Bodygesamttext

Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 1 THE BODY-MIND PROBLEM AND THE CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHICAL DICUSSION A CRITICAL AND SYSTEMATIC STUDY by Josef Seifert, Internationale Akademie für Philosophie im Fürstentum Liechtenstein Partly translated from the German original (Das Leib-Seele-Problem in der gegenwärtigen philosophischen Diskussion. Eine kritische Analyse. (The Body/Mind Problem in Contemporary Philosophical Discussion. A Critical Analysis) (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1979)1 by Professor Robert Wood, entirely reworked, revised and augmented with respect to the original German text by the author 1 The second revised and enlarged edition, almost twice as voluminous, is: Das Leib-Seele Problem und die gegenwärtige philosophische Diskussion. Eine kritisch-systematische Analyse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2 1989). Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 2 Preface The body-mind problem, or as one used to say, the body-soul problem is one of the great classical questions of philosophy. It was even called justifiedly by Arthur Schopenhauer the Weltknoten (the world-knot). For in this query the weightiest questions of philosophy and of the world as such are intertwined. Let us just review some of these questions: The foundational question of philosophy of man, what or who is man?, is so clearly present in the body-mind problem that the answer to it depends decisively on whether or not man has a mind distinct from the brain. Is the human being a machine or a mere sideproduct of vital processes in his neurons, and his consciousness identical with brain functions or a mere consequence of them? Or is man a rational being and thus has a soul? On the true answer to this question the entire nature of man depends. For as we shall see, only if man possesses a soul, he can truly know; and he can also be a free agent only if he has a soul that is irreducible to brain-functions and epiphenomena thereof. But linked to the problem whether man possesses knowledge and is free is also the character of man as a person, as a moral agent who can be good or evil, act rightly or wrongly. Thus the entire sphere of morality and ethics is intimately interwoven with the bodymind problem. As the human body is not only a material thing like the physical entities which we call bodies, the body-mind problem is intimately connected with two further great problems of philosophical anthropology and of philosophy of nature: with the question what is life?, because a lived body, a Leib or corps-propre is never a pure machine. 2 At the same time, the lived human body is not only a body that is biologically speaking alive, as are plants, but is also connected with conscious experience that tranforms the character of a human body when compared to a machine, a material thing or a tree. The body becomes a human body through ist union with speech, thought, action, love, etc. Our own body as experienced from within and the body of the other person with whom we speak or whom we love is essentially more than matter. But what is this ‘more than’? 2 On this question see Josef Seifert, What is Life? On the Originality, Irreducibility and Value of Life. Value Inquiry Book Series (VIBS), ed. by Robert Ginsberg, vol 51/Central European Value Studies (CEVS), ed. by H.G. Callaway (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997). Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 3 Since the human body also is a material thing, the question of the relationship between body and mind touches also philosophy of nature: therefore besides the question of life also the question of matter and of space, spacial extention, etc. enters into our problem. And most obviously, the question of immortality – of which Pascal said that only a monstrous degree of indifference can make man unconcerned with this question that deals with our everything or nothing – is intimately interwoven with the body-mind problem. For if man has no soul, his being will be both destroyed and dissolved in death, as Epicurus taught, and then his life will be conceived completely differently than by a philosophy which recognizes the eternity of the human self. And of course, any religion such as the Christian one which teaches immortality can be nothing but an illusion if there is no soul. Thus the fate of man and of religion is inseparable from the outcome of this question about the soul. Connected with the question of freedom, knowledge, personhood, and religion is also the problem of the existence of God. A professor of medicine and friend of mine saw this quite clearly. As a materialist and atheist, he had reached the conclusion that if man has a soul, there must also be God because a soul cannot be produced by matter. Therefore, when he understood suddenly on the occasion of listening to a piece by Chopin that the music of Chopin and its beauty could only be perceived and appreciated by a subject that is irreducible to the brain, he immediately accepted God and even religion. This is an impressive documentation of the character of the body-mind problem as a world-knot. Yet there are many other aspects of the problem which further illustrate this truth: for example the intimate connection of the question with some of the most significant problems of epistemology, such as the question of philosophical method versus empirical methods of research, of the limits of both of these methods and their exact correlation and unity. In the following study, I build on an epistemological foundation which was laid by the great classical thinkers from Plato and Aristotle on but which was reformulated and deepened in many ways in our century by some phenomenologists, especially by Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 4 Adolf Reinach, Alexander Pfänder, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, and others, but chiefly by Dietrich von Hildebrand. 3 This conception of philosophy, while being filled with great openness and respect to natural science, is far from restricting philosophy to the construction of subjective theories or to mere linguistic comments on the results of empirical experimental sciences. It gives philosophy full credit for possessing ist own methods that are irreducible to those of science and whose results are nevertheless fully compatible with those of science. The compatibility and simultaneously the difference of method of a medical and a philosophical treatment of the body-mind problem presupposes, besides the unity of all being and truth (no true knowledge can ever contradict another one), a crucial distinction made by Hildebrand. We must distinguish clearly between those contingent facts and non-necessary essential structures which only empirical observation and experiment can disclose, and those highly intelligible and necessary facts, as well as those existential experiences, which only philosophy can investigate and elucidate. Empirical science alone can obtain knowledge about the mycro-physiology and macrophysiology of the human brain, it alone can study the different kinds of nerve cells in the brain, the parts of the neuron, its nuclei, dendrites and axons, the different shapes of neurons, pyramid shaped ones and others, the functions of the axon hillock and of the axon of neurons, the input and processing of information through the dendrites of the neurons, the functions of the cell-body to keep the indispensable life functions intact in the whole of the neurons, the DNA and RNA transcriptions of the genetic program, the observation of the staggering number of 10 billion (10 9) neurons, and countless other things. On the other hand, all the essentially necessary aspects of the body mind problem only philosophical methods can explain: the existence and essence of mind, the ways in which it is given, the nature of knowledge and of empirical as well as a priori evidences, the essential differences between the marks of minds and of brains, etc. These objects of philosophical cognition can not only be object of speculations and theories but of rigorous philosophical analysis. A proper philosophical method must serve rigorously 3 Dietrich von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy?, 3rd edn, with a New Introductory Essay by Josef Seifert (London: Routledge, 1991). See also my Erkenntnis objektiver Wahrheit. Die Transzendenz des Menschen in der Erkenntnis (Salzburg: A. Pustet, 21976), and Back to Things in Themselves. A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism (London: Routledge, 1987). Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 5 the return to things themselves, that is the careful turning to the exploring of those necessary and intelligible characteristics and features of the essence and existence of beings which human experience as such and philosophical analysis bring to the fore. Characteristic of this method is the freshness of approach which is reminiscient of what Aristotle proposes at the beginning of book II of his De Anima, where he puts aside all the opinions of his predecessors on the soul and asks simply the question, what is the soul? At the end of this Preface a few technical remarks about the origin of this book: The present English book has a somewhat confusing history. The current text is the English version of a historical, critical, and systematic-philosophical work which was published first in German in 1979, following an earlier work of mine (1973) entitled, Leib und Seele. Ein Beitrag zur philosophischen Anthropologie (Body and Soul. A Contribution to Philosophy of Man), my Habilitationsschrift at the University of Munich. The original title of the present study was, in German, The Body-Mind Problem in Contemporary Philosophical Discussion. A Critical Analysis. In 1989 a second improved German version of the book (of double volume) appeared under a slightly changed name: Das Leib-Seele Problem und die gegenwärtige philosophische Diskussion. Eine kritisch-systematische Analyse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 21989); (The Body-Mind Problem and Contemporary Philosophical discussion: A critical-systematic Analysis). 50 % of the present book is a translation from the first edition done by my then colleague Professor Robert Wood. Wood completed this translation during the years 1980-1981 at the University of Dallas. At that time, Routledge and Kegan Paul Press in London had accepted to publish the book but then decided to publish instead of this translation of a German work another work, an original manuscript of mine: Back to Things in Themselves. A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism (London: Routledge, 1987). Later, as I had done an improved and enlarged version of the book in German, I did not want to publish Dr. Wood’s translation of the first edition but waited till I would have time to improve and enlarge the English text, too. The external opportunity to do this was provided by the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, which invited me in February 1995 to lecture on the Body/Mind/Problem. A second and even more significant opportunity to revise this text Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 6 is presented to me by the possibility of the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality Liechtenstein to invite the Professor of neurology D. Alan Shewmon during the academic years 1997-1999 for a research professorship during which we are able to teamteach courses on brain and consciousness. The present version of the book accordingly has different sources which correspond to the different stages of its genesis: 1) It contains the English version of the first German edition in Professor Wood’s translation (chapters 1-2, 4, 5, 7), with some corrections and additions of mine. 2) Chapter 6 of the present text I translated myself from the second German edition but the English text does not constitute a verbatim translation but a new version of this text. 3) Chapter 3 originates in the text of a lecture I gave in 1983 at a Conference in Dallas when Professor Hans Jonas who was expected to speak, had to cancel his participation. His book - which I discussed then extensively and critically - appeared so significant to me that I dedicated to it an entire chapter of the second German edition (ch. 3). The present text is the original (English) version of this text which was written two years after Dr. Wood finished the translation of the German original. 4) Chapters Eight and Nine of the present text were entirely newly written by me. Chapter Eight is an adapted version of a paper on brain death I had finished for an issue of the Journal of Philosophy and Medicine which was cancelled in the last minute in 1991.4 Chapter Nine originated in the annual „Cardinal Newman Lecture“ which I delivered in 1994 at Thomas More College in Fort Worth, Texas. Both chapters Eight and Nine are consequently not translations but new versions of the corresponding chapters Nine and Ten of the second German edition. Chapter Eight of the second German edition on Ludger Hölscher’s book on Augustine (Hölscher, Ludger, The Reality of the Mind. St. Augustine's Arguments for the Human Soul as Spiritual Substance, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986) and on other works in the Augustinian and phenomenological tradition as well as the Appendix of the second 4 The problem of the nature of death and of the redefinition of death in terms of brain death has recently occupied my work intensely. Another and considerably different version of my critique of the concept of brain death was published in The Monist: Josef Seifert, "Is 'Brain Death' actually Death?, The Monist 76 (1993), 175-202. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 7 German edition on the different meanings of the words ‘mind’, ‘soul’, ‘I’, and ‘person’, etc. are entirely ommitted from the present English text. But let us return from these dray technical questions to the great questions concerning body and mind. Josef Seifert, Schaan, Fürstentum Liechtenstein, September 25, 1997 INTRODUCTION The present volume is an historical, critical, and systematic-philosophical work. The approach to a particular problem usually opens with a systematic development of the point of view to be defended, and at the same time the contributions of contemporary thinkers which point in the same or similar direction are considered or even used as starting points. Following this, usually in the form of objections against the position originally expounded, the most important differing views on the same problem are presented and critically discussed. Within such a dialogical discussion, the point of view originally advanced will be examined anew, and either modified or deepened in the light of the objections. Thus the work as a whole follows a systematic plan, within which all fundamental contemporary philosophical views on the body-soul problem will be treated, or at least briefly sketched. The systematic and schematic character of the work will lead us to consider also some possible positions and objections which are not even defended concretely but deserve to be examined as possible positions and objections against the results of our analysis. This form of investigation has been chosen, not merely because thought borne by the attempt to look to the things themselves seems to be the only valid Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 8 way in which one can write a meaningful history of philosophy and because such a „co-thinking“ of a problem will alone permit us to understand the real concerns of other authors; but also because in this way many otherwise necessary repetitions in the presentation of different positions can be avoided. We believe as well that what is essential to the individual positions can be better brought out when they are arranged in a systematic and unified context, rather than presented in a purely „immanent“ manner, although in this way we will be forced to forego many details and any extensive discussion. Indeed, in many cases the full position of an author will have to be gradually gleaned by the reader from the treatment of his position in various places throughout the text. Not to increase the size of this volume unnecessarily, standard footnotes frequently were omitted. When they are ommitted, works are cited by year and page number, usually immediately following the name of the author mentioned. The bibliographical information can then be found in the bibliography at the end of the work. Usually, the date refers to the first edition, or else the edition cited will be indicated by a number placed before and above the year of publication. If only one work of an author is cited, the page numbers refer to this work, and no date is given. The expression „contemporary philosophical discussion“ refers primarily to the last decade, though to some extent also to the last 50 to 100 years. Only where reference to earlier views seemed indispensable for the understanding of present views (as in the discussion of the Thomistic position) has the earlier position been briefly presented. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 9 CHAPTER ONE THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND METAPHYSICAL BACKGROUND OF THE BODY-SOUL PROBLEM The body-soul problem, the question of the essence and the relationship of body and soul in man, cannot be separated from the fundamental principles of epistemology and of philosophy in general. First of all, it is obvious that a consistent, radically skeptical or relativistic point of view will render impossible any theses about the body-soul relationship which claim objectivity and universal validity. If we admit with Husserl (1900/01) that almost no thinkers of recent times are totally free from relativism, the above observation touches the great majority of all philosophers, whether those who skeptically doubt there can be discovery of objective truth or those who consider truth relative to an individual to sociological or historical groups, or to the human species. Indeed, if, with Hoeres (1969) or Seifert (1972), one detects a relativism even in the transcendental philosophy of the later Husserl, he too must hold that by far most thinkers – so long as they remain consistent – are unable to advance a body-soul philosophy which claims to be intrinsically true. Inconsistent skeptical or relativistic positions, of course, often contain theses concerning the body-soul problem, many times even theses of the most dogmatic kind. In fact, there are many authors whose relativism or skepticism does not merely go hand in hand with a dogmatic body-soul philosophy, but is even grounded in that philosophy. If, for example, human knowledge is seen as founded in and caused by physiological processes, this will lead ultimately either to making truth relative to material conditions (cf. below pp. 000 ff.) or to skepticism. If we prescind from a consistently skeptical or relativistic position, we must admit that nearly every epistemological position has been allied with nearly every possible position on the body-soul problem. This does not mean, however, that, Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 10 besides what we have already noted, there are no further relationships between body-soul philosophy and epistemology. Certain epistemological views usually objectively suggest certain positions on the body-soul problem, so that the two are found together for the most part. An idealistic or transcendental epistemology, for example, according to which consciousness constitutes appearances (noemata), leads by an inner logic to the view that consciousness also ontologically precedes and constitutes the material world and the body. (This solution to the body-soul problem, suggested by the Idealism of Berkelian, Kantian or Husserlian stamp, does not prevent there also being materialistically colored transcendental points of view, as we shall see.) The epistemological convictions of Sensism, Empiricism or Logical Positivism, on the other hand, usually lead either to the thesis that the body-soul problem is a mere pseudo-problem, or else to a defense of Materialism (e.g. Hume, Carnap, Feigl, Feyerabend, et al.) sometimes hypothetically advanced, sometimes advanced in a decidedly non-hypothetical manner. It is clear that, if all knowledge is built up out of mere sense impressions, no such impression will be found which could ground the idea of a substance or most especially of a substantial intellective soul (Geistseele). Further, we can see that, on the basis of the positivistic epistemology of the Vienna Circle and its later refinements (Schlick, Feigl, Feyerabend etc.), it is possible to assume hypothetically that the mental and the physical are identical, even though it be admitted that to us they appear totally different. For, the true essence of matter and of mind are hidden from us according to an epistemology for which all knowledge can be traced back to sense impressions or to empirical verification or falsification. Even metaphysical theories such as those which would be accepted by the Minnesota school still derive all their validity, according to these authors, solely and simply from the experience of the senses (cf. Popper, 3rd ed., 1969: Feyerabend; von Savigny; for a critical discussion see Seifert 1973, XXI-LXXVI, 130-135). That the roots of the body-mind Identity Theory lie largely in epistemology is not contradicted by the fact that Popper (1977), in spite Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 11 of sharing a similar epistemological background and bracketing questions of essence („What is ... ?“ questions), defends a dualism. However, he only defends it expressly as an hypothesis and leaves open the possibility that brain processes and consciousness could be identical (Popper 1977, 86). On the other side, it is understandable that de Vries, Scheler, Weiss, Pieper, Seifert and others, starting from the conviction and, I will argue, the objective evidence that man can grasp the real essential structure of things, would seek to ground philosophically the difference between the human body and the intellective soul – and precisely on the basis of the same experiential data which Popper or even Feigl would admit. Here, the fact that thinkers who share epistemological presuppositions similar to those of the dualists mentioned (for example, Spinoza, who adhered fully to the idea of the knowability of the objective essence of things) arrived at universal identity theories ought not to be interpreted to mean that the connection between the content of an author’s bodysoul philosophy and his epistemological position is purely arbitrary. It is only necessary to grant that it is in no way exclusively, and in many cases not even primarily, the epistemological views of a thinker which determine the positive content of his matter-mind philosophy. Nevertheless, two things could be shown: first, that specific epistemological positions dispose an author in the direction of specific views on the body-soul problem and make it nearly impossible for him to hold fundamentally different views on this problem (e.g., Idealism-Spiritualism). Second, and still more important would be the proof that the grounding of any philosophy which, in treating the objective essence of the psycho-physical nature of man, makes a claim to some kind of certainty, has definite epistemological presuppositions. To these belong, besides the fundamental recognition of the knowledge of truth and of being independent of human thinking, the acceptance of the faculty of the human mind to know not merely appearances, sense impressions, or the noemata of intentional acts, but the real being and essence of things in themselves. Furthermore, one of these presuppositions is that one accept Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 12 the human intellectual capacity to know with certainty universal and necessary essential characteristics of being. (Elsewhere the present author has discussed in detail the epistemological foundations of the philosophical treatment of the bodysoul problem [1973]. ) Besides his epistemological position, many other basic views of a philosopher decisively influence the form of his body-soul doctrine. We would have to mention here metaphysical and general-anthropological elements, (as well as many other aspects of a thinker’s overall philosophy.) Some of those problems in metaphysics and philosophy of nature, the answers to which obviously exert a profound influence upon the framing of the context of any thinker’s body-soul philosophy, might be: the questions of the essence of space and time, of causality, of freedom or of the person. Such presuppositions from metaphysics and philosophy of nature will have to be treated in greater detail later. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 13 CHAPTER TWO THE MENTAL AND THE PHYSICAL: ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE OR IDENTITY 1. First Delineation of the Essential Difference Between Physical and Psychic Data (Material and Psychic Realities) 1.1. Essentially Distinct Properties of the Physical in the Human Body and the Mental Before we can treat the problem of whether there is such a thing as a soul, or what the body and the soul in fact are, we must indicate the starting point in experience for the posing of such a question. That is to say, we must first identify the data which men call physical or material as distinct from those which they call psychic or mental. (In treatment of critical objections against contrasting the physical and the psychic, it will become apparent that, besides the problem of the body as a material being, one can also raise the completely different question of whether the specifically human body [Leib] can ever be reduced to a mere material entity.) Let us proceed first from data which are found in the human body and which anyone would acknowledge as material: a bone, the inner and outer human ear, the physical-chemical components of a brain cell, or even the color or form of one of these entity. Let us ask about the positive essential features of such corporeal realities, and examine whether these features can ever belong to a psychic datum in the widest sense (for example, an act of joy or knowledge, or even bodily pain). A first essential feature of the body, and of any material entity, is spatial extendedness. All physical-material forms are characterized by extension in the three dimensions of space. While it is true that many properties of material beings (e.g., color or shape) possess merely a two- or even one-dimensional extension, nevertheless, onedimensional aspects of material being – like the lines of its shape – still presuppose three-dimensional space and the material entity extended in that space. The cell-body of neurons is 20-80 microns in diameter, their axons 1 to 1.5 m long, etc. Even in the Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 14 micro-sphere this seems inescapable: waves, elementary particles and even energy quanta must also be extended spatially. Things like wavelengths, relations of magnitude according to which electrons or leptons are smaller than protons and neutrons, and many other facts attest to this truth. As Augustine has said, there is always less of a given material being in a smaller part of space than in a larger part. Instead of the term „spatial extendedness,“ it might be better to speak (with Hengstenberg) of the space-filling character of material beings, in order to make clear that they really fill up space and to eliminate the impression that they are reducible to geometrical extension. Data like spatial movement, the real traversing of a stretch of space in a continuous motion with a specific velocity, and similar properties of material entities also presuppose the nature of material being as filling out space. If we now examine a conscious or psychic datum, like pain or an act of will, we can see most clearly that any kind of space-filling extension is in itself impossible for them. The fiction of an act of will three centimeters, or even only a few microns long, or of a spherical joy, or of a pyramid shape of a volition, is in itself absurd. A second fundamental feature of corporeal entities is their being composed of non-identical parts, and their corresponding divisibility. De Vries (1970, pp. 68 ff., 75 ff., 86ff.) has especially emphasized this „unity-in-multiplicity“ (Vieleinheit) of nonidentical parts. For example, the brain, which is intimately bound up with our consciousness, is composed of approximately hundred billion (1011) non-identical neurons,5 and each of these hundred thousand million neurons is again composed of countless smaller parts, molecules, atoms and elementary particles. In addition, the brain contains countless other astroglia, oligodendrocytes and microglia cells. Hand in hand with such a state of composition out of really different, non-identical parts goes the possibility of decomposition into those parts as well, which is already manifest to some extent in the human body during a man’s lifetime, and more fully after his death. (We do not claim that these features touch upon the deepest essence of man’s material being, or especially the living bodily being of man, but only that they are essential 5 This number is taken from a leading text on the brain: Eric R. Kandel, James H. Schwartz, Thomas M. Jessell, The Human Brain (Norwalk, Conn.: Appleton & Lange, 1995), ch. 2, p. 21. This number appears to be a very vague estimate. For in almost all texts and books on the brain the number of neurons is estimated at a tenth of this, at 1 0 billion neurons (ten thousand million). See also Murray L. Barr/John A. Kiernan, The Human Nervous System, 8 th edition (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1993). The CD-Rom, The Ultimate Human Body even gives both numbers: Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 15 features of the body which are co-constitutive of its being as material.) On the basis of this last feature, we could even call the body a being which exists „assunder“ („Auseinandersein”) or „outside of itself“ („Aussereinandersein“). In the light of modern physics, many contemporary thinkers (e.g., de Vries and Büchel) are more ready to grant this second feature of matter than that of its spatial extension, at least as regards the microsphere. They think it advisable to retain the „unity-in-multiplicity“ of material being eventually also in independence from spatial extension. The present author (1973) has criticized this position on the grounds that the unity-in-multiplicity of non-identical parts characterizes the essential nature of matter only under the assumption of spatial extension; for a judgment (proposition), an inference, the series of natural numbers, etc. are also composed of non-identical parts, but they are obviously not material. Thus, the second essential mark of material being cannot be separated from the first. (Geyser, 294, adds to these two features the further one of „reality,“ in order to distinguish material beings from the extended and divisible objects of imagination. The distinction between merely imagined and really existing material entities, however, goes in such a different direction that we cannot treat it further here.) Again, an act of will, a pain or, even more, a spiritual act like knowledge, which could really be broken up into parts or built up out of them is in itself absurd. Thirdly, we find an almost unlimited number of specific and individual features which may be present in a material being. None of these features is a necessary, essential property of the material entity. But all of them presuppose a material being as bearer, and furthermore, every material being has at least some of these properties. Some examples are: spatial motion and velocity, weight, color, sense-perceptibility, hardness, shape, one of the three basic states (solid, liquid or gaseous), positive or negative electrical and magnetic charges – and then the infinite, concrete manifold of all these and other properties. Once again we can state that a conscious or psychic datum – in a much wider sense of the term than that employed by Scheler, who contrasts psychic with bodily feelings like pain – essentially cannot possess any of these properties. It can never travel at a velocity of 40 to 80 m/second as the action potentials travel from node to node in the myelanated axons of the neurons, nor at the lesser velocity in the unmyelanated ones. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 16 Fat cannot speed up the velocity of locomotion of thoughts, since they cannot travel in space at a certain velocity at all. Our affections or acts of logical inferring cannot be electrically charged like the ions in the brain which transmit information, etc. Nor can acts of hope keep wrapping around thoughts in 10 to 12 spirals as white fact glia cells keep wrapping around axons of neurons. All of this is evidently and with essential necessity absolutely impossible. In the course of this first demonstration of the difference between psychic (conscious) and physical (material) realities, we will try a second path of investigation similar to the first, but approaching the issue from the opposite direction. (cf. Seifert 1973, 12 ff.). Instead of beginning with the characteristics of material being, we will now seek the positive features which belong essentially to psychic being and ask if a material being can ever possess them. Psychic data, like an act of the will or pain, are consciously experienced or performed, or are at least ordained to such conscious experience. An act of the will, for example, is consciously experienced and performed from within. This takes place, however, in such a way that the act of will, prior to becoming an object standing over against our consciousness, is rather „in“ our consciousness. Brentano and others have spoken in this context of „inner perception“ or of „secondary perception,” in which psychic being is grasped, as opposed to physical being which is experienced in „outer perception“ or in „primary perception.“ Scheler (1913; 1916) has shown that the term „inner“ here does not mean „in the body,“ but refers to a completely different „act direction“ (Aktrichtung) or form (category) of perception. In the Würzburg School, „inner perception“ was set up as a psychological method, but there this expression refers to the observing of our own experiences after we have experienced them (cf. Popper 1977, p. 107). Thus, the expression signifies there a reflexive examination of our consciousness which clearly must have been preceded by the immediate experience. However, in principle the expression „inner perception“ is inadequate to signify the unique form of consciousness in which we stand within our own experiences, for it suggests that we must make our experiences into objects of some (inner) perception in order to come to know them. In reality, before any self-observation takes place we are, experience, and dwell within our own conscious experiences in a much more intimate Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 17 way than is possible in the consciousness of objects. For the distinction in question here we can introduce the expressions „lateral consciousness“ or „performanceconsciousness,” on the one hand, and „frontal consciousness“ or consciousness of, on the other (von Hildebrand). This conscious experiencing and performing is more than simply a mode of knowing, a way in which we come to know psychic data. It is rather at the same time a mode of being of the psychic. Psychic being has a conscious mode of being, which is to say that it is a conscious being. (Later we will deal with objections that this characterization of psychic being as conscious is too narrow.) Frontal consciousness, or „consciousness of,“ on the contrary, in no way characterizes the manner of being of objects, but merely their mode of givenness. It signifies the conscious coming-in-touch with a being which stands over against our conscious act. If we now think of a material being, or of an axon, neuron, or a dendrite in the brain cells, we see that it is impossible that any of these can be performed „from within“ (laterally), in the sense in which this applies to conscious (psychic) data. (Later we will attempt to bring this claim to evidence and to analyze the unique sense in which the extended being of our body can be lived and experienced „from within,“ and the difference of this mode of „living and experiencing from within.”) A second fundamental feature of psychic entities is that they presuppose a conscious subject, an I, a person. (For the problem of animal consciousness, cf. ConradMartius 1963; 1973.) All psychic experiences and human acts essentially presuppose this subject who can say „I“ and who consciously possesses his own being, or is in principle capable of doing so. In self-consciousness we find even a completely new dimension of lateral consciousness, the full self-consciousness of the person himself, in the sense of that conscious indwelling and awareness (Innesein) of one’s own self which can never characterize acts or experiences as such, but only their subject. This primal datum of self-consciousness also underlies the Augustinian „Si fallor, sum“ (If I am deceived, I am), as well as the Cartesian „Cogito, (ergo) sum“ (I think, [therefore] I am). This conscious subject is, in relation to conscious experiences and acts, something completely new even phenomenally. It is the conscious „performer“ of these experiences, which is to say that it experiences them and not the other way around. The conscious subject also possesses itself in self-consciousness, while neither experiences Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 18 nor acts can be conscious of themselves. Finally, this conscious subject, which is of a remarkable simplicity, is present in an immense number of acts and experiences. Geyser (231 ff.) in addition distinguishes the unity of the subject, in the sense of the simple presence of the subject in a multiplicity of simultaneous experiences, from the identity of the subject, in the sense of its endurance through time as one subject. One is here also reminded of Hengstenberg’s concept of „presentness“ (Gegenwärtigkeit), the existence of the subject simultaneously „in and above time.“ This simple and enduring presence of the subject of consciousness, which has been especially stressed by Lotze and de Vries, remains to be treated by us in detail later (below, pp. 104 f.). A conscious subject is an essentially necessary presupposition for any conscious activity within the human person. The same can in no way be said of matter. Even if certain physiological processes in the central nervous system factually presuppose the presence of a conscious subject, this is still a presupposition of a completely different kind. First of all, the conscious subject is in no way the subject of the processes in the cells of the ganglia or in the neuronic synapses. Here it is rather a question of being presupposed causally, or as a precondition. Secondly, this presupposition is not an essentially necessary one, but only factual-empirical. (Again, all of this will be developed in detail later in the discussion of various objections.) A third essential characteristic of psychic being discussed in detail by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Descartes has been especially emphasized in analytical philosophy. It can be called the „privacy“ of psychic experiences. In modern French Personalism, especially in Lavelle (65 ff.), this feature, referred to as „l’intimité de l’âme,“ has been subjected to very refined analyses. Ayer has written a well-known essay entitled „Privacy,“ in which he distinguishes four possible meanings of this term. The first sense of privacy would imply that a conscious experience, at least in some sense of the term, can be known by one person exclusively – its subject. According to Ayer, privacy in this sense is logically impossible. While we certainly agree on the objective impossibility of privacy in this sense, we understand such impossibility is based upon metaphysical, not logical, grounds (viz., the communicability of Being, the finitude of the human person and the fact that he is known by an infinite being). Psychic being is called „private“ in a second sense when at least in some respect it can be known or experienced exclusively by the person in question. This sense of the privacy of Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 19 psychic being is rejected by Ayer on the grounds that co-consciousness (a sharing of the same thought) is possible, and because he believes that in this sense of the term even many corporeal things could be called „private.“ Here, Ayer fails to distinguish clearly, as Husserl and Pfänder have done, between the thought, that which is thought-of and the act of thinking; nor does he distinguish the material body (Körper) from the lived body (Leib) (see below, pp. 000 ff.), nor factual from essential exclusivity of access. To this a third (for Ayer, the fourth) sense of privacy is related: namely that an individual thing (in our case, consciousness) cannot be „shared in.“ Ayer has rightly stressed that this is a metaphysical, not an epistemological, sense of the term. However, in this sense individual physical properties of the body also cannot be shared, so there is here no question of a feature peculiar to the psychic. Moreover, Ayer does not see that the undeniable identity which every being has with itself results in something totally new when we reach the level of the conscious subject – namely, possessing oneself in consciousness and experiencing oneself in a unique way from within, as „I myself.“ Finally, the privacy of psychic being can signify that, in questions concerning one’s consciousness, one’s own authority is, while not the only, at least the final judge. As did Scheler in his essay entitled Idols of Self-Knowledge, Ayer, too, notes that there is much room for self-deception here, but he still feels that in many cases this final sense of privacy can be applied to psychic being. In fact, we share the conviction that many conscious experiences are „private“ in this sense, and thus less immediately known by other men than by ourselves. But we hold that this meaning of privacy is neither an absolute characteristic of psychic being, nor the deepest essential feature which can be conveyed by the term „privacy.“ Let us clarify this point by distinguishing in a more systematic way four different senses of the term ‘privacy.’ It seems to us that a first and correct meaning of the privacy and intimacy of consciousness lies in the following fact: every person is not only (as is the case with every being) identical with himself, having thereby an objective relation to himself which no other being can share, but the person also perceives this self-identity from within in self-consciousness. Even more, I have, as a result of this unique access to myself in performance-consciousness, a kind of conscious contact with my own being, e.g., in my own happiness and unhappiness, which – and we emphasize this against Ayer – essentially cannot be „shared“ by another person, in the sense that Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 20 someone else could have an access to my being similar in the way in which I alone could have it. Even if an omniscient being perfectly knows all my feelings of despair and abjection, this being never can feel them from within as I do, and if this were possible, it would still not be my feeling them from within but his. We could call this both a metaphysical and an epistemological privacy or intimacy of consciousness. And it is an absolute sense of privacy, a kind of simultaneously ontological and ‘inner cognitive’ contact in the lateral consciousness of Vollzugsbewußtsein, which not even an omniscient other person can have with our being. There is also a second valid epistemological sense to the „privacy“ of consciousness which characterizes our access to our own conscious life only withe respect to other human and finite persons. Many things which occur in our conscious life cannot be known by any other man unless we share them with him. This is in part a consequence of the fact (which also underlies the „si enim fallor, sum“) that no other man can have an access to our conscious being which is at the same time absolutely certain and as immediate as our own. In part, this is also a consequence of the essential as well as the empirical-factual limits of human knowledge, which do not allow the consciousness of another human person to be perceived by us as immediately as our own conscious being is given to us in the performance of it. In both of these important senses the psychic life of the human person can be called private, and as such differs radically from material being and its „public“ character as equally accessible to everyone in principle. We must exclude as false that third sense of „privacy“ according to which no man but ourselves can acquire objective knowledge about our conscious life, as if the only road to the comprehension of the conscious life of a person would be the road of introspection. If that were true, other persons would „see“ nothing of our consciousness, our conscious world would be totally closed to them as far as knowledge is concerned, and the only bridge to that world would depend on faith in the verbal communications of others. This conception of privacy not only overlooks the fact that a superhuman being is possible who would intuitively know our consciousness as directly and immediately as we ourselves do – the idea of an omniscient God presupposes this; but this conception of privacy also fails to do justice to the way in which we can learn about another person Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 21 through his actions, his speech, and the expression of his psychic life and experience in his body. Indeed, even in its less radical form, according to which we are ourselves always the final judge in any questions regarding our conscious life, this thesis remains false, as is demonstrated by the fact that others can often see through our own moral self-deceptions. However, the existence of this kind of self-deception does not prevent us from still having ourselves an absolutely certain access to the fact of our conscious existence as well as to many data of consciousness. (Cf. the discussion of this question in connection with Wittgenstein in Malcolm [1977, 104-132}, Russell [117 ff.} and Ayer [1946]). Also here it is evident that this privacy of consciousness in the valid senses of this term cannot be found in matter. A neuron which would be private in the valid senses of this term identified above is intrinsically impossible. Matter necessarily lacks the unique privacy which results from the other essential features of human consciousness and psychic life. Fourthly, and finally there are a plethora of features of psychic being of which it can be said that, while no one of them need be present in every psychic experience, there is nevertheless no psychic reality which is without any of them. We can include here such traits as a specific degree of alertness, intensity (Bergson 1888), intentionality (Brentano; Husserl 1900/01; von Hildebrand 1959; Seifert 1973) etc. By intentionality we mean a conscious and meaningful relationship of a person and his acts to an object of which that person is conscious. Intentionality is a fundamental feature of psychic being, although it is not found, as Brentano thought, in all of its forms. In addition to these features, there are intellectual, volitional and affective experiences, as well as perceptions and sensations of all kinds. Again, it seems clear to us that none of these predicates could ever be found in a material thing or in its material properties. A neuron that would be intentionally and consciously related to an object, an intense bone in the scull, a happy or despairing ganglion in the brain, or a doubting axon hillock, are in themselves impossible. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 22 1.2. The Essential Difference between Physical (Brain-) and Mental Operations and Actions The reflection on the third group of distinctions between the mental and the physical data has already brought us into contact with another essential difference between the mental and the physical which does not concern the essential properties of physical and mental data or beings themselves in their static characteristics but the dynamic differences between them regarding their distinct types of action or operation. The consideration of these different physical and mental events, activities and operations will turn out especially significant for our purpose because hardly any materialist theory of the mind will actually claim an identity of neurons or of other physical parts of the brain with the mind but many representatives of brain/mind/identity theories and of behaviorist philosophies of the mind will claim that the mental phenomena are nothing but events or actions of the body or of the brain. Again, we can follow the same kind of procedure as before, and first investigate the characteristic operations and functions of the brain, then the specific mental acts and operations, investigating their respective essential structures, characteristics and differences, and finally conclude to the identity or difference of the mental and the physical reality in the human person. Considering the acts of the human body or bodily activities, we concentrate wholly on the brain and nervous system because practically nobody today identifies the mind with other activities in the body such as they occur in the respiratory, circulatory, nutritive or digestive body systems or in any other part of the human body, although some religious groups still give to respiration and heart-beat a role similar to the one most philosophers and scientists assign to the brain with respect to a person’s life. If we thus first regard the human brain, we find four kinds of operations or activities in it: (1) one that is related to the physical nature of the brain as such which the brain also shares also with all lifeless material entities, such as movement, velocity, susceptibility to causal influences from matter, etc.; (2) a second one which is linked to the fact that the brain is a complex entity capable of sophisticated operations and functions like those of computers; Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 23 (3) Functions which presuppose that the human brain is biologically speaking live matter, and (4) Operations and functions which are connected specifically with its character as human brain and which touch the essential and essentially different connections between the human brain and the human mind to which we shall return in Chapter Three. As we shall see, this fourth type of brain operations does not distinguish itself as such from those in groups 1, 2 and 3, except as far as the causes and effects, as well as other relations of these brain operations to the mind are concerned. While externally similar to the preceding groups of brain events, the operations and functions of the fourth group can be understood only when taking into account their mental origins or effects; we will therefore not yet treat them at this point when our discussion focuses entirely on the essential distinction between the mental operations and the physical brain operations. In this context, we will concentrate on the inherent distinctions between all conceivable physical operations of and in the brain and all the experienced mental operations and activities, in order to show that they are essentially different. 1) General operations of the brain as material thing: Within the first group of brain activities, those which the human brain has in common with all types of material entities in the living as well as in the lifeless universe, we find a great number of operations the capacity for which characterizes the human brain as a whole and in its parts. Since in this first part of investigating brain operations, we are dealing only with those brain events and brain operations which the brain has in common with lifeless matter, we have to consider here only all those functions and activities in the brain which the brain has in common with all other material entities: the brain in its entirety and in its parts can move in space, and is thus subject to the many essentially necessary laws which govern locomotion which physics investigates and which Adolf Reinach has admirably investigated from a philosophical point of view. 6 Besides locomotion, it is an essential part of brain operations that they contain chemical and electrical processes, as well as magnetic 6 Adolf Reinach, „Über das Wesen der Bewegung“, in: Adolf Reinach, Sämtliche Werke. Texkritische Ausgabe in zwei Bänden, Bd. I: Die Werke, Teil I: Kritische Neuausgabe (1905-1914), Teil II: Nachgelassene Texte (1906-1917); hrsg.v. Karl Schuhmann Barry Smith (München und Wien: Philosophia Verlag, 1989), S. 551 -588. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 24 forces; magnetically explicable attractions and repulsions as well as chemical and electrical events and reactions are found in the brain. It is not only evident but also obvious to everyone that these and countless other physical activities in brain cells are essentially different from mental phenomena such as thinking and that the operations and functions of the body on the level of those operations to which even stones are susceptible (such as locomotion) can never be ascribed to the mind. Since the impossibility of attributing such functions and operations of the body-matter to the mental is so obvious, this point does not need to be explored further and we will not waste the reader’s time by analyzing this point in detail. 2) Brain Functions Analogous to Computer Functions: We turn therefore to those brain activities which do have a much closer connection with mental events and which therefore by representatives of computer science, cybernetics, general systems theory, and by Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers are often thought to constitute the mind. Within those functions, let us first prescind from those brain operations which characterize the brain specifically as living organic matter. We concentrate then just on those aspects of higher brain functions which also non-living matter, particularly computers, can perform but which are by no means found in all material objects. Moreover, already in computers, and even more clearly and truly in brains, these functions are not so radically separate from mental data as locomotion or magnetic forces which exist in the material universe including brains. Instead, these functions of brains and to some extent in computers, are obviously closely related to the mind and to mental operations. Precisely for this reason they are judged identical with mental events and operations by most brain scientists and by many philosophers, as we shall see. These operations chiefly coincide with the events which can also occur in computers with which the brain is often compared or identified. We shall find that there are certain specific and astonishing features of brain activity which differ significantly from the analogous ones in computers by involving also biological dimensions of the brain as organ of a living organism, but now we are concentrating on operations which are in common between computers and brains, such as storing and transmitting information, codes, etc. Now are not these brain operations and functions identical with mental operations? Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 25 At a closer look we find that they are essentially different from the simplest mental act. While these brain functions are often designated with the same terms which apply to specific mental acts, such as receiving or giving information, they are in fact essentially different from them. Receiving and giving information as a mental activity differs toto coelo from any receiving or giving information as it occurs between persons. Those activities in the brain and in computers which can be confused, or even identified, with mental acts and which are described in language by words which mean both physical and mental events appear all to be related to the transmitting and processing of information through the different parts and events in nerve cells by means of signals, action-potentials, etc. These differ from analogous computer functions but we prescind here from this difference and concentrate on the quasi-computer functions of brains. The transmitting of information in the brain (and in computers) comprises different elements: the receiving information (input), as well as the passing on or transmitting information (output), the processing and the saving of information. Cybernetics and other computer sciences investigate these complex processes. As we know, the receiving of information and the other aspects of the transmission of information in computers is achieved through various electrical processes and their effects; these are studied in the various computer sciences. None of these aspects of input or output of information as far as they are found in computers transcends the level of material beings and its essence which we have discussed before. Information, or more precisely, material potential carriers of information are received by the computer through the input of electrical impulses via keyboards used by humans which send signals to the computer as well as through various programs stored on several types software (disks, CD-Roms, Internet, etc.) which transmit information to and from the computer. These signals can transmit information and hence lead to the computer’s receiving and transmitting information by bipolar ‘language-systems’ in the form of positive and negative electrical impulses and sequences of these. By passing on and receiving electrical and chemical impulses in certain sequences, ‘information’ is received and transmitted. The sequences of such signals and impulses are related to language and information by means of different sequences and rhythms of succession of impulses. By means of software prograns which are able, for example, to read this same sequences in different languages and transform them in the respective letters and signs pertaining to different languages and appearing Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 26 on the computer screen, the receiving, processing, and transmitting of information is achieved on this level. The electrical, magnetic, or other material processes and events, and the coded information they carry are received and then stored on various media such as harddisks, CD-Roms, or softdisks or on other media of saving information. Storing of such information requires some lasting material changes on the media of computer storage technology; and these can again be read. In these respects, the brain is a far more complex computer. In the brain, as we know, the processes of receiving and transmitting information are far more complex. It is the dendrites of the neurons which receive information from other cells through analogous electrical impulses to those received by computers. Each neuron receives such information via its dendrites from aproximately 10'000 other neurons, and possibly groups of 10'000 neurons form ‘muduls’ in which complicated spatio-electric sequences, patterns and formations carry information in modes the exact nature and relation in the world of which we still understand very little but which huge branches of scientific investigation in cybernetics and other fields explore. The brain is still very different from a machine. 3) Life in all its forms is an irreducible datum, and yet its essentially different characteristics such as self-movement, anti-entropy, self-organization, self-generation, etc. can be studied in depth. 7 In the brain as a living entity, the body of the nerve cells contains life and keeps the nervous system alive, while the nucleus of the cell contains the complicated genetic language and program of the DNA which is transcribed in the RNA in proteins, sequences of proteins and eventually transmitted to all other parts of the body. In view of its living nature, the functions duscussed under 2) assume a profoundly different character in the brain because of those entirely new functions of living beings which enter into the modes i which transformation is received in transmitted in nerve cells and in the brain. Thus the brain in a sense programs itself, grows, builds up new structures and centers of information, etc. The genetic information and its transmission is linked in various ways to the transmission of information that is received from the sense organs and from the outside world: via ions, action-potentials 7 Josef Seifert, What is Life? On the Originality, Irreducibility and Value of Life. Value Inquiry Book Series (VIBS), ed. by Robert Ginsberg, vol 51/Central European Value Studies (CEVS), ed. by H.G. Callaway (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997). Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 27 and the rhythm of their sequences, and processes in axons, synapses, etc. Excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms control the receipt and processing of this information. 4) The brain functions which can only be explained in terms of their relationship with the human mind we shall investigate later. Let us first turn to the analogous problem of the role of information receipt, processing and transmission in the genetic codes which can easily be compared with the modes of such information processing and receipt in brain cells. We might say that the sense in which genetic programs contain, receive, and send information is similar to the ways in which these processes occur in the brain. Since the famous discoveries of Watson Crick 1953 we know the hereditary substance DNA, and its fundamental structure – though many unsolved questions. The genetic code in the double spiral of the DNA is written and transmitted by means of 4 building blocks, and the sequences of these four bases– as in the Morse system – contain the amazing language in which the construction plans for all organisms and the proteins which make them up are contained. The content of this ‘language’ or genetic information contains the admirable order of the Gesamtgestalt of a living organism, of its species plan, its micro-structure of cells, its various respiratory, circulatory, nervous, nutritive etc. body systems, the relation between the metabolism, growth, and reproduction to the building up of the body as a whole etc. All of these things are stored in the ‘DNA’. Similarly, the ‘brain language’ is also written in similar sequences which, however, are probably neither the sequences of positive and negative charges in ions or chemical sequences per se but sequences of action potentials in neurons. The sequences of the pairs of bases in the DNA constitute the simple and yet incredibly complex principle by means of which the entire complex hereditary information stored in organisms is written and transmitted. The genetic revolution underwent a new climax in 1978 when Cohen and Boyer discovered (Standford) that foreign genetic information can be inserted/fed into genes and therefore genetic manipulation is possible, with all risks and chances involved. The nucleoids of the DNA are such an economic storage substance that 1 milligram of them is, when stretched out, 300000 km long (covering the distance from earth to moon) and that the genetic information concerning any man, while it can be contained in one tiny cell and in the order of sequences of just four ‘nucleodi letters,’ if Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 28 written in ordinary language, would have to be written in thousands or millions of voluminous books. It is obvious that such a genetic code must be immensely complex. Only computers can cope with the multitude of DNA sequences even in simplest organisms. Moreover: in each further body cell, at each cell-division of the human organism, the entire program of 300 million nucleoids is being copied with only one mistake being made as average. The further achievement of the organism is amazing: One estimates that there are 50,000 kinds of different human proteins which are produced on the basis of this program and stop being produced at the right time so that the meaningful whole gestalt, substances and flesh of the human body is formed from them. Another amazing genetic fact: while each cell contains the whole genetic program, it „knows“ which position it itself should take in the whole of organism, which function it should assume in the whole, and will assume exactly this and no other function – although it contains the programming for all cell functions. Another amazing feature of the human brain and the human body as a whole regards the many nucleoids. In man one knows three million nucleoids but estimates their number at 3,9109. Thus imagine the number of possible sequences between them in building up body formations if even chess with only 32 pieces and 64 squares on the board leads after ca 50 moves of 10 possible moves to the atronomic number of possible positions on the board of 1070. 2. Philosophical Interpretation of the difference between genetic and brain transmission of information and human information transmission as mental event: code as information, man as determined and completely contained Man thus appears as programmed by such information. Perhaps this seems to be a very new thought. Not so. While the discovery of the localization of the genetic code on the chromosomes is new, the idea itself of genetic codes and language is a very old thought that goes back to Aristotle and possibly even to some Presocratics. The newly Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 29 discovered localization of the genetic language is not so relevant for philosophy and the old and new thought that the whole human organism is stored in a tiny fertilized ovum posed always great philosophical problems. Materialists believe in a strict being contained of man in such information and in a complete determination of the future being of the human person by that information. But here many philosophical problems concerning the essence of genetic information, cell-information, brain-mudulat information, as well as of the role of causality and finality within this system of information transmission arise. 3. Information, causality, and finality A. What is information in the brain and in the interpersonal relationships of human minds (persons)? a) information in exclusively personal sense There is a sense in which giving and receiving of information only possible for persons. Only person can make something object of communication in the strict sense; for only he or she can know in the strict sense of knowing and hence form names, concepts, propositions by which persons refer to the world in a thinking manner, by acts various acts of meaning and by the specifically human language and communication in which meanings are expressed, understood, used in acts of meaning, and then communicated to other persons. Only person are capable of information and its transmission in this full sense of the term. Only the person refers intentionally and consciously to the world. All the elements described above are a condition for information in the personal sense. Only when one person communicates the content of his or her judgments, opinions, etc. to another person, language and communication in the interpersonal sense become possible. Through the judgment (Behauptung), for example, and the intention of a person to address another person by means of such judgments which are understood by him or her, interpersonal information exchange is possible. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 30 In a broader and deeper sense communication (Mitteilung) also is implicit in the declaring of love or other acts (in Verlautbarung), in body language and in many other related phenomena. Information (Mitteilung) in this sense is shown by Reinach to involve social acts, acts which are in need of being heard and which aim by their very nature at being heard, such as promises, requests, responses, etc. Thus to information itself, in this exclusive personal sense, belongs also the receptive act of understanding information. getting informed. This sense of information and getting information would be ridiculous to ascribe to RNAS, DNAs or Proteins often language used by geneticists or physiologists as if proteins and brains were smartest geniusses who understand all this and interpret it. This is nonsense. b) Objective information, not as act but as objective thought, judgment, proposition To the first sense of information corresponds a second. Not individual act of informing but product: proposition, complex meaning-units. it can also be called the information content: through it we aim at world. acts as such not communicated but these contents, universal, same in many acts, etc. world 3, not world 2 in popper's sense. also this cannot be understood by cells, proteins, etc. takes mind. But also this information in second sense cannot be directly communicated because propositions formed and understood only in thinking and cannot be communicated by man directly, mentally. It takes a body for that to be achieved. Therefore a third sense and medium of information required. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 31 c) Information as language in the sense of physical formations but at the same time as expressing meaning: word-meanings and ideal meaning-units are distinct from their linguistic expression which can occur in many different languages, belongs to a language, quite unlike meanings. If such a physical language or concrete language-formations are taken really as language, the latter presupposes both in its origin and in its addressee a person. The one gives meaning and the other receives meaning expressed in language. (Husserl) Only persons can receive or use language in and thus information also in this third sense of the term. essential necessity establishes in language the bond between persons and conceptual meanings of different orders, notwithstanding analogous and most interesting phenomena of signs and „languages“ in the animal world. Nevertheless, absurd to assume than information in this sense given or received by genom, etc. exclusive attribute of persons language in this sense. Wrong personification of nature when this is overlooked. Not even signs as signs can truly be understood by animals, even less concepts as concepts understood by any being except persons. animals of course possess some association and perception and even most phantastic perceptions such as of the difference between their human master and other animals, of their sadness: but all this darkly, in an essentially different manner, more as if by instincts: true analogy, but merely analogy. And even such analogy missing in eucariontic cells. These cells and proteins do not read or interpret the genetic code as a language in the third sense. demystifying genetic code as if it were interpreted as language by genius cells that read 300 million words in a minute. d) language as mere body of language: system of physical formations which are subject to rules of language games that can be handled as such without being understood as language Searle's chinese translation box. (Minds, Brains, and Science). Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 32 fourth sense of information. mere transmission of body of language and sequences of morse. Objectively, to be language, these sequences would have to possess meanings but they can be transmitted by entities which do not understand these meanings at all, they are transmitted by way of a mere physical-physiological transmission. Language as such a mere body of language can also be operated according to mechanical rules of combining words, rules which computers can apply so that new linguistic formations emerge. in this sense radios, tvs, computers, and body cells can give and receive and copy information special problem of quantifiability of such information and of its use in computers. how pure quantitative sequences inform about qualities? (conceivably more unknown elements in DNA account for that „More“: for that well-nigh infinity of variations in, let us say, a human face. In principle, there is hardly an insurmountable problem in this sense of quantifiability, however. Analogous to letters of alphabet. If we speak here – in transmission and receipt of linguistic structures – of information, we must remember that this language is not present in this case qua information. For as information these linguistic formations can only have effects when they are understood by a person. For meanings as such cannot exercize any causal effects except by mediation of persons. Therefore brain or computer which themselves cannot decipher and understand such information do not truly receive it but only its mere external body. Not even the human subject who does not understand and not even experience this language grasps it as information in third sense: only geneticist or neurophysiologuist conceivably and partially could do so. e) language as causally effective language: The purely physical language – we now come to see – can not only be considered as purely physical language as such but it can also enter the order of causes: inasmuch as it possesses physical properties and structures it can very well become cause of other events in the physical world. In this case physical language assumes quite different a Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 33 function besides being language and expressing meanings or carrying information. It becomes a physical cause. When the computer is fed commands, electric impulses are transformed into signs on the screen which in turn have meanings which we understand and read; now as meanings they have no effect. Rather, only when these signs or the impulses produced by programming or informing computers initiate simultaneously a causal chain, these may change the physical world and thus become effective. So the tv does not receive information as such from the broadcaster but a set of electric impulses which are causally tranformed or rather produce audio-visual waves of complex sort. In a similar way, also the genetic code or brain cannot receive information but only such impulses. Language functions here as a set of causal factors. Purely physical or physiological laws are at stake in their taking effects. Computers understand nothing, not more than a typewriter which Popper expresses well when he calls computers mystified pencils. One set of chemical-electrical forms is being transfromed into another, also in brain or body. otherwise ridiculous anthropomorphism and mysticism. And yet it remains amazing because what works as system of causes in nature, these impulses, codes, etc. may be read as languages. Their not working as language in nature does not prevent possibility that also information in previous senses objectively present and discovered by reader of computer or genom. Yet it is not effective in the computer or genom as construction plan but as cause, as entelechy. There two possible forms of this. 1. Possibility that same electrical and chemical events which carry information in one respect, are also effective causes in another: TV. This applies only to the case where someone could also read the same set of electrical impulses as language Reduplication of genetic information, etc. seems to be similar case. 2. Very different is the case in which the the embodiment of information and the causes are very different: such as the system of electrical impulses in computer and on disks versus the system of signs on the screen. We read only the latter and if the disk or the printing wheel is mixed up, we cannot read a word. This applies to some exent to Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 34 every case for man. For nobody reads directly electrical impulses which the radio receives but hears words and interprets only these as language. Not even the mere endproduct of the waves but only their appearance as given in human aspect is language for man. The perceived words, however, are quite distinct from the mere effects and even more from the impulses that produce them and have effects. So also here language is such as the physical medium of language differs from the causes as well as from further causes of the the mechanisms of a computer or the structures and life of the organism through which alone language and other meaningful structures appear in consequence of such electrical, chemical or mechanical impulses. Totally different, however, when only conscious subject mediates effects. Then language as such and as understood has effects: the reading of a book may then transform the world, for better or worse. Effectiveness of philosophy here. We must distinguish a further sense of information, though. f) Information as causally effective system in those cases in which it leads to or mediates conscious experiences: here, too, language is in no way deciphered by anybody, it is also not understood. Nor is it, however, merely causally effective in nature such as when a rose is being constructed according to DNA information. Rather it is connected with a conscious intentional relationship to world: this is in a certain sense found in TV where at the end I see a Verdi Opera: amazing connection between causal order and intentional object-relation and dependence on it (g) as well as information in the first sense (Radio-newsman informs me). When in this sense brain sends information to self-conscious mind, as Eccles says, then it cannot be true, as Hoeres remarks, that the mind reads off some brain language and understands it analogously to the computer-reader. Rather the brain and the complicated spatio-temporal electro-chemical patterns in its neurons and in the neuronal modules of the liaison brain are put into the service of conscious human experiences. They would lose all interest without that and worth no dime without this noble finality: that they are destined to mediate our conscious intentional relationship to the world. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 35 But we do not decipher the codes but by mediation of them we see something. Here the brain does not just causally produce effects as in plants but makes us see something that is merely mediated by it. And this medial function we may call information through the brain: the subject is informed by the brain, that is the brain events mediate his conscious relationship to the world! In still a different sense of informing, the will and actions program the brain. g) Information and being informed as essential mark of knowledge: in any case of direct knowledge we find information in the most fundamental sense: the object informs us about itself, whether through senses or more directly as in cognition of essential necessities or inner states. We could speak of self-information as opposed to Fremdinformation. all indirect forms of information go back ultimately to such a self-information of the subject through the known object that discloses itself to us. Receptivity (Kant destroy this moment in his „versuchen wir es einmal...). Aristotle: prote hyle, receptivity. But quite different in receptive transcendence. h) information in indirect process of knowledge: in all deductions and inductions...from signs etc. (cloud informs us, premisses inform us about conclusion, etc.) many kinds. B. Causally effective information called information only in view of meaning and value which it serves as its purpose: eating machine of Charley Chaplin: slaps him, etc. here no finality to be discovered. When it functions, however, one will speak of a program which is realizes and hence of finality. without concept of meaning and value no finality discovered but with it almost inevitable: no chance and necessity can bring about a nineth symphony no the miracle of the human body and of everything that is good in nature. Eccles, Löw. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 36 We prescind here from the possibility of detecting also evil plans if their is some negative meaning in them. 3. Limits and Extent of Genetic Programming: Causality and Personhood Many geneticists claim that whole man already in genes. Some, as Lejeune, in order to prove that man person and against abortion, others interpret this alleged genetic containedness of whole man in genes in opposite sense as proof for l'homme machine and for taking all licence with him. Whether put forward for a good reason or a bad one, this claim is completely false, we can now recognize. The genetic program does not contain whole man: 1. in each cell same program recorded, in cloning millions of genetically identical twins would result. Yet these would not be the same man just as identical twins are two persons and not one. Hence the genetic code cannot at all account sufficiently for the individual person. Soul, spiritual subject required. Eccles-argument. 2. Geneticists must consider that the genetic program as such, be is stored in a book or in the DNA does in fact in no way explain, let alone contain the individual man. For these stored programs are useless to do anything if the cells they contain them die. Thus life cannot coincide with them and they cannot constitute even the criterion for life. Only the living organism and the mysterious force of life can allow them to become influences in the mysterious self-organization of the organism: Kant quote, ConradMartius. 3. Forthermore, even in the living organism, the genetic codes themselves and the many conditions in the organism for their effects do not admit a purely causal explanation but demand finality. They do not provide their own ultimate explanation but need one and indeed various ones: anthropic principle: conditions, whole physiology, etc. but also all the principles of meaning in genetic codes and organism cannot be brought about by matter and meaningless, designless laws of nature. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 37 4. Many important parts of brainprogram not explainable through genetic code but through acts of learning etc. which in their turn depend on the nature of things and not just on physiological circumstances. They depend on free acts, hence physiological program itself not purely genetically explainable. This leads us back to a more foundational limit of the influence of the genetic code on the person. 5. Even in terms of content, the genetic program can only determine the hereditary qualities, in no way what is absorbed through learning, through culture, values, etc. Even less can it account for the ultimate determination of the person which proceeds from free choice and acts of the will, from the value responses to goods etc. free programming for which brain condition but not cause (Eccles' interpretation of Cornford's experiments) : Here in transcendence of cognition and freedom – as also in intentional affections – an origin of content of person totally beyond the genetic code: here lies an immense, fundamental and necessary limit of genetic code and its influence on the person. as Socrates affirms: Phaedo 98 b – 99c Let us turn further to the problem of the nature of genetic language. The ‘genome’ in its entirety and the single genes evidently contain ‘language’ in a purely analogous sense, and in a sense that is extremely different from ordinary verbal language. For ‘genetic language’ is neither spoken nor understood by its ‘addressee’ nor does it address itself even to a listener or a person. It is likewise different from ‘body language’ which term can again mean very different things which, however, deserve to be called ‘language’ only inasmuch as body-language either explicitly addresses itself to another subject that can in some sense of the term ‘understand’ the contents meant or otherwise conveyed by it (as in pantomime, a deliberate gesture, or a smile) or contain in their objective expressive content some ‘information’ about inner states such as in facial Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 38 expressions of rage, feelings of love or hatred, without any communication of meaning being intended. The act of speaking, or of using body language in an explicit sense, always is directed at some object or state of affairs. In community life and in its use for communication, language always possesses a second function: it intends to convey some content, most often some state of affairs, to another person. The speech-acts in the narrower as well as in the wider sense always involve a conscious intentional directedness towards intended objects and states of affairs. In the most characteristic forms of human language they contain a second element: the social act8 of communication which is in need of being perceived (heard) by another person and in which communication is conveyed, reaching another person. In the case of verbal communication, we also find the medium of meaning-units, of concepts, by which we reach out and intend some object or state of affairs: that something is or is such and such, or that an X is or is not y. 9 Language in this sense involves conscious and rational acts. Therefore regarding all these forms of language, especially those which imply verbal and conceptual communication, only persons can be speakers or listeners. In nature, what comes closest to ‘language’ in this personal sense is animal language although also here a weak and purely analogous sense of ‘understanding’ language must be presupposed, a sort of instinctual grasp of it by an animal. This ‘understanding’ is completely deprived of the rational height and rank of consciousness which This notion was introduced by Adolf Reinach and investigated by him with admirable clarity and depth in Adolf Reinach, „Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes“, in: Reinach, Adolf, Sämtliche Werke. Texkritische Ausgabe in zwei Bänden, Bd. I: Die Werke, Teil I: Kritische Neuausgabe (1905-1914), Teil II: Nachgelassene Texte (1906-1917); hrsg.v. Karl Schuhmann Barry Smith (München und Wien: Philosophia Verlag, 1989), 141-278 'The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law', transl. by J. F. Crosby, Aletheia III (1983), pp. xxxiii-xxxv; 1-142. 9 See on this notion of meaning-units, concepts, and their linguistic expressions Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Text der ersten und zweiten Auflage, Bd I: Prolegomena zu einer reinen Logik, hrsg.v. E. Holenstein, Husserliana, Bd. xviii (Den Haag: M. Nijhoff, 1975); Bd. II, 1: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, 1. Teil, Bd. II,2: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Erkenntnis, 2. Teil, hrsg.v. U. Panzer, Husserliana, Bd. xix,1 und Bd. xix,2 (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1984)., „Ausdruck und Bedeutung.” See also Adolf Reinach, „Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils“, in: Sämtliche Werke. Texktritische Ausgabe in zwei Bänden, Bd. I: Die Werke, Teil I: Kritische Neuausgabe (1905-1914), Teil II: Nachgelassene Texte (1906-1917), S. 95-140; see likewise Alexander Pfänder, „Die Lehre vom Urteil“, in: Pfänder, Alexander, Logik, (Tübingen: Ambrosius Barth/M. Niemeyer, 31963). 8 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 39 includes an awakened clear grasp of objects and states of affairs, the use of meanings expressed in language, of true or false judgments, etc. 10 And even that level of animal ‘perception’ which we find in dogs or horses is absent in bees or in lower animals which give no sign of such understanding as higher animals do. D) Genetic technology: ‚Genetic technology‘ means those activities and cognitions which allow us to change or influence the genetic program or the genome of a living being or of its cells willfully. This can be legitimate for therapeutic purposes and if risks justify it, as we shall see. But this genetic technology may also be gravely abused, especially when it is couples with an adoption of the theory of evolution. 11 The most horrid vision of such abuses unfolds when we think of the ‚test of evolution‘ by genetic technology referred to by Father Serra. 12 Here one presupposes that evolution replaces any pre-given natures and essences of kinds of animals or plants as conceived by Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas. Only statistical ‚speciesplans‘ are admitted as by Boorse. Even if this view of a total fludity of natures being a mere product of evolutionist chance and surviving of the fittest is rejected as false, it can give rise to limitless experimentation with altering genomes of humans or of animals in order to prove that any species of living organism (real and possible) can be built up by genetic intervention. Thus the horror-vision of a universal „experimental evolution“ by genetic technology emerges. Any such Even the recently discovered ‘lies’ of chicken which drop down as if dead after consuming corn in order to prevent that other chicken eat this perfectly good corn is an instinctual action which in no way can be interpreted as deliberate false judgment. 11 The Pope’s allocution to the the the Pontifical Academy of Scie nces of October 22, 1996, where he refers to ‘evolution having passed the stage of a hypothesis’ must not be construed as denying that the following types of ‘evolution’ are strictly rejected by good philosophy and Church teaching: metaphysical concepts o f evolution such as atheistic ones à la J. Monod, or Teilhard de Chardinean ones which deny the distinctions unbridgeable by any evolution between matter and spirit, life and life -less, personal and non-personal beings, as well as between the God-Man Christ, the ‘Christique,’ and merely human persons. The statement of the Pope must also not be construed to imply that the evolving of the human body (in which God would infuse the soul) from animal bodies is a confirmed as being more than a hypothesis which, I would argue, is not plausible. Nor does his statements confirm that a universal evolution of all plants and animals (mosquitoes and elephants) from the same original species is more than a hypothesis. Missing links and recent research of many top scientis ts throw doubt on this theory. Only within certain limits of development and trans-species changes, evolutionary changes by mutation, etc. are more than hypotheses. 12 Draft of his paper of September 1997, p. 2 (4d). 10 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 40 experiments with ‚producing evolution‘ (which would not prove, even if successful, that chance rather than divine or human intelligence can construct new species) are to be rejected not only for ecological reasons and for the sake of the risks involved for animals and disturbance of the ecological order and possible diseases, etc. , but also as an intrinsic attack on human dignity which includes the dignity of the human genome. 13 E) Gene Therapy This procedure, and its two methods of somatic cell-therapy and germ-cell therapy, is very well described by Professor Moore with reference to human persons:14 Gene therapy is the genetic modification of body cells of an individual person to prevent the development of disease or to treat existing disease. Somatic-cell therapy will change only body cells distinct from gametes and not affect the offspring, while Germ-cell gene therapy changes the person’s genetic constitution and thus change future generations. Obviously, the latter poses much deeper ethical problems because it involves other persons. Professor W. M. O. Moore argues that „there has been no successful gene therapy to date.”15 None of them unethical in Themselves but by use, consequences, effects, etc.: Neither genetics nor genetic biotechnology are in themselves morally speaking good or evil, but they become such by the purpose and intention with which they are carried out or used. What Reflexions on Cloning, issued by the Pontificia Academia pro Vita (Juan de Dios Vial Correa and Mons. Elio Sgreccia), (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997) says on cloning applies fully here. 14 Draft of his paper of September 1997, pp. 1-2. 15 On p. 7 of his paper, version September 1997. 13 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 41 5. Human dignity and its root in what is irreducible in man to the biological level, but includes the body and the biological sphere of the human being which belongs to the human person. Special dimension and manifestation of this personal human dignity in the value of the genetic integrity of persons. 2) The Special Character and Causal Effectiveness of the ‚Language of the Genome‘ Within the Living Organism Genetic language is entirely different from all these senses of language. It operates neither by being understood by anybody nor is it effective as language which could only happen if it were understood by somebody. Genetic language neither is understood by us nor by animals. (Of course, it is understood to some extent by geneticists but the effects of genetic language are in the organism and not in the geneticist’s mind, and these effects are not accomplished by the mediation of any understanding of the genetic codes by those organisms in which they take effect). Therefore the language of the genetic code does not operate by being first understood. It does not operate qua language, but by some dynamic causal structure of the living organism in whose cells and genes the genetic code is contained. It is by an amazing order of natural causes which this ‘genetic language’ steers in some way that the genetic program ceases to be powerless like human language as such is powerless, being able to operate only by being understood and motivating acts and actions of persons. As genetic language, however, it just contains the immensely rich and differentiated content of potential information, or at least the fundamental structure of it. Hence as genetic language it cannot operate nor be a means of communication, but it operates by its objective link to physiological substances, events and other causes, i.e., by its insertion in the world of nature and natural biological causes. It thus becomes capable of operating and achieving an effectiveness through the dynamic power of life which alone permits the genetic program and Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 42 language to realize in the real living organism ‘what it is speaking about’ in an active, real, and dynamically unfolding way. It has its effects not as personal language by someone else’s understanding the meaning of words and then putting them into action, but by a purely objective causal carrying out and putting into act its content, which is possible solely by means of this ‘language of nature’ being simultaneously causally operative.16 Thus in the ‘language’ of the genome, we find ‘language’ in an entirely new sense. For the highly meaningful natures of organisms are not only admirably written down in the genome but are also actively and powerfully transmitted through its language to the real developing organism as if this language were simultaneously a steering force within the organism. But no dead object, and not even the greatest work of human art, can be written in an effective language that is operative within a living being. In contrast, the human language of words and musical scripts of notes can only be operative by being understood by the conductor and the musicians who perform Beethoven’s 9 th symphony, or by the reader of a novel, or by the person who understands a handbook for a computer. Only in a very weak and likewise astonishing sense, we find such operative languages in computer programs but also these cannot be compared to the manner in which the genome transmits its contents. For in nature, in the living organism, the natures are written down in such a way that they perform themselves and do in reality (not only on the screen) what they speak about, which is only possible by some linkage of the linguistic meanings of the genetic program with the causal order operative in the organism. Similarly, computer programs can only execute what they speak about when they are connected with the causal order of a machine or of the hardware of the computer which transmits into reality what corresponds to the merely virtual reality projected by the computer language on the screen or in the imagination of the user of such programs. See Josef Seifert, „Genetischer Code und Teleologie. Information, Kausalität und Finalität“, Arzt und Christ, 1988, H 4, 15 pp. 16 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 43 3) The Genome and the Contingent Nature (Essence) of Organisms – The Foundations of the Fundamental Value of the Human Genome and of an Ethics of Interfering with It The language of the genome moves on three levels: it is generic language, specific language, individual language. For while it contains entirely individual elements of a perfectly astonishing complex structure, such as my or your structure-plan, it also contains generic elements (such as those belonging to all mammals) and specific ones such as those which belong to the human or to a specific animal nature such as that of an elephant. The human genome as the transmitter of human nature (in contrast to generic features of all mammals and in contrast to the strictly individual aspects of it) can truly be designated as a „possession of mankind,“ as Professor Vincenzo Cappelletti has called it, and as some structure-plan of the human kind with which we must not interfer except for strictly therapeutical including preventive purposes. Both the generic and the specific as well as the individual elements of the genetic program and language can, in virtue of the value and meaningfulness of all species-plans, be regarded at the same time as natures of a special value and dignity. The entire ecological movement and its vehement protestations against genetic interference rest implicitly on such a foundation: the genomes are not just an arbitrary set of information which, as in a computer-game, can be arbitrarily changed and manipulated. Rather, they are carriers of an objective nature, of the meaning and value of lions or elephants. But here it must be understood that when we deal with the value and dignity of the human genome, we are moving to an incomparably or – on a much higher level – that of human beings who are always also human persons. In man most clearly, but to some extent also in animals, we must say that the content of this admirable linguistic document of the genome possesses a high dignity through its connection to human nature, and to some extent even to animal or plant natures. Thus this language of the ‘genetic program’ is simultaneously part of the natures of different beings, of their essences. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 44 The radical difference in value between the animal genome and the human genome emerges before us when we consider the essential distinction between the human person and the animal. This distinction expresses itself also in the fact that ‘cloning’ in plants or animals is permitted under certain conditions, when it serves persons or even saves their lives (for example, if in the Ireland of the 1848 th famine new potatoes not infected by disease could have been obtained by ‘cloning’ healthy ones, which would have saved 2 million Irish people, this would have been perfectly justified). 17 4) Genomes can only Refer to ‚Contingent‘ Essences Which are Not Necessary in Their Essential Structure The human genome refers to human nature or essence. Yet what do we mean, however, by ‘essences’? And here we find that the significant distinction between three types of essence (necessary, contingent-morphic, and accidental ones) 18 is indispensable to understand the language of the genome: While those which we call necessary essences cannot be transmitted through a genetic program but have a deeper and more absolute root, it being absolutely impossible, even by divine omnipotence, to change them, 19 it is the contingent and non-necessary features of natures which are transmittable and transcribable through the language of the genome. The necessary essences are written in the language of the eternal truths, and every being in every possible world is subject to their necessity. No single change can occur without a cause, no state of affairs can coexist with its contradictory opposite, no moral evil can exist without freedom, no color without 17 See also the excellent text Reflexions on Cloning, cit., p. 18. See on this distinction Dietrich von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy?, 3rd edn, with a New Introductory Essay by Josef Seifert (London: Routledge, 1991), ch. 4; and Josef Seifert, Sein und Wesen (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1996), ch. 1. 19 Saint Bonaventure corrects the misunderstanding of Maximus the Confessor, (after him) René Descartes, and others that divine omnipotence can „do absolutely everything,” distinguishing precisely absolute essential necessities from mere contingent necessities. See on this also Kateryna Fedoryka, „Certitude and Contuition. St. Bonaventure’s Contributions to the Theory of Knowledge”, in: Aletheia VI (1993/94), S. 163-197, and Josef Seifert, „Bonaventuras Interpretation der augustinischen These vom notwendigen Sein der Wahrheit“, Franziskanische Studien 59 (1977), 38-52. 18 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 45 extension, etc. But the contingent natures of living beings are a fruit of the free will of the Creator, and they are also changeable. The unity of elements which constitute their essences could be otherwise and therefore can be changed, partly even by man. Being contingent and being subject to free creativity and subject to change, these contingent essential laws of organisms are written in the language of the genomes which develops a contingent program and gradually realizes the life-plan or species-project of the organism. 20 And it is to these contingent, living and created natures alone that the genome refers. Yet these meaningful contingent essences, most of all human nature, must likewise be radically distinguished from the accidental and completely arbitrary ‘natures,’ from those ‘natures’ which are nothing but the consequence of chance or of facts without meaning. 21 They can even be evil and constitute mere deviations from the original species-plan and nature of a being, for example when particular chromosomes are deficient and transmit genetic diseases. In the light of some grasp of the admirable phenomenon of ‘genetic language’ or ‘language of the genome’ we can come to understand what genetic technology is. By genetic technology we mean those human activities based on genetic cognitions which allow us to change or to influence the genetic program or the genome of a living being or of its cells willfully. Now since neither genetics nor genetic biotechnology are in themselves morally speaking good or evil, they become such, on the subject side, only by their purpose and objective character See on the idea that the Jewish-Christian doctrine of creation was the source of empirical science Stanley L. Jaki, Cosmos and Creator (Chicago, Illinois: Regnery Gateway, 1980); by the same author, The Origin of Science and the Science of Origin (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979). 21 See on the underlying notion of ‘essence’ here and on the crucial distinction between the three types of essence Dietrich von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy?, 3rd edn, with a New Introductory Essay by Josef Seifert (London: Routledge, 1991), ch. 4. See also Jean Hering, Bemerkungen über das Wesen, die Wesenheit und die Idee, 2. Aufl., Hrsg. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, Reihe „Libelli“, 80, reprographischer Nachdruck aus: Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 4, 1921, S. 495-543 (Darmstadt, 1968); Roman Ingarden, „Essentiale Fragen“, Jahrbuch für Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung, VII, Hrsg. E. Husserl (Halle a. S., 1924), S. 125-304; Herbert Spiegelberg, „Über das Wesen der Idee. Eine ontologische Untersuchung“, Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, hrsg. v. E. Husserl u.a. (Halle a.d. Saar: Max Niemeyer, 1930), Bd. 11, S. 1-238. See also Josef Seifert, „Essence and Existence. A New Foundation of Classical Metaphysics on the Basis of 'Phenomenological Realism,' and a Critical Investigation of 'Existentialist Thomism',“ Aletheia I (1977), pp. 17-157; I,2 (1977), pp. 371-459; the same author, Sein und Wesen (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1996), ch. 1. 20 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 46 (the finis operis) or by the subjective intention with which they are carried out or used (the finis operantis). They are good when they support the healthy human genome by means which are not intrinsically bad or obtained by intrinsically bad actions, but evil when they aim at mere experimentation, at reducing persons to objects, or at similar perversions, or when they are done by disproportionately great risks for the life of the subject (for example an embryo) of such gene therapy.22 5) Human Genome and Personal Dignity Those who, like Peter Singer, seek to restrict human dignity to the sane and healthy and intelligent members of the human species deny that the very existence and substantial nature of the human person are the source of his dignity. The same is true of those who deny full dignity worthy of respect to children, as if only adults possessed dignity, an opinion which the great Janusz Korczak opposed both as author and through his actions in real life, up to his freely chosen death with a group of children in the concentration camp.23 Authors who deny the dignity of the person to each and every human being and restrict it to certain exemplars of the human kind seek to assign human dignity to our accidental features and remove it from our essence. We can see that the being of the person, and thereby also the dignity of a person qua person, does not reside only on the level of acts and accidents but resides on the level of his essence and substantial nature, and hence is given with his very existence and life. And therefore the human genome is a specific dimension of the human person qua human, a carrier or transmitter of this human nature, as well as a transmitter of the unique individual nature and characteristics of a person. Therefore, it deserves utmost respect and any arbitrary Professor W. M. O. Moore argues that „there has been no successful gene therapy to date” (p. 7 of his paper). See Janusz Korczak, Das Recht des Kindes auf Achtung, especially pp. 7 ff., and, on his maxim that the child „already is a human person and does not become one,” p. 372. 22 23 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 47 manipulation or experimentation of the human genome is a grave abuse to be rejected for the same reasons which are mentioned in Reflexions on Cloning.24 Here it is necessary to note that of the four sources of human dignity and of fundamental human rights (substantial being and personhood, conscious human life, morally good acts, and gifts extrinsic to nature) it is the first source of human dignity, the substantial being of the person, which is of the highest importance. This becomes immediately evident when we consider that to be a person is always to be – in Aristotle’s terms – a substance, that is, to be a subject who stands in himself in being and is not just a quality or attribute or function of something else. Boethius saw this clearly when he said: „Persona est rationabilis naturae individua substantia” (the person is an individual substance of rational nature).25 Never can functions, qualities of things, etc. be persons. For the freedom and consciousness and knowledge as well as the character of an I and self which belong to the essence of the person demand unambiguously a subject who lives and stands in himself in being and does not just inhere in another thing as an accident. Moreover, the being of the person, which is the first source of human dignity, requires the rational and intellectual essence of persons as such, as well as the concrete individual existence and life of the subject which we designate as person. Persons are never abstract essences but always existing and incommunicable individuals. This was plainly recognized by Richard of St. Viktor when he said that the person is „the incommunicable existence of an intellectual nature” (persona est intellectualis naturae incommunicabilis existentia), and that „he exists in himself alone according to a singular mode of rational existence” (existens per se solum juxta singularem quendam rationalis existentiae modum).26 Issued by the Pontificia Academia pro Vita (Juan de Dios Vial Correa and Mons. Elio Sgreccia), (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997). 25 Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, cap. 3. 26 Richard of St. Victor, Trin. 4, 22; 4, 25. 24 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 48 The reality of individual existence, and even the absolute uniqueness and non-substitutability of the person as a subject endowed with a rational nature, is a condition of human dignity and of any personal dignity. 27 Thus, the essence of a rational being and the real existence and life of an unsubstitutable individual of such a nature interpenetrate each other in the origin of personal dignity. We may express this point in a more easily accessible form from a linguistic standpoint which Stephen Schwarz has used in his important recent book on the moral question of abortion. 28 A human being possesses inalienable dignity not only „when he functions as a person” but the person possesses this dignity in virtue of „being a person.”29 The root of the dignity of persons thus lies in their substantial reality which in turn includes their life, and this excludes that persons possess their dignity only in terms of functioning as persons. In Aristotelian terms, it is the substantial being of a human person and its potencies which ground this dignity, and not only their actualization. When people are sleeping, they continue to possess this dignity. All embryos who cannot use their intellect yet – but possess it as a condition of the possibility of ever using it – are endowed with this dignity of the person, too. These facts – the rootedness of personal dignity in the substantial being of the human being and its independence from its actualizations – are overlooked in the logical consequence of two philosophical positions of which we can recognize that they do not do justice to the person: I mean an actualism which reduces the person to conscious acts or to a consciously lived center of acts. Such a position overlooks both the great discovery of Aristotle that only the substance can ground personal dignity and the insight of Boethius that the person is an individual substance.30 And these errors also influence decisions and attitudes regarding the See John Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996). 28 See Stephen Schwarz, The Moral Question of Abortion. 29 Schwarz, ibid., pp. 100-113. 30 For this reason, it is unfortunate that Scheler thinks, as we have pointed out and examined critically above, that he can save the distinctness of the person from non-personal things only by denying the substantial being of the person as standing in himself or in herself in being. 27 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 49 human genome: either the human genome is recognized as an important part or element in the very being and nature of the human person, who in his spiritual being is, except in his origin, independent of the human genome but in his bodily being and in the unity of body and soul deeply linked to it. Or the human genome is regarded just as an accidental product of evolution and an object of genetic manipulations and creations of all kinds. 31 The other great error which obscures this insight is any form of materialism which identifies the brain and its functions with the self of the person. Under this assumption we must take it for granted that human beings who cannot function as persons are not persons because the organ of their brain is exactly what gives rise to their personhood and dignity. And the human genome is falsely given the role of a principle that creates human persons from otherwise non-personal individuals of the species ‘man.’ But, as we have seen in the last chapter, we can see that the self of the person who thinks and wills must be simple and cannot consist in the ten billions of brain cells, in the billions times billions of their parts and distinct and partly unrelated functions, or in the mere organic life in the brain and in the body which lacks the indivisible unsubstitutable center of the I. Thus, the existence of a spiritual mind, of a soul as source of cognition and of free acts, is indeed necessary to constitute this first and most basic level of human dignity: the dignity of the human substance, a dignity which inalienably belongs to the human being qua human being and qua person and which does not possess degrees. Every human being has it in an equal degree and more intelligent reading of the human genome understands this to be a unique and admirable plan that guides organic development of human persons. It is obvious that, however uniquely different each human genome is, it can never explain or exhaust the individuality of the person. Those who, like Peter Singer, seek to restrict human dignity to the sane and healthy and intelligent members of the human species deny that the very existence and substantial nature of the human person are the source 31 Cf. Reflexions on Cloning, cit., on the playing God involved in this. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 50 of his dignity. The same is true of those who deny the full dignity worthy of respect to children, as if only adults possessed dignity, an opinion which the great Janusz Korczak opposed both as author and through his actions in real life, up to his freely chosen death with a group of children in the concentration camp. 32 Authors who deny the dignity of the person to each and every human being and restrict it to certain exemplars of the human kind seek to assign human dignity to our accidental features and remove it from our essence. We can see that the being of the person, and thereby also the dignity of a person qua person, does not reside only on the level of acts and accidents but resides on the level of his essence and substantial nature, and hence is given with his very existence and life. 1.3. Conclusion Should all of our conclusions prove to be well founded, an irreducible essential difference between physical and psychic realities will be disclosed to us. Whatever, and however intimate the relationship between these two may be, still – at least to all appearances – a sameness or even more, an identity of these spheres of being is out of the question. We could now go a step further and claim, along with Plato and Descartes, that two completely different kinds of subjects must here be presupposed, one visible, the other invisible, the first sense-perceptible, the second only given from within in our experiencing and thinking. We could claim that the body as res extensa and the soul as res cogitans must underlie these radically different phenomena. Nevertheless, we must be careful not to take this step prematurely, for the essential difference between material and psychic realities has not as yet been set off with sufficient clarity, nor most especially has the thesis based upon this distinction been adequately grounded yet, viz., that a real difference between body and soul underlies it. There are numerous objections against this distinction itself as outlined above, which, See Janusz Korczak, Das Recht des Kindes auf Achtung, especially pp. 7 ff., and, on his maxim that the child „already is a human person and does not become one,” p. 372. 32 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 51 in what follows, have been grouped into four sets of positions. We will now proceed to present them and examine them critically. 2. First Group of Objections: Positions Which Deny Any Evidence of an Essential Distinction Between Physical and Psychic Phenomena The objections characterized by the title of this section basically move in two directions. First, the experiential datum of psychic realities in the sense discussed is completely denied, and only physical data are admitted (Radical Materialism and Behaviorism). Then the reverse: everything physical, under more careful scrutiny, is held to be nothing other than the psychic (Phenomenalism). We exclude here from our consideration the so-called ‘eliminative materialism’ which is defended by thinkers such as RORTY and claims that absolutely no distinctly psychic phenomenon whatsoever is given to us. A. Radical Materialism and „Metaphysical Behaviorism“ While the preponderant majority of materialists in no way deny the factual existence of consciousness, but only ascribe it to the body, the proponents of the view now thematized defend a bolder thesis, namely that there is, on closer inspection, no such thing as consciousness in the sense of a datum of experience phenomenally different from material processes. This position can be ascribed to those authors whom one can contrast with merely „methodological“ Behaviorists as „metaphysical“ Behaviorists (or rather, as many of them prefer to be called, „logical“ or „analytical” Behaviorists). The methodological Behaviorists only maintain that consciousness, above all because of its privacy in the sense of lack of publicly knowable accessibility, cannot become an object of investigation in scientific psychology. Psychology would only have access to bodily behavior. In contrast to this position, the metaphysical Behaviorists maintain that there is no such thing as consciousness in the sense of something distinct from bodily behavior. In what follows we are interested exclusively in Metaphysical Behaviorists who think, with the early Carnap (1931), that all the propositions of psychology describe Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 52 – or at least ought to describe – physical events, namely the physical behavior of men and other living beings. (Cf. Malcolm 1971; and 1977, 85ff.) The thesis of Metaphysical Behaviorism can appear in at least three forms. In the first and most crude form, Behaviorism interprets „bodily behavior“ in the sense of observable nerve processes muscle contractions etc., as describable in the terminology of physics and chemistry. Even though today physiological and other nonphysical (or non-chemical) categories are still employed to describe human behavior and must be employed in the opinion both of the so-called „old“ and the „new“ non-analytical Behaviorists (e.g. Hebb), nevertheless they hope that human being and action will soon be able to be described in purely physical and chemical concepts. But above all, the only thing given to us would be extremely complex forms of „matter and motion,” and consciousness would be a nebulous notion whose object would turn out, on closer inspection, to be merely the physico-chemical properties of bodies. As will be shown, the mind-brain Identity Theory held by Feigl and others deviates from the view described here in that Feigl affirms merely a factual identity between physical and psychic being, while the theory described here likewise holds a logical identity of the concepts by which we speak of psychic processes and brain processes. Feigl (21967, p. 138) ascribes this logical Identity Theory to the „United Front of Australasian Materialists“ and thinks that one among five different features which distinguish his position from theirs is that, in opposition to him, they hold a logical identity between concepts which signify experiences (like pain) and concepts which signify brain processes. In this regard Feigl’s description of their position seems to us only partly justified. Armstrong (92ff, 116ff.) and Smart (88-92) reject this opinion (ascribed to them by Feigl). Both authors disengage themselves precisely from the Behaviorism just discussed and likewise from Ryle’s position in that they deny such a logical identity between physical and psychic concepts as well as Ryle’s thesis that all consciousness can be translated into merely bodily modes of behavior and dispositions to behave. To be sure, the thesis held by the Australasian Materialists (Armstrong 122, 129ff.) that „the concept of a mental state is simply the concept of a state apt for the production of certain sorts of physical behavior,“ is a still more radical form of Behaviorism than Ryle’s. This reductionist thesis of Armstrong can be aligned with the Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 53 Radical Materialism treated here. (The other side of Armstrong’s and Smart’s Materialism will be investigated later.) Many Behaviorists who, with Skinner or Hebb, distinguish „overt” behavior (e.g. shedding of tears) and „covert“ behavior (e.g. brain processes), would indeed also want to maintain a logical identity between physical and psychic being. Still these Behaviorists would rather fall into a second group within Radical Materialism than outside Metaphysical Behaviorism. Another form of Metaphysical Behaviorism, whose adherents clearly set themselves off from those of the first group, would admit that human behavior cannot be reduced to forms of behavior comprehensible in chemical and physical terms. These Behaviorists (e.g. Tolman) recognize that the behavior of plants and animals already require categories and a mode of understanding of the more complex behavioral patterns which lie outside the boundaries of chemistry and physics (e.g. purpose, response). Still, ultimately, in view of some future development of the sciences, they hold that all behavior could be explained chemically-physically, perhaps even mechanically, in the sense in which, e.g., the behavior of a computer and its program, on the one hand, presuppose more than mechanics, but still, on the other hand, its operations can be explained through purely mechanical laws, at least as far as the efficient causality of the operations immanent to the computer are concerned. (Watson, Skinner, Lashley, Hebb and others advocate the first mode of Metaphysical Behaviorism in many of their remarks, in others the second mode. On the history of Behaviorism, cf. Shukla, 126ff.) If Ryle would surely reject the first and indeed also the second form of Metaphysical Behaviorism, he still defends a third form: the logical and linguisticanalytical form. He would concede that human behavior is completely different than that of a machine and can never be explained mechanically. He would even concede that the categories apt to describe plant behavior are totally inadequate and insufficient when it comes to describe human behavior. Still, human behavior according to Ryle consists merely of extremely complicated phenomena of physical behavior which indeed do require a proper mode of understanding of a proper sort. Only Ryle’s position will be presented and criticized in some detail because it is the most intelligent form of Metaphysical Behaviorism. The arguments presented by way of criticism of Ryle will apply a fortiori to the less sophisticated conceptions of Metaphysical Behaviorism. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 54 Ryle begins his major work (1949) with a deliberately sarcastic presentation of what he calls „the official doctrine“ (11ff.). In this work and in several articles as well, he characterizes this doctrine as „the dogma of the ghost in the machine“ (16) and attempts to make it seem ridiculous. Just as uneducated peasants thought there was an invisible horse in the first locomotive, so also men have accepted an invisible spirit in human bodies whose mode of behavior one cannot explain mechanically. A dualistic conception, therefore, brings into play a sort of „invisible machine“ within the body, understood in a way similar to „visible machines” to explain human behavior. The traditional theory has distinguished two theaters: one mental, conscious and private; the other material, public, and unconscious. Ryle now rejects the „invisible private theater of consciousness“ as a pure philosopher’s myth (16). He thinks this misguided construction would find adequate explanation in the fact that one seeks explanation of intelligent demeanor, thought-processes, decisions – all of which cannot be explained mechanically – with the help of completely erroneous categories. In the employment of pure categories of consciousness for such phenomena, one commits a category mistake. This not very clear concept (16 ff.) is related to a wide range of philosophical errors which can be described in the following way. One ascribes to an entity a type of predicate which essentially cannot belong to it. If, for example, one expects a person to show him the University of Oxford as he could show its individual buildings and grounds, he commits a category mistake, since he seeks the university on the same level, and tries to grasp it with the same categories as the buildings or grounds. Ryle believes he detects this error in the dualists who seek the concepts „mind,“ „intelligence,“ etc. in the realm of an immaterial soul, or at least in a dimension of consciousness phenomenally distinct from bodies and their behavior. Instead of this, one should seek intelligence (25ff, 42ff, 28Off.), feelings (83ff.) and willing (62ff.), not in a world of consciousness mysteriously separate from bodies, but rather in overt behavior which everyone can verify. The soul (mind) is really nothing but the behavior or dispositions of bodies. If, for example, we say someone is intelligent, according to Ryle we do not mean that this person is capable of a mysterious, conscious understanding, but merely that he either actually behaves bodily in a certain way (e.g. solves a complicated computational problem on paper or in words) or would behave in Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 55 given circumstances in a certain way. The latter would be the disposition, the former the behavior of bodies (116ff.). These modes of behavior of a bodily sort could not be described or explained in mechanical categories (20), but rather require categories and descriptions which can be obtained through an analysis of ordinary language. Ryle now approaches his task in a most sophisticated manner, explaining in this way all expressions (like joy, willing, attending) which quite obviously suggest consciousness. To this end, Ryle divides „mind-sentences“ into three different logical groups: categorical, hypothetical and semi-hypothetical sentences, none of which indicate „mental entities.“ The categorical sentences employ episodic verbs (either task or achievement verbs). Learnedness, vanity, etc., would be expressed by hypothetical or dispositional sentences which refer to hypothetical bodily behavior. If one says of another: „He drives carefully,“ it is a question of a mixed form, in that one refers simultaneously to behavior currently occurring (categorical) and to behavior to which there is a disposition and which would occur if certain conditions are met (hypothetical) (cf. Jha, 71 ff., 171 f.). So one could call Ryle perhaps the most systematic and most prominent Metaphysical Behaviorist. In spite of many examples frequently brought forth by critics in which Ryle cannot help employing categories of consciousness, the whole sense of his major work consists evidently in the attempt at founding not merely a methodical, but a Metaphysical Behaviorism which polemically rejects as „humbug“ the soul as a spiritual substance or even as „conscious life.“ In the assessment of this notion one can begin with the most radical objection: Metaphysical Behaviorism represents, epistemologically speaking, a boldness in that here, reversing the tale of the king’s clothes, a fact familiar to every child is denied, namely that there is consciousness distinct from bodily behavior or dispositions, which we experience in ourselves in the clearest and most indubitable manner (Jha, 175ff.; Polten, 145-6; Feigl; Smart; Armstrong, 73). Since we are not more certain of our existence than of our consciousness, the thesis explaining that we did not exist at all would not be stronger than the view of the Metaphysical Behaviorists that there is no such thing as consciousness. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 56 The attempt to eliminate the most evident thing of all for the sake of a system, then, also leads unquestionably to the contradiction often noted by Ryle’s critics that precisely in the attempt to explain away consciousness, he cannot help always presupposing its factual existence as well as its essence, since he needs to understand the nature of consciousness in its distinctness from physical behavior in order to attempt his reductionist theory (Jha, 173ff.; Popper 1977, 106). Likewise of an epistemological nature is the objection that Metaphysical Behaviorism completely fails to recognize the relationship between diverse modes of knowing and the degrees of certitude proper to them. For not only is the existence of conscious life absolutely certain and knowable with greater certitude than the behavior of bodies, but the latter is exclusively given through our intentional awareness of objects (perceiving, understanding, inferring). Thus the objectivity and certitude with which we know the behavior of bodies, taken by Behaviorism as unquestionably real, wholly depends, not merely on the existence and objective validity of our conscious perception and recognition, but also on the certitude with which our conscious life is ascertained. Furthermore, one can never attain, with reference to bodily behavior, that absolute certitude with which we recognize the existence of our conscious being (Augustine, Descartes), against which the self-deceptions Ryle (142ff.) refers to present no valid counter argument since these self-deceptions do not indeed place in question the existence of conscious processes as such, but rather presuppose them. Therefore, even if the activities and dispositions of bodies were merely illusions, it would remain unshatterably true that our actual consciousness would be presupposed for such illusions (cf. Likewise Seifert, 21976). Ryle maintains that dualists must hold that in other persons merely physiological behavior is immediately given, but not intelligence, willing, feeling, etc. (21). Precisely the acceptance of consciousness would lead thus to the Vulgar-Behaviorist notion that merely external corporeal behavior is given, while the mind belongs to a private inwardness, to which we can make surmises at best, based upon hypotheses which rest upon dubious analogies drawn from our own experience. Ryle then stands as the defender of the immediate givenness of mental characteristics in other persons. Now the view of knowledge of other persons criticized by Ryle is indeed poor and manifestly Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 57 false. Certainly we experience the psychic-mental life of another person with great immediacy by attending to the behavior, speech or expression in the body of that person. As the critics would have it (Jha, 177ff.), everything still depends upon the mode of interpreting this fact – and here are different views. Scheler, Hengstenberg, Lorscheid (44ff.) and von Hildebrand (1977, 163ff., 139ff.) affirm that in bodily behavior a conscious mental life in no way identical with that behavior is co-manifest. Bodily behavior or bodily expression becomes a „transparent“ manifestation of the conscious life of the other person, itself neither sensorily nor bodily perceptible. On this is based the „public character” that belongs also to the mind in certain respects, a fact which Ryle rightly pits against the false understanding of the privacy of psychic being criticized above. On the other hand, Ryle claims he could explain this general and direct accessibility of the mind only under his behavioristic presuppositions. But Ryle thereby misses not merely the truly private aspects of consciousness (cf. above pp. 11ff.), but likewise gives a false interpretation to those aspects of consciousness which are publicly accessible. If, for example, we „immediately“ perceive the intelligence of an examinee by the words he utters, his or her intelligence and our understanding of it cannot be reduced to the disposition to produce complex linguistic utterances. Rather we must understand the meaning, completely transcending overt behavior, of the answers, concepts, contents of judgment, inferences and so forth expressed in speech. Then we must understand the linguistic and logical laws, radically distinct from overt behavior, which his discourse follows, and eventually the universal and concrete characteristics of the things of which he speaks, as well as the rational correspondence of meaning between questions and answers. Finally, we must grasp the intelligible relation which exists between the thought-acts revealed in language and the intelligence of a man (Husserl, 1900101). These thought-acts and the intelligence of the examinee clearly also lie on a completely different level of being than his bodily behavior. Evidently the blush and the helpless conduct of a girl is not identical with modest innocence nor the vigorous voice of a man with moral indignation, but are only the intelligible reflection of these inner qualities in expression. We are now also in a position to comprehend the unjustifiability of the caricatured presentation of any dualism as „the dogma of the ghost in the machine.“ For example, Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 58 it is now clear that in the phenomenon of expression it is a matter neither of the relation of an invisible machine or theater to a visible one, nor of mere causal interaction (cf. also below, p. 29) even if there are also dualistic theories to which this caricature properly applies (cf. Polten 1973). Ryle’s analysis of the category mistake is in itself an excellent discovery or rather an original treatment of a long familiar philosophic mistake. Doubtless there are numerous psychologistic logicians, for example, who commit numerous category mistakes, exposed particularly by Husserl (1900/01), regarding „judgment,“ „thought,“ „law,“ etc. However, Ryle does not merely employ this fruitful discovery falsely, but in his application of it to the body-soul problem he himself commits a category mistake as flagrant as can be imagined. The employment of the categories of „doings“ and „dispositions of bodies“ for mind exceeds indeed everything that Ryle himself cites as examples of category mistakes. The violence and untenability of this employment of the category mistake was often noted by thinkers oriented toward Linguistic Analysis (Hampshire, Ayer, Austin and others; cf. Wood and Pitcher 1970; Addis 1965). Likewise we ought to note as one of Ryle’s genuine contributions the fact that the expressions „mental act“ and „bodily action“ do not ascribe behavior to a material and to a mental being in the same sense. Only the differing senses of these expressions move in the direction precisely the opposite to Ryles assumptions. Namely, while „bodily action“ (in the sense of a person’s action carried out bodily) in no way characterizes an activity which has the body itself for a subject (whence it follows that lifeless matter and indeed animals perform no „bodily actions“ in this sense), the expression „mental act“ could much rather be taken as characterizing the act of a spiritual subject (cf. below, pp. ... ). Perhaps the most basic mistake to be exposed in Ryle and in mechanistic logical (metaphysical) Behaviorism is reductionism with .respect to two realities that are evidently distinct essentially, claiming that consciousness, mind, willing, etc., are modes of bodily behavior. Already the proceeding, and still more the following, investigations ought to illuminate the impossibility of reducing to one another two evidences that are contradictorily opposed to one another in all their essential predicates. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 59 Already here we should underscore the fact that Ryle’s reductionism is, on the one hand, much more radical than that of the mind-brain identity thesis, since he denies even the evidentiality of conscious life, which the identity-thesis recognizes. On.the other hand, Ryle’s reductionism is less drastic and thus more plausible since he reduces consciousness to features closer to consciousness than brain processes in that they reflect consciousness largely, albeit not completely, namely language, expression, acticns, etc. If all these bodily processes were thoroughly representedas often occurs in the presentation of the heroic in a novel or in a film, there arises before the reader or viewer the world of the heroic consciousness which expresses or announces itsell.f in these processes. If, however, conscious processes were identified with brain processes and the latter were described scientifically, there would appear before one the physiological sphere that is worlds apart from consciousness, and the deviance of this reductionism would appear in a more crass manrner. (Cf. below, pp. ) For completeness we should at least mention that many authors defend a Moderate Behaviorism. They do not deny the givenness of all, but only of many psychological data, to be sure, often of the most important ones. They seek to reduce them either to corporeal (overt) behavior or to brain processes. Thus, for example, Malcolm (1971, 31 ff.) defends the view that Wittgenstein has made perhaps the greatest contribution to contemporary philosophy of mind by his observation that there is nothing which remains in us outside of impressions and propositions, if in self-concentration we attend to what really happens in us when, for example, we understand meanings (significances) or purposes. Malcolm draws the conclusion that this observation concerns intangible mental phenomena, in reference to which Malcolm claims with Wittgenstein that only the correct employment of speech is the criterion of their existence in other persons and the mode of knowing their existence in us. In reference to all deeper psychic data (givens), Malcolm thus tends to a kind of „Verbal Behaviorism“ in Ryle’s sense. On the contrary, of such tangible mental phenomena as physical pain, Malcolm holds with James that they have their own positive psychic essence, which likewise does not disappear on closer inspection. On this point Armstrong and Smart likewise move in a similar direction when they say that Ryle’s Behaviorism holds for thinking or willing, but not for physical pains or after-images. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 60 (For the criticism of these conceptions see below, pp. ... on the specific evidence for mental acts.) B. Denial of the givenness of Physical Realities (Phenomenalism) There is likewise the reverse (phenomenalistic) denial of the evidenticility of physical being and the thesis that only psychical being is given to us as such. Upon closer analysis the supposed physical phenomena would show themselves merely as qualities of perception or as other qualities of consciousness. Since this thesis is scarcely widespread today and also subject to the criticism offered later of the more moderate Phenomenalism (which does not deny the immediate givenness of the difference of the physical and the psychic, but only the metaphysical autonomy of physical being), we will not consider the matter more closely here. C. Second Group of Objections: A Less Radical Attack on Some Essential Distinctions Between Physical (Material) and Psychic (Mental) Realities The positions gathered together under this heading could be divided into five different types which can be treated in order. 1. Rejection of Some of the Above-Stated Essential Features of Corporeal (Material) Data As Bretano (1874) explained, on the basis of objections which Berkeley, Platner, Herbart, Lotze, Hartley, Brown, the two Mills and others have raised against the traditional distinction (largely accepted in this work) between the physical and the psychological, he felt forced to completely abandon the traditional basis of this distinction. (He makes the distinction between mental experiences and physical data the sole basis of this distinction.) Brentano would have still more readily drawn this conclusion in view of contemporary literature. In what follows, before we can decide whether or not to join Brentano on this point, we will discuss some old and new positions which deny a number of the essential features of matter held in this work. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 61 a) Quasi-Phenomenological Objections Against the Spatial Extendedness of Physical Realities It has been maintained that many non-psychical – and thus physical – things are not extended: sounds, noises, flavors, smells, indeed even colors (at least with respect to hues, degrees of lightness and darkness, etc.) lack spatial extensity. From this one could conclude that, first of all, not all material entities have to be spatially extended, and secondly, that psychical data’s not being spatially extended proves nothing at all about their immateriality. In criticism of this view one can first of all reply that sounds, smells and so forth are not material entities in the strict sense. Indeed they represent an authentic aspect of the exterior material world, but they are not themselves material entities (cf. von Hildebrand, 1960; the present author 21976). The alternative: either something is physical or it is psychic (Brentano), which stands behind the view to be criticized, is much too narrow (Dilthey, Husserl, Scheler, Ingarden, Plessner, Gadamer and many others have pointed this out). Appearances are aspects of material things which are themselves neither physical nor psychic but are coconstituted by consciousness precisely as appearances (of material things) in relation to consciousness and thus are beings of a unique character which forbids us to identify them simply with „matter.“ Secondly, the appearances of material realities (colors, smells, etc.), although they are not themselves physical-material realities, participate in extensity in various ways and degrees. This holds first of all for colors which are indeed given as attributes/qualities of material things and thus even necessarily and essentially presuppose extension (in at least two dimensions). Smells indeed have a less pronounced relation to space, although they also come from definite directions, are perceived more strongly in one place than in another, fill a room, etc. Tastes are still less spatial, partially because of their special characteristic as „inner“ features of food or drink, partly because of their close relation to bodily sensations, through which the tastes are not only perceived, but of which they in part consist (cf. below, pp . ). The basis for this removal of spatial extension lies in the increasingly „pure“ character of appearance which belongs to these objects of sensory perception. This attains its high point in sounds Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 62 which do not present themselves any longer as characteristics of material things, although they likewise participate in spatial extension through the direction from which they come, through their echo, their acoustics, their diminishment over greater distances, etc. This leads to the decisive third point of the critique. The material substrata (sound waves, light waves, etc.) which lie at the basis of sounds or colors and which are falsely identified by many physicists with sounds or colors, are indeed material in the strict sense; they likewise clearly possess spatial extensity. But they clearly differ from the appearances to which they give rise and which must not be identified with matter as we have seen. b) Transcendental Idealist and Transcendental Phenomenological Objections Against Spatial Extendedness of Matter Some thinkers who contest the essential spatial extensity of corporeal being base this conviction not on any experiential evidence but on a theory which goes back mainly to Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. As a consequence of such theories, many even deny that color must be extended and indeed that bodies which possess color are spatially extended. This is understandable, for example, from Kant’s starting point according to which we never know a material thing in itself, and from which we merely receive an amorphous „sensory matter“ (Sinnesmaterial) which (abstractly taken) is not as such even spatial. Space is merely a subjective form of intuition which the subject imprints on the amorphous „material.