[lit-ideas] Re: The Immortality of the Soul of a Chicken
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2013 19:46:19 -0800
JL writes
Indeed. One of my favourite Greek (or whatever) words ever is ENTHYMEME,
which is like a cancelled implicature ("Dorothy Parker was a wit, and so she
frequented the Algonquin").
For Aristotle, enthymeme as it [name] indicates means, "in-the-heart". I
believe Aristotle thought the soul was located in the heart. Geary thinks it
is located elsewhere.
Aristotle doesn't think the soul is located anywhere. It disappears
('dies' would be an unhelpful rendering) when the body or organ for
which it was the essential function—roughly, that which makes a thing
what it is—no longer has that function. When the soul goes away it just
goes away.
In de Anima, he offers this analogy: if the eye were an animal, vision
would be its soul. If an eye can no longer see, it ceases to have a soul.
'Suppose that the eye were an animal-sight would have been its soul, for
sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the
formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is
removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name-it is no more a real
eye than the eye of a statue or of a painted figure.'
—Somebody's translation of de Anima
Robert Paul,
standing in for Walter
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