The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Skeptical Reactions Erupt Against Platonism

I. Aristotle Abandons Plato’s Postulate of “Personal” Immortality

ARISTOTLE, of Stagira (384-322 B.C.), greatest of Plato’s pupils—under whom he sat for twenty years—and for three years tutor of Alexander the Great, is regarded as one of the giant intellects of the ancient world. Döllinger significantly calls him, “Plato’s most illustrious disciple, and at the same time his greatest opponent.” ¹ CFF1 599.1

He was recognized as unsurpassed in logic and dialectics, and his philosophy was practical and matter of fact rather than mystical and speculative. He systematized formal reasoning and was considered the ultimate in his field, surpassing all before him in the natural science of his day. He was called “universal” doctor, for he compassed the whole circle of human science of his day and was the creator of logic, ethics, psychology, and natural history. CFF1 599.2

In 335 B.C. Aristotle founded his Peripatetic School in Athens. His students were called Peripatetics (walking philosophers), for it was his habit to deliver his lectures while walking. He rejected Plato’s doctrine of “ideas,” maintaining that ideas are not realities but merely mental abstractions. The idea exists in things, not apart from things. Aristotle held that God is an immaterial Spirit who is the First and Final Cause. Such an assumption, he said, is inescapable from the evidences of design in nature. CFF1 599.3

He did not, however, recognize a divine Personality. God, he held, is pure energy, transcending the universe—the unmoved Mover of all things, without plurality and without parts. Moreover, Aristotle could not conceive of God as framing the world at any given time. The process, he thought, was an eternal one. CFF1 600.1

1. QUESTIONS PLATO’S REASONING ON IMMORTALITY

With Aristotle the period of the great speculative system of philosophy is brought to a close. Following him philosophy takes a new turn, for he introduces the age of reason. Greece had gone through her period of credulity, her era of inquiry, and her time of speculation. And now, in marked contrast, Aristotle moves from the speculative scheme of Plato to the scientific method. CFF1 600.2

Aristotle’s philosophical method was the reverse of that of Plato, whose starting point was the universal—the very existence of which was a matter of faith. Then, from the universal, he descended to particulars. On the contrary, Aristotle rose from particulars to universals, advancing by induction. His system was therefore called “inductive philosophy.” Plato had trusted to imagination, Aristotle relied on reason. CFF1 600.3

Instead of Plato’s fanciful reminiscences, or abstractions—from former experiences, as he thought, in other previously incarnated lives—Aristotle sought to substitute actual experiences in this life, recalling facts and collating them and discovering likenesses and differences. But, like others before him, Aristotle was still confused. For example, he held that matter has a triple form—simple substance, higher substance, and absolute substance, or God Himself; that the universe is immutable and eternal; and that the primitive force that gives rise to all motion and change is nature. He also held that the world is a living being, having a soul. ² John Draper summarizes Aristotle’s discussion of what he believes to be the functions of the human soul and body, with this simple statement: “It is doubtful whether Aristotle believed in the immortality of the soul, no decisive passage to that effect occurring in such of his works as are extant.” ³ CFF1 600.4

Pictur e 1: Aristotle:
Aristotle, Plato’s Greatest Pupil, Abandos Plato’s Postulate of “Personal” Immortality.
Page 601

That is borne out by my own investigation. CFF1 601.1

2. ARISTOTLE IN SHARP CONTRAST WITH PLATO

Taking Platonism as his basis, Aristotle sensed its contradictions and its gaps, and struck out into new paths. In many aspects these two great thinkers of antiquity are in almost complete contrast. As Döllinger says, Plato was the philosopher of the intellect, Aristotle—of nature. ⁴ As to the relation of God to the world, Plato set Him forth as the Master-Builder, Aristotle as the last end or Final Cause. The world, he held, is from eternity, and the entire cosmos without beginning and therefore indestructible. CFF1 601.2

But, as noted, Aristotle also rejected and combated Plato’s doctrine of ideas and its consequences. He placed in nature the forms that appear to be embodied in her. They were not planted by God in nature but they constitute her real essence. Plato’s God is intelligent power, ordering and sustaining the world, or cosmos. But to Aristotle the First Cause is an eternal, ever-energizing substance, corresponding to Plato’s World-Soul rather than his creative Demiurge. To Aristotle there could be no plurality of gods. CFF1 602.1