“ Thus, indeed, material things as appearances, but not considered as „things in themselves“ are spatially extended or at least the latter must be left open. Since according to this view, the being-in-itself of psychic being is also unknown, it obviously can be concluded from Kant’s basic position that our conscious life could perhaps be extended „in itself“ and in any case be identical with the also unknowable material thing-in-itself (cf. Polten, 146, for some passages to this effect in Kant’s works). While in a certain way this inference reflects the sceptical side of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, there is still another specifically transcendental-philosophical direction for objection against the essential extendedness of material being, whereby it is not the extendedness of matter as such, but only its „ontological status“ that is in Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 63 question. Kant, Husserl, Croce, Gentile, Bradley, Bosanquet, Royce and others would indeed grant the essential spatial extendedness of matter, but reject the existence in itself of this extended appearance qua extended. If matter is extended only as appearance or as representation or noema of the (transcendental) ego, it is a question of treating the distinction between matter and mind as in no way so fundamental and irreducible as realistic metaphysics assumes it to be. Then the body-soul problem in the narrower sense likewise disappears (cf. below, pp. ). With Reininger, for example, the corporeal being becomes merely the representation-side, (Vorstellungsseite), psychic being the experienced side (Erlebnisseite) of all experience. Physical being as „absolute exteriority“ (p. 107) then becomes like purely psychic being (p.101ff.), a mere fictitious boundary-concept. Strasser and Brunner hold similar views. (Cf. The author’s work 1973, pp. 45-61 for a critique of these theses.) This direction of thought takes a still more characteristically „transcendental philosophical“ turn when the lived body also is no longer considered simply as a noema constituted by mind, but as world constituting, as well as constituted by consciousness. The body as the „zero-point“ of world-constitution (Husserl), both constituted and world-constituting, returns with numerous modifications in Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lingis, Laskey, van Peursen and others. (cf. also Zaner, 1964). Since a critical encounter with these objections against the ontological significance of the spatial extendedness of matter (of the body) would have to consider extensive epistemological problems, we cannot address ourselves to it within the limited scope of our discussion (cf. above, pp. ). c) Objections Against the Extendedness of Matter Based upon Philosophical Theories of Nature and Modern Physics Many philosophers propose, on the basis of significant scientific discoveries, that modern physics radically places in question the traditional view that in the microsphere one could also speak of the spatial extension of matter. According to this view the fourdimensional or multi-dimensional space with which modern physics operates makes especially doubtful the factual existence, or at least any intuitable meaning, of the spatial extension of matter. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 64 More closely considered, this doubt is only partially rooted in modern physics. Its real sources lie in the philosophical speculations and theories influenced by them which largely go back to the views of Leibniz and Kant in philosophy of nature and in scientific theory. First of all, within modern mathematics and physics or the philosophical positions usually bound up with them we find a pronounced tendency to deny pregiven and evident structures of space, time, number, etc. While Euclid, together with Plato and Aristotle, considered the definitions, postulates, and axioms of geometry and arithmetic as first principles which held for actual space and true geometric figures and numbers, many mathematicians and physicists after Kant cast doubt upon this position. Granted, Euclid (with Plato, Republic VI-VII) had held that the postulates and axioms which he laid down as basic had no ultimate justification within mathematics itself and thus would be taken there merely as hypotheses. But in the mind of classical mathematicians, these postulates permit an ultimate grounding in evidence which – going beyond all mathematical insight – ultimately could be attained only by philosophy. In modern mathematics and physics we mostly find a point of view opposed to this ideal. For example, modern scientists usually no longer take Euclidean three-dimensional space (which is presupposed in any talk about the spatial extensity of matter which can be „fulfilled“ in intuition or understanding) as true, objective space. Often they do not even consider it (as Kant still did) a subjective form of intuition necessarily presupposed for external intuition. Rather, they introduce an unintuitable space-time continuum of „four dimensions“. or x-dimensional space, as if they were as good as or better „models“ with which to think about actual space. Thus they not only attained to the real knowledge that the famous parallel line postulate of Euclid is independent of the previous four postulates, but they also believe that, on the basis of trains of thought that cannot be more carefully described here, they are able to deny this postulate within Riemannian or other non-Euclidean geometries, or rather to replace it by other axioms. So long as this occurs only for the purpose of simpler stereometric computation, one can have no objection. Still these theories led to the denial of the evident philosophical and simultaneously mathematical truth that the Euclidean parallel line postulate is the only true determination of straight parallel lines in the same plane. A similar development occurs within modern physics in relation to the objective essence of time. In their Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 65 physical theories, but still more in their own philosophical explanations of these theories, Einstein and Heisenberg define simultaneity, e.g., which possesses a philosophically knowable, pregiven essence, in such a way that the same event can be regarded as being both simultaneous and not simultaneous with another event; and even events which are millions of years apart can be „simultaneous“ – which would have seemed absurd to classical philosophy of nature and physics. „Simultaneity“ and time as such are posited relative to certain observers. Under the influence of these and similar developments, the view set in, particularly in mathematical formalism, or rather within the formalistic philosophy of mathematics, that all principles treated as eternal truths about time, space, and number, and extolled as primary examples of evident states of affairs, ought to be treated as mere conventionally posited rules of the game. Indeed, necessary consequences follow from the presupposition of their validity; but these „necessary consequences“ would be neither of timeless validity nor would their axiomatic foundations relate to a true essence of things independent of the human mind. The sharp opposition between an intuitionist or formalist philosophy of mathematics and that developed in exemplary fashion by Augustine (De libero arbitrio, II) cannot be more carefully developed here. Behind this development stands not only the philosophy of mathematics going back to Kant and Brouwer, but also the Empiricism and Positivism influenced by Hume. This shows itself, not only in the mathematical logicism developed by Russell, where mathematical entities are reduced to logical truths, and these to tautological (analytical) truths, or in the conventionalism developed by Poincare, but also in the positivistic tendencies which manifest themselves most clearly within the boundary regions between physics and mathematics. Thus, one takes empirically observed data as much more certain than the philosophical and mathematically knowable apriori essential structures of things. From this it follows that the interpretation of the empirical results of measurement is not determined according to the essential structures of the actual being of time, space, movement and number, but according to the measure of the greatest possible practicability. It is not truth in the sense of adequacy to reality, but „truth“ interpreted in the sense of pragmatism as that which is most successful practically and in theoretical scientific operation that holds as the highest criterion of scientific theoryconstruction. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 66 Such tendencies culminate in the philosophical interpretation of the theories of indeterminacy and relativity in which we meet a subjectivization, making things relative to their observability by a subject, (a position unacceptable in part even for Einstein, and in any case for classical physics) and a total disregard of pregiven laws (e.g. for the principle of causality). In a philosophically and scientifically irresponsible way, certain subjective limits of measurement are ascribed to material things themselves, culminating in the doctrines of the relativity or metaphysical indeterminacy of space and location, of time and of simultaneity. Such a background in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of nature, and modern science certainly does not allow us to hold spatial extendedness to be an essential feature of matter. Büchel, de Vries and others have seen that correctly. The total unintuitability of the „space“ of an x-dimensional geometry, if models of four or more dimensional „spaces“ are taken for actual space, does not allow us to make claims about the essential spatial extendedness of matter, taking our starting point in intuitively given matter, but to understand the sense of such affirmations only with respect to „actual“ (supposedly completely unintuitable, „curved“) space. Above all, every thesis on extendedness as a determination inhering in matter itself is disqualified if every objective knowledge of the essence of space and actual matter is rejected. As already noted, also at the root of these theories are the views of Leibniz and Kant in philosophy of nature. According to Leibniz (Monadology) the ultimate analysis of the spatial extendedness of matter leads to the insight that the ultimate building blocks of matter (the monads) are not extended and thus our thesis on their extendedness would be false. His proofs were further developed by Kant in the doctrine of the antinomies in the Critique of Pure Reason. According to Kant, in reflecting on the extendedness of matter, reason necessarily falls into contradiction with itself. On the one hand, impeccable reasoning could show that matter ultimately must consist of simple (unextended) parts; on the other hand it might consist of simple parts. If any body whatsoever were composed through and through of non-identical parts, a removal of all composition by thought would leave nothing. Composition would be without anything composed, which is absurd. Thus matter must ultimately consist of non-composite simple parts. (If this is true, then naturally matter can ultimately – as unextended – also be psychical, as Leibniz already suggested.) On the other hand, we can (following Kant) Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 67 just as surely show that the matter cannot consist of simple parts. Since all matter is in space, and since space itself is infinitely divisible mathematically, there could be no simple-parts of matter, which must be composed through and through without containing any simple parts. In the face of this (second) Kantian antinomy, one could – in a not strictly Kantian manner – draw the conclusion that to affirm dogmatically that we can know the essential spatial extensity of matter and indeed that we can have any knowledge at all of the objective essence of matter as such would be naive in the highest degree. At best one could offer hypotheses and theories on the spatial extensity of matter, but what matter „in itself“ is would be radically unknowable. Under the assault of this objection, must not our basic position be simply abandoned? In what follows we can merely sketch the presuppositions on the basis of which one can still maintain the actual spatial extendedness of a material being: First, it would have to be shown that the first principles and bases of true mathematical and physical knowing are neither mere subjective categories and forms of intuition, nor merely conventional rules, nor likewise mere matters of arbitrary definition. Then we would have to show how objective knowledge of essences can be attained regarding not merely space and number, but also motion, time, matter, substance and causality (cf. the author’s work, 21976). Secondly, on these grounds we would have to demonstrate that within the theories of modern physics many theses are to be found which contradict the eternal essential laws regarding being as such, time or matter, and hence which do not validly place in question the objectivity of our knowledge of matter because they all imply false philosophical assumptions or interpretations. Further, it must be shown that in no way is the ultimate criterion of the truth of a theory provided by the results of merely empirical research, much less by the merely practical success of that theory, but only by apriori essential laws. Thus, in an adequate philosophy of nature, the latter must never be sacrificed to the former, but rather those theories must be given up, viz. those alleged empirical „facts“ must be treated as scientific fictions, which contradict the timeless laws of the essence of space, time or matter. The essence of the truth of judgment must be explained as a unique form of „adequation” between judgment and actual states of affairs (Pfänder), etc. Only on such Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 68 philosophical bases could the apodictic affirmation of the spatial extendedness of matter be defended. On the presupposition of the theory of science held by Kuhn or Hubner, of course, our whole set of problems would fall away, since, according to such views, the theories of physical science as such should advance no claim to actual truth and could be in principle replaced by theories that are totally opposed philosophically or rather that go back to historically changeable, relative „models.“ We can, of course, not accept such a simple solution to our problem, since we hold that scientists do not merely factually claim truth for most of their theories, but likewise do this with justification, so long as they know and examine as such the ultimate philosophical truth-foundations of their science in the sense of classical mathematics and natural science. (Cf. Heitler 21976, pp 23ff.; Seifert 1973.) Against Leibniz’s denial of the ultimate essential distinction between mind and matter, or Kant’s affirmation of the ultimate unknowability of the essence of mind and matter, an error in their argumentation must be pointed out, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, our thesis of the essential spatially extended multiplicity-in-unity of matter must be modified. In Kant’s argument, the second antimony which we have sketched, three radically different concepts of „simplicity“ and „composition“ are employed. The confusion resulting from the failure to make these distinctions gives a false impression upon which this alleged antinomy rests, and is also responsible for the view of Leibniz that the ultimate parts of matter are unextended (simple). Since very similar ways of thinking lie at the basis of the discussion of elementary particles in modern physics, we ought to give a short critical treatment of this here. First, there is the absolute simplicity of a mathematical or actual point in space as pure position without any extension. It is evident that neither material things nor their ultimate elementary particles can be „simple“ in this sense. This knowledge, based on the essence of matter, of the simplicity of the point and of its opposite, the infinite divisibility of space, lies at the basis of Kant’s proof for the composition of all matter. The fact, however, that all parts of matter, in that they fill infinitely divisible space, essentially possess parts outside of parts and never merely occupy a point, does not lead to the least antinomy or contradiction. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 69 Secondly, one can characterize as „simple“ any entity which does not consist of real parts, or rather, which cannot be further divided into parts. Leibniz and Kant (in the second antinomy) seem to prove cogently that every material entity must consist finally of „simple parts“ in this sense. For if one admits no elementary particles of matter that are no longer really divisible, then indeed a „composition“ of matter „out of nothing“ seems ultimately to be posited from which the contradictions seen therein by Kant seem to follow. It is entirely possible that an entity is composed in the first sense (displaying parts outside of parts), but is simple in the second sense. Thus we must accept an irreducible simplicity (grounded in the essence of real material being, not in the essence of space) of elementary particles which are not built out of something smaller. The search for the atom (atomon, the indivisible) from the Pre-Socratics to modern physics is based upon this insight. In a third, totally different sense, one can speak of the „simplicity“ of the soul. This simplicity constitutes, indeed, a contradiction to the first two modes of composition and includes the second mode of „simplicity,“ but is still „simple“ in a completely new sense. It is neither characterized, like a point, by an exact spatial „position“ nor is it compatible with having „parts“ of its simple being (in the second sense) lie outside of other parts or in other points (or parts) of space. (This third sense of simplicity will be more carefully established in our discussion of the soul.) In the light of these distinctions, Leibniz’s and Kant’s idea that simple substances in the second sense imply something like souls (monads) is totally untenable. The proofs of this are based upon an equivocation or a quaternio terminorum. On the basis of the above distinctions, the panpsychism of Leibniz (of which we shall still speak) and of many philosophers of the present, the neutral monistic thesis of the identity of mind and matter, as well as the affirmation of the unextendedness or non-intuitably unextended and unknowable (antinomic) structure of matter, can successfully be criticized. For these positions are largely based on a failure to make the proper distinction between these three modes of simplicity. Of course, these objections, or rather, the distinction of these modes of simplicity and composition compel us to distinguish two different interpretations of the thesis that matter is essentially composed of non-identical parts and is thus divisible. Only in the first sense of simplicity, involving the divisibility and unity-in-multiplicity connected Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 70 with the (mathematical) essence of space, can this be held as an essential feature of all matter, even of its most elementary component parts. In this sense, every part of matter has „part“ outside of „part“ in the exteriority of space. Yet, „simplicity“ in the second sense can be found in the elementary particles and therefore, its opposite, composition as the unity-in-multiplicity of non-identical, really divisible parts, must not be ascribed as an essential feature to matter as such. It is not real composition in this sense, but the disjunctive property of either such composition or the capacity of constituting larger material entities through such composition that belongs to the essence of matter. 2. Objections Against the Thesis that No Essential Feature of Matter Is Found in Psychic Realities a) Non-Phenomenological and Anti-Phenomenological Objections: There are a series of philosophical theories which ascribe to conscious experience many of the features of matter – extension, for example – not on the basis of referring to something unequivocally given, but rather on the basis of the confusion of completely distinct data. First of all, many thinkers equate intentional acts with their objects. Thus they ascribe spatial extension and divisibility to the sun or the earth as „contents of consciousness.“ Such „contents of consciousness“ would apparently be in our consciousness, and thus psychic. Thus there would be something psychic that is spatially extended. Husserl (1900/01) showed that such „proofs“ are based upon an equivocation of the expression „content of consciousness.“ At times this term indicates the objects of intentional acts of which we possess consciousness and some of which, to be sure, are spatially extended. However, at other times the expression signifies a conscious experience (something psychic). Now the contents of which we have consciousness are in no way , in our consciousness in the sense in which, e.g., our knowing is „in consciousness.“ Contents of consciousness in the latter sense – the real components of conscious life – are not spatially extended, while contents of consciousness in the first sense can be spatially Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 71 extended, but then they are also not psychic. Thus the argument mentioned rests upon pure equivocation. Often the confusion of the two meanings of „content of consciousness“ goes hand in hand with a second confusion in which the appearances of material things – this time, since they presuppose an observing subject in order to be constituted – are identified with psychic realities. If, however, one holds colors to be psychic entities, psychic being must evidently appear as extended. Now, however, that dependency on a subject which characterizes appearances does not make them in any way something psychic (Reinach). They lack all the positive essential features of psychic being. Thus reference to the extendedness of many appearances cannot be considered as proof of the spatial extendedness of psychic being. We find a third confusion where the physiological and material conditions of psychic data or their physiological causes and effects are taken for psychic being itself. In many theories this confusion occurs already on the level of the phenomena; in other theories (as in the mind-brain Identity Theory) it is the result of speculative theories and hypotheses. The first kind of theory still leads for the most part to the radically behaviorist seduction of psychic being to the physical, which we have already treated. The second kind of theory we will treat later and there also investigate the essential distinctions between physical and psychic being which reach beyond all simple modes of givenness. The arguments developed there can serve also for the critique of those theories which identify psychic being not completely, but only partially, with physicalphysiological forms or processes. b) Objections Originating in Phenomenology, „Common-Sense Philosophy,” and Related Movements Many authors refer to phenomenologically demonstrable facts as proof of their thesis that psychical being – in any case everything conscious in the broadest sense of the term – is in no way necessarily „unextended.“ In genuine orientation to the given, these thinkers point to the fact that hunger, thirst and, Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 72 all the more so, experiences of pain or pleasure are not only experienced in the body, but in many cases even have a precisely specifiable bodily location ( a tooth ache for example). Such experiences can spread from one place to another. On this basis Scheler refuses to consider such experiences as „psychic“ and contrasts them precisely with psychic data (such as sorrow) or spiritual acts (such as an act of the will). Thus, however, psychic data in our broad sense of the term ( including everything conscious) could be extended, or at least, to employ Scheler’s terminology, „extensive.“ (Cf. also Merleau-Ponty, pp.24080). It is, moreover, not merely sense experiences and bodily feelings, but the whole phenomenon of the lived body that appears to be misconceived in our approach. A phenomenological philosophy of the „subjective body“ (livedbody-phenomenon), developed in the more recent past by M. de Biran (cf. Henry, 1965), Bergson (cf. Zaner, 1964) and especially by Scheler (cf. Hengstenberg, 1955; Lorscheid, 1962), Marcel, Husserl, Sartre and MerleauPonty, opposes those dualistic conceptions according to which the body is a mere material substance. Scheler (51966, p. 388) notes in this regard that the false conception of the body as material stems from the false alternative that every entity must be either physical or psychic. Since the body is not psychic, it must be physical (material). In recent philosophy, this narrow dualism has actually led into many blind alleys. It is the great merit of the phenomenologists (especially Husserl, Reinach, Scheler, Hartmann, Ingarden and others) to have shown that there are many regions of being which are totally falsified if one attempts to fit them into this narrow alternative. The human body is certainly no merely material thing. Rather it is lived from within. This lived body, ever experienced in this way from within only by a single person (Scheler calls it somewhat misleadingly „body-soul“ [Leibseele], Merleau-Ponty „corps propre“, is certainly radically different from body as a purely material entity („Leibkörper” in Scheler’s terminology). Sartre also (pp 368-427) has referred to this distinction. He, and especially Merleau-Ponty and the later Husserl, have developed or analyzed the notion of the body (Leib) or Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 73 rather of the bodily self, as an integral „constituent“ of consciousness insofar as the conscious being of man himself is experienced as „embodied.“ However, not only is our body as a material thing „spatial“, but our lived body is also „spatial,“ (cf. Merleau-Ponty, pp. 114-172) and as consciously experiencing and perceiving bodily subjects we have a definite position in space from which we experience all objects in space (cf. Zaner.1964, p.250). In this regard, Husserl has characterized the body as the „zero point of orientation“ for perception. Scheler has likewise pursued something similar in his analyses of the body as constituting the „environment“ (Umwelt),. The „outerworld“ (Aussenwelt) according to Scheler only presupposes an I, not a lived body. Plessner’s original investigations of the body move in a similar direction (pp. 230ff.). Thinkers from entirely different philosophical backgrounds (such as Vesey and – on the basis of a „common sense“ standpoint shared with Moore – Stout, pp.150ff.) furnish similar analyses of the „embodied“ or „incarnate“ mind, though not with the same phenomenological breadth and depth as Scheler, Marcel and others. Even thinkers like Nagel, coming from Neo-Positivism, reproach physicalism for treating the body of man only as a (material) object among others and overlooking the phenomenon of the lived body. Whitehead’s philosophy of the lived body also moves in a similar direction (cf. Lovejoy, pp. 193ff.). Because of this short work’s goal of treating critically the different basic positions, no far-ranging discussion can be given of those theories which, like Russell’s, oscillate between the phenomenological philosophy of the body, a physicalist body-soul identity theses, and an epiphenomenalism (cf. Lovejoy, pp. 235-318.) On the basis of these considerations, it would be claimed that the embodiment or bodiliness of our consciousness, the „primal feeling“ in which we experience our own body (Marcel), the role of the body as „perception-organ“ or as „organ of the will“ and many similar phenomena would be totally misunderstood if our above distinction between physical and psychic actualities held. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 74 In response to this objection and in further development of a philosophy of the „lived body,“ we must say that our body is certainly not reducible to a material entity; we experience it „from within,“ yet at the same time in a totally different manner that a „state of the I” (Ichzustand) (Scheler 51966, p.397). To no other thing do we have such a relation (cf. Driesch, pp.87-88). Thus, as Scheler demonstrates, going far beyond Driesch and others, we also cannot reduce the givenness of the body to organic sensations in which, on analogy with the sensory perception of „exterior“ bodies, we would have a kind of „sense perception from within“ of the body. Rather (cf. Scheler, p.398) we find here a „perception“ sui generis, in which the body is not perceived as an object in the sense of those things of which we might have mere consciousness. This first primordial experience of the body grounds the more concrete organic sensations (Scheler, p.401). Marcel and later Merleau-Ponty (pp.87-113) have analyzed these states of affairs in an especially thorough manner. It is also incontestably true that the body as lived body plays a central role in exterior sensory perception and also in all activities co-implicated with the body. Likewise one can only give a positive evaluation to the contribution of the phenomenologists that the body in the sense of the lived body moves in the vicinity of something „psychic,” even if it is also difficult to delineate clearly the states of affairs here involved from what is in our opinion the false thesis that our entire consciousness is „bodily“ and the entire body „psychic“ (Sartre). Because Sartre declares the „lived body“ to be (wholly) „psychic,” he creates a radical split between the body-as-object and the lived body. For the body-asobject (the material physiological body, which is „a thing among other things“ and can be dissected and subjected to chemical tests, is certainly not psychic; it is not „what this (our) consciousness is.“ In contradistinction to this view which tends to separate the material body (object-body) from the lived body, Scheler affirms in many places (p.399, p.406) that in spite of the distinction between the body experienced from within and the body observed in outer perception, both are identical. Here he certainly sees something correctly even though it would Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 75 also be difficult to state exactly the sense of „identity“ involved. Naturally my inner experience, itself of the lived body cannot be identical with the material body end even less with the externally perceived material body. Likewise, insofar as the lived body (characterized by Scheler even as „body-soul” (Leibseele) entails this conscious experience or rather is understood as consciously experienced body in the way described, it is surely not simply identical with the material body apprehended in exterior perception. But the body which I experience from within in lived-body-experience, is indeed identical with the material body which I observe from without, as experience teaches us in thousands of ways. Moreover, on this point there is in Scheler and other phenomenologists of the lived body an ambiguity upon which we will still critically comment. A further distinct contribution of the phenomenologists lies in their inquiry into the many different meanings of the body or of the relations of the soul (the mind) to the body. Thus the body as „word“ and „expression“ of the spirit is probed by Merleau-Ponty (pp.203ff.), Hengstenberg (31966, pp.225ff.), von Hildebrand (1977) and others, and also the body as „partner of the mind“ (the wisdom entrusted by the mind to the body – as in the hand of the artist), as the basis of the creation of „time-forms“ or bodily movements, rhythms, and forms which unfold in time (Hengstenberg, pp.263ff.), etc. (cf. below, pp. ). By way of critique of some phenomenologists of the lived body, one must note that usually (also in Scheler’s case, p.405, in opposition to this thesis of the identity of the „body-soul“ and the „matter-body“ – Leibkörper – the distinction between lived body and material body is exaggerated or conceived in a false manner. In Sartre, the „object body“ is directly described as something completely separate from the lived body, something foreign, identified moreover with the „body of the other“ or rather with the material body (one’s own or another’s) as object of (external) perception. On the contrary, we must note first of all that it is at best a neutral laboratory view in which one considers the body of the other only as a material thing and that one must not identify the body as thing with the „body of the others“ or with „its being-for-others,” etc. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 76 (This general view developed by Sartre that „the nature of our body for us entirely escapes us to the extent to which we can take upon it the other’s point of view“ is contradicted by occasional statements that the body of the other is not identical with the anatomical body and that we can view the body of the other also as subject for whom we are objects. But even in these remarks the identification of thing-body with body-for-the-other is still implied.) This identification of material body with „body for the other“ is, however, radically incorrect. The dedicated physician, and above all the one who hates or loves, considers the body of the other absolutely (surely not by mere sense perception, but by an understanding bound up with it) as lived body in the authentic sense, even if the body of the other person qua lived body is given to us in a completely different way than our own. Secondly, it is also implied in what has been said that the sensorily perceived and, as such, understood body must not at all be simply identified with the physical body as a material thing. Not only this false conception, but also, linked with it, the exaggeration or radicalization of the distinction between body as material thing and lived body must be eliminated. For, evidently, as presented above and as rightly understood, there is an identity between the body perceived from without and the body as lived from within. And precisely in the inner experience of the lived body, the material body is co-given as heavy, spatially extended, etc. This identity and unity of lived body and material body must be noted and a false lived-body/material body dualism avoided. In addition it must be noted that that „aspect“ of the body which awakens from its „being drawn into“ our conscious life stands in a deep unity with the body as material substance/body (Substanz/Körper), although both are not simply identical. In the case of the body as experienced (lived body) we are confronted with a unique appearance or rather mode of givenness of the material body. Further, even the experience of the lived body itself, which belongs totally to our conscious being and (as psychic in the broader sense) is worlds apart from the body as a material substance, is not at all – separated from the latter, but is related in significant ways to it. Perhaps in this regard Plessner Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 77 (pp.246f.) was reformulating an important insight of Scheler, when he said, „that the lived body as unity of behavior is the qualitative form and Gestalt in which the material body and the soul exist as anchored in each other.“ Marcel has indeed described the lived body in a similar sense, on the one hand as a limit case of „having“ and as the root and the condition for the possibility of other forms of having, and on the other hand as a limit case of „being.“ We must also criticize another error that is made by many phenomenologists of the lived body and apparently radically opposed to the one just described. While they often interpret the mere distinction between lived body and material body as a separation, they interpret the „unity“ of body and consciousness as an identity. To be sure, seldom is a strict identity affirmed (the nearest to this is Sartre or Nietzsche). Zaner (1978), e.g., recognizes a diversity of „contexts,“ but holds any „dualism“ and, above all, any recognition of a substantial distinction between body and soul as inconsistent with the affirmation of the unity of man. (Cf. below, pp. ff. ...) The error of such phenomenologists consists above all in an unexamined acceptance or affirmation that the close unity of consciousness and bodiliness, as experienced in the phenomenon of the lived body, excludes body-soul diversity. (Zaner, 1978, even criticizes Jonas, although the latter advocates a biological Monism, for holding a false dualism between the living and the lifeless. Zaner thinks he can overcome every false dualism by his contextualist body-soul philosophy.) At this point we must gladly make a further concession to the phenomenological and existentialist philosophers of the human body, a concession which concerns an important refinement of the characterization given above (pp. ... ff.) of the essential distinction between physical and psychic being. The phenomenology of the lived body shows that we must supplement the opposition of a material entity as necessarily an „object“ of which we merely have consciousness but which we can never consciously perform from within, and our own conscious being which we perform and live laterally from within. If one only means by that that a material entity – and thus our material body – can never constitute a „part“ of our performance-consciousness, this opposition Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 78 is correct. In this sense, Scheler (51966, p.397) goes so far as to say that even the consciously lived body as lived does not belong to our consciousness, but stands over against it as object. But if one were to understand this thesis in so radical a manner that all material entities always „pose“ (Ayer) over against us only as objects, it would be false. For there is a unique mode in which a material entity (our material body) is lived from within in a way in which consciousness and matter as it were „melt together“ in our experience. Our lived body is distinguished from all other material things by the fact that it is consciously experienced from within to the highest possible degree and in the mode in which a material entity as such can be experienced „from within.“ (Naturally, there could be intensifications of this body-experience.) In the „primordial bodyfeeling“ the lived body is given, so to speak, „half-objectively,“ although this expression can still have many other meanings. One must, however, add a critical note to this „concession“: many phenomenologists (e.g. Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Zaner) do not see too clearly (or generally not at all) the distinction between, on the one hand, („pure“) psychical states such as depression and, above all, spiritual acts (such as an inference) which are precisely not experienced in the lived body in the sense described, and the experience of the lived body, on the other hand, a distinction which Scheler stressed. If we speak on the „bodiliness of our consciousness“ as applying universally, this distinction is misunderstood. In addition, we must critically note that our body, precisely in being experienced „from within,“ shows itself as clearly different from the experience itself. Thus in Scheler’s notion of the „body-soul“ there lies an unclarity in that the lived body and the (psychic) experience of it, which is given „in it,“ seem to be identified. Pascal (Pensées, Fr. 108; p.339) appears to us here to be more phenomenological when he says that neither the hand nor the arm, neither the flesh nor the blood, but only something immaterial could experience pleasure in us. Likewise our „localized“ body-experiences must be clearly distinguished from the body given in this experience. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 79 A concluding critical remark concerns the fact that most phenomenologists do not distinguish or do not sufficiently distinguish three radically different sorts of relation to space when they speak of the bodiliness [Leiblichkeit (Körperlichkeit)] of consciousness. The first sort of relation to space lies in matter’s property of filling space (cf. above, pp. ff. ... and pp. ff.). By its very nature this relation is not a conscious relation, but a purely thing-like, objective relation which refers to the two forms of material „composition“ distinguished above. The second sort of relation to space we find in experiences which are experienced bodily either in indeterminate ways (e.g. tiredness) or in concrete localization (e.g. a tooth ache). These experiences not only include an essentially conscious relation to space, but they are also able to be present in cases in which one can not speak of a real existence in space, as in the case of pain in a phantom limb (Pluegge). these experiences indeed show, also in contrast to spiritual acts, a certain „exteriority“ („Aussereinander”) (Scheler, Baier), but they do not have „part“ outside of „part“ as material entities do. In a third sense, purely mental human acts also have a relation to space. By reason of the universal bond which ties our conscious being by means of the body to a definite space, one can also say that purely mental events or experiences have occurred in definite places. Here it is a matter neither of filling spaces, nor of being localized, but of a mental and spiritual presence in space. These distinctions obviously do not exhaust all the modes of relation to space. Similar distinctions were stressed by Bergson (p.274) between spatial extension (etendue) and the lived extensivity of the psychic (etensivitè). Similar distinctions were also made by other philosophers. Scheler particularly distinguished (51966, pp.410-11) spatiality (the first kind of spatial relatedness) and extensivity (the second mode of relation to space) and simultaneously rightly stressed the non-spatiality of all consciousness and the nonextensivity of mental acts. In general, a clear distinction of the basically different modes of body-involvement, or rather spatial involvement, is still lacking within the phenomenological philosophy of the body. 3. Objections Against Some of the Above-Stated Positive Features of Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 80 Psychic Phenomena a) Phenomenological (Psychological) Objections Based on the Unconscious One could say that, just as the greatest part of an iceberg is under water, so also the greatest part of psychic being might be unconscious, preconscious or subconscious. Our „Cartesian“ essential determination of psychic being as experienced in conscious „performance“ would lead to the denial of the greatest part of the psychic realm and also to the denial of the continuous existence of the person and the existence of the psychic realm (and the personality) in embryonic or comatose states. (Spaemann critically employed the same observation against the present author, 1973.) Not only the unconscious and subconscious, but above all the deepest superactual acts of the person, such as the whole realm of fundamental attitudes (virtues and vices) of the person or acts such as love (Von Hildebrand), lie beyond the sphere of actual consciousness and are not in any case exhausted in consciously being experienced. (Love, for instance may continue to exist as one and the same act for years, and can clearly not be restricted to our actual experiences of love.) A first critical response to this objection is the following: There are many meanings to the terms „unconscious” and „subconscious” which do not refer to realities and acts that are in no way conscious (Geyser). Rather we often say a man acts or hates unconsciously when he lacks a reflexive consciousness of these acts or when he even deceives himself about them. Thus, for example, a female patient of the psychologist van den Berg had not inwardly accepted her crippled child for years, although she thought she was a perfectly concerned mother. In spite of the „unconsciousness“ of this behavior, she became aware in the course of treatment that for years she had reacted to the pleading look of her child coldly, lovelessly and even hatefully. These „unconscious“ and „repressed“ feelings were thus experienced on a certain level of consciousness and in this sense always conscious. What was lacking was reflexive awareness and the conscious admitting to herself of these feelings. Furthermore, there are many experiences, acts or their objects, which we call unconscious or subconscious (childhood traumata, repressed wish-images), Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 81 since we neither experience them in the present nor possess a recollection of them that is consciously accessible to us. These experiences, however, were once conscious, and in their being consciously experienced lies their primordial form of being. „Consciousness“ ought therefore not to be so narrowly conceived that it merely includes the actually and momentarily experienced. Not only past consciousness, (i.e. acts which endure also when we do not actually perform them and which constitute a lasting foundation of our actual experience and color it) but also potential and, above all, superactual consciousness, which is not exhausted in being experienced in the moment, must be treated as a mode of conscious being (von Hildebrand, Heidingsfelder). Not only do such experiences and acts possess in themselves an essential reference to consciousness (they are either „superconscious“ as superactual acts, or „potentially conscious,“ e.g. knowing the parts of speech of a foreign language), they are also ordered to completely actual consciousness as to their proper form of being. But all entities whose most complete mode of being is conscious being i.e. consciously performed being, must be ascribed to consciousness. Certainly, there are also many aspects of the psychic being of the human person which are not essentially exhausted in consciousness or even are essentially not themselves conscious: moral goodness, guilt, merit, responsibility, values, the self of the person (which does not cease to exist when deprived of consciousness in sleep or coma), etc. This fact is still no valid objection to the fact that psychic being must essentially be characterized by its relation to consciousness. For those data referred to in this argument either inhere in consciousness in a definite way, or are founded in conscious acts; or, again, they are the bearers or the substantial grounds of consciousness and are essentially directed towards awakening in consciousness, without exhausting themselves in consciousness. In this or in similar ways the unconscious or subconscious dimensions of psychic being are essentially characterized by a relation to consciousness. These considerations certainly lead us to differentiate our basic thesis, but they do not overthrow it. Something similar is also true of Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 82 matter which is essentially characterized by spatial extension and unity-inmultiplicity, without being exhausted by these characteristics. Similarly, this being of matter which fills space grounds many properties which are not themselves spatially extended (order, form, finality, beauty, ontological value, etc.). With this reply we clearly distinguish ourselves from Descartes who was inclined to reduce the psychic to consciousness and matter to extension. Likewise his thesis that always (even in sleep, delusion, etc.) we think (are actually conscious), seems to us to be completely untenable in the face of experience. (One need only consider the dimensions of the unconscious mentioned before, of forgetting, of the experienced degree of tiredness and of losing consciousness, etc.). Against the objection raised a further concession must be made whose development at the same time will bring into relief the most complete meaning of our thesis that psychic being is essentially determined by its relation to consciousness. Between consciousness and its bearer there is clearly a completely different relation than between a material thing and extension. Consciousness is (as the experience of fainting shows) not so inseparably bound up with its bearer as extension is with its material bearer. Consciousness is not a modus of psychic being in the same sense – a property considered as a feature necessarily bound up with a substance (Descartes)--in which extension is a modus of matter. Still, it is not merely the case that psychic being is only accessible to us by and in consciousness (Coreth); rather psychic being is also so deeply directed metaphysically to consciousness that an absolute and irremovably eternal separation of a psychic entity from awareness would rob this entity of a feature which is still more deeply essential to it than extension is to matter. In consciousness alone does the personal psychic being attain to its complete actuality. The state of a person who would indeed always exist objectively (like a table) but would not be conscious and would no longer be conscious for eternity would come close to a annihilation of the person concerned. An eternal sleep of death in the sense of a total extinction of consciousness would not be decisively different from the annihilation of the Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 83 person. Within consciousness thus lies the most proper life, the deepest meaning, the most complete being and the vocation of the person. (This does not necessarily preclude the psychic-mental being of man, characterized primarily by its relation to consciousness, having vegetative functions as well. For a discussion of this difficult problem cf. the present author’s work, 1973, pp.7lff. and 328ff.) b) Objections Against Any Givenness of the Self (I) In Hume’s famous remark that it is never a self (I) that is given to us but merely a bundle of sense-impressions, there is certainly contained the truth that one does not experience the I or the self in the way in which one experiences this or that sense-impression, perceptions, acts or objects themselves. Still, one ought not conclude from this that we do not experience the self in another much more elementary way. As Butler already emphasized against Locke, and in more recent time Eccles (1970), the present author (1973) and Healy among others have also insisted, there is scarcely a more evident and more basic experience than that each experience is given as an „I experience,“ „I feel,“ etc. and not as a subject-less „experience in itself.“ In contemporary philosophy one also finds other and more convincing objections against tin self-givenness of the conscious subject. The objectors do not maintain that there is no conscious subject of conscious acts, but they hold, on the contrary, that the „I think accompanying all conscious performances“ (Kant), the person, can never be made object of conscious acts of reflection (Scheler, Husserl, Strasser, Brunner, Reininger, et al.). As is well known, Kant has indeed held that the classical proofs of the nature of the soul represented a „paralogism of pure reason,“ since they are based upon a Quaternio terminorum. That „I“ which we grasp in reflexion as object is not identical with the I as (transcendental) subject, which remains permanently removed from the knowing (objectifying) grasp. We find similar views in Husserl’scontemptful remarks (in the Crisis) on Descartes’ interpretation of the cogito as a particle of the actual world, as mens sive animus. Similar ways of thinking also lie at the basis of Scheler’s and Strasser’s rejection of the substantiality of the soul and Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 84 also of Marcel’s thesis that the I or even the lived body cannot be objectified (mystere ontologique). 33 To these objections one can first of all critically remark that various meanings of „object“ [„Objekt” and „Gegenstand”] must be sharply distinguished from one antrther. Certainly neither the I nor the lived body can be treated as an „object“ in the sense : of a mere „thing,“ without both being falsified. But that does not mean that the lived body or the person cannot be „object“ in an epistemological sense, as something which a person can frontally encounter, of which he has consciousness. It can be shown phenomenologically not only that we are able to have consciousness of other persons and of ourselves (our lived body) in this sense, but that the philosophers mentioned necessarily presuppose this when they speak unhesitatingly in an „objective“ manner of the transcendental I, the person, etc. Secondly, if once the lateral being-known of some acts in performanceconsciousness and the completely different sort of conscious givenness of the self in self-awareness as such are recognized and distinguished from any „consciousness of“ objects the thesis can be critically rejected that the I that becomes an object in reflexion is not the same I which laterally experiences itself in conscious performance before every „becoming-object-of-consciousacts.“ (cf. below, pp. ff. ...) Finally, Weier (1967) has shown the nonphenomenological character of the „actualistic“ anthropology of Descartes, Hume, Scheler, Hartmann and others, who tend to reduce the given(„I”) to mere conscious „performances,” experiences, etc. without allowing for the givenness of the personal subject himself. Weier has persuasively criticized them in many respects – above all by rendering fruitful Hengstenberg’sconcept of meaning. (Cf. below, pp. ff.) C) Objections Against the Givenness of Psychic Being and of Its Bearer as Real „In Themselves“ 33 Cf. on this matter also Zaner (1964) and, for a critique, the author’s work (1973,pp.45 -61). Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 85 If the soul and psychic being are identified with the allegedly never objectively given (transcendental) subject (as in Strasser or in Reininger), we are dealing with the previous objection inspired by Kant. If the soul, on the contrary, is identified with the object of inner experience or with its (objective) conditions, we confront another objection. If, for example, Kant was correct that all our experiences are only given through being shaped by a subjective form of the intuition of time and by subjective categories (forms of thought), then we would have here before us only „appearances“ and not an actual psychic being „in itself“ [„an sich“ (in sich selber)]. To investigate the „objective essence“ of psychic being and to accept a „soul“ lying at its basis could then merely lead to a „transcendental illusion“ and only be advocated by one naive enough to believe he has before himself anything more than a „heuristic fiction.“ The same thing holds also for the thesis developed by Husserl (21962) in connection with Hume and Kant, that only in naive world-belief in the claim to validity of the phenomenon is a „real” experienced. At best, an I would be given to us as „soul“ in an inauthentic, purely noematic experience of objects which are constituted by an underlying transcendental ego. Here we cannot critically enter into the far-reaching epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions of this objection (cf. the author’s work 21976 and the literature referred to therein.) 4. Objections Against the Position that Material Realities Lack the Positive Features of Psychic Realities Since these objections – under reverse emphases on the body as primary datum – are very similar to the positions treated under 2., they will only be mentioned here for the sake of completeness, but not treated specifically. (For an answer to them see above, #2.) D. Third Group of Objections: Based on the Claim to an Ultimate Identity Underlying the Essential Distinction Between Psychical (Mental) and Physical Phenomena Admitted for Naive Experience Those philosophers who raise the objection formulated in the title of this section would perhaps acknowledge many (Armstrong, Smart), perhaps even most of the distinctions between psychic and physical evidences treated here (Feigl). Indeed, Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 86 they would agree with us that Ryle’s Behaviorism is completely untenable and hold with us that the characteristics which we experience in psychical being are radically different than those which we meet with in physical being. They would even agree with us when we affirm that the concepts with which we indicate psychic being and those with which we indicate brain processes have an entirely different logical meaning. They would certainly also grant that this logical diversity in the experience of physical and psychic being: we experience psychic being in a „knowledge of acquaintance“ or in conscious experience (performance-consciousness) without which, as Feigl remarks, commenting on a remark made by Einstein, the world would be „a mere manure-pile“; physical being we always experience as object of which we have consciousness, particularly as extended, composed, etc. The one we experience in „inner experience,“ the other by sensory perception, etc. Feigl or Armstrong would not contest that consciousness, in opposition to brain-processes, is experienced in many cases as intentionally directed to objects. And still these authors would say: although both modes of evidentiality are so different and thus physical and psychic being appear to the naive as essentially different, both are in reality identical, indeed not in the logical sense, but in the metaphysical or empirical sense. Outside of the Australasian Physicalists and the proponents of the materialist Identity Thesis, various „Spiritualists“ also take this point of view, although under reversed signs – or at least they tend in this direction. Thus with Berkeley or Schopenhauer as well as with modern Phenomenalists there are places in which they come close to the view that physical being differs from psychic being in modes of givenness and certain features, but that „matter“ ultimately is identical with conscious experience in the sense of the principle „Esse est aut percipi aut percipere” or in the sense of its continuation into the more radical thesis: „percipi est percipere“ ( To be is either to be perceived or to perceive; to be perceived is -reducible- to-percieving). For if all material being is nothing but an object of consciousness, its ultimate being is easily reduced back to its ground: consciousness. But since this form of the objection in the strict sense of an identity theory is scarcely widespread today and since also the Phenomenalists rarely hold a strict identity of physical and psychic being with the radicalism of the Materialists – indeed they often Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 87 even hold the opposite (since, indeed, according to them matter is mere appearance and object, and only psychic being is subject and real, and thus both are distinct) – we will not treat this position here. A third form of this objection is „Neutral Monism“ which affirms an identity of physical and psychic being, without reducing the one. to the other. Rather an identity of both with a third reality is postulated which is neither physical nor psychic (Rosenblueth, Rensch). In what follows, only the Materialist turn of this objection will be expressly investigated. Of course most of the arguments brought forth against this form of the objection also hold for the critique of the other two forms. 1. The „Vulgar Materialism“ of the Australasian Physicalists and the Cybernetic Materialists A first form in which the Identity Thesis could be proposed would be that standpoint characterized by Dialectical Materialism as „Vulgar Materialism.“ According to this view, what we experience in naive experience as consciousness is indeed not experienced as matter or motion, as chemical or electrical processes. Accordingly, we also do not logically indicate chemical or neural processes by notions that point to experiential acts. Nevertheless, our consciousness is not merely (objectively) identical with these processes. But it is hoped that science will soon be so far advanced that we will no longer need to speak of psychic being in the unscientific mode of conscious experience, but we will be able literally to „see“ thoughts and feelings with the help of a cerebrascope or in similar ways. This standpoint, already held in antiquity, in the Middle Ages or in the eighteenth century, is being advocated in its crassest form by Steinbuch (cf. Brandt, pp.7-30) who denies every in-principle distinction between man and programmed machines (computers). Armstrong also (p.116) comes remarkably close to this view when he maintains that a natural scientist who perceives a brain process perceives the same thing that the patient experiences. He likens this to the case where one man only smells a piece of cheese which the other only tastes, but both perceive the same cheese. Even Feigl often approaches this position, e.g. when he affirms – with Smart that in a completely scientific world the „nomological danglers,“ i.e. all concepts of expereince and consciousness, indeed even eventually all Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 88 specifically physiological concepts (which are not yet reducible to concepts of physics and chemistry) would be superfluous. As the concept of color can be replaced by subsequent concepts such as electromagnetic vibrations, waves, etc., so likewise all concepts of experience will be replaced in a completely scientized world by physicalistphysiological and ultimately by purely micro-phycial concepts (pp.139-142). Everything important would be said with these concepts and nothing will be explained away thereby (p.145). Of course Feigl again limits all these remarks in a way still to be discussed, yet the places indicated as well as the reviews and books written by and about Feigl on the thought experiement of the cerebroscope and the auto-cerebroscope for perceiving thoughts show that Feigl many times approaches identification with the standpoint of „Vulgar-Materialism.“ In the most naive way, Matson (pp.70ff.) represents the cerebroscope in the sense of Identity-Theory, showing pictures and colored tables of this instrument which is a pure figment of science-fiction. Eccles (1970; 1977) has shown that this view (above all the idee of the cerebroscope) is, scientifically speaking, not merely extremely naive, but completely untenable. First of all, it is impossible to find any strict one-to-one relationship between brain-events and specific experiences (the same patterns of brain-events arise in conjunction with most diverse and sometimes opposite experiences). Secondly, the brain-events involve millions of brain-cells and most complicated patterns of electrochemical activations which succeed each other in fractions of fractions of seconds, and thus could as little become „visually“ observable as it is impossible to see and visually distinguish different and irregular number-series which involve billions times billions of members and, would pass by before our eyes with a speed so great that even one single member in this series could not be visually perceived because it is succeeded too rapidly by another one. But even if, one could observe by means of more refined methods an exact match between certain conscious processes and certain brain-processes, and if the latter could be precisely observed with the help of an instrument, still on the basis of the diverse modes of experience initially admitted by this theory in which physical and psychic being are independently given, the Identity-Theory (instead of Parallelism) would remain not merely an arbitrary hypothesis, but – at least if one presupposes the Neo- Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 89 Positivist epistemology presupposed by most advocates of this Identity-Theory – a meaningless thesis in Carnap’s sense, i.e. a thesis which is neither directly nor indirectly verifiable or falsifiable empirically, but belongs to a realm lying in principle beyond the empirical. This objection can also be raised – even from an immanently positivistic or analytic standpoint against the.refined form of Identity-Theory in Feigl and others. It is raised by Ornstein (30ff.) and Popper (1977, p.99). (Of course, if one accepts this epistemology, the same objection appears to confront Popper’s and Ornstein’s own theories as well, which likewise in principle transcend what is to be made apparent with the help of empirical verification or falsification.) Further objections against this position coincide with those to be brought against the refined form of the Identity-Theory. 2. Refined Forms of Australasian Physicalism and of the Mind-Brain Identity-Theory Some Australasian Physicalists (Place, Smart, Armstrong) and Physicalists of the Vienna Circle (Carnap, Schlick), but, above all, Feigl and his followers, advocate the following position. (The epistemological basis of this position in Carnap’s NeoPositivist principle of verification was persuasively worked out by Malcolm [1977, pp. 89ff.] – and also shown to be the epistemological foundation of most contemporary forms of Behaviorism.) These authors would grant – with the already mentioned limitations – that the ways in which we experience physical and psychic being in naive experience will always remain different. Never will one – in the sense of the naive modes of experience – ”see“ thoughts or be able with instruments to observe feelings as lived. While Armstrong, Smart and others, as Popper (1977) stresses, much reduce the role of consciousness, Feigl (21961) grants repeatedly – deviating from the thesis mentioned in the previous section – the fundamental role of consciousness. Although sometimes he claims that physicalist concepts (and evidences) could ultimately replace and explain psychic being, he still thinks that consciousness can never be explained away and would always have to play an irreplaceable role in its „warm, emotional Christmas atmosphere“ (pp. 141-2). Not only are there ineffable qualities of conscious experience, but the concepts of introspective phenomenological psychology quite generally always remain essentially different than the concepts of physics. Physicalist Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 90 concepts would be invariant over against the completely different sense organs in which their objects would be grasped (indeed the latter could even be grasped with the help of technical devices totally without direct sensory experience). In opposition to this stand the meanings of purely phenomenal concepts (warm, cold, happy, sad, red). Their designate, Feigl admits, can only be real or possible data of immediate experience (pp.143-46) and they possess existentially a sharply pronounced singularity as does everything experienced. A Minkowski-world, where every I and here would be only one among others, precisely fails to do justice to the described facts; this cannot be further demonstrated but only clarified by argumenta ad hominem. With the help of the thesis borrowed from Quine (1960, pp.141ff.) on the „referential opacity“ of many concepts (such as the concept „hot,“ which would really – without the speaker’s knowing it – refer to kinetic energy) Feigl attempts, in spite of his concession regarding the difference of the two modes of experience, to maintain the thesis of the identity of psychic being with physical being and to prove that all phenomenological descriptions of consciousness are „rudimentary physiology“ (pp.149-150). Thus Feigl attempts to defend his Identity-Theory, above all with the three following distinctions: first by establishing, not a logical (conceptual) identity, but only a factual identity (to be determined in empirical-synthetic judgments) between psychic and physical being. Feigl also emphasized this point recently (Cheng, 1975) in sharp criticism of Smart, Armstrong, Medlin and other Australasian Physicalists. Secondly, he tries to justify his identity thesis – against the experienced difference – by accepting a double knowledge (conscious inner experience and outer sense perception) of the same identical reality. Finally, he argues for his position by positing, correspondingly, two levels of meaning of psychological terms which he speaks of as denotation and connotation. The denotation (the formal object intended objectively by the concept) would be identical for psychic and physiological-physicalist concepts, both of which describe brain-processes. On the other hand, the connotations (the co-intended) of both types of concept would be different (p.138). In reference to the second point, in many places the Australasian Physicalists explain the state of affairs in similar ways (cf. above for the opposite, pp. ....). They Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 91 would say, e.g., that colors are . always perceived and experienced by us differently than electromagnetic waves or brain-processes. Likewise we do not experience the clouds in the sky as „suspended drops of water,“ and lightning as movement of electrical charges. Still, one could not contest the fact that both are identically the same. In naive experience we will always have access to conscious experiential acts in completely different ways than we do to brain-processes. Thus the naive person will always consider them to be different. Yet they might be identical – or at least one should consider their identity as a rational hypothesis. Empirical science will perhaps supply the definitive proof someday (we have already criticized this point in our discussion of „Vulgar Materialism“) that conscious experiences are identical with processes in the central nervous system, just as colors are identical with waves, clouds with drops of water, lightning with electrical charges (Place). This conception leads, at least in the radical form in which Smart (pp.105-130) espouses it, to a radical deterministic and mechanistic picture of man. For Smart, man is ultimately nothing more than a computer. According to his view, a computer could also have consciousness. (For the critique of such views, cf., e.g., Dreyfus, 1972 and both this and the next chapter which, in refuting the thesis that the body could be subject of, or identical with, consciousness, also refutes the possibility that computers could have consciousness.) With respect to this theory, one must note positively that it succumbs to reductionism less than the cruder form of Identity Theory. In recognition of logically diverse conceptual meanings, of a double form of knowledge, etc., this position at least recognizes a certain essential distinction between physical and psychic being at the level of naive experience, though it does not acknowledge an ultimate essential distinction, indeed it even holds identity in being between the two phenomena. Of course, one must also critically note that, with Ryle, and in different degrees, the proponents of the refined forms of Identity Theory even identify conscious processes in every respect with corporeal behavior (cf. above, pp.). In all cases the advocates of this theory deny, almost necessarily, many data of conscious life, e.g. freedom, which is much more than the unimpededness found in the free fall of a body or the free flight of the bird and which, as true auto-determination of the conscious subject as such, is denied by Identity-Theorists as well as by epiphenomenolists.