Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - What is spirit like?

If in the previous chapter Crusius intended to explain the essence of spirit, in this chapter he wants to outline the basic features of a spirit. In effect, he has to describe in more detail the two basic capacities that distinguish spirit from mere matter, that is, understanding and will.

Starting with understanding, Crusius says that every idea a spirit has cannot be something passive. If there was a passive idea, he justifies his statement, it would have to be caused either by an external or by an internal activity. If an idea was caused by an external activity it would have to be either movement or caused by movement, because external interaction occurs only via movement. Both possibilities, of course, contradict the very immateriality of a spirit, Crusius notes. On the other hand, if an idea was caused by an internal activity, it would again be caused by movement or by some other activity belonging to the spirit. The former possibility is again an impossibility for Crusius, while the latter possibility he rejects, because ultimately all spiritual activities presuppose ideas.

Although ideas are always activities, Crusius continues, they can be directly generated by God, who supposedly does not act through movement. Furthermore, he adds, ideas can be modified by other activities of spirit and their generation, forcefulness and duration can be connected to external conditions.

Furthermore, Crusius notes that while all spirits have understanding or capacity for thinking ideas, only some spirits have reason, that is, an understanding so developed it is able to consciously know what is true. To have a reason, it is not enough that a spirit can have ideas, but these ideas must also be able to continue for a while. In addition, a spirit with a reason must be conscious of itself and it must be able to make abstractions. Finally, Crusius concludes, a finite spirit cannot have reason, unless God has given it the capacity to think, distinguish and combine ideas in a manner that it can recognise signs of truth in them by imitating divine understanding.

Crusius emphasises that if a finite spirit is capable of reasoning, its capacity of understanding is not derived from a unique force, but from a sum of many fundamental forces. The only other option, he points out, would be that the fundamental force would be the general force for thinking or knowing truth. Crusius rejects this possibility, because our ideas are so multiform that they cannot all have the same source. He especially points out that it is a very different matter to have an idea and to be conscious of this idea, because one can e.g. be angry without being aware of being angry.

If Crusius defined understanding as a capacity to have ideas, he defines will as a capacity to act according to one’s ideas. Every spirit must have a will, he adds, or otherwise its understanding would have no purpose. Every act of will presupposes an idea and therefore, Crusius insists, will as such is called a blind force.

Crusius is adamant that will requires fundamental forces distinct from those required for understanding, because otherwise will would be just a modification of understanding, which he has already denied. He especially objects to the idea that will could be understood as deriving from a representation of goodness, because good wouldn’t even be a meaningful concept without will. He does admit that the representation of goodness can awaken our will, but he doesn’t think this would yet reveal what will is. Crusius doesn’t even accept the Wolffian idea that the representation of goodness together with conatus or innate striving toward goodness would be enough to define will, simply because Crusius regards conatus as an unfamiliar manner of referring to will.

Every will must will something, Crusius points out, that is, it must be directed by specific ideas, which the will then strives to achieve by action. When such striving continues for a longer period of time, Crusius calls it a drive. Will must then have drives, and even, Crusius says, some fundamental drives, from which other drives are derived. Actions caused by the same fundamental drive can have various grades and directions, thus, Crusius concludes, only few fundamental drives are required for manifold variations in actions. Since a state of a spirit can be in accordance with a fundamental drive, in opposition to it or neither, we can speak of pleasant, unpleasant and indifferent states of mind or feelings. A reasoning spirit, Crusius adds, is also conscious of its state being pleasant and unpleasant, which makes it possible to speak of pleasure and pain. For animals, on the other hand pleasant and unpleasant sensations act then as mere physical causes.

Crusius notes that all animals should control their body and so they must have drives concerning the body and therefore also an idea of their body. Reasoning spirits, he continues, should also have fundamental drives that serve their moral perfection. Such fundamental drives include a drive for perfecting one’s essence, a drive to love other spirits and a drive to fulfil obligations toward God or conscience.

In addition to fundamental drives, Crusius insists, at least reasoning spirits must also have freedom. Even freedom, Crusius admits, does not do things completely without any reason, but it has to be guided by motives. These motives just do not determine the free will to do anything, but just make it inclined to something, leaving the will the final choice whether to pursue these inclinations. Free will can also boost smaller inclinations against stronger inclinations. Yet, Crusius notes, free will of finite spirits must also be finite and can thus be overcome by strong motives.

