Psychology

Psychology is a topic that was first defined and examined by Aristotle. 'Psyche' is Greek for 'soul', so 'psychology' means 'science of the soul'. Two main features of Aristotle's theory, drawn from ideas originating with Plato, are, first, that the Soul consists of three main parts, and, second, that it stands to the Body in a Form-Matter relation. The three parts of the Soul, in ascending order, are the vegetative, the animal, and the intellectual, with the latter best-fitted to be the ruler. By 'form', Aristotle understood not inert shape, but the dynamic shaping of lifeless material. But, whereas for Plato, Form is separable from Matter, and imperishable, for Aristotle, they are two sides of the same coin, and, so, Soul is as perishable as the Body of which it is the Form. Aristotle also abandons Plato's attribution of a Soul to the Body Politic, in which the 'vegetative' and the 'animal' levels are, by, analogy, the mercantile and the military classes of society, to be ruled over by a wise leader. Medieval Theologians, commited to the notion of an immortal personal Soul, sided with Plato in that regard, but rejected one of his concept's more problematic entailments, namely, that the vegetative and animal levels would thereby also be immortal. Their solution was to detach the upper Soul from its lower functions, rendering it merely intellectual, with some added religious capacities, and, with one consequence being that animals were henceforth conceived to be soulless automatons. Centuries later, despite presumed secularization, the 'soul' remains the province of Theology, 'Psychology' now handles animal motivation, and the pure intellect is the subject matter of such academic disciplines as 'Theory of Mind' and 'Epistemology'. The contemporary fracturing of the ancient Soul is perhaps even more legible in the Body Politic, where, generally speaking, the mercantile and/or the military classes rule, while academia prefers to remain detached from the rest of society.