The Notion of a Human According to Aristotle and Descartes

 Though they came from completely different eras, Aristotle (384 B.C.-322 B.C.) and Rene Descartes (A.D.1596-1560) shared several common ideas in their notions of what makes a human. Both grounded their philosophical opinions around the two components of the human being: the soul and the body. Where the two differed was in their interpretation of the nature of the soul, the nature of the body, and the relationship the two shared. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle articulates ideas on mankind, the mind, and body that would shape epistemology for centuries to follow. Descartes, a product of the Age of Reason, took on Platonic undertones in his philosophical stance on what comprises a human. In his Treatise on Man, Descartes delineates a slightly contrasting view from his predecessor. His Meditations on First Philosophy clearly deviates from  Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Books Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon, but its roots are not entirely the converse of Aristotelian discourse.

THE ARISTOTELIAN NOTION OF A PERSON

 Similar to the later Cartesian “cogito, ergo sum” statement that popularized the Age of Reason, Aristotle believed a large part of what makes a person is the cognizance of its existence. Humans are defined by the “[natural] desire to know” (Aristotle 2000, p. 1). Unlike the existence of other living creatures, Aristotle believes that man’s evidence of intellectual study and a conscience cognizant of its own existence makes the mental person whole. From an existential perspective, Aristotle believed humans, like other living things, were made up of a soul and a body. What separated human beings from other living things, he argued, were the particulars regarding the soul. Aristotle stood by his opinion of the human dual-countenance of body and soul; he took body to be the human matter, and the soul to be the form or essence. Understanding the dichotomy transcends the manifold relationships between the two, but of the utmost importance is the stipulation that man remembers that neither body nor soul can exist interdependent of the other.
 Aristotle wrote, “no part of [a] body can be properly defined without reference to its function; which it could not have in the absence of perception (Aristotle 1971, p. 17). In examining his notion of what makes a person, it is important to also define the nature of the soul and its relationship to the body. According to Aristotelian epistemology, the soul is among the primary components of a human being that comprises essence. Human essence is equal among all humans; Aristotle believed in the universality of man. His concept of man hinged on his belief in the existence of universal axioms and characteristics that all humans shared. Reflective of Plato, Aristotle’s universality of humanity signified the existence of a common trait in all mankind, such that reference to humanity equated not with individual humans, but the inherent traits linking each one. It is the common essence of man that links all humanity, and the essence is the notion that makes a person. For Aristotle, “it is also clear that the soul is the primary substance, that the body is matter, and that man or animal is the compound of the two taken universally” (Aristotle 1971, p.20). Aristotle believed man was connected to nature but was inherently different from the living things populating the world. Aristotle purported what separated man from beast was the “presence within it of soul” (Aristotle 2004, p. 1). Other animals were presumed to be unaware of their existence, and one of the things that made a person was the ability to both distance himself from the rest of nature while simultaneously striving to find the link that binds him to the rest of the world.
The Aristotelian view of what makes a person is the dichotomy of human existence; man is comprised of two separate halves in Aristotelian psychology, the union of corporeal body and a relatively abstract soul. The difference between the two was what “made” a person, and what further defined a human was the relationship between body and soul. The nature of the soul itself was not wholly unique in classical philosophy. Aristotle’s epistemological predecessors Plato and Socrates had previously raised the concept of an abstract component of human existence. Aristotle’s view of the soul was slightly different, as it was not a transcendent entity. In fact, according to Aristotle, the soul could not exist without the body, but was merely one component of the greater human body like any organ or limb. Aristotle wrote that the soul is “the substance of any living thing,” it is the “substance given by the formula, or the form and what being is for bodies of [the] sort” (Aristotle 1971, p. 17). Most of Aristotle’s argument is based on the assumption that animals “other than man live by appearances and memories and have little of connected experience; but the human races live also by art and reasoning” (Aristotle 2000, p.1). In order for Aristotle’s philosophy to be posited as truthful, other animals’ psyches have to be corroborated as dependent on the empirical world. According to the Platonic student, “parts of the soul—some or all of them—will be prior to the animal as a combined whole, and similarly in particular cases, whereas the body and its parts will be posterior to this substance”; “it is not this substance but the combined whole that is divided into these bodily parts as into its matter” (Aristotle 1971, p. 17). Aristotle believed that before understanding the nature of man, it was necessary to first understand the nature of his soul. He believed that it was important to consider “whether [the] soul is divisible or is without parts, and whether it is everywhere homogenous or not” (Aristotle 2004, p.  2). The duality of man, the intangible and the concrete, the soul and the body, was a dichotomy he could not ignore.
The study of the person and the soul “must fall within the science of Nature, at least so far as in its affections it manifests this double character” (Aristotle 2004, p. 3).
For Aristotle, the duality of man is the defining aspect of existence. No other animal in existence has the depth of being to facilitate pondering its own nature.
 Aristotle believes a person is a “harmony or composition of contraries, and the body is compounded out of contraries” (Aristotle 2004, p.  10).  However, harmony “is a certain proportion or composition of the constituents blended, and soul can be neither the one nor the other of these” (Aristotle 2004, p.  10). That man can associate soul and body creates a question in Aristotelian philosophy that defines a separate notion of the abstract. Unlike his predecessors Plato and Socrates who determined the world to be out of the scope of man’s comprehension, Aristotle identified man as the greatest unknown.
A significant detraction from man’s natural body is the fact that life is therefore neither concrete nor abstract. If the soul is indeed intangible, it accedes to neither the law of birth, nor death. Its existence has neither beginning nor end, and if man can be born and in turn die, then where and how does the soul exist? The modern answer to this question in a Judeo-Christian framework mandates the existence of a higher being, but in Aristotelian philosophy, there is not much accommodation for such a concept. Moreover, the nature of the soul versus the vessel that is the body bears a major theoretical disconnect. A body is terminal, and has an end, where the soul does not. Therefore, by definition, if the soul is connected to the body and the body dies, then the soul ceases to be intangible in its own mortality. The body, according to Aristotle, “is not something which belongs to a subject” such as the soul, but exists solely for itself “as matter” (Aristotle 1971, p. 3). If body cannot exist for the soul, but the soul exists in the body, then a level of dependence must exist. Man could still exist without his soul, the abstract that separates him from animals. But what of the soul that is dependent of man? Therefore, the person is defined by a soul that is transcendent but at the same time possessive of a dichotomy of its own: it is a separate entity from the body, but its link to terminal matter binds it, coercing it to share in the potential for both death and life. Through this logic, the soul cannot exist unless it is matter. An intangible entity cannot be dependent on concrete, terminating matter unless that abstract is matter itself.
The aforementioned phenomenon is ideologically closer to Aristotle’s contemporary Democritus, whose opposing thoughts “roundly identify soul and mind” with concrete reality (Aristotle 2004, p.  5).

