After the preliminary considerations, Meier begins his investigation by elucidation of what is meant by the soul being immortal. He notes that many earlier philosophers, especially those of Cartesian school, had said that the soul's immortality means that it will not be decomposed. Because they also thought that the soul was simple and thus composed of nothing further, they imagined they had sufficiently proven the soul to be immortal.
Meier notes that this Cartesian notion of immortality is simply inadequate: even if the soul cannot be destroyed, it might still fail to be immortal. As an extreme case of an opposite kind, Meier introduces Ludvig Thümmig’s notion of immortality. Thümmig had said that to be immortal, the soul must not just be indestructible, but it also must exist eternally after death, live after death and finally recollect its previous life. Meier thinks Thümmig includes in his notion things that are not really about the immortality of the soul, but about the condition of the soul after death. The true notion should then lie somewhere between Cartesian and Thümmig’s notions.
Meier starts his own discussion of immortality with a discussion of life, which he defines, following Baumgarten, as something continuing its own nature. By nature Meier means sum of all such inner determinations that causes changes in accidences or makes them actual. Thus, he elucidates, nature of something does not include just its essence and capacities, but also forces. One could then prove that something lives by showing, firstly, that it continues to have its capacities or forces, or secondly, by showing that it continues to have actual accidences or changes in them that depend on its particular nature. Meier notes that the latter method is more common and easier, and indeed, the only way we can prove the life of something from experience, because we cannot directly perceive capacities and forces. For instance, we can know a tree has not died during winter, only if we see it grow leaves again in spring.
Death Meier then defines as the opposite of life, that is, interruption in the nature of something. Hence, something can be known to have died, firstly, if we know a priori that its forces have disappeared, or secondly, if we know a posteriori that it has no natural changes or accidences anymore. Note that the dead thing can still change in a manner that does not belong to its particular nature, just like a dead tree can still rot.
Meier continues by defining human being as a complex consisting of a reasoning soul and a human body, which are in a close relation of correspondence. Humans thus have three types of life: life of their body, life of their soul and life of the whole human being. Meier notes that the life of a human being requires the life of the body and the soul. Then again, he adds, if a human body lives, so must its soul and the whole human being also. The death of the human being implies then the death of the body and the ensuing separation of the body and the soul, but it need not imply the death of the soul.
In separation from the body, Meier says, the soul has two kinds of life, because it has two types of forces. In regard to its lower capacities, based on indistinct representations, it has sensuous or animal life, while in regard to its higher capacities, based on distinct representations, it has spiritual life. Now, he adds, spiritual life requires sensuous life, but not the other way around, as we can see in a sleeping person. Soul can then also die in two senses: by losing its sensuous life and thus all representation or by losing its spiritual life and only distinct representations.
Meier defines mortal to be something that can die, while immortal things cannot die. Because what is impossible cannot be actual, assuming the immortality of the soul means, he explains, assuming that the soul cannot die and that it will continue living after the death of the human being. Because what is possible need still not be actual, mortality of the soul might not mean that it would actually die, although usually people assume that the mortality of the soul implies its eventual death.
Following common definitions in the ontology of his times, Meier notes that possibility and impossibility could be absolute or hypothetical. This implies then two senses of mortality and immortality. If something is absolutely or in itself mortal, it can die, when we do not regard its relation to other things. Hypothetically mortal, on the other hand, is mortal when regarded in relation to other things or in some context. Meier notes that the human body is mortal both in itself and hypothetically. Absolutely immortal is then something, the death of which would imply in itself a contradiction: this sort of immortality Meier reserves only for the highest being. Hypothetically immortal, then, is something which cannot die in some context. Meier notes that a thing can be absolutely mortal without being hypothetically mortal in all contexts, while hypothetically mortal is always absolutely mortal. Absolutely immortal, on the other hand, cannot die in any context and is therefore hypothetically immortal.
Meier notes that for the sake of religion and morality it is not enough to prove that the soul is immortal or continues living after death, because it could just sleep or live like an animal. Instead, if one wants to defend religion and morality with such proofs, they should also show that the soul is at least occasionally conscious of itself and of other things in the future life, that it uses at least occasionally its higher forces, that is, freedom and understanding, and that in its future state it also remembers what it did while attached to the body and even recognises its identity with its former state. These latter properties, Meier elucidates, do not characterise the immortality of the soul, but something more, namely the condition of the soul after the death.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti