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SELECTED ASPECTS OF THE В‘BODY AND SOULВ’ ISSUE

V. Jakubovska, M. Joukl, K. Jakubovska

Abstract

In the history (of philosophy, art) there have been different ideas of the body and soul and their mutual relations. First opinions appeared in antiquity, continued in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the modern age, until the present time. The body was mostly the object of investigation, it was examined as a whole and so were studied its parts. In Plato’s philosophy, the body was considered material and the soul intangible. Although he found the soul to be more important, it was not possible to separate them. Aristotle studied the body as an object that could be seen and touched. Unlike Plato, the body was no longer a prisoner of the soul, it was closely connected with it. The body has become a part of the biological and cultural world. Medieval ideas were based on the ideas of God being the creator of everything, on a linear understanding of history, predestination etc. The body was not separated from the soul, but the relation to it was rather reserved (the body wastes, weakens, decomposes, is full of illnesses, etc.) if not a hostile one. More attention was paid to the soul. Although the Middle Ages discovered the personal dimension of the body, it did not apply to it as the basis of experience of the world, as something privileged. The Renaissance understanding of the body was partly influenced by the medieval images of the human, but more and more attention was being paid to the body and bodily manifestations associated with the soul. Descartes’s dualism of the body and soul, which was later questioned in the very modern age (D'Holbach, La Mettrie et al.), as well as, in the later concepts of Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, Marleau - Ponty and others, suggested further direction of this issue.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2017/22/S09.085

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