THE CARTESIAN NOTION OF A PERSON: BIOLOGY AND THEOLOGY UNITED

 Descartes was a philosopher in the Age of Reason whose ideas regarding man were spiritually based. His own thoughts were a meld of the religious age in which he lived and the scientific era whose advent changed the face of Europe. In his Treatise on Man, Descartes surmised that men were “composed of a soul and body” (Descartes 1998, p. 99). He believed the body and soul existed separately of each other, but knew the soul and body to “be joined and united so as to constitute” humanity (Descartes 1998, p. 99). The renowned French scholar believed the soul to be a transcendent entity without which the body could not exist. A creation of God, man’s body and soul were fundamentally different. The body was but a vessel for the soul to inhabit earth, and the soul was part of the essence of man. Because Descartes’ beliefs paralleled those of Christianity, he believed it was the soul that tied man to God, not the mortal body in which the soul was housed.
 The soul, however, was not immortal or transcendent to the point of God.  The soul was still imperfect, and constituted the flawed character traits that kept man mortal. The soul did not die with the body, as it existed separately. Nor was it dependent on the body to take physical form. The body was in no way a prerequisite for the soul’s habitation. Instead, Descartes believed the “body to be just a statue or a machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us” (Descartes 1998, p. 99). A soul defined the person, the person’s traits, characteristics, and life. Without a soul, there was no person. The soul provided movement, which Descartes attributed to be life; without the soul, the body could not exist. His philosophy was not just based on faith, however. What was then modern science gave a substantial direction to philosophy, and Descartes could not ignore the ramifications of technology and man’s newfound knowledge of the intricacies of the human body. Particularly unique in Cartesian philosophy was the person’s inseparable connection to the human body, which Descartes believed was specially designed by God to incorporate the soul. Descartes held “that when God unites a rational soul to [the body], He places its principal seat in the brain” in what the modern world knows to be the pineal gland (Descartes 1998, p.  119). From a scientific standpoint, the pineal gland was actually located underneath the frontal lobe on the anterior surface of the medulla oblongata, the part of the brain responsible for unconscious acts such as breathing and heartbeat. The human organ system was quite crucial to the soul’s mobility in Cartesian philosophy. Unlike Aristotle, who asserted the duality of spirit and body as mutually dependent, Descartes believed “the soul can cause no movement in the body unless all the corporeal organs required for that movement are properly disposed” (Descartes 1998, p.  171).
 Though the souls that would compose humankind had no need for the body to exist, the link between body and soul still had a hand in what made a person. With the creation of the body, God designed the soul’s temperance “to depend solely on the disposition of the organs” (Descartes 1998, p.  171).  The key factors manipulating the soul and the person were the nature of the person, the health of their organs as well as the state of their organs. Descartes used this theory to explain mental illness and various personality dispositions. Descartes’ philosophical contribution was hence another dichotomy unto itself. If the soul existed separately from the body and God designed the soul, how and why was the body such a controlling factor in the nature of the soul and humanity? Descartes’ own writings contradict his philosophical extrapolations, as his purpose in writing the Treatise on Man was to discredit the religious bias of the soul’s position in philosophy. Descartes explains the body so that man will have no reason to think that the soul directs the body just as man does not believe that “there is a soul in a clock that makes it tell time” (Descartes 1998, p. 171). So if the soul is controlling of the body but the body can function independent of the soul, how can the body simultaneously command such dependence from the soul?
 To address the inconsistency of a single soul’s habitation in the body, Descartes crafted the theory of multiple souls in a single body. Descartes did not ascribe man to being connected with just one soul, but rather described the existence of several separate souls. The primary souls described were “qualitatively different,” with a soul existing as the controlling force for “digestion, movement of the blood” and other such bodily functions (Descartes 1998, p.  xxiii). The Cartesian notion of the multiple souls paved the way for secular modernity, as Biblical sources contrasted the French philosopher’s theories. Though Descartes’ thought was primarily religiously based, his views changed as the Age of Reason began to flourish. His contentions led to later conclusions that man did not require several souls, or even one. In the end, Descartes purports that humans do not need a soul “for these organic processes, but that all that is needed is the right kind of mechanical explanation” (Descartes 1998, p.  xxiv).