Activities of a spirit form a clear hierarchy, Crusius says. For instance, movement is the lowest kind of activity, which serves both understanding and will: Crusius again emphasises that the spirit should be able to move its own substance. Of the two other activities, on the other hand, understanding is subservient to will. This does not mean that e.g. laws of truth should be dependent on arbitrary choices of the will. Instead, it means that understanding ultimately does what the will wants, and indeed, for this reason we can speak of the moral perfection of understanding: e.g. a failure to develop one’s understanding could be taken as morally evil. With free spirits, Crusius concludes, freedom is the highest activity, which the fundamental drives should serve.

Crusius notes that there is a certain ambiguity in the concept of a purpose, which he defines as something that a spirit wills. He explains that we might be speaking of a subjective purpose or our own activity of desiring something, of an objective purpose or the object which we specifically desire, and finally, of a formal purpose, by which he means a relation between the subjective and the objective purpose. Purposes form a hierarchy, Crusius explains, since one purpose could be desired because of another purpose. He is convinced that such a series of purposes cannot continue indefinitely, but there must be one or several final purposes, which are desired for their own sake and not to fulfil another desire.

It is common knowledge that we often cannot directly achieve our purposes and so have to use some means to do this. Crusius notes that actually means is an ambiguous concept: it might refer to material means or the mediating cause used for furthering the purpose, but it could also refer to formal means or the activity of using the material means. Crusius also remarks that means can be divided into means in the proper sense, which are active causes that have in itself the power to further the purpose, and mere conditions, which do not have the power to further the purpose, but are still required by other causes to further the purpose. In order to be a proper means, Crusius adds, means must, firstly, make something happen to further the purpose, when so directed by a spirit, secondly, bring about something that the spirit wants before wanting to use the means, and finally, be used by spirit because of desiring the purpose. Thus, if a spirit doesn’t intend to use something because of a purpose, but for a completely different purpose, and this something happens to further the purpose, spirit hasn’t used it as a means for the purpose, but it has been a mere accidental intermediary cause for the purpose.

The notion of spirit is closely connected to that of life. Crusius defines life as a capacity of substance which enables it to be active from an internal ground in many, qualitatively different ways. The seemingly innocuous demand that activities enabled by life should come in many different forms actually implies that these activities cannot be distinguished by mere quantitative means, like spatiotemporal terms or grades of strength. Thus, these activities, and so also life, cannot be based on mere motion and can therefore belong only to spirits. Crusius notes that his concept of life excludes plants, which do not have spirit or soul. In fact, he adds, only spirits really have life, while animal bodies have life only in the sense of being connected to a spirit or a soul.

Crusius also notes that life is more of a continuum, with some substances being more alive than others. Thus, while one substance is alive in the sense that it has all the capacities required for living, another would be alive in a stronger sense, if its capacities of life are truly active. This higher phase of life begins, Crusius suggests, when the will of the spirit becomes active. Depending on the perfection of the will, life can then be also more or less perfect, and the highest type of life is the life of a free spirit.

While God can be alive and still have only one fundamental force, a finite living being must have several, in order to create a qualitative manifold of activities, Crusius insists. These fundamental forces must then be interconnected in the sense that one force is a condition or an object of an activity based on another force. Such an interconnection of forces then modifies the activities enabled by these forces and thus creates the manifold of activities required of a living being. These interconnections are then, Crusius concludes, controlled by laws, some of which describe interactions of spiritual activities, while others describe their interactions with the body and the material world.

Crusius goes through several of these interconnections of spiritual activities. Thus, he notes that force of will is dependent on the force of understanding, and especially, free will requires an ability of abstraction and consciousness of oneself. Other examples include when a drive for some purpose awakens a drive for the corresponding means or when thinking a certain idea activates also some other ideas through association.

An important type of interconnection connects the higher powers of the spirit to its capacity to move. These connections enable external sensations, in which ideas are not literally caused e.g. by our substance moving because of external objects, Crusius notes, but they still are conditioned by the presence of such a movement. Such an external sensation can even be an occasion for a substance becoming alive in the stronger sense, that is, for the substance activating its powers of life. The connections with the capacity of movement also explain why movements of the body can hinder our thinking and why spirits can finally return to the same inactive state in which they were, before having the first sensation. Although such interconnections are then possible, Crusius points out that a finite spirit can also be independent of the movement of its substance, which means that it would be constantly alive.

