/lit/ - Literature

Notes from I.1:
>The individual soul has psychological distinctions.
It is clear that passions reside in a different part of the soul than ratiocination or opinion.
>Is the soul a composite aggregate?
Is there any difference between the soul and the soul-essence? If so then it is a composite aggregate. If not then the soul would be a form and we must admit it is immortal.
>The soul is not essence.
If the soul were essence she would not be able to partake in mixture or change; she would not have fears nor passions; she would be unreceptive and unperceptive of the external and unable to suffer. Yet all this is clearly not the case.
>The soul uses the body as a tool.
How do passions from the body penetrate into the soul? If soul were separate from the body then one individual would suffer while a different one would be affected. It is philosophy (logos) that separates the soul and the body, which were originally one.
>The relation of the body and the soul before separation was a primitive one.
They were probably mingled together, with the body being the independent part and the soul its instrument; however, philosophy raises the latter to the rank of the former, and she grows independent of the body.
>There are consequence of the mixture of the soul and the body.
The body improves by participation with the soul; the soul deteriorates by association with irrationality and death.
>The soul and the body cannot be completely mixed.
They are incommensurables.
>Not all affections are common to the soul and body.
There are some which require the excitation of blood and bile and are entirely bodily. The desire for goodness on the contrary belongs entirely to the soul.
>The soul's faculties, by presence, while remaining unmoved, cause reactions in our organs that enter them into movement.
The soul and body form an aggregate where the organism's life belongs to neither fully. If corporeal emotion finds its term in the soul, the soul feels.
>Animal nature is formed by the soul.
However it is not the soul's nature in itself; it is instead the nature of the composite formed by the soul and body.
>Our higher principles concur in forming the manifold complex of human nature.
Hence the soul-body feels sensation.
>The soul only perceives the typical forms, i.e. intelligible portion, of sense objects impressed on the animal sense.
The soul receives only image of the external sensation the animal feels. Rtiocination, opinion, and thought deal exclusively with these images.
>There is a superior part of the soul, we who direct this organistaion and a lower part of the soul which is mixed with the body and is irrational.
It is this part of the soul that partakes in Nous.
>The One hovers over intelligible nature. We, on the third hypostases, partake in the World Soul which permeates all bodies.
She is indivisible and in the universe.