(Criticisms of Identity-Theorists Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 92 built upon freedom, reflexion, etc., will be developed later [pp. ff.... ]. Cf. also Klein, pp.13-20.) Nonetheless, the reductionism of the refined Identity-Thesis is not so universal. This advantage, however, will again be put into question by a stronger inconsistency. This leads to the criticism of the contradiction within Identity Theory between, on the one hand, the affirmation that consciousness is experienced in a totally different way than brain processes and, on the other hand, the thesis that both are strictly identical. Malcolm has shown this strikingly in Smarts’ case (1971, pp.60-79). Because of this inconsistency, Malcolm recommends to the advocates of Identity Theory the adoption of a strict Logical Behaviorism. (In a less clear philosophical way, Sellars [pp.370-378] also goes in a direction similar to that of the Australasian Physicalists and will thus also be involved in this criticism.) Completely apart from all inner contradiction, however, the emphasis upon strict factual identity already in the case of colors and vibrations, lightning and electromagnetic charges, clouds and water-drops is untenable. At least identity in the strict sense is here precluded since such identity presupposes a congruence of all characteristics and, beyond this, (as distinguished from mere perfect similarity) an ontological sameness. Between a lightning flash given as flashing and illuminating an area with its aesthetic properties and the physical substratum or the cause of the lightning flash there is not only no strict identity, but not even a similarity. The two things cohere causally or in other ways, but they are clearly different. (Neither Place, Smart, Armstrong nor Feigl ever explain in general what they really mean by identity – something to which Popper and Polten have rightly called attention.) All the more, the color „red,“ as seen, is worlds apart from the vibrations that ground it. These vibrations already show by their invariance – emphasized by Feigl – in respect to their different effects, viz. to the objects of sensory perception bound up with them (color, sound, etc.), that they could not be identical with these effects and sensory objects. For how could a thing which is invariant with respect to different and separable Ys, Vs, Zs etc. be identical with them? Identity loses all meaning here. Above all, the completely different predicates of both sets of data demonstrate their difference (cf. also Klein, p.16). The Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 93 fundamental superiority of Epiphenomenalism (see below, II.E.) over Identity Theory consists in the fact that it sees this. The distinctions between logical and factual identity as well as between denotation and connotation are most important in themselves, yet contribute nothing to the explanation of the distinction between physical and psychic being. Certainly the meaning of the name „John Barger“ is completely distinct logically from the expression „this man“ or „John Joseph’s father,“ and still one and the same entity can be intended by these logically different concepts (names). Certainly, the identity in question here only exists in a certain respect. For, as a matter of fact, Barger’s being a man is not identical with his being a father. Otherwise he could not have been a man before he became a father. Yet the same identical entity is intended under non-identical aspects. In the case of the clouds and the water drops, a similar identity of the entity with merely different aspects could be supposed. In reality, already here – and above all in the case of color – it is not a matter of an identical entity under merely diverse aspects as in the above case but of closely linked entities of which each possesses its own different being and essence. Here we cannot go into the very interesting problem as to which sorts of distinctions and identities in being can correspond logically to diverse concepts and categories. We will only emphasize that the relation between consciousness and brainprocesses is radically different from all the examples of difference mentioned up to now. Here we are dealing not merely with two entities radically diverse in being and in all their predicates (as in the case of color and vibrations), but with a diversity which points to different substantial bearers (cf. below, pp.... ). The attempt to explain this difference by a merely conceptual-logical (and also experiential) distinction which would co-exist with ontological identity totally miscarries. Indeed, here it is a matter of entities to which belong predicates which exclude each other in a mutually contradictory way (cf. above, pp. ), and indeed in a way founded upon a far-reaching distinction in the content of the respective essences. To present this case merely as a matter of logically distinct meanings, would betray a total linguistic and metaphysical confusion, the occurrence of which in the work of brilliant thinkers can become understandable only when seen as the result of a desperate attempt to maintain a crass materialist reductionism in spite of the basic non-identity of physical and psychic being which such thinkers cannot fail to Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 94 grant implicitly. If the distinction between diverse logical categories (with identity in being) is already completely insufficient to explain the distinction between physical and psychic being, this naturally holds all the more so for the logically much weaker distinction between different connotations with similar denotation (e.g. to die, to cash in one’s chips, to expire, to bite the dust). Certainly, the very same object or processes can be intended by different expressions, though completely different meanings, images, allusions, expressed feelings, etc. are connected with them.). But clearly such examples of the same denotation with different connotations cannot possibly explain the essential distinction between physical and psychic being, when not even the much farther reaching logical distinction between fundamentally different logical categories (denotations) suffices for this. Finally, the methodical monism which is to be found in the advocates of the Identity Theory must also be criticised. Certain reductionist methods which have a limited justification and, above all, many practical advantages on the level of natural sciences, are employed where they do not have the least justification in the region of intelligible,.necessary essential distinctions which are grasped with apodictic certainty. (cf. the present author’s earlier work, 1973, pp.xxi-lxxvi). E. Fourth Group of Objections: Epiphenomenalism and Related Positions (Dialectical Materialism) The standpoint taken by Epiphenomenalism of every stripe does not deny that physical and psychic realities are given to us as different in the way analysed or in similar ways. Moreover, Epiphenomenalists do not deny that it is a matter here of a genuine and irreducible essential distinction which excludes all identity. Still, this essential distinction is completely compatible with a single, and indeed a material reality (substance) as its ground. As far as its view of the phenomena themselves of physical and psychic being is concerned, Epiphenomenalism could be characterized with Shaffer (p.39) as „Dualism.“ On the level of the question of the identity or non-identity of the bearer (the substance) which lies at the base of physical and psychic being, Epiphenomenalism is still a Monistic Materialism. Historically, Epiphenomenalism was first advocated, at the latest, within the Phythagorean school (represented, e.g., by Similias in Plato’s Phaedo). In the nineteenth century this notion experienced a revival Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 95 – born mainly by considerations from natural science and philosophy of nature and, towards the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century , found various sharp critics (McDougall, Eisler, Lotze, Busse, Driesch, Geyser et al.). In its strongest contemporary form, the Epiphenomenalist standpoint broadly conceived is advocated by Dialectical Materialism (Diamat), where it is bound up with the theses of Evolutionism and the self-creation of man through labor (cf. Koeing, pp.505ff.). In its Marxist form Epiphenomenalism and the theses bound up with it (e.g. materialistic dialectic) found numerous critics: Bochenski, De Vries, Wetter, Becker and others. In what follows, generally only the most important and most intelligent arguments for Epiphenomenalism will be presented and criticized. In spite of its irreducibility to corporeal forms of behavior or to brain-processes, indeed in spite of its „godliness“ (Simmias), consciousness is, according to this view, a mere epiphenomenon of corporeal states and processes. Our mind would be a „harmony,“ a special sort of „immaterial,“ mental aspect of corporeal reality or a product, a function or immaterial characteristic of matter, as Diamat teaches (cf. Wetter, pp.48ff.). The Epiphenomenalist can point to the fact that in many cases we doubtlessly find such mental-immaterial aspects of matter. Already the gestalt-qualities of material things, the goal-directedness and meaning of a machine and its parts, or the value and aesthetic beauty of a material thing surely cannot be characterized as „material.“ None of the moments given with the essence of matter can be rightly ascribed to these „immaterial aspects“ of matter. The beauty of a material thing, e.g., is not spatially extended, divisible, etc. A favorite argument against Epiphenomenalism (Feigl, Lotze, McDougall et al.) ascribes to this view the thesis that consciousness is a mere insignificant phenomenon accompying matter, by the lack of which the world would go on exactly as well or would even be as meaningful as it would be with consciousness. The Epiphenonenalist who orients himself along the lines of Simmias or Diamat could still reply: many insignificant and false forms of Epiphenomenalism may have meant that, but we emphasize the deep significance of the mental aspect of matter much more than Feigl or other Identity Theorists. Consciousness is the highest product of reality; it alone makes possible the end and aim of evolution; in it the world finds its highest meaning, as in the beauty of a Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 96 painting the central meaning and value, the raison d’être of the painting, not an insignificant by-product is to be recognized. Consciousness ought to be characterized as an appearance accompanying matter, not in contemptible, devaluated dependency, but in the sense of a dependency in being. Indeed, the Marxist Epiphenomenalist could add that although consciousness is an ideal superstructure of material conditions – predominantly explained ecomomically – it as well as its products yet react upon their material base, and thus consciousness is in no way considered ineffective. Then Epiphenomenalism is even compatible with the threeworld theory of Popper and Eccles (1977). Next to material reality (World 1--basis) there would be the conscious inner life as epiphenomenon of matter (World 2). In its turn, consciousness produces language and other cultural products (World 3--ideal superstructure) which, for their part, again – naturally only by the mediation of consciousness (World 2)--can act upon material reality (World 1). Thus it does not seem fair to reject, with Wetter (p.62) and others, the conception of immaterial aspects of matter as simply absurd if one considers the facts mentioned above. (Bloch refers to the whole history of the concept of matter and of dialectic from thee pre-Socratics to Hegel in order to show that mental characteristics were always already accepted for matter.) One could even attempt to show, perhaps with the aid of Moore’s concept of value as a „non-natural“ characteristic : of an entity or Rossls conception of the same as a „consequential property“ that consciousness – analogous to the case of the relation between value and its bearer – indeed depends completely upon matter and is based upon it, but is nevertheless wholly spiritual and in no way possessed of material characteristics. By a thorough phenomenological analysis one can show that there are a plethora of spiritual entities or aspects (works of art, beauty, value etc.) which clearly depend totally upon a material substratum are destroyed with the destruction of the substratum, and are still „spiritual.“ Now, no one can doubt that human consciousness depends in many and radical ways upon the brain and upon the entire body (as well as upon economic and other material conditions). On the basis of this fact is it not justifiable to consider, at least hypothetically, the thesis that consciousness might be a spiritual epiphenomenon of matter? Must not such an hypothesis appear still more plausible if one considers the Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 97 enormous complexity and intricacy of the brain which could give rise to more refined and complex spiritual epiphenomena than any other material thing? The Marxist would add that the thesis that consciousness comes from matter can be still less astonishing if one bears in mind the „dialectical laws“ taught in Diamat, e.g. the law, illustrated by numerous phenomena, of the conversion of quantitative alterations into qualitative changes or the law of „the negation of negation“ (cf. Kosing, pp.383ff. and 415ff.; Bloch, pp.23Off., 382ff, and 461ff. On the critique of these notions, cf. Wetter, pp.91ff.) Tran-Duc-Tháo (pp. 214ff. and 23Off.) even attempts to link the Transcendental-Phenomenological doctrine of constitution with Marx and Engels doctrine on the brain (matter) as origin of consciousness. Certainly Epiphenomenalism seems correct when it emphasizes not only the existence and significance of spiritual aspects of matter, but also the fact that an irreducible essential distinction does not necessarily presuppose a substantial and real distinction. Indeed, to maintain this, would be in many cases (e.g. that of the beauty of a building) an unfounded hypostatization, a category mistake. It is likewise correct that these spiritual entities and aspects bound up with material entities cannot possess the predicates developed above as essential features of material being. Thus the proof that the positive features of matter cannot belong to any psychic reality does not at all suffice to maintain on this basis a substantial distinction between physical and psychic reality (body and soul). On the other hand, from all the facts mentioned one should also not conclude that psychic reality is an epiphenomenon of matter. For all the „spiritual characteristics“ of matter brought up as examples lack the positive essential features of psychic being as clearly as those of matter: the beauty of material forms, etc, cannot be consciously performed from within, be conscibous itself, presupposes no conscious subject as its bearer, is not intentional, intensive, etc. (cf. the present author’s work, 1973, pp.18ff.). Even if one does not conclude from the examples cited of the „spiritual epiphenomena”’ of matter to the epiphenomenality of consciousness, it could always still be the case that psychic being is a special sort of epiphenomenon of physical being – so the Epiphenomenalist could object. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 98 In response to this objection, first of all it is valid to stress that none of the socalled spiritual aspects of matter possess the same degree of reality as the material things themselves on which they depend. Indeed, often beauty and other immaterial aspects of material things (i.e., aspects which do not themselves possess any of the essential, previously analysed marks of matter: extendedness, divisibility, etc.) surpass these things themselves in intelligibility or value, but never in reality. Elsewhere, [1973], the present author has developed the distinction between three different „dimensions of being”: reality, intelligibility and value. In spite of many reciprocal relations, these diverse dimensions of being are relatively independent of one another. Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago is certainly more real than Cordelia in Shakespeare’s King Lear, but in no way is it more valuable, intelligible or comprehensible. Conscious acts are not only given as more real, but even surpass in their reality every purely material substance. We will come back to this point in the discussion of the substantiality of the soul. In the level of reality occupied by consciousness which incomparably surpasses that of matter, there also lies the basis for the persuasiveness of Idealism which, in our opinion, incomparably surpasses Materialism of any stripe, precisely because it recognizes this decisive matter-transcending character of consciousness. (On the critique of Transcendental Idealism, cf. the present author, 21976.) Secondly, we in no way find in psychic data, in spite of theirs close relation to matter, the experiencable evidentiality of their being founded upon matter as we did in the case of the spiritual aspects of matter mentioned above. Even if we consider the most bodily experiences of man (e.g. pain), they are never given as intuitively founded in the colors, forms, teleological structures, etc. of matter. Thirdly, acts such as the decision to speak do not possess that character of weak dependency which we encounter in the case of those spiritual aspects of matter mentioned above. (On this point Epiphenomenalism contradicts not merely the substantiality of the soul, but also the immediately given essence of psychic data.) As Plato already stressed (Phaedo, Alcibiades I), we possess freedom to command corporeal activities and to oppose bodily passions. This position of command over the body, possessed, though in a limited way, by the human mind, is completely lacking in the „spiritual aspects“ to which Epiphenomenalism refers for comparison. There we Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 99 meet, in complete contrast to this position of lordship over the body, a radical dependency upon matter. Still, to distinguish psychic data so radically from all spiritual aspects of matter universally recognized as such, leaves unanswered the question whether the human brain with its ten billion cells, innumerable highly structured cell components, neuronic syhapses, highly complex processes and mobile structures could not evoke many higher, in principle different, conscious epiphenomena. On this point what is clear is that only the proof of a real or even a substantial difference between body and soul can finally overcome epiphenomenalism. For such a proof the incomparability (Busse, p.49) or essential distinction of physical and psychic being, which we have established in this chapter furnishes a decisively important, but essentially incomplete, basis. CHAPTER THREE CRITIQUE OF EPIPHENOMENALISM BY HANS JONAS The recently published book by Hans Jonas, Macht oder Ohnmacht der Subjektivität34 is so important and, in the best sense, ‘phenomenological’ a contribution to the body/mind problem and so strong a critique of epiphenomenalism (and implicitly of most forms of materialism) that it deserves in the present author’s opinion a special extensive treatment all by itself in the context of the present book. This is all the more so because this new book of Jonas, while not rejecting explicitly the kind of biologistic monism defended in some earlier essays collected in The Phenomenon of Life. Toward a philosophical Biology by Jonas (New York, 1966) – to which some earlier comments in the present book refer – nevertheless constitutes an important philosophical step beyond (and, may I suggest, – against the author’s own interpretation expressed to me in a letter – away from) the earlier position of its author. While Jonas still regards Hans Jonas, Macht oder Ohnmacht der Subjektivität? Das Leib-Seele-Problem im Vorfeld des Prinzips Verantwortung (Frankfurt a.M., 1981). 34 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 100 previous forms of dualism (it is not quite clear whether some or all) as outdated, he seems to give to subjectivity (to the subject) a far greater autonomy and power over matter and to imply a far greater difference between mind and matter than appeared from his earlier work. Whether or not Jonas’ new book modifies his earlier positions alluded to in the body of my present book, it refutes in any case brilliantly the materialist ontology and the deterministic account of mind. I would not hesitate to call this work the most important critique of epiphenomenalism known to me (after having undertaken extensive studies of the problem), and an excellent general contribution to the body/mind problem in its ontological aspects, while the classical essay philosophy of The Nobility of Sight in The Phenomenon of Life constituted one of the leading contributions on the ‘lived body’ as given in sense-perception.Argument against Epiphenomenalism based on the Datum of the Promise to promote epiphenomenalist Materialism Jonas opens his book by relating the historical fact that a group of young physiologists (students of the famous Johannes Müller) met regularly in the house of the physicist Gustav Magnus in Berlin. Two of them (Ernst Brücke and Emil du BoisReymond) made a formal pact to spread the truth ‘that no other forces are at work in the organism except chemical-physical ones.’ Soon also the young Helmholtz joined them in this solemn promise. Later all three men became famous in their fields and remained faithful to their agreement.Jonas shows, however, that the very fact of this promise already contradicted, without them noticing it, the very content of their promise, or rather, of the materialist theory which they pledged to promote throughout their career. For they did not bind themselves to leave to the molecules of their brain their respective course of action because the course of molecular events in their brains, according to their opinion, was wholly determined since the beginning of the world, nor did they bind themselves by means of their promise to allow these molecules to determine all their speaking and thinking in the future. (This would have been equally senseless for the same reasons.) Rather, they pledged fidelity to their present insight (opinion). They declared by their act of compact at least for themselves that their subjectivity was master over their action. In the very act of making this promise they trusted something entirely non-physical, namely their relationship to what they took to be the truth. Moreover, they ascribed precisely to this non-physical factor a determining power over their brains and bodies – which power, however, had been denied by the content of their thesis. To Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 101 promise something, with the essentially included conviction to be able to keep such a promise and to be likewise free to break it, this admits a force at work ‘in the organism’ which is distinct from those forces which are immanent in the material cosmos. Faithfulness to one’s promise is such a force, like any other form of dominion over the body. Thus, precisely the very act of excluding admission of a non-physical force solemny confirmed the existence of the very sort of ‘non-physical forces’ which they denied! Jonas points out, referring himself back to Kant, how centrally important this problem is for that of the moral responsibility of man. It is in light of this ethical context that he intends to treat critically the issue of epiphenomenalism, after his brilliant first refutation of materialist epiphenomenalism by his analysis of the very act of promising to promote epiphenomenalism, i.e., after his analysis of the contradiction between the content of the epiphenomenalist thesis and the essence of promising. The profound critique Jonas offers of epiphenomenalism is doubly interesting for the broader context of this book because most of the arguments which Jonas advances against epiphenomenalist materialism can equally serve as critique of many other forms of materialism. Nevertheless, one could raise the somewhat critical question as to whether the epiphenomenalism treated by Jonas is the only or even strongest version of this view which appeared mainly at the end of the last century and at the beginning of this one. (Jonas explained in a letter addressed to me that he indeed takes this form of epiphenomenalism to be the strongest one.) Both the ancient epiphenomenalist position, as it is propounded, for example, by Simmias in Plato’s Phaedo and the version of epiphenomenalism contained in Marxism could be developed entirely without reference to the laws of causality and of the conservation of energy and the assumptions inherent in the nineteenth century physicalist epiphenomenalism treated by Jonas. There are also a number of concrete phenomena (such as beauty) which do clearly depend on matter somewhat in the same manner in which epiphenomenalism maintains that consciousness depends on matter. Thus some of the following objections of Jonas will not refer to all forms of materialism, and even not to the strongest versions of epiphenomenalism. (Perhaps my own view that the epiphenomenalism treated by Jonas is not the strongest one which contrasts with Jonas’ own view that it is indeed the strongest one is due to the fact that by ‘strongest’ I mean the one which has the best chance of ‘explaining’ the Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 102 data at least to some extent. Jonas seems to use ‘strongest’ in the sense of ‘purest,’ ‘most rigorous’ materialist epiphenomenalism.) Nevertheless, many important arguments of his apply to all versions of epiphenomenalism and to other versions of materialism. Truthfulness or Lie of ConsciousnessJonas offers, prior to embarking on a critical examination of materialism, a genuinely phenomenological analysis of the self-given features of consciousness. He begins with the observation that consciousness exists and that it either is what it claims to be or puts up a mere show behind which lie hidden events which are wholly different from the conscious drama itself and its apparent moving forces. In the first case the testimony of experience, for example, of the daily experiences that I talk, write, or lift my arm, remains intact in what it gives itself as, and is regarded as trustworthy; in the second, it is an illusion and in fact no more than a masking of neuro-physiological processes which parade in the costume of volition but which lift the arm anyway and without any causal determination by the will. The first standpoint does not need further justification because it remains faithful to experience. The second, however, does stand in need of reasons, and even of strong reasons, because it contradicts an experience which it itself constantly presupposes: as well in its own point of departure in experience as in its attempt to concretely formulate the very thesis of epiphenomenalism itself. Once the suspicion of naivet is thrown upon the first ‘natural’ standpoint, however, the latter has to be defended against objections materialist epiphenomenalism raises against it. Jonas sees only two main arguments in favor of the epiphenomenon-thesis: 1. that the immanent completeness and totality of physical determination is incompatible with any interference with the physical chains of causes exerted by the Psychical; and 2. that such an interference is also impossible because of the character of the psychical as being nothing but a one-sidedly determined effect of physiological causes which is bare of any causal power of its own. 3.1. The First Argument from the causal Closedness of the Material Universe and Its Critique The first main argument in favor of (nineteenth century) epiphenomenalism has been already mentioned above and could be stated thus: The laws of nature, especially Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 103 those of causality and of the conservation of energy, forbid any interference of thought and volition with physical events. Consequently, the emerging of volitions, desires, goals, actions, etc. as causes of bodily activities is pure illusion. This first argument clearly presupposes the assumption of the laws of conservation of energy, which are interpreted not as merely inductively verfied laws but as possessing strictly universal and unconditional exceptionless validity. Such a necessary universal validity of the laws of conservation of energy, however, Jonas points out, is not at all given in experience but only derived from it by means of some idealization or postulate. The merely empirical nature and limited sphere of ‘observation’ of the principle of conservation of energy is forgotten and this principle is illegitimately treated as a strict apriori necessary law. A second critique Jonas offers is the formal one that even if there were a strict incompatibility between the experience, say, of freedom, and the laws of the conservation of energy, it should be left open which side of the pair of incompatible claims should be denied or revised, or whether perhaps both allegedly conflicting claims need more differentiated statement or revision. Epiphenomenalism sins against this requirement of an objectivistic scientific spirit by prejudging dogmatically that the laws of conservation of energy are sacrosanct norms and the experience of freedom must be sacrificed. Yet both evidences and the cost of sacrificing any or both of them should be carefully weighed before judging the case.Thirdly, Jonas points out that, since the idealization of the laws of nature as dominating absolutely every single case is not justifiable (first critique), one ought not to construe an artificial alternative between either holding an absolutely exceptionless validity of the laws of nature or opting for the total invalidity of, for example, the law of conservation of energy. Aproximation and not absolute mathematical exactitude is all that natural science can reach. Hence epiphenomenalist materialism pretends to possess a far greater and more absolute knowledge of nature than is granted to science. Therefore, admission of some exceptions to the law of conservation of energy (to which some hypotheses of Jonas to be expounded later refer) seems fully justified, especially if the more fundamental experience of thinking and of freedom necessitates the assumption of a less than absolute validity of the allegedly universal laws of nature. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 104 3.2. The second Argument in Support of the Causal Nullity of Consciousness and the Critique of the Three Riddles It Poses The thesis of the epiphenomenality of consciousness itself is a consequence of the first thesis and not itself an argument. Nevertheless, this epiphenomenalist thesis of the impotence of consciousness can be supported by a number of arguments which are independent from the first one, such as the following:1. That there exists matter without spirit, the entire inorganic and also most of organic nature teach us. Moreover, mind appears solely in conjunction with the very highly developed matter of human brains. What is suggested by these facts is that matter has original being, spirit only a being derived from matter. Moreover, it seems clear that mind depends on matter not solely in regard to its genesis but also in reference to its concrete activations. This can be proven for many sense-perceptions and feelings and one can easily extrapolate and assume that it will also be proven in the future for thinking, remembering, etc. Since conscious acts depend wholly on matter, they can also not gain any independent being of their own in virtue of which they could have effects back on the matter which causally determines them. 2. It follows already from the first epiphenomenalist argument (from the closed material universe) that the mind can have no power of its own over matter. But there are also many attempts of cybernetics, etc. to prove this empty postulate empirically and to demonstrate the total causal impotence of mind. It is, furthermore, up to the spiritualists to prove that any interference of mind in the realm of matter takes place. The absence of any thought-model, which could even only make thinkable, leave alone plausible, such an interaction, is further ground for rejecting spiritualism. 3. Occham’s razor must be applied here also and an economy of explanatory factors preserved. The epiphenomenalist thesis is faced only with one single mystery which remains unaccounted for (and about which, according to BoisReymond, we must say, ‘ignoramus et ignorabimus): namely the transition from matter to mind. Interactionism, however, introduces two mysteries, the causality from matter to mind and, in addition, the action of mind on matter. The scientist who says his ignoramus only once is certainly in the advantage over the one who says the ‘We do not and never will know’ twice. 4. Socrates in the Phaedo is wrong when he introduces his insight and will as causes for his sitting in prison. Rather, the Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 105 physiological factors alone fully suffice for explaining the facts of human movement and action. Reference to soul is completely superfluous for the explanation of physical events. 5. This argument can be strengthened by hinting at the possibility of simulation (Simulierbarkeit) of intellectual activities (or better: of the physical events accompanying intellectual activities) by matter, a fact which already Descartes used for the explanation of animal behavior. We can in our century also demonstrate that even the most refined thinking activities of man’s mind (at least the material processes accompanying them) can largely be imitated or ‘simulated’ by computers. Jonas opens his critique by admitting the apparent strength of the materialist position in virtue of the fact that matter is what remains and lasts while mind seems to be only an ephemeral being appearing very recently in the history of the world and lasting in form of the individual consciousness only for a short time, and this solely in conjunction with the matter of the brain and its functions. Every death seems to vindicate matter and to refute spirit, i.e., its autonomy. Mortality is the strongest argument for the ontological priority of matter over spirit and for the secondary being of mind. Likewise, the facts surrounding ‘evolution’ and biological development seem to fortify the assumption of materialism. Generally, however, we have to notice, Jonas argues, that ontological foundedness is no proof for the merely illusory character of that which is founded. One could critically object to Jonas here and point out that there are kinds of ontological foundedness which are indeed incompatible with the very essence ascribed to a given entity; if morality, for example, were really founded solely in ressentiment, it would not exist as morality. Similarly, if mind were identical with the brain or only produced by material processes of evolution, neither knowledge of reality which penetrates to the intelligibility of being nor freedom would be possible. Certain causal explanations lead to radical changes in the conception of the essence of a given thing. After a brief general survey of the main arguments against epiphenomenalism Jonas expounds his critique in detail:ende einschub,printing?¡Immanent CritiqueJonas critizes epiphenomenalism first by pointing out riddles or mysteries which this theory creates. He implies that these riddles are unsolvable from the epiphenomenalist standpoint or even involve absurdities. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 106 3.2.1. The first ontological riddle: creation of soul from and through nothing Perhaps we can summarize this objection of Jonas in the following way: the epiphenomenalist theory presupposes a totally closed series of material causes which are simultaneously wholly necessary for the explanation of the material universe. The way in which these causes also cause psychic entity is without any causal cost to them, so to speak. A causal creatio ex nihilo of soul from matter is maintained by epiphenomenalists in the sense that absolutely no energy is lost to the physical world in the ‘causal effort’ of producing consciousness. The central thesis of epiphenomenalism is precisely that there can be no interaction and that the energy in the material world must remain constant. Thus, in a sense, the production of consciousness has no cause; it is a causal nothing in the material world which produces it. It just mysteriously and without explanation ‘is there’ or comes to be. 3.2.2. The second ontological ‘riddle’ The second ontological riddle created by epiphenomenalism is that consciousness is something, is something real, which nevertheless has no power to have real effects; it is an effect but cannot effect anything; is a consequence of something without being able to have any consequence at all, etc. This strange duality of the consequence of consciousness being a nothing in causal respect, while not being a nothing in terms of its being, is the second ontological riddle which epiphenomenalism creates and is wholly incapable to solve. In fact, this riddle is so great that it gives rise to a contradiction, Jonas argues.One might object here and point out that this difficulty is only insurmountable for a theory according to which all ‘real somethings’ must also be real thing-like entities which can have causal effects. If one admits ‘realities’ such as values, beauty, etc., they do not seem to ever be efficient causes. They are in some sense real but cannot change the world nor does the way in which they are produced by their bearer ‘use up’ any causal energy. Here Jonas addresses his arguments against the official but not the strongest version of epiphenomenalism in our and the last century. His argument does, however, fully apply after it has been shown that consciousness is indeed fully and even primordially real being. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 107 3.2.3. A Threefold Metaphysical Riddle 3.2.3.1. Illusion of power – to be explained through impotence? The third and probably most tremendous metaphysical problem for epiphenomenalism is that it in fact professes ‘an illusion in itself.‘ The powerless consciousness can, according to epiphenomenalism, neither determine the bodily action nor determine itself. It only is determined. If it could determine itself, then it would be possible that there would be a clash between, for example, ‘I want to move my hand,’ and what the causal series in the body would do which could precisely do another thing from what I want. If the physical side of human action were totally and solely dependent on bodily processes, however, and yet consciousness would be something real in its own right and thus could ‘determine itself’ to willing things, it would seem that consciousness should experience this clash. In fact, it happens sometimes that consciousness experiences the clash between willing something and the inability to carry it out. This is sufficient, it seems, to strongly indicate the falsity of the epiphenomenalist’s claim that consciousness cannot even determine itself. Epiphenomenalism cannot really admit such a clash because it would involve some autonomous being and autodetermination of consciousness. Under the contrary assumption, if human consciousness were wholly dependent on the brain, as epiphenomenalism teaches, I should also experience such a total impotence, a total inability to determine myself in willing, or to oppose volitionally bodily movements or instincts. Yet such an experience of radical impotence of the mind is precisely not given in our experience. Now, the first main problem Jonas sees arising from this situation consists in the fact that the epiphenomenalist theory is precisely adduced in order to explain the illusion of power. How can this feeling of power of consciousness over the body be explained epiphenomenalistically, however? The epiphenomenalist has to answer: It is precisely the total dependence of consciousness on the body which produces, among other effects, this illusory feeling of power. Epiphenomenalism is a theory which seeks to explain the illusion of power and the not appearing of our true impotence – by impotence. The impotence remains hidden behind the illusion of potency. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 108 3.2.3.2. Subject-less Illusion? Consciousness itself as Illusion by whom? to whom? This illusion refers also to the sequence of thoughts which seem to motivate actions, etc. Any such self-determination or determination of one conscious act by another is illusion according to epiphenomenalism because really each conscious event is solely caused by physiological causes and not one by the other. Thus not only the power of mind over body but also the process of thinking itself is an illusion. Soul thus is the illusion of this double fiction. It deceives itself. But who is the subject of this illusion or fiction? Certainly, brains cannot be subjects of deception. Is the subject the reference point of deception? But it itself is a deceptory nothing according to epiphenomenalism. This illusion, namely consciousness itself, is the only possible ground for the very distinction between truth and error, illusion and reality. These distinctions and data make no sense without reference to consciousness. Thus the very content of the epiphenomenalist thesis and the most fundamental distinctions on which the theory rests presuppose consciousness which alone can declare consciousness as illusion. The absurd consequence follows from this that illusion alone can distinguish itself from reality. 3.2.3.3. Consciousness – Illusion without any Meaning or Purpose? An additional difficulty here is unfolded by Jonas: There is absolutely no purpose for this illusion. Descartes’ evil spirit at least has a reason for this illusion. But what for is the illusion of consciousness? The illusion of consciousness cannot serve any purpose for the material world because the latter would go on in exactly the same way without consciousness. Since the material world is the only reality, reality can have no interest in consciousness and consciousness can have no reason for being there. It serves no purpose and has no sense at all. Thus the existence of a fiction (illusion) without subject and without any purpose is the second metaphysical riddle of the theory. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 109 3.2.4. The logical riddle: Appearance which appears to itself The difficulty mentioned in c is also a logical-epistemological one: that, because neither consciousness itself nor the brain is subject of this illusion, consciousness and the feeling of power of subjectivity must be an illusion whose seeming addresses itself to itself. The illusion appears to be real to – an illusion! Ultimately this leads to the position that the I would be an illusion of psychical phenomena which in turn would be his (the I’s) illusions. Thus we deal with an illusion (the ‘I’) of illusions (psychic phenomena)...of what (whom)?... an illusion (the subject, subjectivity) again? Here we touch the unthinkable absurdity. The meaningless concept of a free-floating illusion as such is the consequence of all this, an illusion of nobody. Appearance appearing to itself or a nothing reflected in a nothing – this is the riddle which lurks behind the apparently smooth surface of the epiphenomenalist theory. 3.3. Self-contradictory Notion of ‘Nature’ Moreover, the notion of epiphenomenon introduces itself as a totally mysterious exception to the epiphenomenalist theory of nature which gives rise to the explanation of consciousness as epiphenomenon. At the outset of the theory, everything in nature was supposed to be causally determined and constant. Hence the causal costlessness of the production of one thing (consciousness) as well as the effectlessness of that thing (consciousness) violate this principle twice or introduce something totally ‘unnatural’ as a ‘product of nature.’ (As stated above, this critique applies legitimately only to a form of epiphenomenalism which does not recognize any reality besides naturalistically conceived things and their actions; to other forms of epiphenomenalism this criticism can be referred also, but only under the condition that it first be shown that consciousness does in fact belong to that sphere of wholly real being which, if it is what it gives itself as, must indeed have causal effects in reality.) Ironically, it is the opponent of the epiphenomenalist position who has to defend here the idea of nature underlying this position. According to this theory, nothing in the world can be brought into existence without any causal cost and nothing can exist without being able to produce any effect. Nothing can come from nothing nor can it Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 110 wholly (causally) disappear in nothing. Precisely the determinist (epiphenomenalist) has to be bound by this principle even if the indeterminist is free to go against it. The epiphenomenalist position, then, ‘saves’ the inviolability of this principle by violating it. In addition, the theory bears all marks of an ‘ad-hoc-invention’: a totally unique kind of causal process (production, i.e., causation of epiphenomena) is introduced by this theory which contradicts its entire general content and thrust. Thus it is quite contrary to the facts if the epiphenomenalist claims to utter just one ignoramus instead of the two of the dualist position. More importantly, it is not a mere quantitative matter of the number of difficulties and unknown riddles. Totally intolerable kinds of further ignoramus are introduced by the epiphenomenalist in his contradictory theory which abounds of wholly unintelligible theses and radically unsolvable riddles. The dualist psycho-physical interaction thesis presents in comparison a totally harmless problem which implies no contradictions even if it leads to puzzles. 3.4. Reductio ad Absurdum (from Absurd Consequences of Epiphenomenalism) Jonas discusses then three kinds of absurd consequences of the epiphenomenalist thesis: first, absurd consequences for the concept of being; secondly, absurd consequences for the thinking which is explained by such being; thirdly, for epiphenomenalism itself as that which is thought by this thinking. 3.4.1. Metaphysical Absurdity of the Illusory Consciousness and of the Being that Produces It What kind of being is that which produces as its most complicated and as its superior product a wholly purposeless fiction? It would be not only an indifferent being but a positively absurd and perverse one, a totally unbelievable and untrustworthy one. Matter produces some accompanying music not only without purpose but with the illusion as if this music influenced itself; thus this being would systematically falsify itself – and this activity would be its most exalted one. It produces an illusion which Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 111 sings only to itself the song of error and produces the illusion of something purely illusory (powerful consciousness) which sings this song to itself??!! That which has neither interests nor needs (material determined world) produces the comedy of it having interests: and this pure fiction (of consciousness) it now endows with the illusory consciousness of having a power over the material being which produced it, a power which it does not actually possess but nevertheless feels to possess in spite of its real total impotence! The total absurdity increases, moreover, inasmuch as that which has no consciousness nor hearing would want to produce some illusion which it can never hear while nevertheless and simultaneously any illusion presupposes as its innermost essence a being capable of hearing (receptivity). Does this theory of consciousness show that consciousness is an absurdity? No, this theory itself proves to be absurd in view of its absurd consequences about being, and it definitely fails to succeed in its attempted demonstration that the nature of being (matter) itself which it describes is senseless and absurd. It even fails to notice the absurd consequences about being which follow from it. The meaningless notions of being and of the consciousness produced by it which result from epiphenomenalism do not convincingly condemn the nature of things as absurd, but this theory itself makes no sense and thus disqualifies itself. 3.4.2. Absurdity through the Theory’s Self-annihilation Not only by the absurd image of being which results from it does this theory disqualify itself but more directly still: this is its final reductio ad absurdum. The epiphenomenalist thesis itself is totally deprived of any (rational) foundation, and this by its own admission or, better, in virtue of the consequence of what it says about any theory whatsoever. For even the most false of all theories still pays tribute to the power of thinking. Any theory presupposes that it can rise up above the power of mind-foreign determination and can judge objects freely in accordance with norms of insight and intelligibility. At least, any theory presupposes this in implying that it is at all able to decide that something is true. But epiphenomenalism claims the powerlessness of consciousness and thereby the incapacity of itself to be a theory at all. Even the most extreme materialist must therefore except himself and his theory from falling under the Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 112 field of its application as long as the theory put forward by him continues to be a theory at all. Whereas the famous ‘lying Cretan’ paradox allows that the ‘lying Cretan’ speaks only about all other Cretans or lies and excepts his own statement, without any difficulty involved in such a self-exception (which situation Russell and Whitehead, in the theory of types, falsely extend to all theses), the epiphenomenalist who has defined the essence of all thinking cannot introduce an exception-clause for himself (which would ‘except’ his thinking from the universal essence of thinking). His theory is completely engulfed in the abyss of the universal judgment about the essence of all thinking. What, then, shall we think of an activity which pretends to know being by means of a total illusion produced by this very being? Knowledge itself has been declared impossible by this theory by denying that freedom with which any possible theory stands or falls; thus the theory in question annihilates itself. 3.5. Critique of epiphenomenalist Materialism on the Basis of the Superfluity of the epiphenomenalist Thesis 3.5.1. The artificial Character of the Problem Nobody has ever had any reason from the immediate data of experience to doubt that his thinking and willing has the power to determine his acting (to assume this power is only another form of saying that one can act at all). And even after the extrinsic doubt of the trustworthiness of this experience is raised, nobody (not even the epiphenomenologist himself) doubts that, for example, when he writes down his thoughts on the psycho-physical problem, his thought freely commands his body to write down the theory. Likewise, nobody doubts, at least not in the existential performing of the act of thinking, that his thought had gone, prior to being entrusted to writing, the way of thought itself and not the way of body: i.e., that his thought was formed by the intelligibility of things themselves and not by the blind mechanisms of brain-processes and causality of nature which obey chemical, electrical, and other laws of the physical universe. The epiphenomenalist doubt, then, calls into question quite extrinsically the self-certainty of acting, whose immediate certainty it cannot diminish. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 113 3.5.2. Jonas’ Theory to Explain Causal Effects of Psychic Action as Compatible with a ‘Constant Energy Level’ of the Material Universe After his excellent phenomenological analysis of the data themselves Jonas goes on to develop a speculative answer to the problems which concern epiphenomenalism: namely, how free and intelligent action of mind on matter does not violate the wellestablished principles of physics, notably the laws of causality and conservation of energy. It is important to note that the author himself does not regard his speculative attempt at such an explanation as being on a par with the philosophical analysis of the essence of subjectivity and of the datum of its power. He does also not equate the intelligibility of this speculative answer with that of the critique of epiphenomenalism based on the self-contradictions which are found in the latter. Jonas does not call into question these laws themselves, although he had expressed before his opinion that, for example, the inductively known principle of conservation of energy cannot claim absolute exception-less validity. Instead, he uses a thought-experiment in order to illustrate the possibility of an interference of psychic causes with the course of brain events (with physical events) without any need to modify the general laws of physics. He uses the example of a geometrically perfect cone which stands on its head which ends in a ‘point’ and does not possess any straight surface. The cone stands on a perfectly straight surface and all exterior causes of it falling in any direction are excluded. Nevertheless, factually the cone will fall, and will fall in one or another direction. The direction of its falling is completely unpredictable and cannot be empirically determined; it is as it were an ‘indiscernible cause’ and power which tips the cone over. If the thought-experiment is carried out perfectly, the physicist will both admit that the cone will fall in one direction and that he is quite unable to know the cause for such a fall. Jonas applies this thought-experiment to the problem of psycho-physical interaction. He asks: Why could not the psychic conscious events assume such a role of tipping over the ‘cone of neuro-physiological processes’? The power of subjectivity, then, would be a cause which accounts for the radically different directions brainprocesses take and the changes caused by them in the world, and yet it would step into the material world so discretely that its appearance in it and action upon it could not be Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 114 distinguished from unknown causes which give the impression of being mere probability and chance, like in the case of the thought-experiment. This argument does not seem to be convincing, however. In the first place, as Jonas himself discusses in the Anhang of the book, the physicist will assume a radical determination of the physical world and a physical cause of the tipping over of the cone even when he cannot tell or know the cause because it is a quantit ngligeable. If the principle of causality holds and no psychic cause interferes, then at least the classical physicist who holds strict laws of nature will not doubt that some undetected material cause is responsible for the direction in which the cone falls and that, if any such cause were eliminated, the cone would indeed stand in perfect balance on the surface. For two additional reasons Jonas’ speculative explanation of a compatibility between deterministic physics and psychic causality seems untenable to me. In the first place, the mental effort spent on many projects of creation or action, the years of concentrated and single-minded labor which defy the worst physical conditions and overcome countless material obstacles (think of the artist, writer, etc. who works under most adverse conditions) is such a strong cause and such a clearly defined one that it can in no way be compared with the quantit ngligeable of an undiscernable cause which does not change the predictable course of events. How can one say that physical nature alone would produce, without an enormously strong cause interfering, such changes? Moreover, the cause of human action is given consciously as intending its effect and it is likewise given that a different act of will would have radically different effects as the Platonic Socrates explains so well in the Phaedo, where he writes, speaking of the materialist explanations Anaxagoras gives of human behavior in spite of his thesis that mind (nous) rules supreme: as if in the same way he should give voice and air and hearing and countless other things of the sort as causes for our talking with each other, and should fail to mention all the real causes, which are, that the Athenians decided that it was best to condemn me, and therefore I have decided that it was best for me to sit here and that it is right for me to stay and undergo whatever penalty they might order. For, by the dog, I fancy these bones and sinews of mine would have been in Megara or Boeotia long ago, Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 115 carried thither by an opinion of what was best, if I did not think it was better and nobler to endure any penalty the city may inflict rather than to escape and run away. 35 Thus the comparison of the will with a type of cause which, for all practical purposes, is purely fortuitous and which apparently produces its different effects by mere chance (to be calculated by the law of probability) is quite unsuitable as analogue to the case at stake in psychic action where the cause precisely determines in one or another form of willing, and where this willing proceeds from the free autodetermination of the person. The power of self-determination lies in the hands of the subject. This conscious and free cause of which Socrates speaks and which is clearly given as determining human action is not gratuitous or chance-like at all.Yet, if the cause of human action did in fact act in accordance with mere laws of probability like the indiscernible causes of tipping over the cone, then it would in no way explain free action. This would be my main objection also to the frequently undertaken attempt to use and interpret philosophically Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy in such a way that it would prove the taking place in nature of uncaused chance-events, and to then interpret such alleged uncaused events in nature as opening physics up towards the action of freedom upon matter. Such and similar arguments, I submit, wholly fail because a chance event which can be calculated on the basis of the principle of probability is just as far removed from freedom or determination by thought as is a materially determined event. Thus my first main argument against Jonas’ use of his thought-experiment of the cone which seeks to construe the power of subjectivity in analogy to an indiscernible material cause of the tipping over of the cone is the following: it fails to notice the radical difference between the allegedly analogous case of the cone-thought-experiment and the case of free and rational action. This radical difference concerns a) the very discernible extraordinary power of interference of mind in material processes to which all products of culture, art, philosophy, etc. are owed; b) the intentional, conscious, and free character of human action whose rationality, 35 Plato, Phaedo 98 c – 99 b. Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 116 dependence on the meaningful structure of the object, like the self-determination of the free subject, differs radically from any chance event. The second main argument against Jonas’ comparison and speculative theory would be to point out its superfluity in view of the fact that although every event calls for a cause (this presupposes the validity of the principle of causality which is neither to be reduced to a mere inductive law which is true in general, nor to be indeterministically dissolved), there is no reason for the assumption of epiphenomenalism in classical physics. In spite of all the determinists among philosophers and scientists during the period of classical physics, and despite of Kant’s third antinomy in The Critique of Pure Reason, the strict validity of the principle of causality and also that of the conservation of energy can only be construed as denying the power of subjectivity if they are philosophically misinterpreted. Only if the principle of conservation of energy is construed in such a way as not only forbidding any increase or loss of material energy in a closed material world as such, but also as excluding any such increase or loss absolutely – only then does it indeed contradict free action of mind upon matter. The appearance of such a contradiction between freedom and the laws of physics disappears if one reformulates this principle so as to exclude any increase or decrease of energy in the world save by intervention of some cause from outside the material system of a given universe. Such a cause could lie in another material system (universe) or also conceivably in the mind. The increase or unchaning of energies which did not exist in the given material world through such an outside cause, then, in no way contradicts the correctly stated principle of conservation of energy. The phrase ‘save...’ in it leaves precisely room for the action of mind upon matter. For if the law of the conservation of energy is only one of physics, i.e. applicable only to life-less matter, and not including living or other beings of external systems to act upon life-less matter, then the effects of freedom and thought upon matter would in no way contradict the principle of conservation of energy. For soul and freedom would precisely be such causes external to the given material system. Similarly, it is well known that the laws of thermodynamics do not apply to living organisms whose growth completely contradicts the tendency of transformation of matter, when left to itself, to sink to lower energy levels. This does not show, if we attend to things more carefully, that life contradicts the (perhaps even absolute) validity of the thermodynamic laws but only that the laws Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 117 of thermodynamics do not apply to every but only to some spheres of being, namely to life-less being only. As soon as life acts upon matter, we witness the amazing phenomenon that from very undifferentiated forms of matter and energy higher and more complicated forms arise. Similarly, the laws of conservation of energy may apply only to a closed sphere of material being and material causes and not at all to matter, when life-forces or spirit acts upon it. The principle of conservation of energy would have to contain the clause:..., as long as no outside influence works upon matter. Hence if the human soul is such a cause outside of the closed universe of life-less matter, then it can quite well interfere causally with the material universe without this being in conflict either with the principle of causality (which I deem to be self-evident and undissolvable by any theory of physics or philosophy of nature) or with that of the conservation of energy. All that follows then is only that the laws of the conservation of energy only apply to life-less matter as such, to matter which is not under the influence of either life or spirit. In other words, the law of conservation of energy is one of physics and not of biology or of the person. The apparent contradiction arises solely from the absolutization of the law of the conservation of energy and from its application to all being as if it were a law of everything that is, a universal metaphysical law. Still another criticism of the classical deterministic theory, which underlies epiphenomenalism, is not presented by Jonas. It refers to the status of the principle of conservation of energy itself, even when it is regarded as a mere law of physics and lifeless matter. Also when formulated in its limited sense outlined above, it still is not selfevident. It does not seem empirically verifiable or gained by means of induction either. By means of which repeated observation could it be stated that all energy remains constant? The so-called law of conservation of energy in its limited sense of ‘the principle that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains unchanged while internal changes of any kind occur’ (as Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines) or ‘that the total mass, matter, or energy of any material system is neither increased nor diminished by reactions between the parts’ seems to be introduced into physics (or chemistry) more as a pragmatic principle than as one which can be regarded as a strictly established principle of physics which ought to be taken seriously philosophically. This principle seems to be a generalization arising chiefly from very limited experiences of the transformability of kynetic energy into thermodynamic energy and vice versa. But Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 118 the proof for it being an absolute universal principle of physics seems both for ever outstanding (because complete induction is impossible) and also prevented by the inherent unclarity as to the exact meaning of this principle. Where, for example, is the proof or empirical indication (or even clear formulation of the meaning of this question) that the entire energy which the Colorado river possessed for millions of years and which led to the formation of the Grand Canyon Valley, is still preserved? What does it mean that it is preserved and where is it preserved? In the formations which it created or in the temperature changes brought about by its flowing? Can these temperature changes or mountain-formations be transformed again into a river and its energy? What does it even mean here to speak of the ‘same amount’ of energy? What if the river would have engendered electric energy for all these millenia? Would then not more energy exist now? But electric energy itself which constantly flows, where and how is it preserved? Is all the electric energy used by a lamp preserved so that from it one could create at any moment the accumulative voltage, etc. produced by the lamp over the years? This consideration leads us to a deeper problem. It is only amply evident that this principle in its literal meaning is not a metaphysical principle. The principle of conservation of energy seems to make absolutely no sense when it is regarded not as a law of physics and of the observable energy levels but as a principle of being and of metaphysics itself. How could it be applied to temporality of being which we already alluded to in the example of the river? For what does this conservation of all energy in the material universe even mean if we regard the fact that all beings in the world are temporal and the past energy which the entire world possessed in the just past moment is no longer because it was but is no longer real. In view of the temporality of things there is a constant radical loss and a constant renewal and multiplication of energy. Thus, when it is taken as a metaphysical principle, it is neither clear that such a principle of the conservation of energy exists nor what its exact meaning should be, given the mentioned metaphysical facts. Since our further main reasons against epiphenomenalist and against some customary physical assumptions on causality to which Jonas seems to suscribe in his book are developed elsewhere in this book and has also been treated elsewhere, 36 I do See Josef Seifert, „Das Antinomienproblem als ein Grundproblem aller Metaphysik: Kritik der Kritik der reinen Vernunft“ in Prima Philosophia, Bd. 2, H 2, 1989. 36 Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 119 not need to repeat this discussion and my main argument against the mentioned positions and against an absolutized version of the law of causality. The critique given thus far also applies to the further development of Jonas’ speculative model according to which the fundamental double structure of human consciousness as, on the one hand, active-spontaneous and as receptive, on the other, would allow for a constant level of energy in the material universe because constantly some energy from the physical universe would be absorbed by the sphere of consciousness (in its receptive activity) and some would be put out again from consciousness into the material world (by means of spontaneous acts). This idea which Jonas puts forward very tentatively as a mere hypothesis of which he himself feels that it might be and probably is far from the truth, is equally superfluous if the assumptions about conservation of energy and causality which underlie this conception are shown to be incorrect and if all forms of causal action of life and of consciousness upon the material universe fail to violate the principle of causality or any other law of physics as we tried to show before and in the works mentioned above. There is a further important reason to doubt the correctness of Jonas’ model according to which the ‘equal amounts’ of receptive activity and spontaneous activity would cancel each other out and would account for a perfect balance of energy in the material universe. (Input via receptivity would exactly match output via spontaneity and hence the energy level would appear to remain stable and closed while constantly some energy would leave from matter to mind, while other energy would be transmitted from the sphere of subjectivity to matter.) The further critique of this view is the following: This theory seems to accept a very materialist model of the mind’s life which would be wholly subjugated to such principles as the constancy of energy. In reality, however, life and especially freedom belong to a sphere and rhythm of being which possesses within itself a dynamism and a possibility of spontaneous self-determination which is radically different from, and can never be captured by, ‘physicist’ images of the mind suggested by Jonas’ own positive speculative attempt to solve the psychophysical problem, while retaining some philosophical and physicist assumptions of epiphenomenalism. In the Appendix to his book, Jonas believes he can explain the compatibility between the power of subjectivity over the body and the principles of causality and conservation of energy only if he breaks away from these principles. This Body-Mind Problem, Josef Seifert, 120 solution I find wholly unacceptable. The rejection of this explanation follows from the elucidation of the evident truth of the principle: ‘every change (contingent being) presupposes a sufficient cause through the power of which it comes about (is)’ and from the critique of traditional forms of stating the principle of causality: such as ‘every being presupposes a cause’ or ‘every change follows upon another change in accordance with a general law.’ These formulations of the principle of causality are absurd and lead to self-contradictions as Hume pointed rightly out and as they gave rise to Kant’s alleged ‘third antinomy.’ For indeed if one form of causality (namely causality in accordance with laws of nature) is absolutized (as the principle of conservation of energy), then a false deterministic ‘causal law’ replaces the authentic principle of causality which says: every change and contingent cause demand a sufficient efficient cause through the power of which they come about (exist). This principle is perfectly compatible with freedom, it admits causality through freedom and does in no way give rise to the determinism and self-contradictions to which, for example, the two mentioned statements of this principle (one is used by Hume, the other by Kant), lead. (See above, pp. ). As Jonas himself says, his speculative attempt of reconciling certain assumptions of physics with the admission of the power of subjectivity is not necessary. For the weight of his critical remarks against epiphenomenalism wholly remains and these arguments stand completely on their own. They retain their full validity even if Jonas’ speculative solutions are untenable. The full cogency of these arguments which constitute in this author’s opinion the real strength of Jonas’ superb critique of epiphenomenalism remains likewise fully immune against any weakness in his attempts to use (in the Nachtrag to his book) modern quantum-physics in order to explain the possibility of the power of the mind over matter as compatible with physics – this time no longer with classical physics from which the epiphenomenalist thesis took its point of departure but from modern physics. The importance of the discussed major contributions made by H. Jonas towards the critique of (epiphenomenalist) materialism is so great – be it repeated again – that I regard the work as by far the best and most profound critique of epiphenomenalist materialism produced in our century. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 121 CHAPTER FOUR BODY AND SOUL: IDENTITY OR REAL AND SUBSTANTIAL DIFFERENCE? In the twentieth century there are many philosophers whom one can characterize as „Dualists,“ but only a few who hold a “substantial“ distinction between body and soul. Often, as is the case with Shaffer, Ducasse, Beloff, Popper, Chisholm, et al., we find a Dualism founded upon Logical Positivism or Analytical Philosophy, not upon metaphysics, and moving primarily on the level of physical and psychical data as such. Other authors, though well disposed toward Dualism, write almost exclusively historical-critical works (e.g. Becher, pp. 393-396, and Ebertin). Often such works, basically historical expositions, are linked to tentatively expressed and rather undeveloped solutions of a dualistic character which, because of their idiosyncratic character are only able to persuade with difficulty (Wenzl among others) and remain unclear. Above all, but not exclusively, in German thinkers one often finds Kantian, Neo-Kantian or Transcendental-Phenomenological and Existential-Phenomenological proofs for a „Dualism“ or a Transcendentalism that is close to Dualism (Lotze, Eisler, Reininger, McDougall, Stumpf, Simmel, Busse, Husserl, Strasser, Heidegger and others). For them matter and mind, psychical and psychical being are posed against one another in various ways, but they do not hold a real-substantial distinction between body and soul. Again in other cases, we see attempts to prove a point of view close to Dualism with the help of non-traditional categories or categories grounded in a non-traditional way (as is Scheler’s notion of the person or Soloviev’s notion of the subject). Such positions still remain blurred in their ultimate metaphysical foundations and (e.g. in Scheler), on the problem of substance (reality) easily change into a vitalistically colored Materialism. (With reference to the similarity and differences between Scheler’s notion of the person and Soloviev’s empirical subject-soul, logical subject-intellect and authentically philosophical subject-spirit, cf. Dahm, especailly pp. 325ff, and the works of Szylharski, Hessen and others cited there.) Finally, in contemporary philosophy we encounter a position on the human soul solidly rooted in the classical Western tradition, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 122 but with definite new emphases and notions (Driesch, Geyser, Pfänder, Conrad-Martius and others; perhaps also Bergson can be located here). Especdally we should mention here those,.like Fabro, Gilson, Maritain, De Vries, Siewerth, Pieper and others, who advocate in an original way a position strongly or totally grounded in the Thomistic Tradition, in which the soul is, with certain restrictions, understood as a substance distinct from the body, while the body itself is even less unreservedly regarded as a substance. Since the questions concerning the substantiality of man as such and the problem of the substance character of the person, and of the body ultimately stand in the center of the body-soul problem, and represent the point at which Monistic and Dualistic conceptions of man divide, in what follows the various basic body/mind positions will be treated in respect to their more dieect or more indirect stances on the problem of substance. (Cf. especially Geyser, Healy, and the present author 1973 on what follows.) A. The Nature and Givenness of Substance in General If we abstract from regions of being like „ideal objects,“ works of art, merely imagined objects or „pure appearances,“ and above all attend to real being in the proper eense (matter, organism, man, person), a fundamental distinction appears, made for the first time by Aristotle, between all that does not exist in itself and can only have existence „in“ something else, and an entity (thing) in the most proper sense, which exists in itself. While this distinction likewise concerns the more general problem of the essence or the existence of any thing (ideal or real) that does not exist in itself in opposition to the thing itself as self-existing (als Selbstand), Aristotle primarily draws this distinction only in terms of things which can be called real (in contradistinction to, for instance, ideal objects such as the circle as such, and which can be called real entities as distinguished from mere moments of an entity). Thus every entity within the real world is given either as something not existing in itself but „carried“ by a substance in some sense of the term, or as a substance. The first essential characteristic of substance is that it is that which is in and for itself and not in something other (Cf. Geyser, p. 284). Other entities inhere in it, but it itself does not inhere in another. As „self-existing,“ substance represents an absolute end-point in reality insofar as it is not a characteristic of another entity. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 123 A consequence for logic of this first metaphysical note of substance is that substance (in the sense employed here exclusively of Aristotelian „first substance,“ thus not in the sense of species and genus as „second substances“) cannot be predicated of another entity, at least not in a sense which includes the substance being a determination of another entity.. Thus for example, one cannot predicate one person „of another“ (except in the sense of the indication of a determinate relation between persons). From the outset, the most widespread misunderstandings of this first essential note of substance must be excluded. For most objections against substance in contemporary philosophy indeed rest upon such misunderstandings (e.g. Whitehead, Hartshorne; cf. also Geyser, pp. 284-285 on the following notions). 37 The first misunderstanding of substance as self-existing would lie in the conception that a substance, since it exists in itself, could also exist „for itself“ (alone)--without all the determinations inhering in it. But it would be completely false to hold that substance could have a being really separate (as it were, detached) from all its determinations. The Consequences of such a notion of substance would indeed be those considered by „Actualistic” psychology (Paulsen) and Process-Philosophy (Whitehead, Hartshorne):38 First, substance would be totally unknowable under this presupposition, for how would a thing be recognized detached from all characteristics and determinations? Secondly, a substance conceived of in such a way would be neither in time nor in space, but it would then be a category suited for understanding neither the human mind nor the body. For body as material must be conceived of as being in space, and the human soul and mental life as being in time; otherwise both become wholly unrelated to the reality and experience of man. Thirdly, a „substance“ separate from all characteristics is a category contradictory in itself and, metaphysically speaking, absurd – a fact we cannot demonstrate more carefully here. Thus one must agree with the modern critics of the category of substance without further ado, if substance would really be such a thing, lying, without attributes, behind all attributes. Yet the „if“ does not obtain. First, each substance possesses certain esssential characteristics inseparable from it (Descartes’ modi; Scholasticism’s Accidentia 37 38 point instead of semicolon? The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 124 propria), e.g. extendedness for material substance, freedom for the person. A substance can be known exclusively in and through, or rather in its inseparable unity with these essential determinations, just because it is inseparable from them. It is neither isolated from them, nor coincident with them; rather it is their ontological ground and bearer in the sense that, while it does support all of its „model“ determinations in being and not vice-versa, it still could have no being without possessing these modi. But secondly, every, or at least every contingent substance must possess numerous attributes and characteristics any individual one of which can indeed be either present or absent, but some of which must be present in every substance. We have already spoken of such predicates in connection with the essential analysis of physical and psychic being. A second misunderstanding of the first essential characteristic of substance, which would divorce the substance from the entire meaning of its life, development and fulfillment, is expressed in the notion that all types of inherence stand on the same level and that they leave the being of the substance as such completely unaffected. The undifferentiated „accident,“ turns out to be completely inadequate to express suitably all the types of inherence or modes of being-in-a-substance. Not only is this term not suitable for the essential constituents (principles of being in the Scholastic sense) of a substance (essence, existence, etc.), but it is also inadequate for many other deeper relations of founding and ordination, between the substance and “what exists in it,“ at least if the term „accident“ is conceived in the light of determinations merely „added“ to a substance that remains the same in itself. For example, a person’s consciousness or moral acts or love are not adequately characterized as „accidents“ in this sense of sumbebekota39 since such acts bring the being of the substance itself to its proper fulfillment and actuality. A third misunderstanding of the self-existence of substance is suggested by the definition that substance is id quod nulla re indiget ad existendum – ”that which requires no (other) thing for its own existence“ (Descartes). This definition suggests at least that the standing-in-itself of substance approaches aseity (existing-from-itself). Spinoza concluded from this that there would be only one, the divine substance (in opposition to Descartes’ own interpretation of the “nulla re“ in his definition as merely meaning 39 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 125 created substance). Against this and with Geyser and the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition it must be maintained that the existing-in-itself of substance is evidently different than aseity. In order to be, something can fully require another being as its cause and still exist in itself in the sense that it is not a property or determination of another being. (It is not contradictory to this that only a divine substance, existing from itself, possesses the most complete form of existing-in-itself.) A second essential feature of substance follows from the first and its understanding is also required for the correct understanding of the former: substance is „the really real“ (to ontw on40) in relation to that which inheres in it. Since everything existing in a substance is held in being by it, and the substance „communicates” being to its determinations and accidents, it is the ground of being, without which everything existing in it would be plunged into nothingness, and is likewise the proper and real existent in relation to its determinations. In this respect the second feature of substance is a consequence of the first. At the same time, however, there is a decisive complement to this, which is apparent from the fact that only within the primary and irreducible datum of real-being as such can substance be spoken of in a meaningful way. For not every sort of „thing or entity existing in itself“ is a substance.(e.g. ideal forms or literary works of art are neither substances nor accidents inhering in persons or in matter; cf. Ingarden). Only entities existing in themselves to whom the index of full reality belongs are truly substances. A third essential feature of substance is persistence through change (Aristotle). Considered more deeply, substance is the most perduring level of being within a real entity and the metaphysical basis of its perdurance. Again, three misunderstandings of this feature must be elinlinated. First, to underlie change as such is not a feature of substance alone, but can also be ascribed to powers or to cultures. Only change within a properly real (and individual) being (in contrast to cultures) and the ultimate founding of all perdurance in the individual thing (which does not hold of the perdurance of a power) can be treated as essential 40 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 126 determinations of the substance. Further, the misunderstanding must be eliminated that substance itself as such would be without any change and that only its accidents succumb to change. This idea of a perduring and completely timeless „lump of being“ which stands completely in opposition to the Aristotelian doctrine of substance (act and potency), rests again upon one of those misunderstandings of substance which led to the denial of the notion of substance in the nineteenth (Paulsen) and twentieth centuries (Process-Philosophy).i In reality, contingent substance unfolds and actualizes its being in time. A further misunderstanding of the perdurance of substance in change lies in the fact that one supposes that change itself would be essential for the being of the substance, so that an unchangingly eternal substance would be a contradiction in itself. In order to preclude this misunderstanding, one should characterize as an essential feature of substance, not perdurance in change, but rather being-the-ultimate-ground-ofperdurance-in-a-real-entity. A fourth essential characteristic of substance is the fact that it is able to underlie opposite determinations. Aristotle even held this to be the decisive feature of substance. We are not able to follow him in this, for substance shares this feature with other entities. A color, for example, can sometimes be dark, sometimes light. Only an analysis of the modes of opposition which can be received by a substance and the exact way only substance takes up these opposites could bring to light here the essential features of substance qua substance-something which cannot be undertaken here. A fifth essential determination of substance is that it possesses a merely contradictory, not a contrary opposite. There is only the being or non-being of a substance, not an anti-substance. As Aristotle himself noted, this characteristic does not simply belong to substance; it is thus one of those essential features of substance which do not distinguish the essence of substance from that of all other entities, but which are at the same time not so general that their mentioning would cease to throw light on the distinct essence of substance, such as would be the case if we were to ascribe to the substance only that it is subject to the first principles. In his Categories, Aristotle names a sixth feature of substance. „First Substance“ possesses no „degree.“ „This man“ and „this ox“ would both be substance in the same degree. Certainly it is true that on a purely formal level a thing is a substance or it is The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 127 not. And this formal contradictory opposition admits of neither distinctions of degree nor „third possibilities“ (tertium non datur). Likewise a substance of a determinate sort (e.g. a man) is either this substance or not, and one man can not be „more a man“ than another. But it would be false to exclude tlm possibility that even within the same sort of substance (man) there might be many degrees of unfolding and actualization. The basic fact of being human cannot indeed increase, but the actualization of that which is contained (potentially) in being man can increase. It would be even more incorrect to maintain that within the same genus (e.g. of animal being) there might not be many degrees of distinction in the sense of the fuller and deeper embodiment of the idea of a genus: from an amoeba to a horse there is an immense scale of distinctions indeed with respect to sensitivity, capacity to perceive or learn, etc. which likewise involve lower and higher degrees of embodiment of the ratio of animal being. Above all, in this author’s opinion it is a mistake, leading many to the rejection of the concept of substance, to hold that substances of diverse orders of being, e.g. material, spiritual or even the absolute, would be substance in the same degree. We will attempt to show that spiritual substance possesses the features of substance in a fundamentally higher manner and is a substance in a far more proper sense than material substance. Indeed, as we will show, in both cases it is a matter of a merely analogous usage of the category of substance. A seventh essential note of substance it its individuality. Individuality again can be considered in three ways: first, every substance is a 41 (a „this there“) and possesses a peculiar identity with itself, because of which it is distinguished from all other things as something individually unique. A special perfection of individuality (proper to all real entities including all accidental entities) must be granted to substance on the basis of its existing-in-itself and its reality in the proper sense of the term. Secondly, individuality in the full sense includes a differentiation from the environment, from other entities. An individuum cannot spill over into an other entity “seamlessly,” cannot be a mere „part“ of a greater whole as a drop of water in the sea (von Hildebrand). Thirdly, individuality points to unity and simplicity, owing to which we can speak of one (an individual) entity instead of merely a conglomerate. Likewise a whole which is 41 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 128 no strictly unitary or simple subject, as, for example, any non-living material thing, is no individuum and thus also no substance in the full sense of the term. This emphasis on the individual and unique character of each (primary) substance and on its distinctness from any other one, is perfectly compatible both with union between substances (as we shall see) and with participation and sharing in a „common“ universal nature. In fact, one central thesis which this book and an earlier work by the present author on body and soul seek to establish is that precisly the substantial difference between body and soul is a condition of the possibility of the unity of man’s nature. Similarly, without preservation of the distinctness and without absence of fusion or confusion between two persons no personal communion is possible. Undividedness and communion between persons is the condition of their possibility in the substantial distinctness of persons. Furthermore, in a work on „Essence and Existence“ the present author has attempted to show, in relation to the problem of participation, that the essence of a man or of any other real being exists only in the unique existing being as its essence, but that simultaneously the individual uniqueness of its essence is impossible without a universal essence and, indeed, without participation in immutable and eternal ideas. Thus neither participation and the possessing of universal natures nor the unity between substances must be thought in a monistic way or along the lines of dissolving individual substances into one indistinguishable non-individual, nor must the emphatic stress laid on the individual uniqueness of substances in general and of persons in particular be misconstrued as a sign of nominalism. Here we cannot enumerate in how many cases in contemporary philosophy the concept of a substance or rather of the substantiality of the soul was rejected on the basis of misunderstanding the essential features of substance. (See, for instance, McDougall, pp.61ff, 162ff., and 364f.) B. Proofs for, and Objections Against, the Spiritual Substantiality of the Soul and Its Distinction from the Body In the following, the spiritual substantiality of the soul will be demonstrated systematically. In the course of this demonstration, an exposition and critique of the positions and counter-positions on this problem in contemporary philosophical discussion will be presented. The following considerations proceed from the conclusion The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 129 arrived at previously, that psychic realities such as knowing or willing are not substances; but at the same time, as real entities, they must evidently be „in something other“ as subject or substantial ground. (If the latter point is denied, the previous investigation of physical and psychic data and the problem to be treated below p. 42 on the relation between physical and psychic being will be considered the whole content of the body-soul problem and thereby, in the present author’s opinion, a most important part of this problem will be neglected.) Hence the question presents itself as to what kind of substance that must be in which psychic realities can inhere. Can this be the body (matter) or must a spiritual substance, the soul, be admitted as bearer of conscious experience? 1. A Negative Proof for the Impossibility of Conscious Human Life Inhering in a Material Substance: The present author (1973)--following Augustine, Pascal, Kant and Newman – has presented first of all a purely negative proof for the non-material nature of this substance, i.e. a proof which shall merely demonstrate the impossibility of consciousness inhering in a material substance (e.g. in the brain) without touching upon the positive features of that „immaterial“ substance in which human conscious life factually inheres. The first premise of this proof is the following: Consciousness is real in a more proper sense than any single material substance and than all material substances put together. The second premise runs: no quality (no inherent feature) can surpass in reality the substance which bears it and supports it in being. From this follows the conclusion: consciousness cannot possibly inhere in a material substance. (Since both premises are considered by the present author as apodictically certain, he logically draws what he considers an apodictically justified conclusion.) Several critical objections to this argument have been offered in oral conversations – by professor R. Spaemann of the University of Munich and by students of the present author, Michael Waldstein and Donald Ferrari. They can be briefly sketched and answered in the following way. 42 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 130 The first objection (Spaemann, Ferrari) runs: in the case of the beauty of a material form, which apparently does not inhere in a substance distinct from matter, we also find that this beauty possesses a „higher reality“ than the matter which bears it, which is relatively meaningless by comparison with the higher reality and spirituality of the work of art. Thus one cannot likewise conclude to a non-material bearer from the „higher reality“ of consciousness in relation to matter. In reply to this objection we draw upon the distinction referred to above (p. )43 between three different „dimensions of being“ and upon the results of our analysis of substance. Something inhering in a substance, we have seen’, can actually be superior to that substance in reference to its intelligibility or value, but not with respect to its real being. For the „being real“ of,.e.g., the beauty of a statue, is completely „borrowed” from that of the beautiful thing. Thus the objection suffers from an equivocation of the term „higher reality.“ The beauty of material things may be both of greater value and more intelligible than the substance in which it inieres. But it can never surpass it in reality because its reality is wholly dependent on that of the substantial bearer and it possesses only a „being-in“ another, not a being in itself. Consciousness, however, precisely excels in reality over all material substances. Hence the objection fails to disprove the argument. If one wishes to hold there to be a beauty of the „idea” of the work of art or of its form as purely spiritual, independent of its destruction or the destruction of its material substrate (as can be admitted especially in the case of music or of the literary work of art), then one could indeed meaningfully affirm that the work of art or its beauty possesses a „higher reality“ that matter and that it can be realized or produced in various material substrate. Then, however, one would no longer conceive of the beauty or the work of art as inhering in matter, but as a properly spiritual, indeed even indestructible entity. Thus the point of departure of the objection would be abandoned, which indeed should show that something which inheres in a material substance can surpass this substance in reality. 43 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 131 A second objection against this proof (Roberts, Waldstein) concerns the question whether, because of an equivocal use of the term „reality“ the proof might not be erroneous, since this expression applies once in.the proof to an actual substance (body) and then only to a characteristic of a substance (a conscious act). If now by „reality“ we mean an act, one could not say it surpasses a material substance in reality, since the substance, according to our own presupposition always surpasses an accident in its reality or rather is not at all comparable to an act with respect to its reality. However, if one compares a spiritual (conscious) substance with a material substance and attributes to the conscious subject a higher reality, one could indeed maintain this; but the point to be proven (the existence of a non-material substance) will thus be tacitly presupposed, and thus the logical error of a petitio principii would be committed. To this objection one could reply first of all that the comparison regarding their respective degrees of reality between a substance and a determination inhering in it is entirely possible and indeed furnishes precisely the basis for the thesis that a substance surpasses in reality all entities inhering in it, because it is in itself and supports in being all of its accidents. Secondly, it is only true with reference to one and the same substance that the substance must surpass in reality the determinations inhering in it. It is only this that is proposed here. Thirdly, conscious life is immediately given as something fully real, which so far surpasses in reality a material substance, indeed the sum-total of all material substances, that they are „as nothing“ in comparison with consciousness. (And this can be clearly understood even by someone who denies or doubts the substantiality of the soul, at any rate before the kind of substance in which consciousness inheres is recognized.) „Higher reality“ here means not (yet) „higher substantial reality,“ but rather an intuitively given massive „surplus of reality“ which is proper to every consciousness in comparison with material substance. That the basis for this higher reality of consciousness ultimately lies in an immaterial substance must be granted, but this does not make the proof a petitio principii. For, first of all, this higher reality of consciousness can be recognized before its ontological ground in a spiritual substance is recognized. The inference would therefore not be made to the „higher reality“ of consciousness from the spiritual substantiality of the soul. Secondly, the metaphysical presupposition of an immaterial substance for the „higher reality“ of conscious life, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 132 however, is so far from making the proof invalid that it is rather precisely the condition for the validity of this argument, or better, for the truth of both of its premises. A third objection states that the proof contains a petitio principii in another way. It would be valid only under the presupposition that consciousness could not be the actualization and the „highest state“ of matter. If this were the case, the proof would completely collapse, as the example of the following fictitiously assumed proof teaches: The mature oak possesses a higher reality than the acorn and than all acorns in the world, and this higher reality cannot be explained through the lower. As in this case, so in our basic proof, one likewise presupposes what is to be proven (namely, that consciousness is not explicable as the highest realization of matter). A further and closely related objection attempts to reduce our proof to absurdity by the following consideration. The substantiality of the soul could be refuted in the same way in which we excluded matter as bearer of consciousness. The „substance“ of the soul in its unconscious state (e.g. in sleep) is inferior, to conscious life in terms of „reality.“ For a human being, indeed, an eternal continuance of the soul in an unconscious state is similar to extinction or annihilation. Thus consciousness could not possibly inhere in the soul ( which would be incomparably inferior in reality if compared with the higher reality of conscious life). In response to both of these objections it should first of all be granted that the completely actualized reality (form) of a substance is superior in reality to the same substance in the “sleeping” state. Thus the original proof developed above presupposes that consciousness represents a higher reality than a material substance together with all its proper forms of realization. This addition seems to create no special difficulties, however, since the matter that accompanies consciousness (e.g. the brain and its functions in the case of the waking person) is, with respect to the actualization of matter, fully comparable, indeed is identical, with that without consciousness (the state of the brain in the unconscious person). Consciousness indeed in no way appears as a more refined form of, or as an accretion to matter (as, e.g., the mature oak in comparison to the acorn). Thus it cannot possibly be conceived of as an actualization of matter as such, but would precisely have to be interpreted as epiiphenomenon or as an effect of a material being which does not represent an unfolding of matter qua matter. The proof The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 133 against the (substantial) soul supposedly analogous to our proof for it is thus in actuality completely different. Here indeed (analogous to the relation between the acorn and the oak) consciousness is given as actualization and awakened form of the subject of consciousness (cf. above pp. ff)44. Hence it is clear that the fully actualized substance of the personal subject possesses higher reality than the person in an unactualized dormant state. But this in no way invalidates our proof. A fifth objection against our proof is that this proof presupposes that in general conscious life must inhere in a substance. Why could not consciousness simply be a free-floating result of processes, without substance as Fechner, James and others held? This objection concerns a fact clarified previously and to be explained already prior to the beginning of this and of all proofs for a substantial soul (cf. above, pp. ff; ff; ff). 45 A sixth objection (Waldstein) says that we presuppose a false alternative for our proof: either consciousness is an accident of matter (an epiphenomenon) or it inheres in a substance distinct from matter. But these alternatives have already been overcome by Aristotle. There can indeed be a single substance (in the classical sense of Hylemorphism, which is still held by some thinkers today) which possesses two constitutive principles form and matter. The life-principle (or the form) has a „higher reality,“ and matter a lower. Consciousness could then be considered as an accident of the substance of the (whole) man, an accident, however, which would be grounded in the soul (form). In reply to this objection two things might be noted. To begin with, this first „negative“ proof still indeed does not signify what kind of substance is the subject of consciousness, but only that this substance could not be a material substance such as a computer or a functioning material body (Körper). Thus it seems that Epiphenomenalism and every form of Materialism are refuted if the result of our proof holds. Likewise Hyle-morphism would not indeed explain consciousness through the matter or the form of a merely material thing or through the purely material substance constituted by both, but would affirm that awareness goes back to a substance that is not merely material, but psychophysical (leib-seelische). As far as the introduction of a positively spiritual substance is concerned (which, incidentally, is also granted in 44 45 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 134 Thomistic Hyle-morphism), we see this as based, not on the first proof discussed, but only on the subsequent proofs which are for this reason essentially stronger than the first. 2. Proofs for a Simple Spiritual Substance (Soul) as Subject of Non-Substantial Psycho-Spiritual (seelisch-geistiger) Realities a) Proof Based upon the Universal Essence of Conscious Human Life The following proof one finds in various forms in Wetter, De Vries and the present author (1973), among others. The material substance itself must be spatially extended, composed, divisible, etc. (cf. above, pp. ff.; ff.)46. Now if we treat the positive essential features of psychic being – being lived and consciously „performed“ from within, existence in a conscious subject, the intentionality of most experiences, etc. – we see it is impossible for a material substance in its unity-in-multiplicity and its composition to be the substance which lies at the basis of the conscious acts of the subject (Leibniz). This will become most clear if we treat the positive determination of the subject of psychic life which is clearly given to us as the presupposition of all experience and even of appearing (Lotze). We see that the mode of positive simplicity and incomposite individuality of the subject, which is presupposed, for example, in an aesthetic experience, cannot possibly be ascribed to an essentially non-simple, material substance with its parts outside one another in space. It is immediately evident upon careful reflection on the intelligible essence of, on the one hand, human ”psychic experiences“ and, on the other hand, materially composed substances, that the latter can never bear the former as their subject. In spite of the incompleteness of our knowledge of material substantiality, this knowledge suffices to gain this insight with certainty, and not as a mere hypothesis. Conscious experiences as, for instance, the aesthetic experience of a painting, clearly call for one and the same identical and indivisible subject, in order to be possible at all. Whereas the unity of the aesthetic form itself is compatible with an extended material bearer – nay, necessarily and evidently requires it because it could not exist without spatially extended forms, colors, etc. – it is no less evident that the experience of this form and beautiful painting 46 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 135 is absolutely incompatible with any subject which would be less than strictly indivisible and simple and which is thus contradictorily opposed to a material substance. Exactly as it becomes immediately evident from the essence of the aesthetic visible object that a painting or piece of sculpture without form, color, and thus without a (real or imagined) material bearer would be absolutely impossible, and this insight is fully rational because based on in intelligible and necessary essence and on intelligible facts which, in their immediate evidence, provide the basis of any indirect reasoning, argument or proof, so also is the fact evident that a brain with its millions times millions of distinct parts and functions can bear many accidents such as patterns, forms, functional wholes, etc., but never conscious experiences which are not built up from a manifold of parts outside parts, events after events, and which, above all, would be totally destroyed and would lose their being and unity if there were not one and the same identical and indivisible self as their subject, as the non-composed and simple „I“ of these acts: „I see,“ “I understand,“ „I experience form47.” This proof can be represented in the following form: First premise: conscious human experiences require an indivisible, simple, noncomposite substance as subject. Second premise: No material substance is an indivisibly simple, non-composite substance. Conclusion: Thus no material substance is the substance required by conscious experiences as the subject of conscious human life. b) Proofs Based upon the Specific Character of Certain Conscious, Spiritual Acts Proof from the Essence of Knowing: We choose as starting point the example of the knowledge that two plus two are four, or that we exist. Such knowledge is distinguished by intentionality as well as by consciousness as such the basic feature of the proof just given. In knowledge we are aware and meaningfully related to an object, in our examples to the state of affairs that two plus two are four, and the fact that we exist. 47 from? The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 136 In knowing, a conscious participation in the known entity is essentially involved (the knowing act being informed by the character of the known object). Knowing presupposes that we grasp an entity as it is, or rather that we see a state of affairs as it is in itself. Since two plus two really equals four, we know that it is so; since we actually do exist, the knowing act that apprehends this content has precisely the content „we exist.“ Now, if knowing were a mere epiphenomenon of material processes or even identical with them, it would depend for its content upon material processes which, for their part, are subjected to natural causality. A „blind“ series of efficient causes would determine the content of our knowing which would be fixed.by natural laws and by factual occurrences in the material world. Now this mode of dependency is incompatible with the former dependency on an object which belongs to the essence of knowing. For the content of knowing should only depend upon how the known entity really is. Only if the object of conscious knowing were other, would the content of knowing be „other.“ If knowing were mere effect or epiphenomenon of material processes (or even identical with such processes), it would be „other,“ when material processes in the brain would be „other,“ completely independent of how the known object was constituted in itself. In other words, the object would no longer be the „informing intentional cause“ of knowing (which belongs to the essence of knowing), but a factor radically distinct and independent from the intentionally given known object: brain-events, determined by factual occurences and natural laws. Documented by an example: the view presented here contradicts the Materialist or Epiphenomenalist thesis. This conflict of convictions would be based upon other processes taking place in the brain of the Epiphenomenalist than take place in ours. By the simple alteration of brain processes (perhaps with the aid of the introduction of electrical impulses through electrodes implanted in the brain) our opinions would be determined either to the Materialist view or to a non-Materialist view or to a third view, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 137 etc., without any change whatsoever taking place in the facts concerned, which are the object of our knowledge48 claims. Knowledge, indeed even a meaningfully grounded claim to truth, would be impossible under such presuppositions. We could just as little know whether our knowing corresponds to the known facts as a „computer“ can know, whether it was programmed correctly or falsely. (This argument, which goes back to antiquity, was advanced in contemporary philosophy in various forms by Pieper, Wetter, De Vries, Haldane, Popper 1977 and the present author 1973). Lenin and other proponents of Dialectical Materialism would object that it is precisely only under the presuppositions of Materialism that objective knowledge is possible. They would call attention to the phenomenon of the mirror which reflects an object precisely on the basis of material laws. Similarly our brain, or rather the awareness determined by it, functions as a complex mirror. Only through the conception of knowledge as materially based reflection of objective reality would the adequation of human knowing be explicable. Under the presupposition of a purely spiritual subject, such knowing remains unexplainable, since such a subject would not stand in clearly identifiable causal dependency upon material (objective) reality. To this objection much can be said in reply. First of all, such a reflection theory does not explain the knowing of a correspondance between judgment and reality, but at best the fact of such correspondence. For neither the mirror nor the computer knows that their „reflection“ corresponds to objective facts. Secondly, this theory does not explain the adequation between knowing and object, for neither the computer nor the mirror (think of a distortion mirror) could explain its adequation to the object (and even the best mirror presents the object in reverse). Thirdly, the mirror analogy attempts to clarify knowing in completely unsuitable bodily imagery which contradicts all the essential features of knowing: knowing is no image of an object; an image, in order to be grasped as image, already presupposes knowing the object imaged (Husserl). In addition, a mirror-image stands in an essentially non-conscious relation to an object, whereas knowledge does, so that even the most erroneous and distorted conception of 48 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 138 things has more in common with knowledge than mirror-images; and in addition, any consciously transcending participation in the object, as characterizes knowledge in contradistinction to error, is lacking to the copy. Apart from that, in the mirror theory a relation, presupposing matter, between a purely material object (ignoring all spiritual objects of knowledge) and an image whose parts are outside one another in space, is falsely taken as the basis of the explanation of knowing which essentially excludes such a mututal exteriority of parts in space. (Cf. the critique of this view in Husserl 1900/01; Merleau-Ponty 1945; De Vries 1958, 1962; Hoeres 1969; the present author,21976.) Prom the Materialist explanation of knowing there follows a self-contradiction on the basis of the points presented. For the Materialist or Epiphenomenalist makes the claim of knowing the brain, causality, etc. If he really possesses knowledge of these matters, such knowledge can neither be explained nor justified if it would not be determined by the true condition of things, but only by brain processes which would be causing his “knowledge,” while similarly materially determined processes would cause the opposite opinion in other brains. Thus the Materialist epistemology makes a claim to truth whose justification it completely cancels by its content. This contradiction is not based upon purely formal-logical laws, but presupposes the ‘material’ non-formal essence of knowing, of efficient causality, etc. It likewise does not follow from the theory in itself: if, for example, a purely spiritual being would set it up only for man, this self-contradiction would not obtain. But the contradiction follows from the fact that a man who must himself be subject to the theory sets up this theory. (For a reply to Russell’s and Stegmuller’s objections against this argument see the author’s work 21976, pp. 362-376). A further step in this proof for the spirituality of the soul from the essence of knowing is made by the authors mentioned when they develop the positive spirituality of the knowing process as a non-corporeal, transcending, discovering participation in being. When, finally, they demonstrate the factual existence of knowing by examples of evident and absolutely certain knowledge, not merely is the impossibility of defending without contradiction the Materialist theory of knowledge demonstrated, but the falsity of any Materialist theory of knowledge is thereby shown as well. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 139 If the universal essence of knowing is betrayed by such an epistemology, this holds all the more so for the spiritual knowledge of spiritual objects such as justice, love and truth, where every physical object and its causal influence on our consciousness is lacking. Proof from the Essence of Freedom: In the space alotted we cannot present a demonstration of the fact that freedom exists (cf. on this matter von Hildebrand, 1959; Hengstenberg, 1969; Wenisch, 1973; the present author, 1976). Yet if freedom can be shown to exist, from its essence a proof for the spiritual substantiality of the.soul can be developed. This proof builds upon the fact that the essence of freedom, as spontaneous and self-determination, or as a response or decision brouqht forth by nothing other than the person-center itself, is totally incompatible with its being causally dependent upon brain-processes. This proof takes its point of departure from the specific essence of the free act qua free act. The free act involves a self-possession which radically contradicts the „being possessed“ of consciousness by consciousness-determining laws and facts of the material world; it implies a self-governance of the person which contradicts the person’s being ruled by brain-constellations. Freedom lies in an auto-determination of the person in his ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the motivating „offers“ presented by the objects of possible actions; and such an auto-determination clearly contradicts a determination from without by brain-events or other material conditions. Finally, freedom involves an autonomy and transcendence of the person which clearly contradicts both the heteronomy of being completely subject to determining forces outside the conscious center and the immanence of being determined by one’s nature and by the material world, without being able to transcend one’s nature through knowledge and through a free decision based on the truth about the good or evil character of a being (K. Wojtyla). It is easy to see that freedom by its very essence excludes a dependence of consciousness on material I processes which would produce or determine it from without, i.e. from outside the person’s self. The person’s being able to originate and posit acts, an ability which is actualized in freedom precludes these acts being mere products of brainprocesses and thus of something lying outside the conscious ego. Moreover, this result, as well as the result of the next proof, stands in complete agreement with the latest results of empirical research (cf. Eccles 1977, pp.275ff. and 355ff.). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 140 A Proof Based Upon the Free Governance of the Body: This proof goes back to Plato (Phaedo and other works) who shows that the person (soul) possesses a relation of using and governing the body which cannot be explained on Epiphenomenalist grounds. One can, to be sure, pose the question whether this argument is dependent on the proof from freedom itself advanced above. For if acts that are treated as free could themselves be determined causally or even be identical with brain-processes, the argument would indeed not be valid, since it could then be maintained that the governance of the body rests upon pure illusion, or if it would be considered as given, the governing act of the will itself would be merely a causally determined process in the brain, as Armstrong, Smart and others think. 49 On the basis of the previous proof, however, reference to the free, conscious governance of the body will be the point of departure for a new valid argument against Materialism and Epiphenomenalism. For how can an epiphenomenon, an aspect of matter not only be free, but govern and causally influence the body in freedom and even freely oppose its tendencies? (Both of these proofs from freedom presuppose the result obtained in the previous part of the inquiry that all consciousness, and thus freedom, too, is essentially different from physical being.) Proof Based Upon the Essence of Reflection and other Acts as Possible Starting Points of Arguments for a Substantial Spiritual Soul: In contemporary philosophy, the argument for the spiritual substantiality of the soul based on reflection, which goes back to Plotinus, Augustine, (Pseudo)-Dionysius, Thomas Aquinas and other authors, is advanced in altered form by de Vries (pp. 120ff.), Rahner (pp. 233ff.), Coreth, Hölscher, and others. Likewise in French personalism, especially in Lavelle, we find careful expositions of freedom and participation as well as of the reflexive moi over against the pre-reflexive je, expositions which move in the same direction as the line of thinkers just mentioned, though for example Lavelle does not consider his observations (pp. 45ff.) to be formal proof for a substantial soul. This argument takes its point of departure from the specific essence of reflection that is presupposed in all expressly conscious knowing. In reflection there is a unique turning back and bending back upon oneself which Aquinas, not without inspiration 49 the end of the sentence which the last page does not contain. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 141 from the early Medieval Neoplatonic work Liber de Causis, conceived of as a reditio mentis completa in seipsam (ad essentiam suam), „a complete return of the mind unto itself (to its essence).“ This act of reflection is always presupposed in the conscious life of man. If we say „I“ or expressly think of ourselves, if we expressly recognize or know that we know something, if we are conscious of the truth of a judgment we have made, if we reflect upon our own past or examine our free acts and our responsibility - in these and in countless other acts we meet cases of reflection. If we try to comprehend this reflective gesture of the mind, we find that it represents a unique mode of bending back upon oneself. It is not the case that a part of ourself bends back upon another part, but in a certain way the „whole person“ (soul) bends back upon itself as a whole (especially in reflective thinking on ourselves) This already presupposes that bending back upon oneself is in no way similar to a material bending back. A piece of cloth can only be folded back upon itself in that a part of the cloth touches another part. There can not as such be a kind of self-bending back upon itself of matter where it is not merely a part of a material entity that is bent or folded back upon another. Likewise if a mirror reflection is reflected back in a second mirror and then again in the first, it always remains the case that a „part“ of a material entity (the first mirror) or one image (the first mirror-image) is reflected in another material medium or in a second image; and the image in the second mirror, which mirrors itself again in the first, is never identical with the image appearing in the first mirror. Augustine showed that even conscious activities such as seeing, which are performed with the aid of bodily sense organs, cannot bend back upon themselves in the sense of reflection. The eye cannot see itself, and we ourselves can see neither this Self nor our own seeing. If we see the eye in the mirror, we indeed do not see the eye itself but its image. At closer consideration, there are several factors involved here. Some have to do with the peculiarity of seeing and hearing in that the organs of these sense-perceptions (the eye or the ear) cannot be perceived - either just by us or generally speaking - through the same sense which uses them but only through another sense. Our own eye cannot be perceived through any of our own senses (except in some way felt from within during the performance of seeing), but the eye of another can be seen. The ear, on the other The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 142 hand, can never be perceived by the sense that uses it as organ (it cannot be heard) but seen or touched. In the sense of touch the situation is different: our own hand, through which we touch, can both be touched by our own second hand or by a finger of the same hand, and can be felt from within while it touches any object. Thus there is both a type of „sensual reflexiveness“ in some senses and a possibility to perceive the bodily organ of these perceptions (the sentient hand) through the same organ and by the same type of perception which uses the perceived organ (we can touch with our hand the hand that touches). In other sense-perceptions and with respect to other sense organs this is impossible either for essential or for accidental reasons (such as the location of our eye in the body). Our own eye can, for reasons related to the essential structure of sight and of its organ, not see itself but only an image of itself. Nor can one of our eyes see the other one - for accidental reasons of the place our eyes have in the body. In still other cases the type of organ cannot be seen by means of the same sense organ (also in other persons): the ear cannot hear itself nor any other ear. The situation is different when we move from the question of perceiving or not perceiving bodily sense-organs to the question of the perception itself. The reason why it cannot be perceived as an object of sense-perception is different. For this activity is no sensible object at all but an incorporeal conscious experience; it is no material bodily entity such as the eye, and as such is by its very nature neither extended in space nor perceptible through the senses. For this entirely different reason the activity of seeing can neither be seen nor heared nor smelt, etc. It is bodily, however, in another sense. For it is clearly experienced in its link to the body (and in this new sense it is corporeal). Moreover, all sense-perceptions are „experienced“ and in a certain sense felt from within. Yet the term „feeling“ has here quite another meaning than when we apply it to the feeling of a material thing, for example feeling a hard or smooth surface. When we say that we feel our seeing or experience our own hearing or our feeling warm or cold itself, the term ‘feeling’ refers to the inner conscious experience of our body in sense perception which is a special sphere of the inner conscious awareness of all our conscious activities such as willing, thinking, etc. including perceiving through the senses. No sense experience qua experience can be the object of our external senses; and when we speak of the ‘inner senses’ in which we grasp our own perceiving, we move to The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 143 a „consciousness of performing activities“ which differs immensely from the sense perception of physical objects and from any intentional act of which the perceptions would be objects of experience. Therefore, any such language of „inner perception,“ as Franz Brentano uses it, is misleading. This inner experience of our consciousness is precisely not a perception of our experiences. This would also lead to an infinite regress because we could become aware of any new level of perception only by making it the object of a further perception, and so forth. Thus the „rest“ of all consciousness of in a primordial datum of the immediate inner experience of our experiences and acts which is prior to reflection is a crucial datum and condition for all reflection. Psychic data can, but do not have to, be grasped as objects of intentional conscious acts. Material objects, however, can only be given in such an object-consciousness. They can never be „lived from within.“ A certain exception to this is the unique inner givenness of our own body which distinguishes our Leib (lived body) from our Körper (body as a physical material object). Yet even here the body as such is given quite differently from the way in which our experience of it is experienced from within: the body qua body is given in a half-objective way, to use this awkward expression. Let us return to the Augustinian observation that we cannot see or experience through the eye our own seeing. Seeing and other sense perceptions, as they are not themselves sensible objects, cannot be perceived through the senses and are given from within. Nevertheless, also their experience, in which we get acquainted with them, can in a certain sense be called „sensuous“ in that we find such an inner experience of one’s own sense perceptions also in animals who do not possess reflection. Still further removed from the objects of our sense experience is the „I“, the „Self“ of the person, which originally becomes accessible in its being and life from within in a far more intimate experience than that of the sense perceptions as such, and which can then become the intentional object of which we become properly aware. But this happens not in some „inner perception“ but in a cognitive activity of a purely rational and spiritual nature (in the sense in which „spiritual“ designates experiences which transcend, in the level of their rationality, the „dumb sphere“ of the senses as such and are characteristic only of persons, not of animals). In this rational act of reflection as a The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 144 mental and incorporeal turn of the subject over himself the person becomes aware of himself, thinks of himself, examines his conscience, etc. And yet reflection already presupposes a prior awareness of ourself in which we do not yet turn the Self into an object of the reflective act. If the expression employed by Hegel and Rahner in this connection, the „being with itself“ (Beisichsein) of mind, is correctly understood, it can appropriately characterize this primordial and amazing phenomenon of the Vollzugsbewußtsein and inner presence of the mind to himself, which we touched upon above and which Augustine describes saying: „Even before the mind turns himself into an object of his own act, he is aware of himself, as if he were the memory of himself to himself.“ This act of living our own being consciously from within and becoming simultaneously aware of ourself in a non-objectivizing, preflective manner is different from the act of reflection in which the subject becomes the object of his own cogitatio. The mental activity of reflection in which the „I“ himself becomes the object of mental awareness is not indeed „corporeal“ in the sense in which our sense perceptions are bodily, and not even in the sense in which the so-called „inner senses“ with which we experience our sense-perceptions themselves belong to the sensuous level and are possessed in some manner also by animals. This act of reflection, however, in which the „I“ and „Self“ becomes known to himself or herself and reflects upon his or her very Self, does not use the sense organ of the eye or of the hand, nor is it just the type of inner sense-awareness of the subject which we assume to exist also in animals. Rather, this reflection, in which the Self becomes the object of consciousness and on the basis of which we refer to ourself, involves a purely mental „turning around“ and looking at oneself, being aware of the identity of the „one and the same“ Subject who is the object of this reflective act and the very same Self who is the subject of the act of reflection. Now the argument for the soul under consideration insists that, while already the inner pre-reflective awareness of ourself shows that our mind utterly differs from any corporeal being, especially the act of reflection is evidently completely impossible and even unthinkable on the level of a material thing of any kind. It requires a mode of turning of the Self unto himself (a reditio completa mentis supra seipsam) which evidently contradicts the essence of matter and exceeds all the possibilities of an entity which is spatially extended and consists of non-identical parts. Only an immaterial soul, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 145 as it is indeed already presupposed as subject of sense-perception, is capable of relective self-consciousness (which may be full of errors) or of self-knowledge and a true grasp of its own being and life. Only the rational dimension of consciousness, or put more precisely, only the human mind as an intellective soul can explain the phenomenon of reflection. Reflection is an act which cannot only never be performed by a material entity, but which is also not accomplished through the sense organs or on a sensuous level of irrational consciousness as it is also possessed by animals. Rather, in reflection the mind in a certain manner „remains where it is“ and yet at the same time can bend back upon itself in such an entirely incorporeal and non-sensuous way that the very same identical Self becomes both „object“ and subject of conscious reflecting and is simultaneously aware of his identity. In reflection - and this is an especially astonishing aspect of the „miracle“ of this act - we have a clear awareness of the fact that the object and the subject of reflection are one and the same identical entity which we ourselves are. Now, while the eye cannot remain where it is and at the same time see itself, we can accomplish this in reflection. We do not leave the place in which we stand noncorporeally, and still we see ourselves as though we stood over against ourselves. At the same time, in this non-corporeal turning back upon ourselves, we are aware that the subject of the mental seeing and the mentally seen are the same identical entity. From the results of this analysis of reflection the following argument can be developed for a spiritual soul: reflection cannot possibly be explained by a material substance, but presupposes a substance (a mind or soul) capable of immaterial and specifically rational acts. Reflection exists as a basic fact of conscious mental experience. Therefore a rational mind (a soul) exists. This proof likewise gives us fuller access to the positive essential features and the self-givenness of the mind as the „immaterial, spiritual substance“ of the soul which we will immediately consider more closely. It is certainly to be expected that the analysis of rational or spiritual acts such as concept-formation and abstraction, or of religious acts, etc. would also yield the insight that the specific essence of these acts provides points of departure for new proofs for the spiritual substantiality of the soul. Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, with many other medieval thinkers, insisted rightly on the fact that the act of abstraction, of grasping a universal nature or essence, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 146 is evidently and utterly incompatible with being performed by a material subject. No material thing can draw from experience the universal essence of things and understand a general nature or refer to it by means of concepts and acts of meaning. This activity requires a subject which is non-material. This is so not because material things are individual and therefore could not grasp something not individual, as Aristotle and some medieval authors, including Thomas Aquinas, suggested. For one does not have to be abstract in order to perform an act of abstracting. Quite on the contrary, one needs to be an absolutely individual and incommunicable and consciously living personal subject in order to perform any act, including that of abstraction. Rather, the reason for the inability of a material substance to abstract universals lies in the essence of matter. A thing that is extended in space and consists of non-identical parts cannot perform any conscious act, let alone this peculiar act of understanding the universal nature of a thing. To perform such an act requires surely a non-material subject. This could even more clearly be shown about religious acts in which the infinite divine perfections which cannot properly be abstracted from any sense-object are in some way grasped by the mind and become the object of his love or adoration. Such acts, for additional reasons rooted in their specific essence and in the infinity of their object, are totally incompatible with being performed by any material entity. It is not necessary, however, at this point to go further into the question of the mnifold possible starting points for arguments for the existence of the soul that proceed from the specific natures of diverse acts. Instead, the general structure of the proofs treated in the present section and the absolute irreducibility of the conscious subject to any material entity shall be explained a bit more carefully. c) The Structure of the Discussed Arguments and the Irreducibility of the Mentally Simple Subject to Either One of two Kinds of Material-Spatial Simplicity First (as the „negative part“ of these proofs), it is established in the mentioned arguments that the essence of conscious experience or of certain mental acts is incompatible with their inhering in a material substance or with their being caused by material processes. Thus a substance consisting of non-identical, spatially extended The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 147 parts cannot be the subject of conscious and of specifically rational acts of different types. In a second and positive part of this proof we also apprehend the positive essential features of the mental substance which is presupposed as bearer of conscious, rational, or spiritual acts. To these positive determinations of the spiritual substance belongs, e.g., a consciously experienced simplicity which is neither identical with the mathematical simplicity of the point nor with the simplicity of atoms in the philosophical sense of the term, i.e., with the ultimate constituent ‘simple’ parts of matter which cannot be further broken down or „really divided.“ Of course, the simplicity of the mind shares with the other two senses of simplicity that it likewise includes opposition to mathematical or material composition and divisibility. That it is a matter of the simplicity of a substance, however, makes it completely different from the simplicity of the point, from which it is also differentiated by the fact that it possesses no spatial localization. Further, it is here a matter of the simplicity of that substance which can awaken in consciousness to other entities and become aware of itself. The simplicity of the mind as of a spiritual substance is radically different from the simplicity of the point or of the elementary particles in that it knowingly goes beyond itself and looks at what lies outside of itself, turns back upon itself non-corporeally in reflection, freely responds and determines itself - all capacities which matter can never possess and which manifest a positive primordial givenness of „spiritual simplicity.“ It is precisely the difference of the immaterial simplicity of the personal subject from the mathematical simplicity of the point and from the material simplicity of the atomic constituent parts of matter which Roderick Chisholm, one of the chief defenders of the indivisible identity of the personal subject, has overlooked when he suggests that the personal subject, while it can never be identical with the brain because of its composite structure, could well be an indivisible atom-like microparticle in the human brain. 50 But the simplicity of the personal Self defies just as much to be an extensionless position in space (a point) as to be a simple part of matter. In contrast to the point it can not be See Roderick Chisholm, "Is There a Mind-Body Problem?", in: Philosophic Exchange 2 (1978), 25-32; the same author: Person and Object (London: Allen & Unwin, 1976); - The First Person (Minneapolis, 1981); - "Brentano's Conception of Substance and Accident", in: Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos (Grazer philosophische Studien), (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1978), 197-210. 50 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 148 located in space, it cannot be in the meeting place of two dissecting lines, the center of a circle, etc. In other words, the essential characteristics of the mathematical point (or the real extensionless position of a point in real space) contradict just as much as the properties of composite material things the essence of the conscious subject. Further, in contrast to the uncomposed real parts of matter which still fill out space, are real entities, but cannot be really divided, the conscious subject can never have these properties. It also can never be a building block for larger material bodies, as the atoms. Moreover, its simplicity forbids that it be space-filling as all material entities, even the indivisible parts (atoms in the philosophical sense). For these still lack mathematical simplicity and therefore have in the geometric and physical sense ‘parts of their being outside other parts’. This is just as incompatible with the subject of consciousness as the characteristics of the mathematical point. It is impossible to attribute to the conscious subject the property found in all real material entities that more of it is in a larger space than in a smaller. 3. Proofs for the Spiritual Substantiality of the Soul Which Rest Upon Direct Evidence and Analysis of the Soul as a Mental Substance a) A Proof for the Spiritual Soul from the Direct Self-Givenness of the Substantial Subject of Consciousness The Direct Givenness of the Substance Underlying Consciousness This proof takes its point of departure from the thesis established earlier against Hume’s bundle theory of consciousness; that the conscious Self, the subject of conscious acts, is given to us with at least the same, if not with even with greater immediacy than single conscious experiences. This argument was developed frequently in the first part of the twentieth century (e.g. by Geyser) and earlier, in many cases, to be sure, with Kantian coloring, and not as an argument for a substantial soul, but for a non-material, though likewise non-substantial subject (e.g. by McDougall; Lotze; Busse, 48ff., 475ff.). If we speak in this connection of „I“ or the „Self,“ we do not usually intend these terms in the sense of relative characteristics distinguished by Scheler (5/1966, 389) from The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 149 the concept of the person as „absolute name.“ Rather we mean the subject of conscious acts as such. We never experience willing, knowing, perceiving, etc. as such. Rather we experience „I will,“ „I perceive,“ „I know.“ It is thus incorrect to hold that we only conclude, with the help of the category of causality, from the datum of conscious experiences to a subject of such experiences. Rather this subject of consciousness is itself immediately given to us and experienced by us. This will be rendered essentially clearer by the following fact. In the experiencing subject of consciousness there are essential features which are completely different than the characteristics of the conscious acts or experiences themselves. The subject is experienced as being conscious of itself, while the conscious acts never can be aware of themselves. The subject of the volitional act wills; the will-act itself cannot will. The conscious subject is experienced as underlying innumerable experiences and as present in them, while the experiences or acts in question are not themselves present in one another in this sense. Of the subject of consciousness it is true to say that states or acts must be predicated of it, something that in no way applies to these states or acts themselves, which must rather be predicated of another entity but of which one must not predicate experiences or acts. It is primarily the conscious subject of experience itself which is experienced as an absolutely indivisible unity and as the identical, perduring ground of myriads of experiences, and not these experiences themselves. Can this „I,“ experienced clearly as subject of consciousness, be an accident of another substance and inhere in another entity in any form (as mode, essential constituent or accident)? The answer to this question appears to emerge by itself from an unbiased look at the facts of experience: this conscious, knowing and free subject, which not only possesses consciousness of other things, but is aware of itself in the performance of consciousness and in reflection, cannot possibly inhere in something other, but is clearly given as substantial self-existence. Theories (such as Hinduism, Spinozism, and others) which regard the personal „I“ as some sort of accident of another being or substance, precisely fail to do justice to this clearly given fact of experience: the subject-character of the personal subject, the lucidly given autonomy of the willing, knowing, loving subject as being „in itself“ and not „in another.“ How could, to develop one of the mentioned points, an accident be The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 150 free, how could the spontaneous auto-determination of the person - rightly designated by Descartes as indubitably certain - be attributable to any accident? One can, at closer examination, hardly fail to see the simultaneous givenness of the substantial selfstanding and of the freedom of a subject? Certainly, all sorts of theories are possible which deny this fact of freedom or of its substantial subject for various understandable reasons, such as the difficulty to account philosophically for true plurality and distinctness of beings which have a common nature, or the perplexity of the philosopher who is asked to understand how freedom and substantiality are to be reconciled with finitude and contingency. But neither any of these indicated theoretical difficulties nor the metaphysical fact of a mysterious in-dwelling of the absolutely single subject in the many experiences, should ever prompt us to reject the strict philosophical evidence of the substantiality of the conscious subject. Moreover, substantiality is here given to us from within and the clarity with which the free subject is given as substance demonstrates the radical untenability of any reduction of the personal subject to a mere accident of another substance. Only if our look at the clearly accessible datum of the substantial „standing in itself“ of the conscious subject is permitted to be obfuscated by various difficulties and theories, can this substance-character of the conscious subject be denied. Knowledge of the Spirituality and Immateriality of the Conscious Subject But could it not be the case that this conscious subject of consciousness is still objectively identical with brain processes or rather with the brain, as the Australasian Materialists or Feigl and Schlick believe, or also with a particle in the brain, as Chisholm thinks? That this is an untenable hypothesis can be established in the following way. The following argument, which Lotze, Busse and others have developed in a form inspired by Kant, has been advocated in more recent times by natural scientists, above all by Sherrington, Penfield and Eccles. First of all, the impossibility that the substance given in consciousness as subject, and a material substance are identical comes to light from a comparison of their The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 151 respective essential features. The material substance is spatially extended and is itself composed and divisible into its elementary particles (at least mathematically speaking). The human brain is even really divisible and it is composed of billions upon billions of separable parts. The material substance can likewise be sensorily perceived though only indirectly through its accidents: to it belongs weight, color, etc. All these determinations show that applying them to the immediately experienced conscious subject of our acts and experiences is evidently absurd. As we saw, this subject cannot possibly be extended spatially, having parts outside parts in space, and being divisible and composed a billionfold, etc. A second and more positive way to grasp the immateriality of the conscious subject reveals itself when we think of the positively spiritual simplicity of this subject, which manifests itself in the capacity to reflect upon itself, to take a position willingly and lovingly, to think logically, etc. Furthermore, if we consider the positively given primordial datum of conscious „in-presence,“ in virtue of which the conscious subject is present in innumerable conscious acts as their subject, if we think of the indivisibly simple presence which is at stake here, the positive spirituality of the conscious subject, not merely its negatively apprehended immateriality, opens up to us. An Augustinian Epistemological Argument from the Indubitable and Inner Evidence of the Subject of Consciousness with Which no Material Object Can ever be Given to us A further way to the knowledge of the spiritual substantiality of the conscious subject is found in an argument going back to Augustine which the present author (1973) presented and of which Armstrong (102ff.) grants that it contradicts his Identity Theory if its premises are true. We are able to know the existence of the subject of our conscious acts with indubitable certitude. No material process, no material thing - and certainly not our brain - is given to us with similar certitude. Likewise we certainly cannot say that we experience clearly or with immediate certitude that we are material or are identical with this or that sort of material with which we should be identical according to Identity Theory. Such a material, moreover, is given to us only as object of conjectures, never as the „I itself“ of which we are certain. But how can we be that entity which experiences itself from within and knows itself in reflection with absolute The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 152 certitude, and at the same time be identical with that matter which we only can envisage by dubious conjectures and as object? Anyone can object (Armstrong e.g.) that we possess no such absolutely certain knowledge of our Self. The response to this objection must go into deep epistemological problems which we cannot develop here (Cf. the author’s work 2/1976). Here we might only refer to the obvious fact of this certitude of our own existence (cf. above, pp. 20ff.). Another objection against this proof for the spirituality of the soul is the following: Certainly anyone can also doubt whether he is a spiritual substance or not, while he is undubitably certain of his existence. Yet from this it cannot apparently be inferred that the man who is certain of his existence is not the entity (mind) of which he is not certain. Likewise, no one ought conclude from the fact that he does not know with certitude whether he is identical with the brain that the latter might not objectively be identical with the Self of which he is certain in performance. This objection still misses the deepest sense of the argument which is the subjectmatter of our discussion here and which can be further developed in the following manner. If you reflectively look back upon yourself, you will perceive that you yourself are given to yourself in an undubitable manner. You will find further that „you yourself“ are given to yourself in a manner in which no material thing with which you might identify yourself can be given to you. You are given to yourself from within in the performance of your acts, in self-consciousness and in the incorporeally reflective turning back upon yourself. Neither in this form nor with this certitude is a material thing ever given to you. The latter always stands over against your perception or conjectural thought as object and can never be given to you from within as your Self. Thus your own being, the thinking and consciously experiencing substance is only this substance given to you as „you yourself“ and cannot be identical with the material thing essentially only given as object of consciousness. Moreover, no material thing is ever given to us with absolutely indubitable certainty. At least in a single case of perception it is not absurd to ask oneself whether one might be dreaming or hallucinating instead of perceiving real material things. And when Berkeley tells us in general that our perceiving and conjectural thought is facing only pure objects of consciousness and not real beings, we cannot immediately refute him. Here we truly find what Husserl has called „a natural belief in the world“ which is The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 153 not in and of itself true with indubitable evidence. The evidence of the senses is immediate but it does not refer so immediately to the intrinsic and objective reality of the world in itself (Seifert, 1987). And no material being, as Augustine notes, can ever be given to our knowledge with apodictic and absolutely indubitable inner certainty. The conscious subject, however, the „I itself,“ is given to us not only from within and prior to „objectivizing“ it in reflection, but is given to us with that indubitable and immediate certainty which long before Descartes Augustine has emphasized, as Hölscher (1986) has shown. This proof which rests upon the necessary bond between the epistemological certitude and mode of evidentiality and the metaphysical character of the material and spiritual substance, will thus in no way be strengthened by correct reference to the fact that we can be in doubt whether we are or are not mind. The argument indeed addresses itself precisely to the one so doubting. He gets to know that he cannot be matter precisely because he can see with indubitable certitude - and prior to settling the answer to the question what he is -. that he himself exists, And as he understands that he can in principle never reach the same certainty regarding any material being that is the object of his senses, he concludes that he cannot be any material thing. But how can we make such a transition from the epistemological order to the ontological one? How can we know that matter as such is not also aware of itself? We are after all not immediately aware of other persons and other subjects. Is it not a purely empirical fact of our experience that we do not experience matter from within and with lesser certitude? At this point we see in the first place that the argument arrives at a discovery of a highly intelligible correlation between the ontological structure of the object of our experience and the mode of its givenness to consciousness. We find it not only as a purely empirical fact that material things are given to us personally only at the objectside. Rather, we understand that it is of the essence of matter in its spatially extended, space-filling structure, and in consequence of its being composed and divisible in parts, that it cannot ever be given to consciousness except as object over against the stream of conscious experience. Moreover, we understand that on the basis of human experience, no material thing can be given to us except through the senses. And the sense-organs - while they serve The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 154 sense perception as a medium which touches its objects with immediate evidence (we know that we see this and that object) - are prone to certain sources of deception and error with regard to the objective reality of that which is evidently perceived. The mediation of these perception both through certain sense-organs and a chain of physiological steps and through brain events, accounts for a fallibility of sense knowledge in principle. Therefore the I which we grasp both from within in lived consciousness and with indubitable certainty cannot possibly be identical with any material thing. For it lies in the essence of matter and in the nature of our cognition of matter that a) matter is only given as object of consciousness, and b) that it is never given indubitably in its objective, transcendent reality in itself. Our own self is given both from within and with indubitable evidence and thus it cannot be any material thing. (A possible objection from lived body experience we are treating elsewhere in this book). b) Proofs for the Substantial Distinctness of the Soul From the Body on the Basis of the Fact that the Subject of Consciousness Possesses the Features of Substance in an in-Principle Higher Degree of Perfection Than is Possible or Thinkable Within a Material Substance The proofs which will be discussed in what follows are in our opinion the most convincing (cf. the author’s work, 1973). They can be developed in three different ways which shall be presented in what follows. The higher mode of realization of the single essential features of substance in the subject of consciousness As a first point it should be noted that the subject of consciousness possesses each single essential feature of substance in a higher degree of perfection than would be thinkable within matter. And we should discover why this is so. First of all, this should be demonstrated for the first essential feature of substance, its being in itself. Towards this goal a distinction might prove helpful between three completely different ways in which an entity can „stand in itself“ and does not exist in another entity as a dependent non-substantial moment or constituens. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 155 First of all, one can ascribe to real and separable parts of a material or living „complete substance“ „standing-in-itself“ in the weakest sense insofar as they are not inherent determinations of another entity, but rather insofar as the whole „consists“ of and in them. These „parts“ possess a being which can exist outside the whole whose parts they are. Atomic parts (elementary particles), atoms, molecules, parts of a piece of silver but also parts of plants or cell cultures, bones or limbs of the human body can clearly exist also outside the whole whose parts they are. Certainly, these „parts“ lose partially or totally their ratio as part of the whole if they are taken in this way from the original whole. Still it remains that these parts likewise can exist in themselves which would be inconceivable for an accidental or inhering feature of a substance such as color, form, joy, etc. This circumstance likewise shows that really divisible parts within a „whole“ material substance cannot simply „inhere“ in it, but in a certain sense „stand in themselves.“ A second and basically different sense of „standing-in-itself“ must be predicated of the whole itself which „consists“ of really separable parts. In cases in which the whole can be conceived of as a kind of „sum of its parts,“ it is consequent upon the metaphysical fact of the standing-in-themselves of the parts that the summarily taken whole in a certain sense also „stands in itself.“ If each part of a material being (each atom) stands in itself, also the whole body is a substance. This is not a mere formal logical inference which would constitute a „fallacy of composition,“ because not all properties which belong to a part belong therefore automatically to the whole; e.g. the „being many“ belongs to the parts, not to the whole. It is rather an insight gained through the peculiar relationship between material part and whole. In addition is the fact that the whole is mostly more than the sum of its parts. That can best be made clear by a distinction of three types of „wholes“ and of the modes of standing-in-themselves belonging to them. First, one can think of the wholeness of the mere „aggregate“ or also of meaningful, non-substantial unities of substances. Under this one can understand an accidental collection of things as well as the meaningful unity of diverse entities which, treated as a „whole,“ are neither a new substance nor an accident. An example of this would be society in the cumulative sense of its members. Even better is the case of a The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 156 material conglomerate because in the case of society the „parts“ are so individual that they have a relation to the whole; the whole here has no homogeneity of being with the „parts,“ i.e., the individual members of society, and therefore could be interpreted as an accident resulting from the parts’ (individual persons’) togetherness. The material conglomeration, on the contrary, possesses in principle the same mode of being as the parts and is one „big“ substance, if the parts are „small substances.“ Here the whole is not a new substance, nor is the whole (cumulatively taken and not as relation between the parts) merely an accident which „inheres“ in the individual entities as relation. Rather the whole here stands „in itself,“ but only as a totality of the parts which stand in themselves. A second mode in which a whole can stand in itself we find in the case of a genuine composition in which from the parts a „new“ whole in the genuine sense of the term arises as in the case of a musical or architectural work, the computer, etc.) or in which a self-standing whole (such as a plant, the human being or the body) is pregiven to the component parts although these are as such separable, and contains them in itself. The whole is here incomparably much more than the sum of its parts and must even be characterized in many cases as a new thing or a new substance. We will have to ask whether man as a whole is likewise such a „compositum“ consisting of body and soul. A third case of the standing-in-itself of a whole consisting of parts is given where the whole neither only stands in itself cumulatively as the totality of its parts, nor is a new substantial entity which consists of clearly distinguished and in principle separable parts. Perhaps one could characterize a single living cell in this sense as a „whole“ because, while it has distinct parts, these parts cannot exist outside of the whole as living parts of the living cell. What is essential here is not the difficult task of clearly subordinating every individual case of a whole under one of these three types of wholes, but only the distinction itself of the three basic types of „wholes“ which are possible within the second mode of standing in itself: the standing-in-itself of a whole which consists of parts. The two in-principle diverse modes of „standing-in-itself“ (of the part and of the whole) which we have distinguished thus far represent merely imperfect forms of „selfstanding.“ For they are not only not necessarily found in a substance, but they even ultimately presuppose a still more elementary form of standing-in-itself which alone can The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 157 be characterized as the essential proprium of substance. Likewise indeed they constitute an opposition to inherence, but still include a differently constituted „dependency“ (the whole on the parts, the parts on the whole) which shows that they still do not attain to the ultimate grounds of „standing-in-itself.“ The third kind of self-standing presupposes a certain degree of simplicity, at least that simplicity which is opposed to consisting of parts non-identical with one another and really separable. In the material world this kind of self-standing can only be found in the ultimate elementary particles. This third sense of „self-standing“ can be ascribed above all to the purely spiritual person or to the human soul and it will be further discussed immediately. (The distinction between these three kinds of „self-standing“ raises no claim to completeness.) If we ask which of these three kinds of standing-in-themselves as such most deserves the title of substance, it is clear that there are two factors which are especially decisive for answering this question. The first of these factors is whether it is a matter of the third and metaphysically most basic form of standing-in-itself. This third kind of standing-in-itself is in many respects the most perfect and most basic, first because it dispenses with, or can dispense with that dependency which both the various sorts of „wholes“ have upon the parts and also the parts upon the whole. It is likewise more basic because it includes a much more „simple subsisting“ than both of the first kinds of standing-in-itself. Further, this mode of subsisting is more perfect and more basic because it is the only thing necessarily found in a substance or rather necessarily presupposed for the existence of any substance. Finally, this third mode of subsistence is more basic than the other two because the latter necessarily presuppose it, while the third kind of self-standing does not necessarily presuppose the first two. As the proof earlier discussed for the most simple elementary particle as presupposition for all composite (material) substances reveals, every substantial compositum (every substance composed of really separable parts) and every cumulative whole of substances ultimately consists of simple substances which subsist in the third sense, or rather of which the „whole“ consists. A second and completely different criterion for the perfection of realization of substantial standing-in-itself lies in the degree in which a substance in itself possesses actuality and perfection of being in itself and is The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 158 meaningfully contrasted with other entities in that it possesses, for example, the character of a genuine species. In many cases both these criteria are found separated. In the light of the first criterion, e.g. within the material world, the smallest elementary particles are the most perfect material substances. Yet in the light of the second criterion, these elementary particles are in an exceedingly imperfect sense material substances since they are essentially destined to be a part or a component within a greater whole of which they are just elements, parts, or building blocks. The human soul in the light of the criterion of „the simplicity of the subject standing in itself“ (first criterion of the perfection of standing-in-itself) is a substance in a much more perfect manner than any material or composite substance (such as man as a whole). For it absolutely excludes a consisting of parts (themselves standing in themselves), not merely in the sense of parts really separate from one another (of which the brain has billions upon billions), but also in the sense of „mathematically“ distinguished (real) parts. In the light of the (second) criterion, i.e. in the light of the question of how perfectly and meaningfully a being is delineated from others and „stands-in-itself,“ the soul is a substance only in an incomplete manner insofar as it is part of the total human being (of the species man). In the light of this second criterion, man as a whole is substance (and person) in a more perfect sense than the soul taken for itself. For man is never „part“ of a new substance, while the soul is essentially directed to unity with the body in the whole man and does not realize in itself a complete mode of being (species). In spite of this, the human soul is not merely the most proper origin of the substantiality of the whole man, but also in itself meaningfully defined as a proper substance. The soul is indeed in no way merely one among many parts (as material elementary particles), but possesses high actuality and plenitude of meaning in itself. It is also clearly contrasted with the material substance of the body by its spiritual essence and at the same time set off from all other persons by its spiritual individuality and personal uniqueness. On the basis of these considerations it is already shown that this more perfect standing-in-itself of the subject of consciousness cannot possibly be explained by a material substance or ever be attained or realized by such. The first essential feature of substance is more perfectly possessed by the conscious subject (or rather the subject capable of consciousness) than by material The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 159 entities on other additional grounds. It is indeed no accident that the concept „subject“ which originally signifies simply the substance (that which lies beneath), is used today almost exclusively of the person. For the conscious subject (the soul) does not stand in itself in such a way that other entities only would inhere in it. In the conscious performance of knowing or of joy, and even more in the free positing of acts, the soul possesses an incomparably more perfect relation to that which is „in it“ than a material substance. We feel this fact linguistically if it appears to us unsatisfactory and wrong to say that love or a virtue „inheres“ in a person. The person is „subject“ of those acts which are rooted in and spring from it in an entirely new sense and in a way which could never possibly occur in any material thing. The soul as spiritually simple subject of conscious acts which performs and experiences these acts from one single conscious and free center is thus substance in a sense in principle higher than matter. This fundamentally superior subject-character of the person is rendered possible or manifests itself in conscious experience, free authorship, simply spiritual in-presence in acts and experiences. Likewise the second essential moment of substance, being real in the proper sense, is incomparably realized in the conscious subject. Here we even find the metaphysical foundation for that abyss of actual being which lies at the basis of our first (negative) proof for the immateriality of the soul, of which Heraclitus said that one cannot find its boundaries. In comparison with the more proper actual and real being which we find in the conscious subject, the whole universe of material substance is as dust, like nothing. We understand this better when we consider that for man as a knowing and acting personal subject being reduced to the maximum of being and actuality within the material universe, to a material thing or substance, would practically be equivalent to his annihilation. Thus he possesses, in his knowledge and moral conscience, in his freedom and love, so much more properly being and reality that the highest form of being in the material world - that of substance - would be like nothing when compared to it. Likewise the third essential feature of substance, the grounding of real duration, is found in the subject of consciousness (the soul) more perfectly than in any material thing. In a material substance it is indeed the case that on the one hand matter (the material stuff, materiality as such in the sense of the Aristotelian prote hyle) of which it The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 160 is composed is more durable than the material substance itself (since it already exists before the coming into being of the substance and remains after its dissolution), and on the other hand the form in many cases is the thing that remains, while the material parts of the stuff are completely changed (in the human body, for example, every seven years). Indeed, if one conceives of all matter with Heraclitus according to the analogy of fire, one could ask whether any identical or lasting subject in the proper sense of the term might be found at all within matter. For the continued identity of the conscious subject, however, clearly the enduring of one and the same identical subject is presupposed. Thus we encounter here an essential and deep-seated identity of the substance enduring throughout change such as it does not exist on any level within matter and is certainly not found in the human body (brain). Among material entities (to a certain degree with the exception of the elementary particles) there is not a single subject which is preserved throughout time. Parts could be replaced in the „enduring subject“ (electrons in the atom, atoms in the chemical substance, cells in the living body, organs in the organism) without having to discontinue speaking of „one“ enduring substance. In opposition to this, the duration of the soul is incomparably more perfect since here alone does an identical and singular subject endure through all change. The personal Self also lasts much more perfectly than matter can ever do since it lasts consciously, experiences and consciously possesses itself as an identical and enduring subject in conscious knowledge, memory, anticipation of the future, hope and reflection and in its superactual acts. Besides, the conscious subject in a certain sense transcends the temporal flux and change to which material things are simply subjected in that it can „make itself present“ to the past or the future, hold fast the past in memory and thus „redeem“ it from vanishing without a trace into pastness. The person (in anticipation, planning, hope, anxiety, despair - indeed, in most acts) is directed towards the future, pretastes, and looks forward to, future goods, or dreads their loss. Above all, conscious directedness to the truth and to timeless, eternally valid objects and contents represents a transcendence of the conscious subject beyond the whirlpool of temporality. Should the soul’s (person’s) immortality be capable of demonstration, the perfection of its endurance would evidently be proven still more definitively. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 161 If we consider the feature of substance which consists in being able to receive contraries into itself, perfection primarily lies in being able to unite in itself polar, i.e. „friendly“ and complementary opposites and to incorporate them into a higher unity. This perfection of being able to unite polar tensions such as strength and gentleness, justice and mercy, etc. in itself again attains in the soul a degree in principle unattainable for a material thing - a fact that cannot be more carefully developed here (cf. von Hildebrand, 1959). Something holds for that perfection of substance which grows from the „power of opposition“ against its contradictory opposite (non-being). Instead of going more carefully into this matter, we shall exclusively investigate one essential feature of substance which is possessed by the substantial subject of consciousness in an especially incomparable manner. The human soul possesses a singularly irreplaceable „thisness“ (haecceitas) which is clearly manifest in its freedom, its capacity to know, its responsibility and in other properties. In the case of love for another person apprehended as worthy of love or also in hope or doubt, this absolute irreplaceability of each person is so clearly manifest that in comparison with it every material substance as such does not appear as individual and unique but as always „replaceable.“ For this unrepeatable and inalienable thisness not only stems from individuality as such, which also plants or animals possess, but also from the degree of life, consciousness, and dignity. Even that second dimension of individuality, which we have described as differentiation from other entities, is more fully realized in the subject of consciousness than is conceivable within matter. Not only is the human soul an undivided and indivisible substance, it is also radically delineated and set apart from all other entities by reason of its unique responsibility, freedom, capacity for happiness and unhappiness and by its being a center of personal consciousness. Only a simple spiritual substance can be differentiated from all other entities in this way; only it can be opposed in such a complete manner to every merely „being a part“ (although it possesses this perfection of individuality only imperfectly being an „essential part“ of man); only it can also ground the individual uniqueness and distinctness of the whole psycho-physical man. A material entity is indeed never so radically distinguished from other entities, either as a cumulative whole or as a composite or as a whole consisting of non-identical parts. And The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 162 precisely what is apparently most nearly „individual“ within matter, the elementary particle, is least essentially contrasted with its surroundings being a mere faceless and anonymous building block of material beings. The subject of personal consciousness likewise realizes the third dimension of individuality in so perfect a manner inconceivable within matter because it is a unique and spiritually simple subject. Now it is impossible for the brain, which is „individual“ in none of these three senses in which the person is individual, to be the bearer of consciousness. Lotze (170ff.) has impressively demonstrated this, as also from the point of view of modern brain research, especially has Eccles (1970; 1977), as we shall see in chapter 6. Lotze uses this unity of consciousness as chief argument for the soul. This unity of consciousness also presupposes indivisibility (174) wherein, according to Lotze, man is distinguished from many divisible animals (such as worms). Lotze demonstrates impressively how this unity of consciousness in no way excludes the multiplicity of experiences: the I is still experienced precisely as the center of all our imaginings, feelings and strivings. We experience this unity of consciousness, even though we possess no permanent or independent awareness of the unity of our essence, since there are forgotten, unconscious or unconnected contents of consciousness. Still, we experience the primal unity of the I which cannot possibly be illusion or mere appearance, since all illusion and appearance already presuppose it (1975-6; 1982). It is likewise impossible, as Lotze shows in detail, that this sort of unity and primal individuality can be explained from the collaboration of any multiplicity, since it is here a matter of a completely different ontological unity which is opposed to every composition out of multiplicity. Similarly, all psychological disunity, disharmony, split personality or schizophrenia presuppose precisely this unity of consciousness as Lotze brilliantly demonstrates, because all these phenomena would be impossible without the indivisible subject who experiences these disorders. If it were two or more persons who would be present, these mentioned phenomena would give way to the presence of distinct persons and thus dissolve. Even any meaningful talk of amnesia in virtue of which one of the multiple personality’s life is severed from the other, presupposes the ontological unity of the subject. Otherwise, instead of a split personality, various persons would possess the same body as this is reported in some cases of demonic possession or spiritistic experiences. But there we have a phenomenon radically distinct from any psychological datum of multiple The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 163 personalities in the same person. Only this phenomenon, which clearly presupposes the unity of the conscious subject, is a psychological problem. (Within the limits of this work, we cannot give consideration to Lotze’s opinion - which is indeed under the influence of Hegel’s dialectic and Kant’s skepticism with respect to our knowledge of the „thing in itself,“ - that there can be a „reconciliation“ of the distinction between body and soul, a distinction which he does not consider a matter of essential necessity.) Here we will also mention a fourth entirely different direction in which an individual is characterized as such; namely, as the opposite of a universal, nonindividual form such as a Platonic idea or an Aristotelian abstract form. The human soul (the person), as Scheler (5/1966, 371-2; 377-8) strikingly shows, can never be something universal or abstract as it comes close to being in Transcendentalism. It is an individual in the sense of the primal concrete, really unique. From all these results it follows not only that the human soul (the substantial subject of consciousness) is substance in a more perfect way than a material substance can ever be, but also that between the spiritual substantiality of the soul and the substantiality of matter there is more than a distinction of degree, in virtue of which the soul would only be „substance in a much higher degree“ than matter. Rather here we encounter such a profound difference in the very meaning of being, substance, subject, individuality, etc. that it is a matter of a mere analogy between material and spiritual (and a fortiori immaterial) „substance.“ The material substance is not only a substance of a lower order; it does not only possess substantial being in a less proper sense and in a lesser degree of perfection; it can be characterized as a substance only in a purely analogical sense which lies beyond all mere distinctions of genus and species of substances. For none of the characteristics of substance are possessed by material and spiritual substance in fundamentally the same sense, but in that strange mixture of similarity-in-dissimilarity which is characteristic of analogy which, as could be demonstrated, does not exclude, however, a precise sense of „univocal“ being or meaning, such as Duns Scotus recognizes it as condition of the possibility of analogy. The merely analogous sense in which material substances are substances at all in comparison with spiritual substances shows most clearly that the conscious subject of personal consciousness cannot be identical with a material substance. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 164 The substantial subject of consciousness possesses the various features of substance in greater mutual unity than matter: The degree of perfection to which an entity is a substance should not only be measured by how perfectly each individual feature of substance is realized in it, but also by how far all the different essential features of substance appear inwardly united, and above all by whether or not the first and most fundamental essential feature of substance as self-standing grounds all the other features and all other features are anchored in a given substance on the same metaphysical level as its „standing-in-itself.“ In material substances individuality in the sense of the uniqueness and simplicity of the subject does not lie on the same metaphysical level as its distinctness from other entities. For while the uniqueness and simplicity of the substance and the standing-in-itself linked to it belong primarily to the material elementary particles, it is primarily the composite material substance (the atom, the molecule and, above all, the material thing) that is delineated from other material substances and which also realizes the specific essence of the respective matter-type (the electrons, leptons, etc. do not constitute „elements“ or types of matter such as gold, stone, etc.). Add to this the fact that, outside of the elementary particles which, however, have the character of being pure „building blocks“, in matter individual distinctness from other entities comes to a thing „from without.“ Every single material thing is made into an individual unity from „without“. Indeed, in the case of inorganic matter as such, individuality does not lie on the same level as the substantial standing-in-itself, but is to be ascribed to the exterior „form,“ so that within lifeless matter the accidental „exterior“ form becomes, to a certain extent, „substantial form“ which singles out this individual tode ti. Indeed even the „inner formedness,“ which, for example, distinguishes gold from bronze, is in a certain way something „exterior,“ resulting from certain molecular or atomic constellations of elementary particles. In the human soul, on the contrary, we are presented with a uniquely perfect unity in which its property of standing-in-itself as such is necessarily bound up with individuality in all three meanings of the term. In material substances the duration of an identical thing is likewise not simply to be sought on the same level as its substantial self-standing. Not only is the pure matter (Aristotelian prote hyle/materia prima) more enduring in this case than the material The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 165 substance itself, but also the „form,“ as we already mentioned, is in many cases the only thing in a concrete material substance which really endures, while the matter in which the form is realized is always (and completely) changing (in the „same“ ship or in the „same“ human body). On the contrary, in the case of the human soul (the substantial subject of conscious human life), endurance lies on the same metaphysical level as substantial self-standing. A change of „matter“ (even if conceived of in the sense of Bonaventure’s „spiritual matter“) while the „form“ of the soul would remain the same, or a destruction of the essential form of the soul while its „stuff“ would remain the same, are intrinsically absurd notions. For even if one were to assume with Bonaventure some „spiritual matter“ in the soul, such a „spiritual matter“ (which I do not assume, for similar reasons as Thomas Aquinas) could never be actually separated from the soul and remain there as some stuff that could also enter into the composition of other individual persons, as this is quite normal with material entities. With respect to other features of substance it can likewise be demonstrated how much more perfectly than is possible within matter are the various essential features of substantiality bound up in unity in the soul. This makes it completely clear that the substantial subject of conscious acts cannot be identical with matter or with the brain. Again, it becomes clear that „substance“ is a purely analogous notion, and material things, compared with the human soul, are not substances as such. Essential features which only the spiritual substance (soul) possesses, and which ground a more perfect mode of being a substance The soul’s more perfect mode of being a substance is also known in a third way. There are features which solely characterize the substantial spiritual subject which lies at the base of consciousness and which at the same time include an in-principle higher realization of being a substance. Some of these essential features that belong exclusively to the spiritual substance were already mentioned: an absolutely indivisible spiritual simplicity; a conscious „inpresence“ in innumerable conscious experiences; a completely new sense of „being a subject.“ Add to this the simplicity which results from the lack of being composed of matter and form. (We discussed elsewhere and will discuss later in this book the reasons why the intrinsic essential individuality of the soul, which we hold with thinkers such The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 166 as Bonaventure or E. Stein, does not make it necessary to assume a duality of form and spiritual matter in the soul itself as Bonaventure found it necessary to safeguard the fundamental truth of the intrinsic individuality of the soul.) These and similar essential features belonging to the human spiritual soul in opposition to material substances also ground an in-principle more perfect spiritual mode of being a substance which in principle surpasses in perfection the mode of being a substance possible within material substances. C. Monistic and „Dualistic“ Objections Against the Spiritual Substantiality of the Soul and/or Against the Substantiality of the Body. Further Major Positions on the Problem of the Substantiality of the Soul in Contemporary Philosophy 1. Denial of the Substantiality of the Soul on the Basis of a Denial of Substance as Such (Dualistic and Monistic Conceptions of this Position) First of all, there are authors who advocate a certain Dualism within which the problem of substance as such is bracketed out (e.g. Popper, Shaffer). Such thinkers content themselves with the analysis of the phenomenal and real distinction between physical and psychic being. Also within Materialism and especially in the case of the advocates of the mind-brain Identity Theory, we find many who simply abstract from the problem of substance (Feigl, Schlick, Carnap, Armstrong). Often at the basis of the bracketing of the questions as to what the substantial bearer of consciousness might be lies the requirement of a criterion of verification or falsification stemming from the standpoint of Neo-Positivist epistemology. Empiricism, Positivism or Logical Positivism conclude that the problem of substance is either as such a pseudo-problem since the answer to it can neither be verified nor falsified, or that it is to be decided in a Materialist sense. In this connection we might mention Ornstein’s theory. Ornstein holds that persons are experientially neither exclusively psychic nor exclusively physical. Indeed, he holds (tending in a „dualistic“ direction) that physical and psychic processes are of a totally different kind (20). He then proceeds to criticizing (26ff., 30ff., 158) Identity Theory, because it is not „falsifiable“ in relation to other conceptions. Thus he The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 167 criticizes the followers of the Vienna Circle for not proceeding in a sufficiently Positivistic way. He proposes a „Multi-Aspect Theory“ according to which a pain, e.g., has an experiential, neural (corporeal), behavioral and verbal aspect. There would thus be „four aspects“ of mind. We mention Ornstein’s book not because it would possess any outstanding philosophical importance, but only because it is typical of the tendency to exclude the problem of substance. Others, in agreement with Carnap, Feigl, Reichenbach, and Popper, and such other „Metaphysical Empiricists“ as Hume and his followers themselves, would argue against the evidentiality and reality of substance and would thus hold the problem of substance to be meaningless. However, they would draw the negative conclusion that there are no substances and no selves, but only, on the one hand, a bundle of sensations and „ideas“ bound together by association and, on the other hand, sense-data. Still other thinkers who are expressly oriented towards metaphysics reject substance in general on the basis of the view that substance is an internally contradictory concept (cf. above pp. 73ff.). This „substance-less“ discussion of the body-soul problem can have dualistic features. It can be directed in a Monistic Materialist way or have the stamp of a Spiritualist or a „Neutral“ Monism. We have already treated this above (pp. 5-72). 2. Rejection of the Substantiality of the Soul by Transcendental Philosophy or by Philosophical Views Inspired by Transcendental Philosophy Many philosophers hold that the notion of substance is meaningful in itself, but they think it is a mere category of the understanding applicable only to appearances and not to the „thing in itself.“ That such a subjectivizing of the category of substance is equivalent to a denial of substance which essentially claims a status as thing in itself, cannot be more carefully demonstrated here (cf. the present author’s work, 2/1976). The interpretation of the body and the soul as a „categorial“ distinction (in the transcendental-philosophical sense of the term) is advocated in contemporary philosophy by Engelhardt, for example. His position is more closely related to Hegel than to Kant and rejects the concept of substance as such. With his conception of man (the body-soul relation) as „identity-in-difference“ (66) he indeed approaches the The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 168 Neutral Identity Theory, but criticizes both Spinozist (Neutral) Monism as well as other forms of Monism (pp. 70ff.), and Dualism as well. Engelhardt thinks he can overcome the Monism-Dualism opposition on the basis of a Transcendental Philosophical „categorial turn.“ The core of his „dialectical“ treatment of the problem is so conceived (119ff.) that the categories as „grammar of being“ signal a coincidence of thinking and being. Ultimately, however, there remains a mere „complexity of meaning“ between body and soul which bears a materialist stamp - as can be seen especially in various of Engelhardt’s essays in support of abortion. He expressly denies that there is „something immaterial in the sense of something spiritual and other-worldly“ (163): Rather it is recognized that the unity of certain physical objects is more than a mere physical unity, and that these objects must therefore be understood as more than purely physical. Obviously that does not mean that they are immaterial. Rather it means that they possess a meaning and a reality which indeed transcends physical reality, but does not leave it behind itself (163). (Retranslation from the German: insert original text**) This quotation is also typical of the expressly materialist tendency of many Transcendental Philosophers and Transcendental Phenomenologists today. The soul is understood by Engelhardt neither, with other authors who treat of the body-soul problem from the perspective of Transcendental Philosophy, in the categorially subjective sense of substance along the lines of Kant’s philosophy, nor generally as a category, but is interpreted in the sense of the transcendental subject which can never be given objectively and which, at the same time, establishes all unity of empirical consciousness. (This position is advocated in various forms by Lotze, Busse, McDougall, Reininger, Strasser et al.) Many Transcendental Philosophical authors or those only inspired by Transcendental Philosophy (Scheler, Landsberg, Brunner, Strasser) hold, on the basis of the thesis of the absolute non-objectivity of the I (the person) discussed above (pp. 51ff) that the soul, or rather the ultimate being of the human subject, could not be known as such. Chirpaz, e.g., depending heavily upon Marcel and Ricoeur as well as Merleau-Ponty and especially on Heidegger, not only questions any form of Dualism (100ff.), but also advocates the skeptical thesis of the The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 169 concept and assertion of the unknowability of the „incarnation de l’homme.“ Man remains a riddle to himself. All philosophical explanations and all objective knowledge always remain insufficient, indeed ultimately unattainable (108ff., esp. 115, 119). It is a question whether in this conception the knowable connections and states of affairs with respect to the body and the soul are not identified with their mysterious aspects still to be discussed. Confusing the two leads to transposing the body/mind problem into something indeterminate and confused. The scope of this work does not permit us a further entry into these positions that are deeply rooted in epistemological considerations. 3. Denial of the Applicability of the concept of Substance to the Soul (Person) Many authors do not contest the existence of material or living substances, but only the suitability of the category of substance for the subject (I). Often the basis for this notion lies in the view that any use of the category of substance for the person must lead to a „thing-ification“ of the person. Often these theses are found in thinkers who have a critical stance vis-à-vis Actualism and the Process conception of the mind (Scheler, Hessen, Lorscheid, Soloviev), but still agree with Actualistic Psychology in that (according to them) the person is no substance „behind and outside of the immediately experienced“ (Scheler 5/1966, 371, 382-4). (For the critique of the Actualism found also in Scheler himself cf. Weier, 1967.) In these views something correct is established. The person ought not be conceived of in analogy with a thing. Likewise, the person is not „behind the experienced“ in the sense of something distinct from the subject which perceives itself in self-consciousness. Still this correct insight is then falsified when one overlooks the fact that this incomparability of the person with other things lies not in its failing to be a substance, but precisely in its incomparably more proper mode of being a substance. Many of the arguments against the use of the category of substance for the soul (person) also go back to general misunderstandings of substance (cf. above, pp. 73ff.) or to the denial of the givenness of a Self both of which we have already treated (cf. above pp. 51ff.). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 170 4. Allegedly Absurd Consequences of the Proofs for the Soul as Substance Many hold that the proofs for the substantial soul of man lead to the absurd consequence that both animals and plants would have substantial souls as well. This critique does not primarily concern the result, but the methodical-epistemological structure or the premises of the proofs given above. From wholly similar arguments from the essence of consciousness one could allegedly also conclude to the substantiality of the souls of animals and plants. Thus these proofs would prove „too much.“ In reply to this objection we must first of all emphasize that in general within the scope of this book we always understand by „consciousness“ consciousness in the human sense. Further, many of the proofs given expressly take their point of departure from spiritual acts and exclusive essential features of the person, so that the results obtained obviously are not transferable to animals or plants. (The question of the essence of the life-principle of plants and animals cannot be discussed here. Cf. on this point especially Conrad-Martius, 1963; the present author, 1973, 1995). 5. Various Forms of Monism as „Single-Substance Doctrines“ Obviously not all systems of Materialism deny the notion of substance. Within contemporary philosophy we also find attempts to recognize material substance alone. In Diamat the concept of substance is replaced mostly by the unclear concept of „objective reality.“ Diamat affirms that matter is the (sole) objective reality which is given in our sensations and exists independent of consciousness (Lenin, Stalin et al.). Matter is in motion, infinite in time, space and depth of meaning. (For the critique of this notion, cf. Wetter, 27ff.; Lobkowicz, 450f.) With Idealism and Spiritualism we find forms of a spiritually Monistic doctrine of substance according to which there are only spiritual substances, and matter is a mere appearance (cf. e.g. Sayre’s contribution in McMullin, 1963). Finally, there is a „Neutral“ Monistic doctrine of substance along the lines of Spinoza’s philosophy. Such a Monistic substance doctrine, if it is not pantheistically conceived, holds that each man is a different individual substance of which body and soul would be merely two modes, two appearances, an inner and an outer side. This The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 171 conception is advocated today by Rosenblueth (114) and Bickel (who is largely inspired by Spinoza and C. Brunner) and defended at times on a more popular and philosophically very superficial level. Ruyer rightly points out (210ff.) that Neutral Monism is a notion thriving in modern times - to be sure, mostly in a non-substantialist version. In this position neither matter nor mind are taken to be ultimate and authentic reality (Mach, James, Russell, Binet et al.). Here it is likewise a matter of the most important „ontological sense“ of so-called „Parallelism.“ (As will be shown, the expression „Parallelism doctrine“ has a completely different sense as a response to the body-soul problem in the narrow sense.) However, the Neutral Single Substance doctrine - as well as Spiritualist and Materialist Monism - can also claim a single all-encompassing substance of which individual human beings would be mere aspects or concretizations (Spinoza). Such Pantheistic or Panpsychistic Single Substance doctrines (often likewise the Panpsychistic doctrine of the encompassing unity of everything, which brackets the question of substance) we find today, e.g., in Rensch or Schroedinger (Crosemus also is close to this conception). Our objections against such a view are implicitly contained in our presentation of the proofs for the substantial distinction between body and soul or for the spiritual substantiality and individuality of the soul. Leibniz’ theory of monads and that of his contemporary followers stand open to the most diverse interpretations. Leibniz indeed holds, on the one hand, that matter ultimately consists of simple substance (monads). In this respect his system represents a „realistic Idealism“ or spiritual Monism which, instead of a single transcendental and non-substantial I, admits many spiritual or immaterial substances. On the other hand, the distinction between sleeping, dimly conscious and clearly conscious monads represents a conception in Leibniz which can be taken over in altered form by Dualists as well as by Pan-Identity, Evolutionary and Materialist theorists. The basis for this Janus-faced character of Leibnizian philosophy lies in the cancellation and at the same time partial recognition of an ultimate essential distinction between material and spiritual substances, which makes possible diverse Monistic and Dualistic interpretations. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 172 6. Rejection of the Substantiality of the Body and Interpretation of the Soul as (Substantial) „Form“ of the Body Against the notion that the body as well as the soul are substances, it is often objected that the soul indeed can be considered as substance, but not the body. Today it is primarily Aristotelian - Thomistic thinkers who hold the general thesis of hylemorphism according to which matter as potentiality stands over against the soul as „form“ or „act“ of matter. (For a closer representation and critique of this important view, cf. below pp. 153ff.) 7. Objections Against the Dualistic Two-Substance Doctrine on the Basis of the Insolubility of the Body-Soul Problem (in the Narrower Sense) Under Dualistic Presuppositions For many, if not for all forms of Monism, the conviction is authoritative that Two- Substance Dualism leads to insurmountable difficulties. Under Dualistic presuppositions, is not the body-soul problem in the narrower sense absolutely insoluble, namely the problem of how matter and mind constitute a unity and can reciprocally work upon each other? Is it not held unsupportably by Dualists that a non-extended substance which does not consist of parts operates upon an extended substance? Must one not, under this presupposition, give up on any rational philosophic solution to the problem and, perhaps with Newman or the present author (1973), consider the body-soul unity as „a natural mystery,“ which opinion, however, calls into question the basis of intersubjective scientific verification and consensus? Further, assuming one can rationally solve the problem of the unity of man under the presuppositions of Dualistic Two-Substance doctrine, must one not then reduce this „unity“ to a mere causal interaction or - considering that a causal interaction between body and soul violates the principles of the conservation of energy and of causality - fall back upon the more radical solution of Occasionalism or accept Leibniz’ theory of pre-established harmony? On the Occasionalist view, however, the situation is even worse: not only is all experience of the real unity of man contradicted, but also God is brought in as a deus ex machina, who must always interfere and make parallel the physical and psychic substances and the The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 173 processes occurring in them. In the Leibnizian solution indeed all processes in the material world are made parallel with those in the spiritual world, but this is accomplished by the divine watch-maker from all eternity by a pre-established harmony (similar to the way a human watch-maker perfectly synchronizes two clocks not causally linked to one another), and thus the deus ex machina problem ceases. But does not such a solution to the narrower sense of the body-soul problem contradict all human experience of the unity of the human being? Moreover, even if one would grant the Dualist he could sufficiently explain causal interaction between the two substances, would such a „solution“ not be extremely poor? Does it not reduce the multiplicity of body-soul relations established in phenomenological investigation to a primitive, purely causal interconnection of two substances whereby the human body qua lived body drops completely out of the picture? And besides, is one not led to the epistemological apories and dilemmas especially pointed out by Straus, which ultimately must terminate in Skepticism or at least in Solipsism (Stirner) because any adequacy of a purely immanent world of perception and consciousness to an „outer material“ world which causally produces it remains a wholly arbitrary assumption on the basis of causal interactionism? Are not such consequences of Dualism as the thing-ification of the human body, the denial of knowledge of matter and especially of other persons, and the „private theater“ view of consciousness justly censured by Ryle or Hoche such absurd consequences that they alone should suffice to allow us to recognize and reject all Dualism as a blind alley of philosophy? This objection leads us to the next section of our treatise. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 174 V. MODERN BRAIN SCIENCE AND THE REALITY OF THE MIND: RESULTS OF MODERN BRAIN RESEARCH AS CONFIRMATION OF PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF A SUBSTANTIAL SOUL We now turn to a discussion of the philosophical relevance of empirical findings of brain research which no doubt call for a philosophical interpretation which partly was already sketched by Sir John Eccles and Karl Popper in their The Self and Its Brain but requires further systematic development and critical reflection. In view of the prominent role of the arguments for the distinction between body and mind in this work, it appeared to me best to insert a discussion of the arguments for the soul taken from empirical science in this chapter, before investigating the different body-mind relationships and the contribution of brain science to their understanding in the next one. 51 I should explain the need for a new philosophical interpretation of the results of brain science. In the following, I shall attempt to bring the latest empirical brain research, as it is summarized in various works of Sir John Eccles (and interpreted by him extensively, in particular with respect to its philosophical significance), into dialogue with a phenomenological philosophy with which it has not yet entered into contact until now. I shall present systematically the philosophically relevant assertions which are dispersed in Eccles works and above all the philosophically relevant aspects of brain-physiological cognitions which are often only intimated by him, and attempt to treat them, by sketching the phenomenological method of such an examination and its results, more rigorously and systematically than they have been discussed in the wellknown and significant work The Self and Its Brain by Eccles and Popper. 52 Originally, in the German edition, this chapter was part of chapter VI which dealt with the scientific findings of brain science regarding both the existence of the soul and their relationship. In this English version of the text the original chapter was split. The empirical confirmations of the arguments for the existence of a soul are treated in the present chapter, those related to the relationship between body and mind are treated in the next one. At the conclusion of the next chapter therefore we will return to the findings of empirical brain research and to their interpretation by Eccles with reference to the relationship between body and mind, critically examining his significant contributions and certain short-comings of an interactionism of the sort proposed by him. These deficiencies I see in the impossibility of doing justice to the manifold body-mind relations in terms of mere causal interactionism and in the reduction of the whole body -mind relation and especially of the lived body to the brain-mind-relation. 51 52 See Karl R. Popper/ John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (Berlin/Heidelberg/London/New York: Springer-Verlag International, 1977/ corrected printing 1981). See also Popper-Eccles, Das Ich und sein Gehirn (the German later version of The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 175 A. What is Phenomenology? Phenomenological philosophy is understood in the following as a methodic and systematic attempt to return to things themselves, to penetrate into the intelligible nature and the necessary essential structure of that which is given to us in experience and to let these intelligible structures speak for themselves and unfold themselves from themselves, as they are given as the proper being and essence of each thing. Therefore, phenomenology is particularly opposed to any form of reductionism which seeks to reduce essentially distinct data to each other and thus violates their clearly given essences.53 Phenomenological philosophy is also opposed to the opinion that we already understand a thing when we have identified its cause. In the first place, such a causal explanation can never replace the essential analysis of a thing. Thus, for example, the knowledge of the essence of the color ‘red,’ as we experience it and as it is perceived, can never be replaced by the knowledge of waves or of other physiological processes which lead to the perception of red and are presupposed as conditions or as causes for this perception. Secondly, a causal explanation for something, if it precedes a careful analysis of the essence of the thing in question, will almost inevitably be inadequate and „declare away“ or deny in its „explanation“ many features of the datum to be explained.54 The Self and Its Brain). At this point we should note that Eccles has developed further in 1979 his thoughts on the body-mind problem, continuing the results he has presented in 1977 and earlier. His dualistic conception was in the meantime philosophically deepened and quite newly reflected by Gabriel (1978) who referred to the concept of "limit" and presented a philosophically deeper interpretation of Popper's and Eccles’ thought. In 1978 Pribram criticized Eccles’ and Popper's conception. He attributes to both authors (1977) in my opinion in an exaggerated way two quite opposite theses. Popper, he argues, conceives of the mind as a new moment with respect to the brain which, however, proceeds from the brain, whereas, according to Eccles, the mind has effects (through the intrinsic "liaison" formations of brain cortex) on the brain. Pribram’s own opinion, which is only apparently a purely scientific, in reality grounded above all in his philosophical conceptions, attempts to transcend dualism without rejecting it. Above all, through the alleged dissolution of the difference between mind and matter in the light of modern physics, Pribram develops a "constructive realism" or "pluralistic monism,“ which is very close to Ornstein's Multi-aspect Theory. As well with respect to answering the question about the essence of body and mind as well as towards understanding the real relationship between them, Pribram's conceptions which we criticized above appear to be inappropriate. 53 cf. Josef Seifert, Back to Things in Themselves. A Phenomenological Foundation of Classical Realism. London-Boston 1987, ch. 1. Here comes to mind the beautiful Jewish joke of a man who marches up and down quite restlessly; the Rabbi passses by, sees him so worried and aks him what weighs so heavily on him. He answers that he cannot understand something very important. Says the Rabbi gently: „Tell me what it is, and then I shall explain it to you.“ To this the Jew answers: „Explain it? To do this I am also able, but I do not understand it.“ 54 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 176 Another important point in the context of the philosophical relevance of empirical knowledge has to be emphasized, when we speak of phenomenology. Phenomenology must be conceived as a critical and radical return to things themselves in their own selfgivenness in experience, although in an „eidetic“ experience of a special kind which is not limited to the contingencies and individual traits of the concrete objects of experience. In order to accomplish such a philosophical return to things themselves as they are given in a special dimension of experience, a „purified“ such-being experience, we must learn to see things in their proper essence and in their features, understanding also the principles and states of affairs grounded in them. In addition, we must carefully analyze conceptual and real distinctions, using examples and elucidate the respective essences, and other data such as existence, as clearly as possible, delineating them from their opposites as well as from other phenomena with which they are often confused or to which they stand in particular relationships. In order to reach this end with regard to the necessary essences of things (and with respect to contingent, non-necessary suchbeings any bracketing of existence is impossible or would at least not lead to solid empirical knowledge), 55 we have to bracket not only contingent empirical aspects of the phenomena at stake, as they are associated with the concrete cases from which we take our point of departure. We are also required and at least able to use an epoché in the sense of prescinding from the very question of whether the examples we consider exist in reality, concentrating on their pure essences, on the pure eidetic structures of the respective objects. When their essences are necessary and highly intelligible, they are so filled with ratio and stand so much on their own feet that their purely essential analysis is sufficient to attain valid knowledge about these essences even if the examples from the investigation of which we start in our analysis, turn out to be illusory. For example, we may experience friendship, to use an example St. Augustine uses in the IXth Book of De Trinitate, and understand certain features that belong to the essence of friendship. If we later discover that our friend was not a true friend or turns against us, we will not doubt the eternal truth about the essence of friendship that we discovered but conclude I rely here on crucial distinctions between necessary and non-necessary (morphic) such-beings and essences brought out in chapter 4 of Dietrich von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy?, 3rd edn, with a New Introductory Essay by Josef Seifert (London: Routledge, 1991). 55 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 177 that he was not really or authentically our friend or that he betrayed a friendship which he once had towards us. The appropriate method to achieve the goal of returning to things themselves in the described sense, however, does not lead, as Husserl believed in his later philosophical phases, to a complete prescinding and a radical epoché of the real and autonomous existence of the world. Much rather, the phenomenological method will not be entirely „essentialistic“ but also lead to a deeper elucidation of the „act of existence“ and of the reality of real, existing beings. 