As an important instance of interaction with external things, Crusius points out that in order to interact with one another, spirits should be able to communicate with one another. With mere animals, this communication can happen through expressions, while spirits with reason are also capable of languages using words that express abstract thoughts. Both kinds of communication use the material world and its movement, but Crusius thinks that God is capable of a more direct sort of communication, in which thoughts are awakened straightaway in the other spirit.

Although activity of one power of spirit would be a condition for another power becoming active, it is still not necessary that when the first power stops its activity, the second should also stop: in some cases it might do this, in others not. This distinction between the behaviour of the powers is important for Crusius especially in cases where external sensations are a condition for the spirit becoming alive in the stronger sense. Some spirits might be passive in the sense that their activities both begin when certain sensations occur and end when these sensations stop. Other spirits, on the other hand, might be capable of independent activity in the sense that while their activities are awakened by sensations, these activities can still continue even after the corresponding sensations have stopped.

With a spirit capable of independent activities, these activities can then continue for a long period of time. Crusius emphasises that such continuing activities are not free choices, which always endure only for an instant. An enduring activity can then be strengthened by new sensations awakening similar activities and this strengthening makes it more probable that the activities lead to effects. In effect, Crusius says, such repetition of activities makes them habits. With human beings, some of these habits might have even been generated, when the human was still a foetus, and could thus be called inborn habits.

Crusius notes that spirits of the world can now be divided into four different classes. The two first classes consist of passive and independently active spirits, that is, firstly, a) spirits that live in the proper sense of the words only while they have sensations, and secondly, b) spirits that are awakened by sensation, but continue to live even after the sensations have stopped because of their inner activities. Both of these classes consist of spirits that do not always live, but must be awakened to life. The two other classes consist then of spirits that do live, even without the help of external sensations. These two classes are then distinguished from one another by c) one still having external sensations, d) the other class not.

Whatever the class a spirit belongs to, Crusius says, it is always a simple substance and thus immaterial. Crusius does admit that God could give a partless element of matter capacities to think and will. This wouldn’t still mean that God would have created a material spirit, but only a transformation of matter to spirit.

Christian Wolff: Rational psychology - Animal souls and human spirits

The final task of Wolff's Latin rational psychology is to show the place of human souls in a hierarchy of what could be called mental entities – a hierarchy in which humans form neither the highest nor the lowest rang. Completely outside this hierarchy are material entities, but apparently also mere elements of material entities, which have no mental capacities and which do not represent the world in any proper sense of the word. Wolff is thus clearly distancing himself from the monadology of Leibniz, in which all monads actually perceived.

Even if Wolff does not accept elements as souls, he dos affirm that animals have mental capacities: animals have sensations and thus consciousness, they are guided by sensuous appetites and aversions and they can even imagine things that they are not perceiving. Thus, Wolff concludes, they must have souls. It it not clear how substantially Wolff wanted to understand this ascription of souls to animals, because the capacities Wolff has described as belonging to animals are all such that have bodily counterparts in Wolff's scheme. Is saying that animals have souls only another way to point out that animal bodies exhibit similar processes as bodies of truly ensouled humans or should animals truly have a simple substance that senses, imagines etc.?

Whatever the case about the supposed animal souls, Wolff says that they clearly lack some capacities inherent to humans. Animals particularly do not have the capacity for language, and because of that, they cannot think or have distinct perceptions or concepts. Thus, they also lack proper self-consciousness and cannot therefore even have free will. Wolff takes this distinction between unself-conscious animals and self-conscious humans as important enough to warrant a new concept: spirits, Wolff says, are entities capable of self-conscious intelligence and will. While it was unclear whether animal souls are simple entities, spirits undoubtedly must be.

It comes as no surprise that Wolff does not want to restrict the concept of spirit to mere humans. He notes that human spirits or souls have essentially limited intelligence and will: they do not understand world or the essence of goodness completely. This suggests then a possibility of a perfect or infinite spirit that succeeds where humans must fail. Another important concept is the notion of a necessary spirit or a spirit that cannot be created nor destroyed, but has always existed and will always exist. Although Wolff does not yet identify the two, it is clear that the roles of an infinite and a necessary spirit will be combined in the person of God.

