Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

It seems likely that humanity will always speak of the soul, even if religious belief were to disappear from the world entirely. And maybe therefore things make more sense when they are addressed to our souls rather than to our minds and bodies.

The rational mind is so cut off from the mammalian mind and from the body — no wonder she sees herself as trapped in some abstract realm. It’s our pre-frontal cortex that gives us our uniquely human characteristics, including language. It’s no wonder that we often think of things in abstract terms — and no wonder we think of ourselves as having a soul or an essence. The mystery is certainly consciousness itself — how it can exist at all. So do we really need to explain essence or soul? Well, the word soul — in the context of the Aristotelian soul I’ve been describing here — may not be the best term to use for the meaning I’ve been ascribing to it. But I think it shows a different way of understanding her, and even a way that, whilst recognising its meaning in common parlance, nevertheless does not rely on supernatural interpretations. Instead, she may be known through the emergence inherent in nature, and the ways that larger entities in nature can affect their smaller counterparts.

We can take things further and speak of the ‘interbeing’ of all things. But then we are off into the underlying paradoxes that shape our world — form and formlessness — the One and the Many — infinity and eternity — and all the rest. That will be the subject of our next chapter.

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