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The Material Soul: Strategies for Naturalising the Soul in an Early Modern Epicurean Context

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Conjunctions of Mind, Soul and Body from Plato to the Enlightenment

Part of the book series: Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind ((SHPM,volume 15))

Abstract

We usually portray the early modern period as one characterised by the ‘birth of subjectivity’ with Luther and Descartes as two alternate representatives of this radical break with the past, each ushering in the new era in which ‘I’ am the locus of judgements about the world. A sub-narrative called ‘the mind-body problem’ recounts how Cartesian dualism, responding to the new promise of a mechanistic science of nature, “split off” the world of the soul/mind/self from the world of extended, physical substance—a split which has preoccupied the philosophy of mind up until the present day. We would like to call attention to a different constellation of texts—neither a robust ‘tradition’ nor an isolated ‘episode’, somewhere in between—which have in common their indebtedness to, and promotion of an embodied, Epicurean approach to the soul. These texts follow the evocative hint given in Lucretius’ De rerum natura that ‘the soul is to the body as scent is to incense’ (in an anonymous early modern French version). They neither assert the autonomy of the soul, nor the dualism of body and soul, nor again a sheer physicalism in which ‘intentional’ properties are reduced to the basic properties of matter. Rather, to borrow the title of one of these treatises (L’Âme Matérielle), they seek to articulate the concept of a material soul. We reconstruct the intellectual development of a corporeal, mortal and ultimately material soul, in between medicine, natural philosophy and metaphysics, including discussions of Malebranche and Willis, but focusing primarily on texts including the 1675 Discours anatomiques by the Epicurean physician Guillaume Lamy; the anonymous manuscript from circa 1725 entitled L’Âme Matérielle, which is essentially a compendium of texts from the later seventeenth century (Malebranche, Bayle) along with excerpts from Lucretius; and materialist writings such Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s L’Homme-Machine (1748), in order to articulate this concept of a ‘material soul’ with its implications for notions of embodiment, materialism and selfhood.

“Material”: “composed of matter. The soul of animals is material, that of humans is spiritual.” (Furetière 1702, p. 518 (Unless otherwise indicated all translations are ours.))

“The soul is to the body as scent is to incense.” (L’Âme Matérielle 2003, p. 174)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Boyle, Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things, in Boyle 1772/1968, vol. V, p. 427; emphasis ours. But Boyle also warns against taking final causes to be more primary than natural science: “the naturalist should not suffer the search, or the discovery of a Final Cause of Nature’s works, to make him under-value or neglect the studious indagation [investigation] of their efficient causes” (Boyle 1772/1968, p. 411).

  2. 2.

    For a related opposition between a more ‘static’ picture of early modern materialism and one which emphasises its fluid, humoral, dynamic character see Sutton and Tribble’s critique of Hawkes (2011).

  3. 3.

    That Descartes has come to be understood in much more ‘embodied’ terms in recent years does not affect the story told in this paper. See Sutton (1998) and Wolfe (2012a, b).

  4. 4.

    In his 1682 work Of the immortality of mans soule…, Baxter challenged “the Cartesians” in the name of devotion to God, ironically “confessing” that he was “too dull to be sure that God cannot endue matter itself with the formal virtue of Perception” (cit. in Henry 1987, p. 36).

  5. 5.

    Smith (2008), p. 473. We do not discuss this aspect here; see Wolfe (2012a).

  6. 6.

    Park mentions Melanchton and Telesio, to which we can add Pomponazzi and Cardano.

  7. 7.

    There are multiple strands of these naturalistic reinterpretations of Aristotle; for instance, the anonymous manuscript of 1659 Theophrastus redivivus tries to restate Aristotle’s Prime Mover in these terms (Paganini 1985).

  8. 8.

    Bayle, “Pereira,” remark E, in Bayle (1740), vol. 3, p. 653; see Paganini (1985).

  9. 9.

    AT I, p. 524/ CSMK III, pp. 80–81, discussed in Petrescu (2013). Thanks to Lucian Petrescu for sharing his work on Plempius and Descartes with us.

  10. 10.

