It is possible to think that the very intelligibility in it’s meaning of all these words and stories and logics does configure some kind of very fine almost immaterial reality which is though in interaction with the body altering even biological data through neurobiological interactions.
In fact, it seems easy to understand the relationship between the new defined soul and body the same way the human relates the word to its meaning. Not to the object it is referred to, but to the meaning as appearing to consciousness. Though many thinkers do associate meaning to some kind of image appearing through the faculty of fantasy, it is obvious that this can only be the case for empirically determined objects. Someone saying: “This has strictly no meaning” is searching in his understanding for some matching impression to a sentence or word or situation, which for him does configure the impression or notion of meaning, independently of the logic he is using. Meaning is as important to thought as the series of words put in a certain order in the mind, even if it is less ‘empirical’ than thought, as it can’t be transcribed into sounds, or letters or other symbols.
Further analysis does show that the notion of meaning is not preserved by logic, which is only a tool in order to convey knowledge, but by soul.
If this were so, it is an evidence, that reality as such is not met by general theories that do refuse an autonomous entity to soul, or even the existence of it. It can be generally said, that if there are things that do belong to the subjective organization of the human (most of beliefs concerning soul), there are concepts whose lack can produce major disturbance in the attempt of organizing reality as such, as there are phenomena that have no ‘case’ where they can be ordered into. If you refuse to consider holes, you will quickly fall into one, and if you don’t want to assimilate consistency or heaviness to a wall, you will crash your head against the first wall. The fact of not thinking properly a certain number of concepts is certainly at the origin of great psychic disturbance, such as anxiety, stress, aggressivity, depression, aso, and also at the origin of the incapability of proper appreciation of general situations, such as concerning social, political, even religious life, etc.
The organization of reality does mainly depend on the definition of concepts and there assemblage as shared by a group or a nation. Changes in definition and assemblage do alter the configuration of reality and thus the very behavior inside of a whole. In how far the side effects of bad definition does fall on a certain number of people who do not share them, is rather to be established.
In any case it is possible on this basis to determine which would be the general body of thought as conveyed by contemporary society, it’s side effects and the interrelation to other possible bodies of thought.