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN PHILOSOPHY

 Of the two philosophers, Descartes is the more faith-based, claiming that God “unites a rational soul” to the body in a specific part of the brain (Descartes 1998, p. 119). A person’s soul is placed in “the principal seat in the brain” and makes “its nature such that the soul will have different sensations” and different characteristics from all others (Descartes 1998, p. 119). Despite their different faith bases and assertions, both philosophers endorse the model of soul and body in the notion of a person. Both believe in a dichotomous existence, with the soul, body or both dependent on the other in order to function. Both philosophers believe in the body representing matter and the soul representing essence; for Aristotle, however, the body has no essence other than the soul, whereas Cartesian philosophy connotes essence in the later dismissal of the soul as the imperative of the two. Both philosophers believed that the body took up space but lacked essence, and that the soul had essence but lacked matter. They both believed that humans were separate animals from the rest of the living, breathing organisms on the earth because of their cognizance of existence and thought. In addition, both philosophers believed that without a soul, animals unaware of their existence were machines on the Earth that contributed to a larger system.
Both intrinsically linked the thinking to a mind, but only Descartes articulated the mind as an organ. Aristotle held that the mind constituted pure essence, whereas Descartes pinpointed the exact location of the gland said to house the mind and soul.
The two diverged on most philosophical assertions outside the dichotomy of man’s being. Descartes conceded that he “certainly [did] possess a body with which [he was] very closely conjoined,” but he also maintained that he “possessed a distinct idea of body, in as far as it [was] only an extended thing and unthinking thing” (Descartes 1998, p. 7). Descartes also believed that mind and body could exist separate of each other, whereas Aristotle did not. Aristotelian discourse argues that the soul is not a transcendent being but a part of humanity that cannot exist without space. While Descartes concedes a degree of the soul’s independency, he does not believe that the soul can move without a body, either. Where Aristotle clearly stipulated the connection and interdependence of body and soul, Descartes lacked a frank, academic argument that the mind is independent of the body with the possible exception of the brain. The Aristotelian argument that the mind is an abstract holds true, as the two are separate entities. Descartes, on the other hand, stops short of discussing the mind as a physical being; if the soul is dependent on a part of the body, then it ceases to be essence as essence and matter exist independent of one another. However, if the health of the pineal gland does in fact alter the soul, then Descartes’ argument of the soul’s abstraction is false and self-defeating. Aristotle, on the other hand, clearly postulated that the soul and body are inseparable; there was neither soul created for a body nor body created for a soul. The soul cannot be detached from the body, as it is similar to an organ or muscle. The soul, according to Aristotle, would have no bearing on the body, nor would the body manipulate it. Descartes, on the other hand, believed that bodily organs affected the soul outside of the pineal gland. The level of organ involvement determined personalities and sanity; Descartes believed the soul was a component created by God to live in the world, and Aristotle would contend that soul and body were created together.
 Descartes, unlike Aristotle, had significant continuity issues with his philosophy. While he agreed that a person was different than animals and other creatures, he believed that what made humans different was not the nature of the soul but the existence itself. He also tied different body parts with functions of the soul; this was something Aristotle would consider a non-issue. For Aristotle, the true abstract soul would have no physical connections to the body, as it was pure essence. Cartesian philosophy argued otherwise due to the physical attributes of the soul, another discontinuity in his epistemological path.
 Aristotle and Descartes’ contributions to the notion of a person differed most apparently in their nature of the body and the relationship of the soul to the body. Aristotelian tendencies followed precedence set by Plato and Socrates, and the prevailing inclination was to relegate the unknown not to man but to man’s environment. Like so many other classical philosophers, Aristotle contributions served mainly as an explanation to man concerning the state of the world. While Descartes was significantly different, his greatest contribution may have been the disconnects in his philosophy that led to the Age of Reason’s beginnings of secular theory.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aristotle. (1971) Metaphysics, Books [Gamma], [Delta], and [Epsilon]. Oxford: Oxford U P.

Aristotle. (2004) On the Soul. Raleigh: Alex Catalogue P.

Descartes, Rene. (1998) The World and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge U P.

Pasnau, Robert et al. (1999) A Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima. New Haven: Yale U P.