    The original title is Quod animi mores sequuntur temperamenta corporis, or in Greek, ΓΑΛΗΝΟΥ ΟΤΙ ΤΑΙΣ ΤΟΥ ΣΩΜΑΤΟΣ ΚΡΑΣΕΣΙΝ ΑΙ ΤΗΣ ΨΥΧΗΣ ΔΥΝΑΜΕΙΣ ΕΠΟΝΤΑ.

  11. 11.

    For Platonic responses to Galen, see Hirai (2011), ch. 2 (on Jean Fernel’s Christianised- Platonic reaction to the resurgence of Galenism); for Aristotelian responses, Des Chene (2000), ch. 4, and for Renaissance responses (and artful combinations of Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen) within a medical context, Martin (2014).

  12. 12.

    On Cremonini see Martin 2014.

  13. 13.

    Berkeley (1710), I, § 141 in Berkeley (1999), p. 87.

  14. 14.

    Dover Wilson (1935), pp. 227, 309 f. Bright was also the inventor of modern shorthand (Characterie: an Arte of Shorte, Swift, and Secret Writing by Character, 1588). On Bright and humours see Henry (1989) and Wright (2000).

  15. 15.

    On Bright’s warnings about the implications of the humoral concept see Trevor (2004), p. 49.

  16. 16.

    And generally Bernier (1678), vol. V, book VI, ch. iii: “What the animal soul is.”

  17. 17.

    Burton (1628), I, v, 10: “Continent, inward, antecedent, next causes and how the body works on the mind.”

  18. 18.

    The tenor of our discussion owes a lot to the stimulating analysis in Sutton (2013).

  19. 19.

    The best study of this is Thomson (2008); see also Vartanian (1982), Thomson (2006).

  20. 20.

    Park (1988), p. 482, citing Pagel (1967), pp. 233–247. Thanks to Benny Goldberg for this reference.

  21. 21.

    “Digressio de animi immortalite secundum naturaliter loquentes.” Thanks to Hiro Hirai for this point.

  22. 22.

    “Et ob hoc intelligimus, Medicinam esse certiorem naturali philosophia, cum naturalis philosophia semper procedat ab effectibus ad causas, Medicina vero persaepe a causis supra effectus” (Cardano 1663/1966, vol. 8, p. 585, cit. in Martin 2014).

  23. 23.

    Most recently, Bitbol (1990), Aucante (2006), and Manning (2007) (a useful review essay).

  24. 24.

    Marx, The Holy Family, VI, 3, d, discussed in Bloch (1977).

  25. 25.

    On ‘officium’ or ‘office’ as a functional, teleological or ‘teleomechanical’ concept in early modern medicine, see Wolfe (forthcoming 2014b).

  26. 26.

    Discours de la méthode, part VI, AT VI, p. 62. Lalande observed in 1911 that similar remarks on the philosophical value and primacy of medicine can be found in Bacon’s De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum, IV, 1–2 (Lalande 1911, p. 305).

  27. 27.

    Cullen, notes added to “Lectures on the Institutes of Medicine,” cit. in Wright (2000), p. 244.

  28. 28.

    Willis (1684), p. 2; Willis (1683) opens with an admiring summary of Gassendi.

  29. 29.

    See the chapter entitled “Of the Science or Knowledge of Brutes,” Willis (1683), p. 32; Wright (1991a), p. 249. The opening pages of Willis (1683) are in part a critique of the animal-machine concept (targeting Descartes and Digby).

  30. 30.

    Pagination is specific to each text in this collection. Willis also says, however, that Gassendi does not provide the empirical details of how this vital chemistry of flame works (a gap he will presumably try and fill).

  31. 31.

    Pagination continous with Of Fermentation.

  32. 32.

    Thanks to Louis Caron for his help with Willis. The literature on Willis has by now reached respectable proportions; we have found Bos (2009), Bynum (1973) and Caron (2011, chs. 1–3) particularly helpful.

  33. 33.

    Conry 1978, Tabb (2014).

  34. 34.

    See the clear corrective remarks in Henry (1989), p. 98.

  35. 35.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.1.ii, in Malebranche (1997), p. 89.

  36. 36.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.5.i, in Malebranche (1997), p. 102.

  37. 37.

    To La Mettrie and Priestley we can add L’Âme Matérielle, as discussed in section 7 below.

  38. 38.