3. SOUL IS THE “PRINCIPLE OF LIFE.”

Aristotle is likewise far from Plato in his doctrine of the soul and its immortality. He challenges the twin concepts of pre-existence and metempsychosis. He rejects as absurd the notion that the soul could enter any body it liked. And he regarded Plato’s theory of reminiscence as “frivolous” and “contradictory.” To Aristotle the soul exists primarily “as quickening the body.” It is the principle that gives form, motion, and development to the body—penetrating and energizing it as the principle of life. CFF1 602.2

The body is nothing of itself, except as a medium through which the soul is realized. ⁵ It cannot be imagined without the body, or the body without it. And Aristotle divides the soul into three component parts—the nutritive, the sensitive, and the thinking power (noes). What God is to the universe, that the noes is to the soul. ⁶ CFF1 602.3

4. ONLY DIVINE REASON IS IMMORTAL

The really human part that comes into being must also pass away. Only the divine reason is immortal. Here is Döllinger’s comment on Aristotle’s position: CFF1 602.4

“Only the divine reason is immortal; but, as the memory belongs to the sensitive soul, and individual thought depends on the understanding or passive nous only, all self-consciousness must cease with death.” ⁷ CFF1 602.5

In other words, there is no conscious continuance. Nevertheless, in one fragment preserved by Eudemus, Aristotle seems to support an immortal-soul concept. CFF1 602.6

“When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.” ⁸ CFF1 603.1

Döllinger observes that he was here obviously speaking “exoterically” to Eudemus, not scientifically. ⁹ CFF1 603.2

5. SEPARATED SOUL HAS NO “INDEPENDENT EXISTENCE.”

Erwin Rohde maintains that in Aristotle’s discussion of the soul’s nature and destiny “two voices are distinctly audible,” first, the physicist, then the metaphysician. The living, organic, physical body brings the potential into existence. Independent life resides in the body. But the soul is “bodiless and immaterial,” and is the cause, not the resultant, of the merging of the various functions of the body, which exists for the soul’s benefit. “It dwells within a natural organism.” It is not to be regarded as “separate from the body,” any more than the vision is separate from the eye. ¹⁰ Rohde explains Aristotle’s position in this way: CFF1 603.3

“When the living creature dies the matter of which it was composed loses its special adaptation to a purposeful organism, and this adaptation was its life; without it there can be no independent Substance .... The Form, the functional power of the once-living organism, its ‘soul,’ has no longer any independent existence.” ¹¹ CFF1 603.4

“There is nothing left that can be thought of as forming the content of the life and activity of the Mind in its separate existence after the completion of its period of life on earth .... CFF1 603.5

“The thought of immortality cast in this form could no longer possess any real value or ethical significance for man.” ¹² CFF1 603.6

In other words, there is a loss, or submergence, of personality or individuality in that continuance. CFF1 603.7

6. TRIPARTITE NATURE: BODY, SOUL, AND MIND

Aristotle distinguishes between “mind” and “soul,” and separates man into three parts—body, soul, and mind. The “mind” is “that in us which thinks and conceives.” ¹³ It enters into man at his creation, and is separate from the soul. In its relationship to the body and soul it is the ruling element over both. ¹⁴ The mind is what the individual man is, and without mind man could not exist. When death occurs, the mind disappears into “impenetrable darkness.” “The separate existence of the mind,” “persisting for itself alone,” is therefore “beyond not merely our perception but our conceiving as well.” ¹⁵ CFF1 604.1

7. ROHDE SUMMARIZES ARISTOTLE’S POSITION

Rohde brings out the fact that in his youth Aristotle had been a complete Platonist, indulging in phantasies about the “origin, nature, and destiny of the soul.” Later he repudiated the concept of the soul as inhabiting the body. ¹⁶ The “soul” was the “realization of the life of this entirely distinct and physical organism.” Mind, according to Aristotle, is not to be included in the soul, but is “coupled with the soul from without and for its limited period of life.” It has no compulsive urge for deliverance. Aristotle thus distinguishes between mind and soul. He does not conceive of its “separate existence after the completion of its period of life on earth.” ¹⁷ CFF1 604.2

