This seems like a good passage to kick off a meditation on the classical speculation regarding the soul or psyche that is, the way that Plato and Aristotle treated of the subject, as best I understand them.
A couple of background notes. Plato and Aristotle regarded divine Nous divine Reason or Mind -- as the ordering, structuring source of all things that come into existence, including man. Man, of all the being things, alone possesses nous. Indeed, mans nous is in some way a participation in the divine Nous; and nous, an area of the soul, is what can facilitate the divine-human encounter, the basis of the divine-human partnership in love, goodness, and justice and their resulting creative effects in the world and society.
Well get to the structure of the soul in a second. First another background note. Divine Nous is the source of the hierarchy of being which expresses the total cosmic Reality. That hierarchical Reality can be summed up in the following list, set out top-down, highest to lowest:
Divine Nous
Psyche Noetic
Psyche Passions
Animal Nature
Vegetative Nature
Inorganic Nature
Apeiron Depth
We might call this layout the divine noetic specification of the cosmos. It is also the divine noetic specification of the microcosm -- man. For man participates in all of these, from Divine Nous down to the apeirontic Depth: As Voegelin notes, Man is an epitome of the hierarchy of being. And the site and sensorium of his participation is the psyche the soul.
Note where psyche fits into the above hierarchy. It is elaborated into two modes, the noetic and the passionate. It has a structure of its own. Rooted in the fathomless depth of the divine ground of existence (Apeiron), it is divided into the unconscious and the conscious. The unconscious is by far the larger part. It has content of which consciousness is not aware (but which can perhaps be retrieved by means of anamnesis, or recollection of memory. But thats a story for another time).
Consciousness itself is a fairly small part of the psyche. It includes sensation, feeling, passions. It also includes Reason, mind nous.
Reason in this sense is not the instrumental reason, such as we see employed in analytical thinking. Rather, Reason is the essence of human nature; for as Aristotle noted, All men by their nature desire to know. Reason is the process for exploring human existence in all its dimensions. It reaches out, questing for the truth of Reality. And given its nature as a participation in the divine Nous, it is susceptible to being drawn from that direction in its search.
That drawing is an immortalizing pull from the creative, divine ground, the criterion of the divine Beyond of this world, mediated by nous in the medium of the metaxy, the in-between of human Reality. We can perhaps define metaxy in part as the psychic field of human existential experience resonating between the two poles of Divine Nous and Apeiron, the contents of which can be made luminous to consciousness via nous, and articulated in language symbols.
Just as man can be drawn by Nous, so can he also be drawn by Apeiron. But where the pull of Divine Nous is an immortalizing action, the pull from the other is a mortalizing one, drawing him downward into the passions and his lower animal nature. Perhaps these lines from Timeaus will clarify the issue:
Now, when a man abandons himself to his desires and ambitions, indulging them incontinently, all his thoughts of necessity become mortal, and as a consequence he must become mortal every bit, as far as that is possible, because he has nourished his mortal part. When on the contrary he has earnestly cultivated his love of knowledge and true wisdom, when he has primarily exercised his faculty to think immortal and divine things, he will since in that manner he is touching the truth become immortal of necessity, as far as it is possible for human nature to participate in immortality.
Man lives in the in-between of Reality, in the metaxy as Plato called it. But man lives in the in-between in more senses than the one just given. He lives in-between ignorance and knowledge; in-between life and death; in-between the animal nature and the purely divine; in-between mortality and immortality; etc., etc. And as mentioned, noetic psyche is the site and sensorium of the searching quest (zetesis) of the truth of human existence as participation in all the realms of the hierarchy of being, as well as the site and sensorium of the divine-human encounter that sheds light on all these problems of human metaleptic (i.e., in-between) existence.
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Alamo-Girl, Im not familiar with many of the sources you cite above, particularly the Kabbala. But looking at the five subdivisions of soul you mentioned, I am struck by certain analogies to the Greek account. This is particularly interesting to me, for Im not aware there was much cultural contact, if any, between Hellas and Israel. Still, Nefesh seems analogous to the animal nature of man. Rauch to pneuma, breath or spirit (which the Greeks definitely underemphasize relative to nous but then the great Greeks were probably the most intellectual people who ever lived). Nous and Neshama seem to be very closely related ideas. Chaya corresponds to the soul of the man who consciously submits to the divine pull that immortalizes. And Yechida corresponds to the joy of momentary sameness that rises, Nous-to-nous (so to speak) in the divine-human encounter, where the sameness and difference of the knower and the known dissolves temporarily in the act of noetic participation. It was of this sort of experience that Aristotle wrote in the Metaphysics:
Thought thinks itself through participation in the object of thought; for it becomes the object of thought through being touched and thought, so that thought and that what is thought are the same.
Thanks for posting this wonderful thread, A-G! Much excellent food for thought here
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The similarities between the Hebrew and Greek conclusions are astonishing to me also. I particularly note the excerpt from Timeaus:
I could see the Greeks thinking boys will be boys when they misbehave whereas the Hebrews would think the boy has sinned and now must atone.
Both see mans essential existence in the in-between and both see that he can become more. Evidently, the Greek sees the becoming more an opportunity for the self whereas the Hebrew sees it as a possible consequence of duty.
Interestingly, Christianity covers both the duty of the law (Hebrew view) and presents the ultimate divine opportunity (Greek view) - namely oneness via the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Notably, the opportunity is one of divine grace and is accessible by faith. IOW - as the Messiah, Jesus Christ is at the level of Yehidah according to the above excerpts. Keeping that in mind leads to deeper understanding of these passages:
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. Romans 8:14-15
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, [art] in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. John 17:21-23
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. I Cor 2:11-12
"Now, when a man abandons himself to his desires and ambitions, indulging them incontinently, all his thoughts of necessity become mortal, and as a consequence he must become mortal every bit, as far as that is possible, because he has nourished his mortal part. When on the contrary he has earnestly cultivated his love of knowledge and true wisdom, when he has primarily exercised his faculty to think immortal and divine things, he will since in that manner he is touching the truth become immortal of necessity, as far as it is possible for human nature to participate in immortality."What meditator on the Word can deny the dynamics and tensions of our sad earthly lives that Plato is mulling over here? Yet, here again is the opportunity for an inappropriate dualism. Thank God for the permeating possibilties (imperatives... declaratives!) of a regenerate in Christ: "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
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I'd like to discuss the Kab... well, let's say, the best Hebrew understanding of the natures of man further, a mite later (not to mention the best understanding of those who wrote in Greek, in "partnership" with the Holy Spirit). I confess I especially continue to be a bit confused as to what is and is not accredited to ruach. A word study in the Scriptures seems appropriate. Better load up that Bible study software I bought years ago, since I don't read the languages and unlike Bill and Ted, haven't even had occasion to converse with any of these ancient folk (other then The Ancient of Days, of course). "Nefesh, ruach, neshama, and... know." That should take up pretty much all Summer if I stick with it.