    Sutton cites psychologist William Burnham, who in 1888, after lamenting Descartes’ “crude physiology” and “dogmatism,” dubbed Malebranche “a true pioneer in the field of physiological psychology” for his account of brain traces and memory (Burnham 1888, in Sutton 1998, ibid.).

  39. 39.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.5.ii, in Malebranche (1997), p. 105; ibid., II.ii.1, p. 135, and II.ii.4, p. 141. For a masterful treatment of Malebranchian neurophysiology see Sutton (1998), Chapter 3, Appendix 2, p. 106 f.; for a more internal discussion of Malebranche’s argument, see Kolesnik (2011).

  40. 40.

    Malebranche (1674), I.x.1, in Malebranche (1997), p. 49.

  41. 41.

    Malebranche (1674), III.ii.7.iv, in Malebranche (1997), p. 238.

  42. 42.

    Malebranche (1674), III.ii.7.iv, in Malebranche (1997), p. 239.

  43. 43.

    Malebranche (1674), III.i.1. ii., in Malebranche (1997), p. 200.

  44. 44.

    Malebranche (1674), I.x.2, in Malebranche (1997), pp. 49–50.

  45. 45.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.V.4, in Malebranche (1997), p. 107.

  46. 46.

    Malebranche (1674), III.iii, in Malebranche (1997), p. 355.

  47. 47.

    Malebranche (1674), I.x.3, in Malebranche (1997), p. 50; “to which the filaments of our nerves lead,” I.x.5, p. 51.

  48. 48.

    Malebranche (1674), I.x.5, in Malebranche (1997), p. 51.

  49. 49.

    Berkeley (1710), I, § 141 in Berkeley (1999), p. 87.

  50. 50.

    Malebranche (1674), I.x.5, in Malebranche (1997), p. 51.

  51. 51.

    Malebranche (1674), III.i.1.iii, in Malebranche (1997), p. 201.

  52. 52.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.5.i, in Malebranche (1997), p. 96.

  53. 53.

    Malebranche (1674), III.i.I.2, Malebranche (1997), p. 200; II.i.5.i, p. 96.

  54. 54.

    Malebranche (1674), I.x.6, in Malebranche (1997), p. 53.

  55. 55.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.1.i, in Malebranche (1997), p. 88.

  56. 56.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.1.iii, in Malebranche (1997), p. 89.

  57. 57.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.4.ii, in Malebranche (1997), pp. 89, 97; Kolesnik (2011).

  58. 58.

    Malebranche (1674), III.i.1.iii, in Malebranche (1997), p. 202.

  59. 59.

    L’Âme Matérielle (2003), pp. 200, 202, 234, reprising Malebranche (1674), II.i.5 and II.ii.1.

  60. 60.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.1.i, in Malebranche (1997), p. 102.

  61. 61.

    A less-known case is Bayle’s paradoxically Epicurean appropriation of Malebranche’s Méditations chrétiennes, analysed in Argaud (2009); other cases of deliberately misreading Malebranche in the service of a new naturalistic scheme are surveyed in Kolesnik (2011).

  62. 62.

    Bayle, Nouvelles de la république des lettres (March 1684), art. II, p. 32, cit. in Mothu (1990–1991), p. 430; Haller (1774/1969), I, p. 556.

  63. 63.

    This section, which was known as L’esprit de Spinosa, is today attributed to the Dutch diplomat Johan Vroesen (as Prosper Marchand indicated at the time), although this is sometimes contested, and another prime candidate for authorship is Jean-Maximilien Lucas (Israel 2001, p. 696).

  64. 64.

    For some indications as to the difference between the two in the ‘radical Enlightenment’, see Wolfe (2010).

  65. 65.

    This is the only passage in Lamy’s work that will be taken over and discussed in the clandestine tradition (notably the Treatise of the Three Impostors, chs. XIX, XX and L’Âme Matérielle, as discussed below), as well as by La Mettrie in his 1745 Histoire naturelle de l’âme (the revised version, entitled Traité de l’âme, appeared in 1750: see ch. VIII, in La Mettrie 1751, p. 104), and in the Encyclopédie’s article “Âme.”

  66. 66.

    Bayle, “Rorarius,” remark D, in Bayle (1740), vol. 4, p. 77.

  67. 67.