56 Authentic phenomenology will also lead to the recognition of the cognitive givenness of the autonomous real existence of the world which constitutes one of the key things themselves the philosopher ought to explore. Eidetic reduction or epoché – as prescinding from real existence – is obviously not the proper method to know what it means to exist and whether I exist, the world exists or God exists. In view of the fact that the esse, the existing of beings, is among the primary objects of philosophical knowledge, the method of epoché must neither be considered to be the universal method of a return to things themselves, as Husserl conceived of it, nor be interpreted in such a way that it would require a withholding of our judgment regarding the real existence of the world, of the Self, or of God. Since all these data can be shown as knowable by the human intellect, a proper phenomenological method of returning back to things themselves must re-interpret epoché radically. Real existence, as Thomas Aquinas, Gilson, and in certain respects also Kant has seen, constitutes in a unique sense the being and reality of things themselves. Keeping this in mind, the discovery of the real existence of the world and particularly of the autonomous existence of the Self in the Cogito, as Augustine and Descartes have brought it to philosophical consciousness, proves to be the fruit of a rigorous phenomenological return to things, as they are given in themselves, and not at all as an uncritical relic of dogmatic philosophy, as Husserl’s later rejection of the self-givenness of the autonomous and real existing world makes us believe. On the contrary, the rejection of realism in Husserl and his onesided essentialism which excludes the esse from philosophical consideration (without This I attempted to show especially in "Essence and Existence. A New Foundation of Classical Metaphysics on the Basis of 'Phenomenological Realism,' and a Critical Investigation of 'Existentialist Thomism'," Aletheia I (1977), pp. 17-157; I,2 (1977), pp. 371-459, and in an enlarged new version of this book in German. 56 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 178 any serious reasons for this being offered by him), is both uncritical and unphenomenological.57 It is even an anti-phenomenological pure construction which clearly blocks the way to understanding the unique actuality of real existence which has its rightful and central place among things themselves. Precisely this fact is of decisive significance for our context, however. For only in view of this fact we can ground the significance of empirical and scientific knowledge of reality for philosophy, a significance which we wish to defend. Of equal importance for understanding the realist phenomenological method is the exclusion of epoché in the sense suggested by the later Husserl: epoché in the sense of bracketing (or even denying) any validity of our knowledge of the essences we describe and analyze in themselves, independently from human subjective experience. Husserl deemed already in 1905 (in his lectures on What is Phenomenology?) any real transcendence of knowledge impossible. Therefore he thought that the phenomenological method could investigate only the noematic datum of essential necessity but that it had to abstain and to prescind from any claim that the object of this knowledge is of absolute validity in the real or in any possible world. But also this methodid epoché we reject and consider to be unphenomenological. For the self-given essential necessities demonstrate the irreducibility of their „having-to-be-such and such“ and their „not possibly being otherwise“ (their Soseinmüssen und Nichtandersseinkönnen, as Adolf Reinach puts it) as an absolute necessity that is irreducible to any kind of purely subjective necessity of experiencing or thinking. Thus the transcendence of essentially necessary facts and of the states of affairs grounded in them with respect to the subject is discovered in these phenomena themselves. Of equal importance for a proper understanding of the conception of phenomenology that underlies the following commentary is a thesis which some phenomenological realists have attempted to substantiate and indeed have not at all One has to admit that not only Husserl (who - after 1905 - also interpretes essences as mere immanent constituted noematas of noetic conscious acts, a trait of his philosophy totally opposed to Reinach and phenomenological realism) but also Adolf Reinach and the whole Munich-Göttingen phenomenology was very essentialistic. See for example Adolf Reinach, "Über Phänomenologie", in: Adolf Reinach, Sämtliche Werke , Bd. I, ebd., pp. 531-550; 'Concerning Phenomenology,' transl. from the German ("Über Phänomenologie") by Dallas Willard, The Personalist 50 (Spring 1969), pp. 194-221. Reprinted in Perspectives in Philosophy, ed. Robert N. Beck (New York: Holt, Reinhart, & Winston, 1961 and 1969). It was only Dietrich von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy?, 3rd edn, with a New Introductory Essay by Josef Seifert (London: Routledge, 1991), and earlier writings by the same author which changed the situation. In my Back toi Things Themselves (1987) and "Essence and Existence“, 1977, I tried to refomulate the phenomenological method more radically in order to make it an instrument also of the knowledge of existence. 57 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 179 accepted in a blind dogmatism but shown to be the fruit of careful investigations of reality, as it gives itself: that we are not reduced to the description of the essences of things, as they give themselves in their empirical facticity in experience. Rather, philosophical insight and philosophical argumentation are capable to return to a purified experience and to data which are not only free from the prejudices, false generalizations and misleading constructions which often darken the interpretation of experience, but which also permit a rational penetration into their necessary and intelligible essential structures which characterize things themselves and things in themselves. Insight in the sense of phenomenological realism is very similar to what Plato describes in the sixth book of the Republic and calls noesis and what Aristotle analyses in the Posterior Analytics as intuition, to which he attributes a supremely rational and foundational role for all knowledge, and which he also calls nous. The objective necessity, which is grounded in the essence of things themselves and which proves its own transcendence with respect to the human intellect and grounds an objective a priori founded upon the essences of things, proves – through the datum of its absolute necessity – to lie beyond any possibility of being a mere construction, or the fruit of some constitution or creation through the human mind. 58 This thesis the realist phenomenologists do not in any way accept in a mere dogmatic blind faith. This conception of a rational insight, so phenomenological realists attempted to prove, is not the result of some construction or of some naive and unexamined assumption but rather the fruit of a faithful analysis of that which shows itself through experience and philosophical insight. Even if we prescind from the real existence, for example of a volitional act or of the person, as revealed in our experience, we can still discover the essences of these things themselves and the objective and a priori necessary universal essential features which are grounded in them. At the same time, we The full merit to have brought out this fact belongs to Dietrich von Hildebrand, following certain leads of the earlier Husserl of Logical Investigations and Scheler. Neither Husserl nor Scheler have understood the absoluteness of this necessity and both have believed later that it could be a construct or at least a constitutum of the human mind. Cf. for example Max Scheler, „Wesen als Werde-Entwurf und Wesenserkenntnis als Konstruktion“ in: „C. Manuskripte zur Metaphysik der Erkenntnis,“ Max Scheler, Schriften aus dem Nachlaß, Bd. II, Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik, pp. 120 ff., where he holds a „Konstruktion der Wesenheiten“ and calls them „frei konstruierte Gebilde.“ Compare also Hildebran’s treatise on the knowledge of the real world and the Cogito in Aletheia VI: D. von Hildebrand, „Das Cogito und die Erkenntnis der realen Welt. Teilveröffentlichung der Salzburger Vorlesungen Hildebrands: ‘Wesen und Wert menschlicher Erkenntnis’“, Aletheia 6/1993-1994 (1994), 2- 27. 58 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 180 understand that these essential features must belong to every really existing sample that possesses the given essence. B. Elements of Phenomenological Realism in Eccles If we speak of „phenomenological realism“ as desribed briefly above, we must distinguish between the case in which a thinker proceeds by means of the methodological principles of phenomenological realism and resists any form of reductionism, and a formulated epistemology and method of realist phenomenology. Clearly, neither Sir John Eccles nor Sir Karl Popper, with whom Eccles has published in 1977 an important book on the body-mind problem, would agree with the idea of philosophical knowledge proposed above. Popper’s own philosophical origins lie in the neo-empiricist philosophy of the First Vienna Circle, even if he has criticized the positions of the Vienna Circle, denying the validity of inductive knowledge and introducing his principle of falsification, according to which only the refutation of hypothetical claims and no verification of them is possible. While this constituted a more radical and purely negative version of empiricism, Popper overcame the narrow positivism of the Vienna Circle through his recognition of the value of those theories, even of metaphysical ones, which Carnap had considered meaningless and which are not themselves empirically verifiable. In the last analysis, however, his criticism implies an even more radical empiricism, which rejects in fact even the principle of induction and empirical probability themselves which had still been recognized by the early empiricism of the Vienna Circle and which constituted a small rest of commitment to objective knowledge in science. Although Popper wrote a book on Objective Knowledge and defends an objectivist theory of truth and knowledge, making many excellent observations on this topic, his position is at the same time a radical skepticism. Popper rejects any source of cognitive justification which is independent of empirical observation and he does not recognize an objective scientific knowledge which is not dependent on empirical observations. Yet Popper develops a purely negative epistemology according to which it is impossible to know any truth with certainty or even with scientific probability. All that is possible is an empirical falsification of scientific hypotheses and theories. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 181 Such an epistemology obviously is wholly unable to ground any objectively founded, let alone certain, results either in science or in philosophy. Thus the whole book of the two authors would end in nothing more than wholly tentative sets of assumptions and hypotheses which wold then have to be subjected to the fire of trial and error-methods od successful or unsuccessful falsifications. Therefore I propose to replace a philosophical interpretation of results of brain science based on this new negative empiricism of Popper by a new philosophical reflection and examination of the results of empirical science by means of a realist phenomenological method. Nevertheless, while they reject in theory such a method as the one proposed in phenomenological realism, both Popper and – even more explicitly – Eccles often use a phenomenological method of philosophy in the sense described above. At any rate, there is an amazing coincidence between the results which the author of this work has reached through applying a phenomenological-eidetic method to the body-mind problem and the results of the research and philosophical interpretations put forward by Eccles. In the work of Eccles and in his interpretation of scientific results we find many philosophical and pre-philosophical assertions which can be firmly established much better on the basis of a phenomenological method than by a mere empiricist theory of knowledge and the method of critical rationalism. A first amazing parallel between Eccles’ „Philosophical Adventures“ and the results of a phenomenological method is Eccles’ anti-reductionism. Eccles takes the experience of consciousness as seriously as the datum of the brain-events and neurons. He recognizes and acknowledges that the fundamental datum of our conscious life and of the unique individual Self of each person, that the experience of talking or of the volitional movement of our limbs, are given with at least the same degree of evidence as any datum which presents itself to the brain-physiological research. In fact, any observation of brain-physiological events presupposes the prior givenness of the perception through which alone these events are given and „registered“ by us. Were Eccles to deny in some form of reductionist „monism of method“ every reality which does not present itself as a more or less clearly perceptible object which can be known through the senses, at least through an electronic microscope or with the help of other methods of natural science, he would no doubt bracket the givenness of conscious life. Many behaviorists and adherents to the identity-theory among scientists do precisely The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 182 that. Eccles, however, recognizes the unique reality and interiority of the experience of conscious life and describes them in an impressive way. In fact, he agrees with his friend Wigner who goes as far as to claim that our conscious life is the most evident thing and that everything except our conscious life is a mere construct (which is certainly not a correct assertion but demonstrates how unconditionally this great physicist accepted the indubitable and elementary datum of the conscious Self). It is a sign for the anti-reductionist way of proceeding of Eccles and Sherrington that Eccles and Sherrington see with Augustine and Descartes that our conscious life is given in a more immediate way than the object of empirical brain research. 59 In fact, while I can in no way agree with the assertion that everything else is a construct, Wigner’s statement to this effect involves the clear recognition of the unambiguous givenness of consciousness being an unquestionable starting point for any philosophical and empirical brain-mind-research. Going beyond that, Eccles does not only recognize an epistemological superiority by way of which our conscious existence is more immediately given than the brain cells or the brain events. Rather, he also recognizes the ontological superiority of consciousness in view of which the conscious life of man in a metaphysical sense excels, in its value and its dignity, over all material beings. This metaphysical and axiological superiority of consciousness was recognized by Pascal, Newman and Kant and formulated impressively by them. Eccles, however, especially refers to a word of Sherrington whom he visited a short while before his death in 1952. Sherrington then said: „For me now the only reality is the human soul.“ 60 Eccles goes still further in his careful attending to the givenness of consciousness. He sees, against the opinion of David Hume and of other representatives of the „Nonownership Theory of the Self“ that our conscious life is never a mere „bundle of perceptions“ which follow one another with amazing speed, as David Hume has it. Rather, Eccles knows that all our conscious experiences are constantly accompanied by the experience of the conscious subject, the I. And this conscious subject, this selfconscious Self, is not only conscious of his or her own conscious activities (these 59 Cf. J.C. Eccles, The Human Mystery. The Gifford Lectures University of Edinbourgh 1977-1978. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York 1979, p. 5. 60 Communicated in a lecture Eccles gave at an International Symposium organized by the International Academy of Philosophy and Dallas Baptist College in 1983 held in Dallas, „The Reality of God a nd the Dignity of Man“. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 183 conscious activities are not identical with him as subject, as we have seen), rather – being their subject – he is also aware of his own Self. This immediate datum of selfconsciousness, and the givenness of the conscious subject and Self, who experiences himself as the subject of his own manifold conscious acts and experiences and at the same time is aware of his own Self, was recognized by many philosophers from Plotinus and Augustine on. Eccles, however, rediscovered this fact in a very original way; he often repeats that this conscious subject is given to us and even given to us prior to any conscious reflection in which we bend back over ourselves and turn ourselves into an object of our thought. The conscious Self is given in a very elementary form of interiority of consciousness which Augustine has analysed in De Trinitate and which he has distinguished from any consciousness of objects which stand in front of our conscious life. 61 Thus Eccles recognizes the fundamental distinction within consciousness between intentional awareness of objects over against conscious acts and the lateral inner awareness of the „self-conscious mind,“ and is in this respect even more phenomenologically close to the things themselves than Franz Brentano who blurs this distinction with his notion of „inner perception.“ Above and beyond that, Eccles sees with remarkable phenomenologicalphilosophical clarity of insight, carried along by a spirit of philosophical wonder, another fact: not only our conscious Self as such is given, but its lasting identity throughout time is given as well, inasmuch as the conscious subject preserves his own identity that gives itself in the most intimate way and becomes indubitably accessible through self-consciousness in retention, in the brief lived continuity of many conscious experiences and in the lasting lived continuity of the conscious subject of innumerable passing conscious experiences, as well as in memory. In an extremely astonishing intimacy that involves also the privacy of consciousness and implies the continuity of the being of our Self (understood here as the substantial subject of consciousness) throughout time, we experience our own present being as identical with our own being as it was in the past, for example when we wake up from a deep sleep and when we re- 61 Cf. especially Augustine De Trinitate 14, 6; 8. See also Ludger Hölscher, The Reality of the Mind. St. Augustine's Philosophical Arguments for the Human Soul as a Spiritual Substance. London-Boston 1986. This work which unfolds the wealth of the Augustinian philosophy of the mind extensively and in a scholarly well-founded way and at the same time rediscoveres the Augustinian insights in the light of the author's own phenomenological philosophizing constitutes one of the most significant recent contributions to the body-mind problem. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 184 assume our conscious life after a period of unconsciousness or of the temporary loss of memory. This experience of a lasting identity which cannot be unmasked with David Hume as a mere illusion or linguistic fiction is stressed again and again by Eccles. Eccles has recognized many other data of the conscious Self as it gives itself in experience. This being, „I myself“ is also experienced - to point at another insight which Eccles defends with great force - as an absolutely unreplaceable and irrepeatable „I.“ We shall see that this insight plays a crucial role in distinguishing the Self from the brain and from any brain functions or epiphenomena thereof. Another important and concrete phenomenological observation of Eccles touches the experience of freedom and the self-givenness of the conscious subject as center of his own doing and willing, of which we experience ourselves in a unique way as origin.62 Certainly, in the light of the great role the evidences of our conscious life and of each person’s subject-character play in his work, Eccles must regard it as an important task to unfold systematically all these evidences and insights which could lead to a phenomenological metaphysics of the person. This task, though, he himself cannot fulfill as brain scientist. He formulates, however, many further ontological and epistemological facts and analyzes characteristics which elucidate the mode of being which he calls the self-conscious mind. He shows for example that this Self can never become the object of sense-perception, that it is invisible. He recognizes that the conscious mind, who is conscious of himself, as well as his conscious acts, can never be extended physically or localized in space as the brain itself. Eccles recognizes both the immateriality and the full reality of the nous with which term one can translate what he himself calls self-conscious mind. 63 Eccles also attempts, at least implicitly, to develop an adequate ontological category for this Self 62 In these insights of Eccles, to whose empirical foundations we will return later, one could see certain Augustinian- Bonaventurian traces of thoughts in Eccles own philosophical reflections. As the thought of an absolute being of doing in the free subject was less emphasized in Aristotelianism and Thomism than in the Augustinian -Scotistic tradition, an analogous philosophy of freedom is revived today, particularly among various Polish ethicists and philosophers, for example Tadeusz Styczen. In Karol Wojtyla's major philosophical work, The Acting Person, we find a philosophy of freedom and of the free originating of acts of the person in a notable contemporary form. Incidentally, we find in Aristotle (especially in his Magna Moralia) and in Thomas Aquinas passages in which the originating activity of the person is as clearly emphasized as in Augustine or Bonaventure. Recently, Cornelia Fabro has shown the hidden philosophy of freedom of Thomas in his "Riflessioni sulla libertà.“ 63 The term which Eccles uses "self-conscious mind" is discussed for example in Sir John Eccles’ and D. N. Robinson's "The Wonder of Being Human. Our Brain and Our Mind" (New York -London 1984, pp. 25ff) The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 185 and to show ist irreducibility to other things. A philosopher’s task would consist in developing and explicating the philosophical basis of Eccles’ rich phenomenological and philosophical insights into the uninventible and essentially necessary features of consciousness and of the self-conscious mind. 64 Eccles rejects the concept of the materiality of this Self as well as that of its identity with the brain. He would certainly also reject the idea that the adequate ontological category which would capture the being that is proper to the Self, could be that of a merely functional unity of experience that would have no reality above and beyond its character as an act-center, a category Max Scheler has claimed to be adequate for the person. Eccles would no doubt also exclude as adequate notion of the Self another idea which Richard Zaner has developed: that the Self could be described adequately as a mere context, a position which would relegate the Self to the category of a relation. Such an anti-phenomenological conception of a „phenomenologist“ does not do justice to the subject-character of the person and to his role as an act-center which Eccles has emphasized so much. Eccles would also certainly reject a purely transcendental-logical unity of the transcendental „I“ in the sense of Kant as an inadequate explanation of the Self. For this conception precisely denies the individual uniqueness and reality of the living person and would lack precisely those features of individual distinctness and uniqueness which Eccles recognizes so clearly and phenomenologically as essential and inalienable features of the Self. Eccles moreover insists on the immortality of the Self and on those transcending acts such as love which clearly aim at immortality. In a separate chapter, I will briefly explain what I consider to be the correct foundation of Eccles’ conviction that this our life possesses a transcendent dimension which aims at immortality. Gabriel Marcel and many other contemporary thinkers have unfolded those data which bespeak such a transcendence and justify Eccles’ conceptions as being phenomenologically much deeper than those of Popper who lacks any sense for this transcendent dimension of consciousness. 65 Eccles criticizes Popper correctly, and this is completely independent of Eccles’ conviction of immortality, for not doing justice to „the Self“ by introducing an 64 The efforts to reach such an adequate ontological category for the Self are revealed p articularly in the dialogues V ff. between Eccles and Popper. Cf. K. Popper and J.D. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain. An Argument for Interactionism. Berlin-HeidelbergLondon-New York 1977, 471ff. 65 Cf. especially dialogue XI in Popper-Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, pp. 548 ff., especially pp. 555 ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 186 ontological category for the personal Self which does not do justice to the spontaneity and the freedom as well as the being a center of spontaneous acts which we find in the person and which Popper does not recognize. 66 The phenomenological givenness of the conscious Self resists any category which, as Eccles notes sharply, would bring Popper’s conception, in the last analysis, very close to the one of materialists and parallelists, such as Armstrong. Eccles himself moves towards a concept of the soul as subject or substance, at least towards a concept of the Self which is a center of real life and is capable, at least in principle, to exist independently of the brain. Eccles recognizes the fact that this Self has the capacity to act in a way which is not dictated by matter and the brain. W. Penfield appears to come close to Eccles’ very marked but metaphysically little developed conception of this matter when he quotes at the end of a paper a passage of Shakespeare’s Richard II where King Richard says: „My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,/ My soul the father; and these two beget / A generation of still-breeding thoughts.“67 As emphasized in the present book, both a radical new philosophical reflection on the Aristotelian contributions to the understanding of substance and an answer to many contemporary objections will be necessary in order to ground theoretically the application of the category substance to the soul. An analysis of substance as such, and of the spiritual substantiality of the soul, as it was presented briefly in the present book, certainly could help to corroborate Eccles’ intimations and to found his assumptions in a more metaphysical and definitive way. 68 Until now I developed mainly, although not completely, the explicit philosophy of the person and of the Self, as Eccles himself presents it.69 66 Cf. ibid., pp. 554, 560 ff. 67 W. Shakespeare, King Richard II, V, 5. See also the quotes from Penfield in Eccles-Popper, The Self and Its Brain, pp. 558. 68 See also Hölscher, The Reality of Mind, and the work of the author, Essere e Persona. Verso una Fondazione Fenomenologica di una Metafisica Classica e Personalistica. Milan 1989. 69 The philosophical reflections of Sir John Eccles have undergone an essential development. In his work, Facing Reality. Philosophical Adventures by Brain Scientist. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York 1970, Eccles still presents a philosophical position which attributes to the mind a much more modest role. Only in his work which he edited together with Popper and which was quoted already, The Self and its Brain. An Argument for Interactionism, and in his later work Eccles develops in an increasing measure a philosophy of the person and of the self, according to which man possesses an autonomous soul which Eccles certainly conceives as a substantial entity and a mind-substance. Cf. also the book already quoted by Sir Eccles-Robinson, The Wonder of Being Human, particularly pp. 154ff., 168ff; J.C. Eccles, The Human Mystery. The Gifford Lectures University of Edinbourgh 1977-1978. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York 1979, particularly pp. 210ff., and of the same author, The Human Psyche. The Gifford Lectures University of Edinbourgh 1978-1979. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York 1980, particularly pp. 230ff. Regarding a critical investigation of the philosophical defects in the conception of the interactionism in Eccles and in his philosophical-metaphysical conception of the self see also W. Hoeres and W. Kuhn, On the Work: The Self and its Brain by K.R. Popper and J.C. Eccles. In Katholische Bildung 84 (1983 ), pp. 670ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 187 C. Brain-physiological Corroborations of Philosophical Discoveries of the Personal Self Let us turn now to some of the most significant discoveries and interpretations of modern brain research presented by Eccles. Without Eccles’ fascinating contributions to a philosophical as well as pre-philosophical reflection on the conscious Self of man certainly many of his scientifically challenging interpretations of these empirical discoveries would have been impossible. His work is a living proof of the positive influence of purely philosophical reflection on natural science; at the same time we find in strictly scientific and experimental results of brain research fascinating evidences that corroborate Eccles’ and our own philosophical views. In fact, these scientific discoveries offer a sort of empirical verification of facts that should be expected from an adequate philosophy of the person and the demonstration of which, through the observation of existing facts lead not only to a corroboration of this philosophical knowledge but can also lead to further philosophical reflections. 70 1. Empirical Evidences (lacking unity, absence of a clear delineation of the liaison-brain, etc.) for the unexplorability of the conscious Self through natural science: The Irreducibility of Consciousness, of the Simple I (Soul) of Man, and of Personal Uniqueness to Brain Events and to the Object of Natural Science In the following I report on findings and theories the value and soundness of which I cannot judge because I am not an empirical scientist. But if we accept them on the strength of the authority of leading brain scientists, they are perfectly compatible with philosophical evidences about the brain/mind relationship. Eccles sees clearly that none of the methods of brain research as such can be used in order to study the conscious Self and the conscious life of the person. Consciousness as well as the unity of the conscious 70 This I understand here not in the sense of empiricism nor in the sense of a dependence of philosophy on cognitions that pertain to natural science, but rather in the sense of a mutually fruitful relationship between philosophy and natural s cience, a relationship that was presented already earlier in this book. See also Seifert, Leib und Seele, XXI ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 188 Self, however, are given to us with indubitable evidence and certainty, as Eccles also affirms. His empirical investigations and those of others 71 corroborate this primarily philosophical insight on the basis of the following observations. There is first of all, at least until now, not even a reliable empirical, brain-immanent criterion in order to distinguish brain events that occur in an animal from those that we find in a human brain.72 Above and beyond that we also have no exact brain-immanent criterion at our disposal, in the light of which brain events that are related to consciousness could be distinguished from brain events in the human brain which are not related to the conscious life of the person. Those parts and functions of the brain which relate to consciousness, are called by Eccles the liaison-brain.73 Eccles has developed a rather comprehensive scientific and hypothetical theory, which of course finds support in many empirical facts, according to which the contact between the brain and consciousness does not occur between single neurons or ganglia, or events that occur in them, on the one hand, and our consciousness, on the other. Much rather, he argues that the liaison-brain, i.e., the part of the brain and of brain events which are connected with our conscious life, consists of modules that are colonies of brain-cells consisting each of approximately ten thousand neurons. 74 There are approximately two million of such modules in the human neo-cortex. In the dominant left hemisphere of the human neo-cortex, so Eccles claims, there are not only such modules and disorganized events of excitation, of inhibitatory action, 75 and of electric discharge in them. Much rather, there are highly and admirably structured spatiotemporal patterns of activities which occur in these modules and which are beyond description in their manifoldness and clear distinctness. It is impossible, with the present methodic tools, to record these patterns of events exactly and adequately. This is so See Eric R. Kandel, James H. Schwartz, Thomas M. Jessell, The Human Brain (Norwalk, Conn.: Appleton & Lange, 1995). See also Murray L. Barr/John A. Kiernan, The Human Nervous System, 8 th edition (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1993). 71 72 See Eccles, Facing Reality, especially pp. 63ff. Compare also Popper-Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, p. 438 ff.. See Karl R. Popper/ John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (Berlin/Heidelberg/London/New York: Springer-Verlag International, 1977/ corrected printing 1981), pp. 228 ff. See Popper-Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, pp. 428ff., 434ff. 73 Karl R. Popper/ John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (Berlin/Heidelberg/London/New York: Springer-Verlag International, 1977/ corrected printing 1981), pp. 235 ff. 75 Eccles received the Nobel Prize in 1963 for his discoveries related to this inhibitatory action. 74 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 189 particularly because the modular chemo-electric patterns extend from module to module so that there are hundreds of cell-colonies which contribute to those Gestalt-qualities which characterize the neuronal patterns of motion and the units of partly electrical, partly chemical activities, the emission of impulses and discharges, etc. These excitatory patterns and their rising energy levels are so immensely increasing that the state of excitation in the brain would rise to such a level that unconsciousness through sudden seizures would be the consequence, if there were not also neurons with purely inhibitatory functions. Thus, it is not sufficient to emphasize the excitation of single neurons to establish the contact between the brain and consciousness. Much rather, this excitation of brain cells, or better of modules that consist of brain cell-colonies, needs on thze one hand to reach a certain minimal level as condition of conscious experience. On the other hand, however, the level of excitation must also not be too high either. Sherrington and Eccles became famous through their detailed studies of those neurons which exert purely inhibitatory functions and prevent that the level of excitation of modular functions rises so high that unconsciousness would result. (For these discoveries Eccles received in 1963 the noble prize for medicine). Thus, there is a via media between over-excitation and too little excitation, coupled with the mysterious principles of order that dominate the modular patterns of motion, which are decisive for understanding the liaison-brain. Eccles is of the opinion that within these modules and modular patterns of motion some are „open“ with respect to consciousness, at least in principle, others not. The first group coincides normally largely with the modules of the left hemisphere, the latter with those of the right hemisphere, which ressemble each other from a strictly brainimmanent point of view entirely. Both the modules of the left and those of the right cerebral hemisphere are capable in principle (especially in the child up to five years) to become part of the liaison-brain, that is to say to open themselves with respect to influences from consciousness and towards consciousness. This „opening“ characteristic of the modules of the liaison-brain, however, is not a permanent feature of these modules and modular patterns of motion of brain events. Rather, these spatio-temporal patterns of motion (which contain immense distinctions among each other) contain primarily only potentially a relationship to consciousness. If there were no rules of order, according to which this potential openness of modular The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 190 events were actualized only rarely and according to an order, chaos of our conscious life or even unconsciousness through seizure or madness would be the consequence. These „rules“ are perhaps, so we could venture complementing Eccles’ hypotheses, partly grounded in consciousness itself and in the meaningful intentional relations of consciousness to objects, partly they must be due to the organization of our body and of its organic life. Finally, they could also to some extent be grounded in the relationship between sense-organs and their stimulation through objects or, as we may say in the light of the preceding philosophical investigation, 76 they could be traced back to the astonishing relationship of two orders: namely on the one hand, the intentionalmeaningful relationship of consciousness to objects and to their nature, and on the other hand, to that causal order of physiological nature that stands in the service of the intentional order and of the intentional relationship of perception and knowledge to objects. In their regard the body takes on the character of a medium. Eccles seems, at least implicitly, to make another distinction between those modules that are directly open to consciousness, which he sees located mainly (and to some extent exclusively) in the dominant hemisphere, and those modules which are only „indirectly open.“ Eccles is convinced that in the right hemisphere there are modules which, through the corpus callosum and other linking tracts between the two hemispheres of the brain, can exert influence on the directly open modules of the left hemisphere in form of some feedback or even of some programming. Nevertheless, Eccles claims that exclusively evidence which is taken from the inner actual conscious experience of patients, particularly of patients who have suffered hemispherectomy or commissurosectomy and which Sperry and his colleagues have studied, can provide the norms by means of which open modules can be distinguished from closed ones. Immanent brain research can never provide such a criterion. Since immanent neuro-physiological research without reference to the conscious experience of patients cannot even make the distinction between potentially and actually open and closed modules of the liaison-brain and can even less „read off“ the brain alone the exactly corresponding conscious experiences that are linked to these brain events, the radical distinction between the conscious life of the Self and its neuro-physiological 76 See esp. Seifert, Leib und Seele, pp. 233ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 191 basis to which it is irreducible, discloses itself even further – especially in the light of such empirical results. 77 In the light of these results, the brain discloses itself as a world that is completely distinct from consciousness. Eccles follows the terminology of Popper and speaks in this context of WORLD 1 (= the brain and the material world altogether) and WORLD 2 (= conscious acts and conscious Self). Eccles summarizes his results regarding the discussed matters in four points which we do not wish to repeat here. 78 Further empirical evidence for the irreducibility of man’s conscious life to brain events, or better: additional empirical material corroborating the philosophical evidence of the irreducibility of consciousness to the brain and approving the inexplicability of conscious life as epiphenomenon of the brain is seen by Eccles in the following fact which constitutes a central empirical starting point for his insistence on the difference between body and mind: brain research confirms the assumption that neither the overwhelming multiplicity of ten thousand millions of neurons with their innumerable parts and synapses, axes, etc. nor the multiplicity of innumerable, non-identical, functional, spacial-temporal, neural and modular patterns of motion can provide the key to the understanding of the astonishing simplicity of the Self which is evident in each moment of our experience and above all in the unbroken experience of self-identity which persists throughout sleep and countless other breaks within our conscious life. 79 Indeed, on the level of that which Eccles calls liaison-brain there is not even a remote analogy for the simple and indivisible unity which manifests itself indubitably in the conscious experience of ourselves. 80 Above all, there is not even the slightest physiological explanation in the brain of the phenomenological datum of the ultimate and absolutely irreplaceable uniqueness (the haecceitas)81 of each personal Self, although there are (in form of the genetic code or even more in form of the individual face, voice and bodily appearance) physiological parallels or faint bodily echoes of this uniqueness. But the genetic uniqueness of the genom of a human person is completely insufficient to explain the deeper metaphysical 77 See esp. Eccles, The Human Mystery, pp. 210ff. (where Eccles also describes the change of his position) and pp. 217ff. 78 See Popper-Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, 361-363. 79 This was already one of the main contributions Eccles made in his b ook, Facing Reality. 80 Besides Facing Reality see esp. Popper-Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, Chap. E7, pp. 355 ff. In Eccles, Facing Reality see esp. Chap. IV and V. 81 See esp. Eccles, Facing Reality: "Does the uniqueness of the experiencing self derive f rom genetique uniqueness?,“ pp. 80ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 192 uniqueness of the person. Not only is this code duplicated in each body-cell; there is also a slim but still not negligeable chance of identity or sameness of genetic codes and genetic factors in two different persons. And identical twins, who are as distinct as persons as any other two persons, have the same gentic code. Therefore this genetic code can never explain the absolutely irreplaceable uniqueness that we find in the person. Even less can the multitude of brain-cells (which on top of their multiplicity do not always serve the same function but show great plasticity in assuming, for example after hemispherectomy or other brain-damage, new functions) explain this personal irreplaceable thisness. Eccles argues in a similar way. 82 Against the background of his purely philosophical analyses which are founded on the experience of the absolutely irreplaceable uniqueness of the personal Self, we can also understand why Eccles rejects materialist reductionism. Similarly, one can explain from this starting point Eccles’ endeavor to find an adequate metaphysical category which would do justice to the reality of the Self in its uniqueness. Eccles obviously does not claim that the two worlds of brain and mind are totally separated. Quite on the contrary, he argues for their manifold and close connection. We shall return to this question. 2. Empirical Evidences Against Epiphenomenalism and For the Autonomous Entity, Being and Freedom of the „Mental Self“ At this point of Eccles’ investigations one could still object: perhaps all these empirical evidences and their philosophical interpretations prove that consciousness is irreducible to the brain and to brain processes. However, the evidences which Eccles presents up to this point, do not exclude epiphenomenalism or parallelism that acknowledges the given distinction between brain and consciousness but considers consciousness – along the lines of Simmias in Plato’s Phaedo or of the Marxists – as an immaterial effect or a „divine and invisible harmony“ of matter in the sense of ancient epiphenomenalism or as a non-extended side-effect of matter, as Marxism would express itself. Even if Eccles rejects this totally and assumes that the conscious Self 82 See esp. Eccles, The Human Psyche: "Uniqueness of the psyche,“ pp. 237ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 193 evidently is a center of self-consciousness or a mind, a soul that is essentially distinct from the body, one could nonetheless assume that the „soul“ stands in a totally passive relationship to the body and to the brain and that its content is purely passively received from the physiological sphere without being able to exert any active influence thereupon which would have its origin in the soul itself. To some extent, a purely physiologically caused pain such as tooth-ache does in fact causally depend on the body (although it cannot, I suggest, be interpreted as a mere „epiphenomenon“). This leads to the second main group of empirical evidences which modern brain research, as particularly Eccles has recognized, presents. These evidences throw not only further light on the distinction between mind and brain but also prove a form of inner mental activity and active influence of the mind on the body and on the brain. Eccles again proceeds from our immediate experience that we can influence and in fact engender our bodily action through our conscious activity, for example when we speak or when we perform other volitional bodily activities. Various experiments with persons who moved their limbs according to their will showed an empirical result which the philosopher of freedom could have expected but which is nevertheless highly remarkable. Upon acting voluntarily – to be more precise: within a very short span of time preceding voluntary action during which the person wants to move and when he actually moves – are built up „observable and completely new modular brain-patterns of excitation and motion,“ which proceed slowly from the so-called „readiness potential.“83 When these motion patterns reach a certain measure of coordination and neural excitation, the bodily motion actually takes place. Now, even the most careful screening of the brain of persons who allowed such experiments to be conducted could not discover any preceding modular patterns of motion and excitation which could have explained the modular „readiness potential“ and especially those excitatory patterns which preceded and accompanied the bodily motions and movements. Thus all empirical evidences appear to corroborate the opinion that these modular patterns of motion occur in form of a sudden appearance, quite independently of any preceding brain-state and precisely, only, and exactly then when the person on whom the experiment is performed wants to become active. In other words, these experiments 83 See Eccles, The Human Mystery, pp. 214-217. See also Popper-Eccles, The Self and its Brain, pp. 283-285, 291, 293, 364, 365, particularly the phenomenological grasp of the phenomenon of the freedom of will, p. 275 ff., 472 ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 194 confirm in a fascinating manner that on the level of the brain exactly that happens which we should expect from the experience and philosophical understanding of conscious life: namely that on the occasion of each volitional motion an objectively existing and also experientially noticeable „breaking in“ of the order of the mind and volition into the world of the body takes place and that the source of such bodily and physicalphysiological changes does not lie in the brain itself but in the will of the person, in the spontaneous innervation of the free center of the person. Empirical brain science thus confirms the most natural experience of a free dominion of the mind over the body, a phenomenon Kant recognized, calling it „causality through freedom“ but which he believed had to be denied for the world of appearance. Had he known these newest empirical results, and at the same time freed himself more entirely from the philosophical grounds of determinism, Kant might have been delighted over such an empirical confirmation of „causality through freedom,“ of the power of the subject over the body. Similar evidences were presented when persons were observed when they spoke, when they solved mathematical problems, when they were asked to remember certain past events, etc. 84 In all of these cases of activities it seems to emerge clearly as an empirical fact of brain-science that in consequence of voluntary action the eruption of physiologically completely inexplicable spatio-temporal patterns of motion into the modules of brain takes place, an eruption that is completely inexplicable through the preceding physiological events or causes and that can only be explained as an irruption of the power and freedom of the mind into the world of the brain. This is not so for other conscious experiences. For example, in the case of experiencing pain because of having cut one’s finger or in sensation an explanation of the newly developing brain events through physiological reality is possible, at least partially. Here no irruption of new causes into the order of the brain takes place but immanent physiological causes clearly give rise to the respective brain events. Physical pain and other experiences here are the mere consequences of preceding brain events (although such a causal explanation cannot exhaustively do justice to physical suffering or provide a sufficient understanding of it). 84 See Popper-Eccles, The Self and its Brain, ch. E 4, E 8. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 195 In the light of a phenomenology of freedom the mentioned empirical facts also witness the philosophically evident link which exists between the free and selfconscious center of the person and his body. Thus the truth of inner experience of really initiating bodily movements, and thereby the truth of „causality through freedom,“ as Kant describes this fact quite fittingly, which, however, he believes to be empirically absolutely undemonstrable since in the world of appearance strictly causal determination would rule, can be verified or at least corroborated through the empirical brain research of the newest date. 85 If nothing in the brain explains the overwhelming excitation and the newly arising patterns of motion that occur suddenly and in complete dependence on the person’s decision and will to act now rather than later or earlier, then it seems to be also from a purely scientific standpoint the most reasonable assumption to assume exactly what our conscious experience has always taught us: namely that as free subjects we are indeed the cause of voluntary bodily movements; that the mind here truly has an effect on matter. To recognize this fact has, however, immense consequences. With Eccles and Popper we have then to assume that, as they express themselves, there exists a fundamental openness of WORLD 1 for WORLD 2. The brain is open with respect to receiving input and influences from the mind and thereby the matter of the brain is open to communicate with a reality that is distinct from the brain and that the brain does not only influence but from which it also can receive influences. Modern natural science reconfirms the words that Socrates spoke in Plato’s Phaedo about the reasons why his limbs and nerves remained in jail because of his knowledge and free decision to do justice and not for physiological causes (98b ff.). These Socratic words which sound just like the newest scientific findings were already quoted before. Further evidences for the fact that these words of Socrates relate also to the relationship between the mind and the brain and to the latter’s link to conscious knowledge and free decision can be obtained from experiments with active memoryretrieval. Our conscious efforts to refresh memories, our activity of rejecting images that present themselves to our memory when these images are not the ones that we are looking for, an activity Augustine already has described in detail in Book X of this 85 Of course, such a "verification" always presupposes certain philosophical insights and cannot be gained enti rely without their help, for example not without various insights which refer to the essence of freedom, of causality, of their mutual relationship and of the subject of freedom. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 196 Confessions, leads to an actual „opening“ of potentially open modules, to an activiation of information that is in a certain way stored or programmed in the brain and had already been „filed“ there and could have been activated before. This activation of brain-stored information occurs through what Eccles describes as „playing the brain.“ This expression for a using of the brain in a quasi-instrumental manner had been suggested before by Henri Bergson in his theories concerning empirical discoveries regarding brain-damaged persons. 86 In the light of these results, the revolutionary character of Eccles and Poppers concept of the openness of WORLD 1 with respect to WORLD 2 emerges clearly. This concept is obviously only revolutionary if you see it in the light of modern science and its deterministic philosophical foundation. For in the above-quoted Platonic text and in many other authors after Plato, including Kant, this concept appears to be a guiding principle.87 The empirical observations on which Eccles has commented in detail thus corroborate the results regarding the relationship between brain and mind which we have gained in the present book merely on the basis of philosophical analysis of a priori essential necessities. Obviously, Eccles does not speak of a philosophical investigations of essentially necessary states of affairs. Nevertheless he refers to them in a more or less explicit way. The results of these philosophical intuitions and of the mentioned empirical experiments, however, seem to contradict and to violate the principle of the conservation of energy and the first laws of thermo-dynamics as we have already mentioned in discussing the epiphenomenalism of Hans Jonas. For the mind appears here to irrupt into matter and material events and to engender new energies or to set them free, energies which had not existed before in the brain or in the material universe. Eccles, Popper and also Wigner, a nobel-laureate of physics, are even less disturbed by these consequences as Hans Jonas. The consequences only demand that we develop a new and simultaneously classical physics (which recognizes objective empirical and also a 86 See Bergson, Matière et Mémoire. On the newest state of scientific research and theory, regarding the problem of memory, see Eccles, The Human Psyche, pp. 176ff. 87 In Kant, however, we find the recognition of this fact only as something lying beyond the experience and beyond any objectivizing thinking, in the alleged sphere of purely intelligible objects and things in themselves in which alone Kant assumes a freedom and causality through freedom to be possible and seeks to save their reality. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 197 priori evident laws of „pure physics“ regarding time, motion, space, etc.) and above all that we explore the relationship of physics to psychology and philosophical anthropology. The mentioned natural scientists argue that the already empirical facts described above do not contradict the laws of physics which strictly and in their full extent refer only to the limited sphere of the material (non-living) universe. These empirical findings only refute the idea of a deterministically closed material universe in which any causal influence, force or energy from a source distinct from the material world itself would be excluded. Even more important than the polemics against those interpretations and formulations of the laws of physics that have their root in a deterministically conceived universe is another observation. The apparent „openness“ of the material universe according to the modern conception of physics, according to which all natural laws are only statistic laws and allow the possibility of chance and exception, is in no way a sufficient correction of earlier deterministic physics, as we have already mentioned in chapter III in the context of a critical examination of the views of Hans Jonas. For the openness of the material universe of the brain as well as of the physical material world which is part of the brain and also of the external physical world with respect to the mind, insofar as all these parts of the physical world are subjected to free deeds of human persons, is a completely new and different form of „openness“ of matter to the mind. It is an openess of the physical world for influences from reason and from freedom, not the mere fact that the laws of the physical universe, at least in the micro-physical world, are only statistical and not absolute. This relationship between the brain and free subjects is completely new and different in comparison to the „openness“ of matter in the sense of statistically calculable exceptions from general rules. A statistical gambling with chances is in a certain way not less far from the openness of matter with respect to mind in freedom than a strictly deterministically closed material universe, as we already have mentioned above. 3. Argument for the Autonomous Being of the Soul and the Non-determination of All Conscious Experiences Through Material Processes from Knowledge and from the Essence of Reason (WORLD 3) Whereas all the mentioned experiments have to do with a free activity of the mind which manifests itself in its effects on matter, Eccles also directs our attention to a very The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 198 different argument which one can apply both against deterministic materialism and against an epiphenomenalism that sees in the mind nothing but a non-material effect or function of matter. This argument, which takes its starting point in the essence of reason and knowledge, rests upon the fact that the knowing subject must be determined by, or rather must depend in a meaningful way on, the object of his knowledge and ist nature. The fact that something is truly so and not different must be the ground for what I think, if knowledge takes place at all. A transcendence of the mind as related to the true nature of things and as dependent on the actual nature of beings is a presupposition of all knowledge and is found in any knowledge deserving that name. Any form of materialist determinism or epiphenomenalism according to which the contents of our knowledge depend merely on determined and determining brain functions or on a gamble with chances, denies knowledge as such. Karl Popper has quite clearly noted this. Popper explains that if determinism were right, any theory including determinism itself would have to be accepted only because the defender of such a theory possesses a determined physical structure. Then, however, we would only deceive ourselves if we believed to act rationally, and we would in fact be determined only physically to think what we think. If such were the case, we would deceive ourselves in the moment in which we would believe that there really exists something like arguments or reasons which convince us to accept determinism. In other words, physicalistic determinism is a theory which, if it were true itself, could never be defended by human beings in a rationally well-founded form, for all human reactions including those that concern our belief in arguments, would be nothing but effects of purely physical conditions. Purely physical conditions, including those of our physical environment, would lead us to assert or to assume whatever we would assert or assume. 88 Eccles regards this argument not only as a refutation of materialism and of the theory of identity but also as a reductio ad absurdum of earlier and weaker forms of dualism which Eccles himself had defended in form of his dualist position of interactionism. A completely new, active role of the mind and a much more autonomous 88 In different works, lastly in Back to Things in Themselves: A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism, we have attempted to demonstrate the unfoundedness of this position and of transcendental idealism as well as of any determinism. See the revised form of J.B.S. Haldane's refutation of materialism through Popper in: The Self and Its Brain, pp. 75ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 199 life of the mind that is dominated by reason and dependent on objective principles and objects of reason (WORLD 3) is asserted by Eccles since 1975. In complete agreement with this position, the author of the present book is nevertheless convinced that the thesis that Eccles takes over from Popper, namely that the whole WORLD 3, i.e. language and culture, in fact that all non-material principles and objects of thought which are not themselves consciousness are produced by man, would not allow in any way to defend the quoted argument. For, as Husserl has proven in Logical Investigations, such a view would lead to a relativism and skepticism that would exactly undermine the foundations of all arguments and of all logic. For logic and its claim to objective truth and validity can only be defended if there is a knowledge of immutable essential laws which are not produced by man (and do not belong therefore in the terminology of Popper and Eccles to WORLD 3). 89 Only if the princioples of ontology and logic such as the principle of contradiction which forbids that two contradictory propositions are both true and two contradictory states of affairs both obtain is grounded in the nature of things themselves and of absolute validity, the validity of logic can be defended and Popper’s excellent argument be defended. One would therefore have to recognize, if one sees WORLD 3 as filled exlusively with products of human minds, a WORLD 4, that is to say a world od uncreatable essences, essential laws and principles, in order to ground this argument. 4. An Argument for the Spirituality of the Subject from the Knowledge of Mathematical Infinity or rather from the Direct Relationship Between WORLD 2 and WORLD 3 (4) There is another and more purely philosophical than empirical reflection that motivates Eccles’ conviction that the human mind is irreducible to the brain and to brain processes and possesses a life-proper that is transcendent with respect to the human brain to such an extent that it cannot even find in principle an exact correspondence in the brain in every respect. 89 Cf. esp. The Self and Its Brain, Chap. P2, where the Three-world theory of Popper is developed which Eccles takes over. The opinions of Popper and Eccles and their recognition of objects which man has not created and which are nevertheless inhabitants of WORLD 3 (we could speak here of a WORLD 4) emerges particularly when they speak of the discovery of the infinitive prime numbers through Euklid. See Das Ich und sein Gehirn, pp. 645ff. We shall return to this point in the next section of the main text. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 200 This argument is developed in one of the dialogues between Eccles and Popper and most precisely in the context of the discussion of the Euclidan proof that there is an infinite number of prime numbers. This problem was discovered by Euclid, posed by him and solved by him. Not only was his understanding of the problem and of its solution determined through the nature of things themselves (by WORLD 3 or better WORLD 4 objects, namely by states of affairs that exist completely independently from human creativity and are eternal truths). 90 Rather, above and beyond this observation of the independence of the human cognitive life from material brain-determination, and apart from its dependence on a transcendent truth and a transcendent meaning, we can ask: How could the concept of an infinite series of numbers, how could further the understanding of the fact that there is an infinite number of prime numbers, go back to Euclid’s brain and could be explained sufficiently through it? The first intuitive grasp of this relationship through Euclid could not be based on a codified information of the brain, not even according to the immanent principles of a computer- or brainprogramming. Above and beyond this, Popper notes quite excellently that there are no physical models or representations of (potential) infinities except in terms of words or symbols which, however, possess this signification of the infinite only as symbols with a purely conceptual meaning and not as material signs and representations. They are only meaningful for a mind that can understand non-physical meanings and they are related to infinity only in a way that is comprehendible purely by the intellect. Therefore, an exact correlation between mind and brain could in principle not exist, even if a symbolic correspondence of those informations which correspond to the Euclidan demonstrations of the infinity of prime numbers existed in the brain. Therefore, even the programming of the brain through the knowledge of the infinite number of prime numbers, but above all this knowledge itself, demonstrates the active influence of the mind on the brain. Further, the active role of the mind and the independence of the life of reason from being caused by brain events, as well as the influence of rational activities on the brain, are elucidated by what Eccles and Popper call the direct contact between WORLD 2 and 90 See Popper-Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, Dialogue XI between Popper and Eccles. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 201 WORLD 3, a contact in which the mind recognizes a situation that belongs to WORLD 3 and then programs the brain in a certain manner. 5. An Argument from Attentiveness There is a further philosophical as well as empirical argument for the distinction of the mind from the body and for the active influence exerted by the mind over the body. This argument is founded on an evidence that relates to the phenomenon of the conscious act of attentiveness and of spontaneous concentration, as well as on the evidence that is founded on empirical observations of the brain. The activity of concentration plays a unifying and synthesizing role in our conciousness. In order that our conscious life can happen at all, concentration is necessary. It is at least necessary in order that our conscious life be more than a series of mutually independent experiences and associations which are linked only loosely like in a dream. In the brain, however, we find normally precisely a plurality of nonintegrated, non-synthesized modular patterns of motion. Only through concentration such selection, ordering and integration of brain activity takes place. Therefore the question poses itself where the origin of the synthesizing function of attention lies. No force immanent to the brain appears to be able to explain why the „dormant,“ but potentially open modules and modular patterns of motion are actually activated and opened, or which of the many modular movements and patterns of motion that happen at all times in the brain when we are exposed to the manifold influences from the external world on the one hand and from the brain on the other, are chosen by attention and actively pursued. Thus the link between the experience of attention and the empirical observation of the brain suggests that the unifying and active force that leads to the psycho-physical effect of attention has its root in the free center and life of the mind as in something that is radically transcendent with respect to the brain. Without this assumption neither the conscious life nor the brain itself can be explained. Above and beyond this, we find in the phenomenon of attention also a process of selection, which Eccles often describes as a sort of scanning of the mind over a set of millions of modules that are alwasy potentially open towards the mind but are actually opened only ba attention. In a similar context, Eccles speaks poetically of „cognitive The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 202 caresses“ through which the mind can influence patterns of motion present in the brain, correcting and modifying them. 91 Even if we will later have to take distance from the language and the suggestions of a direct conscious relationship with the brain evoked by this terminology, the facts mentioned by Eccles appear to exist and to be incontestable. 6. Arguments for the Mental Autonomy of the Self from the Change of Time and Dating Back of Sense Perception Not Explained by Materialism A particularly interesting empirical observation to which Eccles relates frequently in this context, are the experiments which Libet has performed. Through these experiments it can be proven that softer impulses which are received by the brain (e.g. from soft sounds of a drum) need objectively longer than louder ones to cause that level of excitation of brain events and of patterns of motion in the brain that are necessary for conscious experience. The same experiments demonstrate that the conscious experience itself occurs in such cases clearly at a longer temporal interval to the actual playing of the tone than the conscious experience that follows upon a loud tone of the same or of another instrument. If then our actual experience of the conscious perception of sounds were to correspond exactly to the temporal sequence of experiences of hearing and to the point in time at which a given musical note objectively reaches our brain and our consciousness, our hearing would be completely deformed and unrhythmical. The stable rhythm of a musical piece could no longer be experienced; rather the tempo and the temporal distances between tones would constantly change and be deformed through the different strength and loudness of the tone. Since, however, our experience in no way corresponds to such an expectation of a purely brain-oriented materialistic brain science, we must assume that we find here a process of „dating back,“ in that our consciousness as it were dates back to its correct point in time a soft tone, in spite of the fact that we perceive this tone later than the loud one. One could perhaps summarize and more phenomenologically interpret the results of these experiments in saying that the perceiving subject, in spite of the tempo irregularity of its actual experience, 91 See Eccles, The Human Mystery, p. 232. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 203 nevertheless correctly perceives the Gestalt-principles of rhythm, melody, etc. Something similar takes place in the perception of perspectival painting. This experiment confirms on the level of hearing the active influence the mind takes on sense perception, a fact that can be gathered also from another experiment performed with vision, an experiment to which Eccles relates at another place. 