8. ZELLER ON PRE-EXISTENCE, INCARNATIONS, AND “PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.”

Eduard Zeller gives a similar analysis: CFF1 604.3

“In his earlier writings he [Aristotle] enunciated the Platonic doctrines of the pre-existence of the soul, its incarceration in the body, and its return at death to a higher existence. He therefore assumed the continued personality and self-conscious existence of the individual after death.” ¹⁸ CFF1 604.4

But, Zeller continues, as Aristotle developed his own system he was “necessarily led to question these assumptions.” Aristotle considered the human soul as the “entelechy” ¹⁹ of the body, in whose service the whole body is enlisted. Here is the explanation: CFF1 604.5

“As he came to conceive of body and soul as essentially united, and to define the soul as the entelechy of the body, and as, further, he became convinced that every soul requires its own proper organ, and must remain wholly inoperative without it, he was necessarily led, not only to regard the pilgrimage of the soul in the other world as a myth, but also to question the doctrines of pre-existence and immortality as they were held by Plato. Inasmuch as the soul is dependent upon the body for its existence and activity, it must come into existence and perish with it.” ²⁰ CFF1 605.1

Zeller adds that Aristotle expressly rejects the idea that the dead are “happy,” but rather that death brings the loss of all senses. Hence— CFF1 605.2

“under these circumstances it is impossible to say that Aristotle taught a doctrine of personal immortality. He taught merely the continued existence of thinking spirit, denying to it all the attributes of personality.” ²¹ CFF1 605.3

9. WESTCOTT AGREES WITH ZELLER, ROHDE, AND DRAPER

Anglican Bishop B. F. Westcott ²² states that Aristotle “examined with most elaborate care” the immortality question, and sums it up thus: CFF1 605.4

“Sternly and pitilessly he states the last conclusion of man’s natural hope of immortality as tested by reason.” ²³ CFF1 605.5

“The judgment of Aristotle sums up the final result of Greek Philosophy on the soul, as a subject of pure speculation. From his time philosophy became essentially practical.” ²⁴ CFF1 605.6

10. OTHER SCHOLARS AGREE IN FOREGOING EVALUATIONS

Emmanuel Petavel, in his classic The Problem of Immortality, concurs: CFF1 605.7

“Aristotle, for his part, scarcely mentions immortality; the little that he does say about it is very much like Conditionalism.” ²⁵ CFF1 605.8

Dr. Stewart Salmond, professor of theology, Free Church College, Aberdeen, says significantly: CFF1 606.1

“Few have been satisfied by the Platonic doctrine. It made but scanty conquests either at the time or in later schools of Greek and Roman thought. It was not accepted even by Plato’s own immediate disciples. It does not appear to have obtained any place with Aristotle, in whose writings the whole question of the immortality of the soul is ignored; or, if not ignored, it is left so ... indeterminate by the great Stagirite [Aristotle] that Origen [Contra Celsum, iii. 75] classes him with Epicurus in this matter, and modern scholars, not a few, have concluded that he did not believe in the soul’s after-life.” ²⁶ CFF1 606.2

And the eminent Dr. Döllinger puts Aristotle’s teaching in this terse way: “The really human in the soul, that which has come into being, must also pass away ...; only the divine reason is immortal.” ²⁷ CFF1 606.3

The contrast with Plato’s position is noteworthy. CFF1 606.4

11. CENTURIES-OLD CONFLICT OVER ARISTOTLE’S POSITION

Because of his conflicting statements, the question as to whether Aristotle taught or denied the immortality of the soul has been the subject of innumerable debates from his day until now. But his main repeated position is quite clear. And it is incontrovertible that his name has been cited by many of his ablest followers in every generation as authority for rejecting the doctrine of personal, Innate Immortality. That is why examples have been cited. The battle has raged over the literal versus the figurative, the esoteric and the popular. ²⁸ But as Prof. Heinrich Ritter, formerly of the University of Göttingen, wisely says: CFF1 606.5

“The dispute cannot be settled by any passage in his extant works .... We must, therefore, draw our conclusion ... from the general context of Aristotle’s doctrine; and from this it is clear, that he had no conception of the immortality of any individual rational entity, although he did ascribe an eternal existence in God to the universal reason.” ²⁹ CFF1 606.6