    Lamy’s definition of an animal is simply “a mixture of humours and a particular structure of organs”, Lamy, VIth Discourse, in Lamy (1996), p. 106.

  68. 68.

    Bayle, “Dicéarque,” remark L, in Bayle (1740), vol. 2, p. 287; “Rorarius,” remark E, vol. 4, p. 79 and (as noted earlier), for the formulation “du plus au moins,” the article “Péreira,” remark E, vol. 3, p. 652. See Paganini (1985) on the latter formulation.

  69. 69.

    Lamy, VIth Discourse, in Lamy (1996), p. 104; Thomson (2008), pp. 88, 160, 170.

  70. 70.

    Anon. (1716/1904), § VII, p. 99; (Anon.) 1768 edition, p. 85, emphasis ours.

  71. 71.

    Cleanthes apud Hermias, In Gent. Phil. 14 (Diels, Dox. Graec 654 [ = svf 1.495]), in Annas (1992), p. 43.

  72. 72.

    This is taken up and elaborated by Lucretius, De rerum natura, III, 262–265, 268–272.

  73. 73.

    Gassendi, Syntagma, Pt. II, Physica, sect. I, Bk. IV, “De Principio Efficiente, seu de Causis Rerum,” ch. 8, in Gassendi (1658), I, p. 337a; see also Garber (1998), p. 771.

  74. 74.

    “l’âme est au corps comme l’odeur à l’encens, l’un ne peut être détruit sans l’autre” (L’Âme Matérielle, 2003, p. 174); this is a shorter, non-literal but more assertive rendition of Lucretius, De rerum natura III, 327-330.

  75. 75.

    Niderst first suggested Du Marsais as the author, who is now considered to have been the priest Etienne Guillaume (Mori and Mothu 2003), but this has been contested (Thomson 2008, p. 157, who does not say why). Guillaume was the author of, amongst other texts, De la conduite qu’un honnête homme doit garder pendant sa vie.

  76. 76.

    On ‘clandestine’ strategies of naturalisation of the mind (in both L’Âme Matérielle and Fontenelle’s earlier Traité de la liberté de l’âme) see Wolfe (2010).

  77. 77.

    See Niderst’s introduction to his new edition of L’Âme Matérielle, pp. 13, 16–17. For further discussion of this text see Vartanian (1982) and Thomson (2008).

  78. 78.

    Even the Jesuit Dictionnaire de Trévoux has under “Trace” a sub-heading entitled “Brain Traces” (“Traces du cerveau”).

  79. 79.

    Our aim is not reiterate the presence of every single possible historical source, which in any case has been done by Niderst over the course of his three editions of the text. See also Mori and Mothu (2003) for additional sources.

  80. 80.

    Malebranche (1674), I.xiii.5, in Malebranche (1997), p. 64; Malebranche (1674), II.i.1, § 3, in Malebranche (1997), p. 89.

  81. 81.

    Malebranche (1674), VI.ii.7, § 3, in Malebranche (1997), p. 492.

  82. 82.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.5, in Malebranche (1997), p. 101.

  83. 83.

    Malebranche (1674), VI.ii.7, § 3, in Malebranche (1997), p. 492, our emphasis.

  84. 84.

    L’Âme Matérielle (2003), p. 230. Malebranche also defined life in terms of blood: “man’s life consists only in the circulation of the blood” (Malebranche 1674, II.1.i, in Malebranche 1997, p. 90).

  85. 85.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.5.ii, in Malebranche (1997), p. 106.

  86. 86.

    The two treatises are printed together but paginated separately.

  87. 87.

    Malebranche (1674), II.i.5.ii, in Malebranche (1997), p. 105.

  88. 88.

    Emphasis ours. Cf. Malebranche 1997, V.i.4.

  89. 89.

    The text glosses on the brain and animal spirits, essentially based on Malebranche, at pp. 190–220.

  90. 90.

    L’Âme Matérielle (2003), pp. 96–106, with more details supplied after the criticism of Descartes, pp. 106–122, including an elegant combination of Bayle and Lahontan on beavers.

  91. 91.

    Priestley (1778), pp. xvi–xviii; Thomson (2008), pp. 223–224.

  92. 92.

    Locke 1975, IV.iii.6, pp. 540–541.