Human spirits are then not necessary, but can be created and destroyed, although as they are simple substances, their creation does not involve combination of parts and their destruction does not involve taking them apart. Now, since it is only such material creation and destruction that we understand, creation and destruction of human spirit lies beyond our understanding. Still, we can see at least that human spirit cannot have been formed from the spirits of its parents, because two simple entities cannot be turned into a third simple entity.

Wolff goes on to speculate that even a fetus must have a soul, since it evidently can have sensations. Still, all the perceptions of the fetus must still be obscure and therefore it cannot have any consciousness nor any memory. This raises the question whether the human soul is meant to be generated along with the body or whether it might have pre-existed, say, as the soul of some animal. Whatever the case, the perceptions of the soul become more clear and more distinct, when the fetus develops into a full-grown human being. Wolff concludes that this level of distinctness and the memories gathered by the soul cannot suddenly disappear when the body dies, but human spirit must go on living in another shape.

This is as much of Wolff's rational psychology I am going to examine. Next time, it shall be a good time to return to some of the opponents of Wolffian school.

Ludwig Philipp Thümmig: Institutions of the Wolffian philosophy provided for the use of academics - Do animals have souls?

Thümmig's psychology or theory of soul remains familiarly Wolffian in its main characteristics. Human soul certainly exists, Thümmig says, because we are conscious of many things and being conscious presupposes something that is conscious. Furthermore, this conscious being or soul cannot be material, because material or in general complex objects could not form a continuous unity out of its experiences. Thus, souls must be simple entities defined by their unique force or striving towards perfection.

Then again, Thümmig does not wish to dminish the role of body. On the contrary, he supports Leibnizian idea of a harmony between soul and body – changes in the soul are reflected in body and vice versa, because God has set the two to work in harmony, although neither has any true effect on the other. Thümmig's consideration of the doctrine bears an obvious resemblance to Bilfinger's discussion. As both works appeared in the same year, the reason for the similarity is probably to be found in discussions between the Wolffians. Particularly noteworthy is that both locate the bodily element corresponding to soul in brain.

Thümmig notes now that human brain is similar to brains of many animals. As the human brains are in a sense the physical manifestation of human soul, Thümmig suggests that animal brain is also a manifestation of a soul. In effect, Thümmig is advocating the idea that animals are also souled and therefore aware of their environment. This is important as the first opinion on the question of animal psychology in the Wolffian school.

Animals then have soul, but what sort of capacities are their soul is supposed to have? Animals do have sense organs, just like men – eyes, ears and noses. Thus, it is reasonable to suppose that they are capable of having perceptual experiences – they can, for instance, have an experience of redness, when their eyes come in contact with red light.

The question of conceptual capacities of animals is more difficult. Thümmig states that concepts as such cannot be directly manifested in the brain. He apparently thinks that even perceptions occur in brain as some sort of physical images – picture of a rose is somehow imprinted on the mind. Now, instead of concepts, words referring to concepts might well be imprinted in this manner, which would explain what corresponds to thinking in human brains.

Thümmig takes it granted that animals do not usually have any language skills – even parrots do not really talk. Thus, no words as such are imprinted in the animal brains and therefore they cannot at least have abstract thoughts without any clear perceptual content. Thümmig is thus saying that animals do have sensations, but not concepts. As we have seen, in Wolffian philosophy the difference between sensations and concepts is one of degree: sensations are at best clear, while concepts might be more or less distinct cognitions. In other words, animals can distinguish e.g. apples from pears, but they cannot define what is it in apples that differentiates them from pears.

In Wolffian philosophy, reasoning was seen as an essentially conceptual process. Thus, Thümmig couldn't admit that animals had any capacity for reasoning. This appears strange, because animals appear to make inferences. For instance, if a dog smells a piece of food coming from under two boxes and it cannot find any food from one box, it appears to know that the smell originates from the other box – in this case the dog has apparently deduced from statements of the form ”p or q” and ”not p” the third statement ”q”. Thümmig solves the dilemma by introducing the idea of a reasonlike behaviour – a non-concpetual capacity analogous to reason is operating in the dog's mind. In other words, dog has instincts that simulate the conscious use of reason.

So much for animal psychology. Next time I'll be moving to the second part of the book.