  93. 93.

    Lamy, VIth Discourse, in Lamy (1996), p. 104; L’Âme Matérielle (2003), p. 172 (the soul as flame), p. 228 (“l’âme de l’homme est matérielle”).

  94. 94.

    Gassendi, Syntagma, Pt. II, Physica, sect. I, Bk. IV, “De Principio Efficiente, seu de Causis Rerum,” ch. 8, in Gassendi (1658), I, p. 337a (see also Garber 1998, p. 771); also in Bernier (1678), V, book VI, ch. iii, p. 456.

  95. 95.

    “L’âme est au corps comme l’odeur à l’encens, l’un ne peut être détruit sans l’autre” (L’Âme Matérielle, 2003, p. 174). The author is apparently using de Coutures’ translation of Lucretius, De rerum natura III, 327-330 (Niderst, ed. (Anon.), p. 60, n. 1). In the 1692 edition, the passage is at p. 411. It is also discussed by Gassendi in the Syntagma (in the chapter on the soul, Pt. II, Physica, sect. 3, membrum posterium, Bk. III, “De Anima,” ch. 2, “Qui animam corpoream fecerint?”, in Gassendi 1658, II, p. 249b; thanks to Delphine Bellis for helping locate this citation), and in the Theophrastus redivivus.

  96. 96.

    On sensibility (sensitivity) and irritability as properties of matter in the eighteenth century see Wolfe (2014a)

  97. 97.

    On the naturalisation of the soul as ‘substance’ or as ‘function’, see Vartanian (1982) and Wright (2000); on the ontologically neutral aspect of this naturalisation, Hatfield (1995), pp. 188, 191.

  98. 98.

    For Kant’s attack on Soemmering, see Hagner (1992), p. 9.

  99. 99.

    Rather loosely rendering “Qui a guéri le corps, ne doit pas s’inquiéter de l’âme” (“Physiologie,” 1765, p. 538a).

  100. 100.

    Maupertuis, Lettres sur le progrès des sciences (1752), in Maupertuis (1768/1967), vol. II, p. 426.

  101. 101.

    Roche, Traité de la nature de l’âme, et de l’origine de ses connoissances. Contre le système de Mr. Locke & ses partisans (1759), discussed in Yolton (1987), p. 90 f.

  102. 102.

    Éléments de physiologie, in Diderot (1975), XVII, p. 334

  103. 103.

    Hemsterhuis/Diderot (1772/1964), p. 277.

  104. 104.

    On Glisson here, see Henry (1987) and Giglioni (2008). On how an Epicurean medical context produces a uniquely embodied form of reductionism, see Wolfe (2009) on La Mettrie and Wolfe (2012a) more generally.

  105. 105.

    Priestley, Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (1777), in Priestley (1972), vol. 3, p. 230.

  106. 106.

    For Malebranche, too, we cannot have a clear idea of our soul, but only a “conscience ou sentiment intérieur” (Malebranche 1674, 11th Elucidation, in Malebranche 1997, p. 552).

  107. 107.

    One of us discusses the ‘embodied’ aspect in more detail in Wolfe (2012a).

  108. 108.

    For more discussion of the methodological niceties involved in approaching the history of materialism, see Bloch (1995); Aury and Wolfe (2008).

  109. 109.

    Diderot, in Hemsterhuis/Diderot (1772/1964), p. 277.

  110. 110.

    Although if we consider Malebranche’s psychophysiology, or the multiple lines of fracture between Epicureanism and Spinozism suggested by interpreters of the period, this distinction loses its sharpness. For more on the chimiatric, non-mechanistic context of the material soul in Lamy et al., see Mothu (1990–1991), p. 390; on the Epicurean context, Wright (1991a); on La Mettrie’s Epicuro-Cartesian combination, Wolfe (2004).

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Charles T. Wolfe

  2. Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Michaela van Esveld

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  1. ARC Centre of Excellence for the History, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, West Australia, Australia

    Danijela Kambaskovic

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Wolfe, C., van Esveld, M. (2014). The Material Soul: Strategies for Naturalising the Soul in an Early Modern Epicurean Context. In: Kambaskovic, D. (eds) Conjunctions of Mind, Soul and Body from Plato to the Enlightenment. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9072-7_19

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