92 A further illustration of the way in which learning can transform the interpretation of visual information is provided by Stratton’s famous experiments (1897), in which a system of lenses was placed in front of one of the eyes of a person (the other being covered), so that the image of the retina was inverted with respect to its usual orientation. For several days the visual world was hopelessly disordered. But as a result of 8 days of continual effort, the visual world could again be sensed by this person correctly, and then became again a reliable guide for manipulation and movement. These experiments which were repeated later and refined in many ways. They teach us again that our consciousness is not a mere passive product of brain events. The active elements of the conscious activity of understanding, of correct coordination, of dating back and even of the perceptual reversing of orders that are directly suggested by the immediate effects of our physiological constitution on our consciousness – all of these influences of the mind over matter and over the brain appear to be incontrovertible. 93 The activity of interpreting and of influencing sense-perceptions, however, is a further manifestation of a life of consciousness which can neither be reduced to brain-events themselves nor to epiphenomena which passively depend on brain events. Also the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues argues in an analogous way against the Pythagorean position defended by Simmias. He conceives of the mind as of an epiphenomenon of matter by pointing out the active role which the mind has in commanding and influencing the body. 94 But this leads us to another problem, the bodysoul-problem in the narrower and in the narrowest sense, which we should first examine in general prior to turning back again to the scientific evidences both as they relate to 92 See Popper-Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, p. 404. The changes occurring in vision by mere physiological causes, such as visual defects caused by lesions of the eye, or those caused by the interruption of the pathways, be it of the central pathways or the cortex (see Murray L. Barr/John A. Kiernan, The Human Nervous System, 8 th edition (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1993, pp. 325 ff.), are very different and constitute one of the physiological causal influences which take away conditions and consequently mediating functions of the body for intentional acts discussed in the preceding chapters. 93 94 See Plato, Phaedo, pp. 47a ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 204 and confirm our purely philosophical results, and as they appear to require a critical philosophical inquiry into merits and limits of the „interactionism“ proposed by Eccles, which must not be confused with his „dualism.“ The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 205 VI. THE BODY-SOUL PROBLEM IN THE NARROWER SENSE: THE UNITY OF MAN AND THE RELATION BETWEEN BODY AND CONSCIOUSNESS (SOUL) A. Relations and Distinctions Between Philosophical Positions on the Essence and the Relation of Body and Soul The body-soul problem in the narrower sense consists, generally speaking, in the question as to which relation or which possibly completely different relations exist between the body and the consciousness of man. In a still more specific sense, it consists in the question how to conceive of the unity of man or of the bond between body and consciousness. We should distinguish here three meanings of the term „the body-mind problem“ which are often confused, a confusion which makes a proper treatment of the body-mind problem difficult: 1) In a first sense, the body-mind problem consists in the question: what are body and mind? Is there a mind distinct from the body?; 2) Secondly, the body-mind problem can be understood as the general question: „What is the relation, or what are the different relationships between mind (consciousness) and body?“ Is the mind the „form“ of the body, or just externally linked to it? How are sense perception and brain, love and its physical expression, speech acts and the material-corporeal sides of the body, etc. linked to each other?; 3) In the narrowest sense, the body-mind problem signifies the question what exactly and ultimately constitutes the link between body and soul, where exactly the „seat“ of the soul is in the body, a problem to which we shall return especially in chapter 8 on brain death. All the theses and positions treated up to this point pivot around the first of these questions, the problems of the essence of psychic being (the soul) on the one hand, and of physical being (the body) on the other. Obviously, however, the various answers to the question of the essence of physical and psychic being have consequences for the replies possible within these positions to the second question of the relationship between physical and psychic being. Thus it is clear that a Materialist Monism which accepts only a single substance, insofar as it - like Epiphenomenalism - recognizes at all an essential difference between physical The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 206 and psychic being, can only accept a one-sided relation of dependency between body and consciousness in which ultimately consciousness would be completely determined by material processes. This does not exclude that for example Marxism, although it conceives of mind as an epiphenomenon of matter, accepts a kind of action which consciousness epiphenomenally conceived - exerts, in its turn, upon matter. In a similar way, Marx and Engels assumed effects of the ideological suprastructure (Überbau), which they thought to originate entirely in material forces, back unto its economic base. But this „reaction“ and effectiveness of the epiphenomena of brain events on the brain (apart from involving possibly some absurd dialectical assumptions according to which a pure side-effect can in turn become an efficient cause upon that which produces it)95 is still, in the ultimate analysis, a mere effect of material processes which for their part have produced all consciousness. Many of the kinds of relation between consciousness and matter to be discussed in the following cannot be recognized in their proper nature under Epiphenomenalist presuppositions (cf. Rohracher, 23, 507), although within Epiphenomenalism replies to the question of the exact relation between mind and matter are possible which deviate strongly from one another. Likewise Berkeley’s Idealism and the Phenomenalism built thereon are primarily doctrines replying to the question of the essence of physical and psychic being, but which also have their consequences for solving the problem of the relation between mind and body. According to Phenomenalism, this relation is to be considered one of total dependency of matter upon consciousness. Thus according to this doctrine there is no real active and dynamic relation at all of matter to consciousness; material events in the brain can, according to this philosophy, never have any causal influence on the brain because they are mere objects of consciousness. And the third problem of the „seat“ of the soul in the body and the exact manner of its influence on the brain disappear altogether. As we have seen, Hans Jonas shows that some absurd assumptions (such as a creation through nothing and from nothing, without any causal cost and loss of energy) lie also in an epiphenomenalism that excludes any effect of consciousness on matter, while not denying that the conscious life is an effect of matter and possesses some reality. 95 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 207 Other theories, such as the „Neutral“ Monism which follows Spinoza and, as such, is designed to answer the question about the essence of matter and mind, find their natural correlate in the thesis of Parallelism which is only secondarily a view of the essence of physical and psychic being and primarily a reply to the body-soul problem in the narrower (second) sense. (Driesch 2/1920, 2 f., in his critique of Psychophysical Parallelism, significant in itself, does not notice this fact.) Still, Parallelism is a logical outgrowth of the Dual-Aspect theory which is one possible monistic answer to the question about the essence of mind and matter, although it can likewise be defended on dualist grounds. We could also demonstrate similar consequences for the body-soul problem in the narrower sense that flow from other views on the essence of body and soul. Within Dualism, the most diverse theses on the relation between body and soul can be defended (e.g. the theory of Interactionism, Parallelism, Occasionalism and, as we will see, a completely different general explanation of the relations between body and soul). The recognition of a substantial distinction between body and soul thus establishes not so much the content of a given theory regarding the relation between body and soul, but rather constitutes the presupposition and general framework for the understanding of many body-soul relations (e.g. the relation of expression or psychophysical interaction). There still is a completely different tie between the philosophical view of the essence of body and soul and that of their relation. Many theories of the essence of body and soul are mainly conceived in expectation of a solution of the body-soul problem in the narrower sense. Most Monistic conceptions are motivated explicitly (cf. Rosenblueth, 114-5) by the hope of being able to solve the problem of the relation between body and soul with their aid. M. Henry (261) explicitly characterizes „Phenomenological Monism“ as motivated chiefly by the hope of being able by its means to solve or to avoid the mindbody problem in the second or third sense. Husserl had also emphasized in the Crisis that his transcendental-philosophical conception of the constitution of the world (of the lived body) is determined to a great extent by the attempt to solve or to dissolve the problem of how a real reciprocal influence could exist between the extended being of matter and the immaterial being of the mind. R. Schmitt, D. Laskey, A. Lingis and others The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 208 have seen in this an essential motive for Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism. Sayre (1963) has stressed the fact that Berkeley’s conception of the essence of matter is based upon a similar motive. Beyond a doubt, the conception of matter held by Kant and Leibniz, too, are largely borne by the attempt to solve the body-soul problem in the narrower and in the narrowest sense. Manier, Smith and Caponigri have emphasized this (McMullin, 1963). Likewise Feigl, Armstrong (74ff.) and others think it would be easy to explain the unity and relation of body and mind, especially psycho-physical interaction, by means of Identity Theory. For if psychic realities are identical with brainprocesses, one can easily explain how they can influence the physical. Still, in reality this alleged advantage of the mind-brain Identity Theory does not exist. Precisely no interaction whatsoever is accepted here but merely a cause-effect relation abiding within the material universe. Insofar as psychic being is held to be identical with brainprocesses or even with an „inner“ experienced aspect of them, no sort of „interaction“ can be accepted by Identity Theory. What kind of sense is there to the view that an identical entity (brain-process equaling psychic being) operates causally on itself? Upon closer inspection, it turns out that Identity Theory can explain neither psycho-physical interaction nor the evident data which we will discuss later of expression, of the volitional governance of the body, etc., since here psychic being is reduced from the outset to material processes, so that one cannot speak of any relation except the „relation“ of identity between psychic and physical being. This does not exclude that the wish to explain psycho-physical interaction has been a strong motive of individual adherents of the mind-brain Identity Theory. In spite of the close relation between the philosophic response to the question of the essence of body and soul and the response to the problem of their relations, it is important to distinguish clearly these two questions, and that not simply because such a distinction serves the philosophical elucidation of the facts, but especially because, within the same view of the essence of mind and matter, completely different views of their relation are possible. This holds true notably for Dualism, particularly in the sense of the recognition of a substantial distinction between body and soul. That position as such solely concerns the essence of body and soul and should not, as practically always happens, be confused with the doctrine of Psycho-physical Interactionism, with which it is usually brought into a close connection and indeed is often identified (e.g. by The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 209 Popper, 1977). For the doctrine of Interactionism describes solely a position concerned with the body-soul problem in the second sense. It does not merely accept a reciprocal causal relation between body and soul, but declares this mutual causal link to be the decisive relation between body and soul. Such a doctrine presupposes a Dualism (at least one that essentially distinguishes between physical and psychic phenomena). But, inversely, the recognition of a substantial distinction between body and soul still permits many different answers to the problem of the relation of body and mind or to the problem of how exactly such psycho-physical relations are to be thought. For example, within Dualism one can defend the thesis of Occasionalism which goes back to Malebranche, Geulincx, Cordemoy and others. According to this doctrine which presupposes a Dualism, there is no interaction or real contact between bodies and souls, but rather it is God who effects physical events in bodies on the occasion of certain psychic processes and vice-versa. The reverse also holds: within the same view of the relation between body and soul, different conceptions of the essence of physical and psychic being are possible. For example, the thesis of Parallelism, insofar as it presents a specific answer to the question of the mode of relation between mind and body, is to be sharply distinguished from the above mentioned Spinozist Dual-Aspect theory. Indeed, while Parallelism is surely suggested within the Dual-Aspect theory, it can also exist within a philosophy responding dualistically to the question of the essence of body and soul. Thus, for example, the doctrine of Parallelism in its Leibnizian form (on the basis of preestablished harmony) goes very well with a Dualism. We emphasize especially this distinction between positions which concern the essence of body and soul and those which concern the relation between the two. This is because we think that a philosophical knowledge of the basically different body-soul relations and of the proper nature of each of these relations, and thus a comprehensive and adequate explanation of the various body-soul relations (which differs radically from any mere causal interactionism and even rejects this view totally because it fails to proceed phenomenologically and to delve into the intelligible roots of each body/soul relation) is possible solely on the basis of a Dualistic answer to the question of the essence of body and soul (cf. the present author, 1973). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 210 Finally we might still note that many of the positions on the relation between body and soul (e.g. Occasionalism or the doctrine of Pre-established Harmony) attempt to solve speculatively the body-soul problem in its third, the narrowest sense: namely the question of the ultimate How of the relation of physical and psychic being. Other conceptions only concern the kind of relation between physical and psychic realities, e.g. the doctrine of Interactionism or of Parallelism as such. Thus, for example, it is true that the doctrine of Interactionism as such is to be sharply distinguished from the speculative attempts to explain precisely how this interaction occurs, e.g. Descartes’ doctrine of how this reciprocal effect could be explained by the pineal gland on the one hand and the „vital spirits“ on the other. (Related theories by W. B. Carpenter, H. Spencer, E. V. Hartmann, G. H. Lewes et al. are described by McDougall, 286ff.) Here we might also mention O. Spann’s Theory of Wholeness (Ganzheitslehre) which provides a speculative explanation of the questions of the essence and at the same time of the relation between body and soul. This view distinguishes between the gross materiality of the body and the immaterial roots of matter which are mind-like (dem Geist ähnlich). Mind stands in reciprocal relation only with the latter. Not „two-ing“ (Gezweiung) as between mind and mind, but „two-ing of a higher order“ belongs to this relation of the higher to the lower. Basically it seems to us that - apart from the fact that it appears to be without justified basis in experience this theory does not answer the question of the essence or that of the relation of mind and body, which it is intended to do according to Spann (143). For in that it introduces a third element between mind and body, the „immaterial roots of matter,“ it must clarify not only the relation of this element to mind, but also its relation to „gross matter.“ These relations, however, pose the same problems as simple Dualism, if not still greater problems. On many points this theory contains in an original way - though also in a less clear way - a notion similar to the traditional anima-forma-corporis doctrine and the view of the soul as „substantial form,“ to which we will return. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 211 B. The Equivocation of the Expression „Dualism“ as Major Obstacle to Progress in the Philosophic Discussion of Body and Soul Few factors are as damaging to the objective investigation of the body-soul problem as the lack of distinction between radically different meanings of the term „Dualism.“ In most discussions of the body-soul problem, the term „Dualism“ is usually used disparagingly (Schlette), rarely commendingly, many times also with a value-neutral meaning, without being aware of the ambiguous content of the term. 1. A first meaning of „Dualism“ has nothing at all to do directly with the problem of substance. One means by „Dualism“ any position which recognizes a basic distinction between mental and physical data (Shaffer). In this sense, Epiphenomenalists as well as certain Process philosophers could be characterized as „Dualists.“ Within this weak meaning of Dualism, which brackets the problem of substance, very different views can again be distinguished, which run parallel to those to be discussed in what follows (3ff.), without being based on a substantial distinction between body and soul. 2. A second sort of „Dualism“ distinguishes body and soul as two different substances. One can characterize this philosophic position as the classical view of the essence of body and soul which is, however, to be distinguished from all further theses of individual thinkers that often crystallize around it. It was held by Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, Descartes, Malebranche and many other thinkers. To a certain degree, even Aristotle (at least with respect to the nous or mind) and certainly also Thomas Aquinas must be added, who expressly characterizes man as composite of a spiritual and a corporeal substance (Summa Theologiae, I. q. 75). Leibniz, Wolff, Bolzano, Geyser and many other philosophers as well advocate a Dualism in this sense. Dualism in this sense presupposes Dualism in the first sense, but non vice-versa. We attempted (1973, and above) to ground this Dualism anew, combining it with a more complete affirmation of the unity of man (Cf. below. pp. 134ff.). 3. „Dualism“ in a third sense is to be found in all views in which the affirmation of the substantial distinction between body and soul (or the affirmation of the essential distinction of physical and psychic being) goes hand in hand, not with a radical denial of the unity of man or of the real connection of body and soul, but with a deficient The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 212 understanding, indeed a partial compromising of this unity. „Dualism“ in this sense has „objectively“ a negative meaning (even if those who use the term in this sense fail to perceive this). Plato or Plotinus can be characterized as „Dualists“ of this sort, since they do not take sufficient account of the essential correspondence and unity between soul and body in some of their conceptions of the body as „tomb of the soul,“ on transmigration and on the soul as purely spiritual substance, which possesses a complete essence (species) in itself. (In the Timaeus and elsewhere, Plato develops a very different positive understanding of the body which had also its impact on Neoplatonism). This view was attacked and corrected already by Aristotle. It was criticized in the twentieth century by various authors as „Angelism,“ and replaced by different conceptions of the essence of man as „incarnated spirit“ rather than as pure spirit (soul) hindered by the body. A completely different sort of „Dualistic“ contraction of the unity of man is found in Psycho-physical Interactionism (Descartes, Popper, Polten, Eccles). If it turns out that the phenomenon of the lived body in general , body feeling, sense perception, expression etc. cannot possibly be explained as mere causal interaction, this „Dualism“ would also be shown to be a constriction. In this view the human body is interpreted more or less radically as mere material substance The Phenomenologists justifiably react to this (cf. above, pp. 39 ff.). Unfortunately their reaction is frequently burdened by an identification of this third sense of „Dualism“ with the first two (cf. E. Straus, G. Marcel, M. Merleau-Ponty, E. Husserl, R. Zaner et al.). And indeed, the great merit of dualism in the third sense is that it discovers the central truth contained in the first and/or second kind of dualism. Yet it is no way proven that Dualism in the first two senses leads necessarily to Dualism in this third sense which jeopardizes the full unity of man and misrepresents expression, perception, and many other dimensions of the „lived body“ and of man’s intentional acts. But a resulting of the first two forms of dualism in the third is insinuated, since the meaning of the term „Dualism“ is never investigated first. Rather Ryle’s caricature of the „official doctrine“ as „the dogma of the ghost in the machine,“ which really applies partially to Dualism in the third sense, is generally tacitly viewed as an adequate description of Dualism. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 213 „Dualism“ in the third sense, unlike the two first meanings, does not relate to the question of the essence, but to that of the kind of relation of body and soul (Dualism in the third sense presupposes Dualism in the second or at least in the first sense, but not vice-versa.) It is completely different from the classical Dualistic doctrine of the unity of man. 4. As soon as the real connectedness of body and soul (physical and psychic being) is not merely constricted, but - as in Occasionalism - rejected as impossible, we encounter a forth form of „Dualism.“ The critical response to this theory does not properly belong in this book, since this conception is scarcely defended today. (On this matter cf. the present author, 1973, 173-6.) 5. A fifth meaning of „Dualism“ can be used either in a value-neutral or in a value-negative sense, but it always means a view which makes the distinction of body and soul in the light of a value-judgment. In this connection Chirpaz (pp. 101ff.) has aptly spoken of a „dualism axiologique,“ which, to be sure, he only opposes to a „methodical Dualism“ (104ff.). And, interestingly enough, here one speaks of axiological „Dualism“ only when a positive value-judgment is passed on the mind and a negative value-judgment on the body, not vice-versa. Axiological Dualism does not relate to the question of the essential distinctness of body and mind. Indeed, it is compatible with a Two-substance doctrine of mind and body (Plato, Plotinus) as well as with Materialism (Manichaeism). Dualism in this sense also operates only indirectly on a (partial, evaluative) denial of the unity of body and soul. The overcoming of this „Dualism“ in no way involves denying the substantial distinction of body and soul, but showing the values bound up with the body and the unity of man as well as the roots of disvalue and evil which cannot be explained through the body. In our opinion, however, axiological Dualism itself in this sense is also a term which should contain a negative value-judgment of a position. To be sure, one must be wary of marking as a false „Dualism“ every genuine discovery of disvalue connected with the misuse of the body and of sexuality or with bodily infirmity, and every knowledge of the superiority in value of the mind over the body and the defense of the positive meaning of a certain separation or liberation of the mind from the body as it takes place in askesis, for example. Here one must expressly note also that an The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 214 „Axiological Dualism“ in the sense of a consideration of physical and psychic being in terms of value and of an elaboration of the values and disvalues bound up with body and soul has not the least to do with a Manichaean Dualism. 6. A sixth meaning of „Dualism“ relates to the question of the separability of the soul from the body after death. Dualism in this sense can be completely bound up with the encompassing affirmation of the unity of man in life. It presupposes Dualism in the first two meanings, but still goes essentially beyond them. (In chapter 9 of this book we shall defend such a dualism.) 7. Again, „Dualism“ has a totally different meaning if this term relates to a view according to which there would only be two sorts of substance in the world, spiritual and material substance. (On the presentation and critique of this view cf. Plessner, 72 ff.; the present author, 1973, 178 ff.; above, pp. 84 f.) 8. A final sense of „Dualism“ can be set against various forms of „Trialism“ and similar views. „Dualism“ would then posit solely two distinct „parts of man’s being,“ body and soul. Against this, „Trialists“ would add, next to body and soul, spirit, e.g. as a third reality sharply distinguished from the soul. In a very different form, Olivi, Scheler, Frankl and others have defended such a view. Hengstenberg even distinguishes two sets of three essential moments, constituted and constituting (Konstituentien und Konstituierte) in man. Should „Dualism“ in this last sense imply that one takes the distinction between body and soul as the sole distinction of substance within man (whereby, indeed, man as a whole can even be considered a substance), we would advocate a Dualism. However, should „Dualism“ in this sense be identified with the position that the distinction of body and soul is adequate to conceive of the human being properly, and that there would be no essential distinction between merely „psychic“ experiences and acts in man and spiritual experiences and acts, then Trialism is clearly correct, as we shall see below. The (in no way exhaustive) distinction of these different meanings of „Dualism“ represents a first approach to responding to the objection raised above against „Dualism.“ For it is now clear that no total cleavage and diremption of man can be ascribed to „Dualism“ in the second sense - at least not without careful demonstration. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 215 C. Attempts to Reduce All Unity to Identity Much of the apparently self-evident character of those theories which wish to explain the unity of human nature by the identity of body and soul fails if one takes the pains to inquire into and to test basically different kinds of unity as to whether they can all be reduced to identity. A first primary sort of unity certainly rests upon identity. Every entity must be identical with itself - at least at the same time and in the same respect. This is as evident as that every enduring entity (above all the person) can only be one if it remains identical with himself or herself through the whole of his or her duration. Again, other kinds of unity do not consist in identity, but presuppose it. Thus, for example, the organic unity of knowing and willing or the mere co-existence of good and evil in the same person presuppose the identity of the subject in question. It is a completely different matter with those kinds of unity which neither presuppose nor exclude the identity of a self-same bearer. This holds, e.g., for the unity between the act and the object of knowing. A third kind of unity presupposes precisely the diversity of two persons or other substantial beings. This holds for all acts essentially directed to another person, such as promising, jealousy, and many kinds of love and community among persons which presuppose the distinction between persons. The kinds of unity which imply the difference of substances, especially that of persons, are in no way necessarily of lesser meaning than those forms of unity which are grounded in identity. But their specific nature and character of profound union (such as that achieved in love) would simply collapse if the non-identity and difference among persons were dissolved. (This mode of unity is even contrary to the case of one new substance consisting of two incomplete substances which form parts of a whole being.) Here we should also consider that there are two completely different ways in which two substances can form a new unity and a new substance. In the case of the fusion of cells, for example, a new unity is formed which cancels and overcomes the previously existing diversity. In the case of a composite (as in the case of man consisting of body and soul) a new entity or even a new substance arises without the distinction of the substantial „constituents“ of the entity concerned being violated. Rather they remain, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 216 each continuing to possess its proper nature, and do not lose their clear demarcations and boundaries (as also in the analogy of the musical composition in which the melody as something totally new in comparison with the notes still retains each note in its peculiarity). For the understanding of the unity of the human being the paradigm „composite unity,“ not fusion, emerges as the proper archetype. The whole man is a new substance, which consists, however, of two substances (substantial parts) which involve contradictory opposites in all their essential features (extended/non-extended; selfconscious/non-self-conscious; simple/composed, etc.). Body and soul, the two substantial essential parts of the human being, do not flow into one another despite the intimacy of their union. Many acts such as thinking „inhere“ primarily or exclusively in the soul. Other properties (colors, fractures, etc.) are exclusively proper to the body. Still other predicates (laughing, crying, running, speaking) must be ascribed to the whole man as a „third substance,“ as a „composite“ substance. D. The Aporetic Aspect of the Body-Soul Relation The claim of the Epiphenomenalists, that under the presupposition of Dualism the body-soul relation would remain an impenetrable mystery, deserves a further reply. The question how exactly body and mind touch each other is seen by most philosophers as a problem (in Marcel’s terminology), i.e., as something one can „solve.“ As we already briefly indicated (pp. 122f.), not only nearly all forms of Monism, but also many non-substantialist theories which approach either Dualism or Monism, are decisively carried by the hope of solving this riddle and being able to eliminate all unclarity. Thus one attempts to make intelligible the relation between consciousness and body by the opposition of the living to the life-less (Jonas), by the diversity of mere „contexts“ (Zaner, 1978), by mere noemata of the transcendental ego (Husserl; Reininger; Strasser; Vesey, 40ff., 109ff.; Hoche, who wishes to link Ryle’s Behaviorism with Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy in a „purely noematic Phenomenology“), by the constituting-constituted peculiarity of the lived body (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Zaner, 1964), by mere diversity of „categories“ (Engelhardt) or „aspects“ (Ornstein), etc. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 217 Many Dualists (e.g. Ducasse, 430ff.; Conrad-Martius, 1963, 114) deny that there is any peculiar problem and especially any mystery bound up with the peculiarity of the relation between body and soul. Such authors criticize Driesch, Adrian, Jones and other such authors for claiming to see a mystery here because, according to them, this relation is a matter of a completely natural and intelligible relation and of a mode of causality which might be no more incomprehensible than, e.g., mechanical causality (Ducasse). Over against all these positions, we presented (1973) an answer to the body-soul problem in the second and third sense which sought to keep free from a false Rationalism as well as a false Irrationalism found in all the views mentioned. Over against false Irrationalism, it must be affirmed that neither the substantial diversity of body and soul accessible to philosophical knoweldge, nor its inner link that manifests itself in the phenomenon of the lived body, nor the essence of radically different body-soul relations are rationally unknowable. Against false Rationalism it might be emphasized that, as Augustine and Newman already observed, the exact mode of contact between body and mind in man is a natural mystery or an aporia. And indeed it is accessible to philosophical knowledge in the sense of Socratic knowing of his own non-knowing that it would be impossible, not merely factually-empirically, but also in principle, for present human knowledge to penetrate exhaustively the exact connection between body and soul. The latter can be grasped both on the basis of insight into the in-principle limitation of human knowledge, and into the immense strangeness of this connection which binds together into unity two substantial parts of man which do have radically different essential attributes and whose exact link, as far as its ultimate „how“ is concerned, is not given in any experience. Perhaps one could view this impossibility of penetrating the ultimate connection between body and soul as a special case of a much more universal limitation of knowledge, in consequence of which man as such may not encompass with his mind and completely comprehend the ultimate metaphysical ground of things, e.g. the relation between essence and existence in every entity, between freedom and contingency, motion and the infinite divisibility of the continuum, and so forth. In the attempt to grasp any entity in its ultimate How and Whence, despite all knowledge that is granted him, man encounters his limits. At the „bottom“ of the questions what time, motion, matter, the person or a being as such is, it seems to us there always lie certain aporiai The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 218 (perplexities) for human knowing in the face of which an ultimately comprehensive explanation of reality is impossible for man contrary to what Kant or Hegel thought with respect to - at least - the questions of „pure reason,“ which Kant believed to be completely answerable by human reason, while Hegel extended the ambition of such a comprehensive explanation even to history and to the totality of Being (God-World). A Rationalistic desire to solve the body-soul problem completely is as far from our position as an Irrationalist denial of elementary and absolutely certain knowledge about accessible data regarding the body-mind problem. Even in knowing of one’s own nonknowing there lies a rational contribution to knowledge. The objections which many critics of this standpoint have raised mostly betray a disregard and misreading of our explanations (1973) (as if we wanted to declare the body-soul problem as such as inaccessible to rational analysis or to introduce a religious category, instead of a precise philosophically conceived category of „natural mystery,“ of aporia). E. Rationally Given and Not Given, Directly Given and Indirectly Inferred Body-Soul Relations The body-soul problem in the sense of different body-soul relations accessible to reason was scarcely ever accorded an in-depth treatment in the history of philosophy. Moreover, in the measure in which it was treated, it was scarcely distinguished from the question of the ultimate How and the ground of possibility of the unity between body and soul. Access to most of the inexhaustible intelligible aspects of the body-soul relation was thereby closed and they were treated merely in terms of their capacity to serve as a solution to the body-soul problem in the narrowest sense. One considered, for example, causal interaction the decisive, or even the sole relation between body and soul, and at the same time treated this relation above all in terms of how this interaction might be explained (cf. above, pp. 120ff.). Or one accepted the thesis of a Parallelism between body and soul which would be guaranteed by pre-established harmony, or by the Occasionalist thesis as explanations of the riddle how the body-soul relation is to be ultimately thought. At the same time one thought that the mere parallelism which is accepted between physical and psychic being could constitute and explain the peculiarity of all body-soul relations. Thus one became completely blind to the The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 219 difference of the two questions we distinguished (1973) and did not recognize the independence of the question last raised from the former one. Even Bergson (9/1913) who in his investigation of the peculiarity and the different dimensions of the body-soul relation was further advanced than most of his predecessors, reduced the number of conceivable types of body-soul relations within Dualism to a few (253). Let us therefore turn to the problem of the many levels of the rationally given forms of body-soul relation. (The ensuing systematic investigation of the issues themselves will again prove fruitful for the historical-critical analysis.) On the basis of an inquiry into these clearly given body-soul relations, not only can we more adequately get to know the essence of man, but we can also give a partial rational answer to the body-soul problem in the second sense. Within the intelligible body-soul relations we can distinguish quite generally two kinds: those which are immediately given, and those which can merely be known indirectly on the basis of proofs. Again, within those directly given within experience, we can distinguish conscious and non-conscious relations. There are, first of all, types of consciously experienced relations to the body which are given in experience and are directly accessible in their evident diversity to philosophical inquiry. The common elements in the essence of these conscious relations to the body are best illuminated by a comparison with the unconscious, not directly given body-relations - if we compare, for example, the conscious givenness of the body while swimming in the sea with the non-conscious relation between this experience and brainprocesses which are bound up with it. The first relation is consciously experienced, the second not at all. It even belongs to the essence of the first sort of relation to the body to be consciously experienced. It could not exist at all without being consciously experienced in its specific peculiarity. The second sort of relation, on the contrary, is not merely compatible with not being consciously experienced, but it belongs to its meaning in a two-fold way not to be consciously experienced. First, such relations (e.g. that between brain as condition and experience as conditioned) cannot possibly be themselves conscious relations. We could indeed possess an immediate consciousness of them which, however, would not turn them into conscious relations (as our bones do not become conscious entities because The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 220 we have consciousness of them). Clearly, the fact that we have consciousness of a mathematical proportion, does not make the latter into a conscious relation or that we are conscious of an entity does not result in that entity becoming conscious itself. Secondly, it belongs to the meaning of these relations that we do not even possess a consciousness of them as objects of some perception. It would be an intolerable burden of our conscious life to have an exact detailed knowledge or even an immediate perceptual consciousness of the relation between our consciousness and the processes in our ten thousand million neurons together with their synaptic connections. Further, we find within each of the two kinds of body-soul relation an entirely different perfection peculiar to it. Many of the unconscious and not directly given bodysoul relations, as empirical experience and science disclose to us, are factually indispensable for all human conscious and spiritual life (at least during this life and as far as empirical scientific research can tell). Many of these relations are significant as indispensable presupposition for consciousness. However, the significance of brainprocesses and of other bodily functions for conscious life does not reach into the essence and inner meaning of our conscious life as such. Likewise this kind of relation cannot be known as deeply significant, let alone necessary, either on the basis of insight and intuitive understanding, or on the basis of proof, but has a purely factual character. In this sort of relation between body (brain processes and the like) and soul (conscious experiences) literally two different worlds rebound off of one another. Further, while the factual relation involved here can be known in many of its aspects, the exact peculiarity, indeed even the ultimate possibility of this relation remains an aporia (a natural mystery) and is manifested in its factuality only by experience. The conscious relations to the body, on the contrary, are indeed often not so indispensably necessary for our mental life and our bodily existence as brain processes. Making this statement, however, we do not intend to call into question that sense perception, e.g., and the bodily conscious relation it involves play, at least genetically, as central a role for the psychicspiritual awakening of the person as brain processes.) For this they possess a completely different sort of perfection. They constitute an integral component of the specifically human body-soul relation which bears a higher sense and value. Besides, the different kinds of conscious relations to the body possess a high degree of intelligibility. We can The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 221 often penetrate into their intelligible and essentially necessary peculiarity and grasp their specific meaning and value. There are also non-conscious and still highly meaningful relations between soul and body (e.g. the relation of expression or essential correspondence between soul and body). While these relations, together with conscious relations, are the home of the completely human, meaningful, and highly intelligible linkage between consciousness and the body, they are essentially non-conscious relations to the body. (As we shall see, also relations between consciousness and body that are themselves not conscious relations are decisive moments which constitute the unity between man’s consciousness and body: e.g., expression.) To be sure, we can have consciousness of these meaningful non-conscious relations, above all in other persons; even an immediate perceiving and understanding of these relations (for example, of the expression of kindness or concern in another person’s face) is possible, without a „burden“ arising for our conscious life. An unbearable burden for our conscious life would arise, however, if we were conscious of all relations between brain and consciousness. In many cases - e.g. in the expression of morally good behavior in one’s own body - we should, though, possess no awareness whatsoever of these relations. Conscious as well as non-conscious intelligible relations between body and soul share the feature that they can be immediately known experientially as well as philosophically in their specific peculiarity. Next to directly given soul-body relations there are also those which can only be inferred indirectly through proof. This holds above all for the relation between the central nervous system on the one hand and consciousness on the other. These relations are in no way directly given experientially, but we can infer many empirical and a priori truths about these relations. In such inferences we choose as point of departure the essence and the existence of conscious experiences, acts or directly given body-soul relations on the one hand, and, on the other, empirically apprehensible brain processes. From this point of departure, we can draw conclusions with respect to those body-soul relations that are not directly given. For example, if free acts are given clearly as such and are bound up with brain-processes, the latter can never be the causes of the former, but only their conditions, parallel appearances, consequences and the like. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 222 F. The Multi-leveled Character and the Three Basic Directions of Body-Soul Relations Within the directly given as well as the only indirectly inferred body-soul relations we find extremely different types. The distinctions between these types go in completely different directions, so that it is difficult to classify them meaningfully. We follow, in the following explanations, the division we have previously proposed (1973). 1. Dynamic Relations from the Lived Body (and/or Material Body) to the Soul First of all, there are dynamic relations between body and soul which include a certain directedness from the lived body (or material body) to the soul (center of consciousness). To begin with, many kinds of bodily experiences and feelings must be mentioned in this context, which is to be strictly distinguished from sense-perception (cf. Conrad-Martius, 1916; Seifert, 1973, 240ff.). These experiences clearly contain a conscious relation to the body, are in a certain sense experienced „in the body,“ can even be precisely localized in the body, and are further experienced as stemming from the body, as the „voice of the body“ (von Hildebrand). In the case of man, such experiences are personal, even if they are not also spiritual/mental. But they are immersed into the personal and spiritual life of man; they can be formed by it or affect and dethrone it; they can express it, and they are certainly bodily experiences (pain, pleasure) of the person. The bodily experiences of man are thus also distinguished essentially from similar experiences of the animal, a fact which manifests itself in the moral relevance of human bodily experiences, especially with regard to physical suffering or in sexuality. The movement from the body to the soul and other characteristics belong, in diverse modifications, to this group of body-mind relations in man. Sometimes, this directedness from the body to the mental and feeling Self characterizes merely the unconscious relation between body and mind, for example when some tumor in the brain, without being experienced by us, causes us headaches. In other cases of specifically bodily experiences and feelings this directedness from the body to the mind is itself experienced and part of our conscious relation to the body: for The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 223 example when we warm our fingers on a burner and feel how the warmth penetrates our body and conscious experience, proceeding from the burner. These conscious bodily experiences likewise presuppose an essentially nonconscious, causal relation. This relation is not itself a conscious one, although we naturally can have consciousness of it. In many cases this causal relation itself is experienced (above all when bodily experiences, e.g. bodily pains or pleasure, are bound up with the perception of an object satisfying or harming us - e.g. a stone crushing our hand). This experiential grasp of a causal relation occurs in a special experience of „suffering or undergoing something“ and in an accompanying rational grasp of the causal bond between the perceived object and its effect upon our body or our bodily feeling. In other cases, e.g. in the case of nerve processes causing bodily feelings, these causal relations must be inferred on the one hand from the peculiarity of the given „passive“ experience and on the other from the principle of causality (without mediating perception). It is a completely different matter in the case of purely or predominantly psychic states and experiences, as of euphoria based on alcohol consumption or of physiologically conditioned depression. These psychic states lack a conscious and adequate relationship to their object which is the mark of rational acts of knowledge and judgments, meaningful good acts of will, etc. They lack furthermore a feature of formal rational structure possessed even by irrational judgments or volitions: namely a merely intentional (consciously meaningful) relation to an object (although they can obviously influence intentional acts in many ways or be their object). These psychic states in principle and according to their essence permit us to appeal to causes, especially also to physiological causes. In many cases, e.g. in euphoria after an immoderate consumption of alcohol, there even exists an immediate plausibility of the physiological causation of these psychic states, not merely by knowing of their regular coming to pass - e.g. after consumption of alcohol - but also by reason of, for example, some effects of alcohol that are being felt as such and at the same time manifest themselves in many bodily feelings. Still in other cases the physiological cause is knowable merely with high probability and indirectly purely through inductive inference on the basis of empirical observation. According to their essence, psychic states are directed to the body in a completely different way than bodily feelings. First, they are not experienced „in the body“ (Scheler, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 224 von Hildebrand). Secondly, they cannot be the basis for a perception of the exterior world as sensations can (Conrad-Martius). Thirdly, these psychic states, in contrast to bodily experiences, frequently raise the claim of being motivated and not physiologically caused (cf. the discussion to this inquiry of two kinds of bodily dependency in von Hildebrand 1964, 61ff.; the present author 1973, 222ff.). A third and much more radical kind of causal influence of the body upon the soul is present when physiological processes destroy the capacity of psychic-spiritual experiences and acts. The various kinds of physiologically caused mental illnesses, cretinism, etc. show the factuality of this dependency and represent the apparently strongest argument in favor of Materialism or Epiphenomenalism (Rohracher). Although here the frail nature of man as a „thinking reed“ appears, a more exact analysis shows the untenability of the Materialist conclusion. First of all, from the fact that certain causes (bombs, physiological causes) can destroy another reality (a palace, the capacity to think), it cannot be inferred that the same sort of cause can also positively produce the realities in question. Bombs can destroy a palace but it may take architects and geniuses to build it. Secondly, three kinds of causes of the destruction of something must be distinguished. Many causes destroy something simply from without and directly (as bombs destroy a cathedral). Other causes destroy a reality not directly, but only through destroying its condition (e.g. the destruction of an automobile stops the flight of a man). Again other causes destroy something „from within“ the very being in which the destroyed entity exists, since either what is being destroyed here are also the positive causes of the given entity or the cause of destruction is the subject of the entity concerned (thus a free person can eradicate faulty behavior and thus „destroy“ it.) Consequently, even with the proof of the presence of some sort of cause of destruction, it is in no way determined yet which sort of cause and radicality of destruction is in question. (Cf. below, p. 143ff.) A further form of causal influence of the body upon the psychic life of man is present when physiological causes are responsible for irrational moments in psychicspiritual acts. (On this and other kinds of causal influence of the body upon consciousness, cf. the present author 1973, 219 ff., 176 ff.) As became already clear in the example of the lived relation to the body in bodily feelings, purely causal dynamic influences from the body to the soul must be The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 225 distinguished from completely different dynamic relations from the body to consciousness which can in no way be reduced to causal ones. Above all, to this category belong those relations in which a „mediating role“ belongs to the body in the service of receptive intentional acts. These relations, present in sense perception and in the acts based directly upon it, presuppose the first kind of relation in that psychic-physical causes call forth physiological effects which for their part are presupposed for corresponding conscious experiences. Thus also here the dynamic direction goes from the body to the soul. Yet in marked distinction from body-sensations as such, psychic experience in perception and acts based on it can still not be understood as a mere final link within a causal chain. Psychic experience here stands in a meaningfully conscious, intentional relation to its object and depends for its content on the peculiarity of this object (Brentano, Husserl, von Hildebrand, the present author). My seeing a car that almost kills me is not simply an effect of physiological processes, as if the seeing were a mere head-ache. Rather the physiological processes here serve as media for the cognitive contact with the car which I see because it actually is passing by me on the street. The physiological processes and the body serve here as media to enable me to see the car and to render it possible that my act of seeng be shaped by the real car that approaches me. Such specifically intentional object-dependency cannot possibly be explained as merely the causal effect of physiological causes without violating the facts and without self-contradiction (cf. Straus; the present author, 1973). For if one denies the primary dependence of perception and knowledge on its object, one denies knowledge itself. Thus the physiological processes in the body that precede knowledge only have the role of making possible or mediating the object-relation of the cognitive act. Here it is partly a matter of an astonishing bond between a purely causal order and an intentional order (in the role of the body as „unconscious medium“ of sense perception), partly of the consciously experienced role of the body as medium of sense perception (ConradMartius, Pluegge, Jonas, the present author, et al.). Other relations within the first direction of dynamic body-soul relations include the role of the body in the knowledge of other persons, or as the „place of the real attainment or of being really reached and touched (des Erreichtwerdens) of the person“ (cf. Scheler 1912; Lorscheid, 44ff.; the present author 1973, 244ff.). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 226 In the knowledge we gain of other persons, the role of the body goes far beyond being a medium of sense perception. Here sense perception in its turn becomes a starting point and medium for extremely complex groups of cognitive acts, for example the acts of understanding the meanings of language, objective thoughts or meaning-units expressed in language (such as judgments, questions, etc.), as well as the acts of the other person which manifest themselves as sources of the other person’s thinking and uttering the respective thoughts he expresses in language, etc. Husserl was speaking in this context of a Kundgabefunktion (manifesting/revealing function) of language in virtue of which not just the objective meaning-contents (as in virtue of the meaningfunction, die Bedeutungsfunktion, of language) but also the conscious life and acts of the speaking subject become manifested through language. And these acts, and thereby also the person who is their subject, become known to us by our understanding the type of act and subject that stand at the root of expressing objective meaning-contents in speech. For this type of knowledge sense perceptions play only an indirectly supportive but nevertheless decisive role which allows us to consider the body also as medium of our knowledge of other persons. To be sure, the intellectual acts in which we grasp the meaning-contents of language and even more those cognitions in which we understand the acts of thinking, commanding, questioning, or willing, etc. that underlie other person’s linguistic utterances, are more losely connected with the body than sense perceptions. Nevertheless, also here sense perceptions as well as brain functions assume a medial role through which our getting acquainted with the objects and other persons occurs. The body becomes here an instrument and transmitter of receptive knowledge on many levels or conscious and non-conscious body-mind relations. Still more profound is the role of the body as the real anthropological „place“ where the person is actually reached through the love or hatred, etc. of other persons. Also here what happens to and in our body constitutes the starting point so that the dynamic relation goes from the body or through the body to the soul, to the person himself. Yet here the body is more than just a medium; it is the place where the person himself is consciously and really present and therefore can be reached. In the handshake of the friend who reaches us and assures us of his condolences, in the kiss, in which a person conveys his love to us, in the sexual sphere when a person is reached in his own The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 227 body by the presence and expression of love of his spouse, the role of the body goes beyond being a medium for receptive knowledge. Here the body, as the place of incarnation of the person, becomes also the place where he or she is actually and truly reached. he body as actual place of being reached by another is, helas, also found when a human person is insulted or tortured by other persons. Also in a person being mocked, spit at, tormented and the source of a person’s passion, this most profound ‘receptive’ or ‘passive’ role of the human body discloses itself: the body as enshrining the soul (person) becomes the locus of a person being reached and affected. There are no doubt countless other specific body-mind relations that fall under this first categorey of dynamic relations from the body to the soul. What was said is sufficient, however, to realize the immense significance, differentiation and diversity of this first group of body-mind relations and the impossibility of reducing all of them to a mere psycho-physical causal interaction 2. „Static Relations“ Between Body and Soul As recent works and anthologies (Spicker; Bernath, 56f.) emphasize again and again, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas especially have called attention, against a false Platonism, to the essential „fit“ between the human body and the human soul. This relation, also impressively investigated especially by Gregory of Nyssa and Hegel, is of a „static nature“ and cannot possibly be reduced to a causal relation or to other dynamic relations between the body and consciousness. The human voice, the human mouth in its suitability for meaningful speech, the human upright posture and the consequent freeing of the hands for work and for spiritually creative action, the whole „ineffable spiritual tone“ (Hegel) of the human body shows the original fundamental relatedness of the human body to the human person especially investigated by Portmann and Hengstenberg. Likewise the conscious relation to space through the body (Husserl, Scheler, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Marcel, Lorscheid, Zaner, Tymieniecka, Lingis), to which we already referred (pp. 39ff.), and the relation of expression, because of which the human body as such is a visibly perceptive manifestation of spiritual personhood might be mentioned here (cf. Plessner; Hengstenberg, who in a special way places this relation in the center of his philosophy of the body, 225ff.; von Hildebrand 1977, 135ff.; The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 228 the present author 1973, 251ff.). This general expression of personhood in the human body is analogous to the more specific phenomenon of expression to be treated below. We might single out one kind of these static relations between body and consciousness since it is especially significant to treat it in some detail: the role of the body as condition of the psychic-spiritual life of man. Philosophic reflection begins on the basis of the empirically established fact that physiological processes are decisive presuppositions for the psychic and spiritual life of man. But what do we mean here by the body being a presupposition or condition of mental life and of mental acts? First of all, we must distinguish between a (necessary) condition and an efficient cause of something. A state of awakening is, e.g., a condition for mathematical knowledge, but surely not its efficient cause. A condition is that without which something else would not exist and, indeed, the pure sine qua non as such. On the other hand, a cause (as causa efficiens) is more, namely the power through which something exists, which brings something forth and makes it be. If it can be shown that the spiritual acts of man cannot possibly have physiological efficient causes (cf. above, pp. 86ff.), then it can be shown, on the basis of the distinction between condition and efficient cause which goes back to Plato and was developed by Aristotle, Bergson and others, (cf. the present author, 1973, 256ff.), that physiological causes can be presupposed for the spiritual acts of man only as conditions, not as efficient causes. A second essential distinction is that of absolutely necessary metaphysical conditions and merely empirically-factually necessary conditions. An absolutely necessary condition is based upon the necessary essence of something and cannot be removed in any possible world (Leibniz). In this sense, the existence of a subject, e.g., is a condition for conscious acts. Certain brain-processes are merely empirically necessary, and not absolutely necessary conditions for human spiritual life. While in the first case we can see that a condition is presupposed with unalterable necessity for a certain entity, in the second case not only are we unable to see such necessity, but we understand that the condition is not an absolute necessity. In the case of the relation between brain and consciousness, the lack of absolute necessity of the relation of condition is shown from the following consideration. First, as Descartes already emphasized, here it is a matter of two distinct contingent substances, of which one (or processes in it) is the condition for another (or for its acts - cf. above, pp. 79ff.). But it is understandable that one contingent substance The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 229 can never be an absolutely necessary condition for another contingent substance and for its acts (only for certain relations). In order to attain this knowledge it is, of course, presupposed (a fact to which Descartes paid too little attention) that thinking is not necessarily an act of the human person qua composite as laughing is, e.g. But this can indeed be known. Another way which leads to this knowledge takes its point of departure from the fact that the conditions in these cases are not integral parts of the conditioned or do not enter into the conditioned itself (as freedom in relation to morality). 3. Dynamic Relations from the Soul to the Body Since nearly all relations of soul to body presuppose intentional and/or spiritual acts, it is appropriate to preface the following section by a brief attempt to ground three theses: 1. Intentional and spiritual acts, according to their very essence, cannot be (causally) produced by physiological causes; 2. According to the essence of spiritual acts, it is certainly possible and plausible for them to influence the body in diverse ways; indeed this must even be accepted, not simply on the basis of considerations of essence, but also in terms of diverse empirical facts and basic human experiences as such. (For the distinction between empirical and a priori/essentially necessary facts in the bodysoul problematic, cf. the present author, 1973); 3. It is compatible with the essence of psychic-spiritual acts to be connected with empirical-physiological conditions. Ad 1: With respect to the first thesis, we have already presented the evidence for it in the context of the proofs for the substantiality of the human soul (cf. pp. 86ff.). What was said there about knowing and willing could be shown without difficulty to hold as well for all other spiritual-intentional acts such as concept-formation, artistic creation, love, etc., at least insofar as all these acts presuppose knowledge, but also insofar as they are meaningfully suggested, motivated or grounded in other ways by the object (cf. our work, 1973, 91ff., 269ff., and the literature cited there). Ad 2: With respect to the second thesis, it is clear from the fact that psychic realities are real in the full sense of the term and from the substantiality of their bearer shown earlier, that they can be efficient causes of bodily effects or can stand in other real relations to physical entities. If it is clear from the investigation of many human bodily experiences that causal influence as well as other influences of psychic being The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 230 upon bodily being are continually experienced, nothing prevents the recognition of the reality of such dynamic relations of the soul to the body. Indeed, causal dynamic influences from the soul to the body could only be contested by flying in the face the facts of experience, as Jonas has pointed out. That there are both consciously experienced as well as unconscious causal operations of psychic experiences, acts or attitudes on the body, is not merely established by psychosomatic medicine (e.g. Alexander), but also by many daily experiences. Once one gives up the ill founded thesis, stemming from a mechanical world view and taken over by twentieth century Epiphenomenalism, that the material universe must be a causal system closed in itself, there is no difficulty in recognizing this fact. In our view, the deterministic conception of the material world as a closed causal system rests on a confusion (also involved in Kant’s antinomy of freedom and causality) between the universal principle of causality (every contingent entity and every change must have a sufficient cause), the law of causality present in nature (an event is produced by another „according to a universal rule“), and a falsely postulated „universal law of causality“ according to which all causality should be reduced to causality according to laws of nature. Thus it is not recognized that in the order of causes freedom stands in the highest place, or that between the causality operative according to natural laws in a limited region of being and human causality in the world through freedom there is no opposition, but an organic relation of reciprocal presupposition (Ingarden 1970). 96 If this is once recognized, it is also not necessary to hold with Lersch (9/1964, 11-116) that there is no causal relation of consciousness to the body, but only a relation rooted in a life-ground (Lebensgrund) which is the basis of the multi-levelled constitution of the person and of the psycho-physical totality. But Lersch does not demonstrate the exact nature of this life-ground. The third thesis has already been discussed and rationally grounded (pp. 143ff.). We have already gone into detail elsewhere into a critical discussion of J. M. R. Delgado’s97 objections against the first thesis, objections supposedly based on empirical investigation but in reality rooted in false philosophical presuppositions (1969) (the present author, 1973, 276ff.). Delgado experimented with electrodes implanted in 96 97 Roman Ingarden, Von der Verantwortung. Ihre ontischen Fundamente (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam Jun., 1970). J. R. M. Delgado, Physical Control of the Mind. Toward a Psychocivilized Society (New York, 1969). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 231 animals and humans. The patients did not notice the presence of these electrodes and the tests had as their purpose the study as to whether the impulses sent through these electrodes could influence the conscious life of patients. Now nothing we have explained philosophically forbids that such impulses can causally produce non-intentional bodily and psychic experiences such as physical pain, pleasure, or states of tiredness, sleep, or wide awakening, as these tests show. Delgado does not make the distinctions between intentional and non-intentional acts, and not even between reflexes and volitional acts. On the basis of such confusions, he believes that all psychic experiences, including volitional acts and cognitions, can be produced causally by brain processes. In reality, however, his tests prove only that physical states and non-intentional, and non-spiritual psychic phenomena can be thus caused. He studies the effect of stimuli on healing epilepsy, on alleviating physical pain, on suspending neurotic anxiety, on suspending involuntary physical movements (Delgado, 1970, 88, 91 ff.). This only confirms our results. Stimoceivers (electrodes which receive and transmit impulses from, and on, the brain) can also produce motoric effects, muscle contractions, closing our hand, speech deficiencies, etc. which cannot be stopped voluntarily (Delgado, 114, 137), something we find in daily life in cramps, etc., which cannot be prevented by our volitions. Here we do not even find psychic experiences but reflexes, physiological events, etc. It is surprising and proof of a philosophical dilettantism that Delgado interprets these tests as proof that volitional acts re caused by electrical stimuli. For the patient questioned by Delgado said only that the experienced impulse that forced making fists was stronger than his will which intended to prevent making a fist. But this only shows that electrical impulses can lead to physical events such as muscle contractions wich cannot be prevented by the free will but in no way that this will was electrically caused. On the contrary, the patient prfecisely did not will that his hand move or make a fist. No intentional act (such as cognition, happiness of love, joy over end of war, repentance, will to act) is proven in Delgado’s experiments to result from the impulses sent by electrodes, only non-intentional experiences and acts or hallucinations, awakening memopries etc. But also here the experiements do in no way prove that the intentional relation of these experiences to objects are caused electrically but only that the mediating role normally played by sense-organs and the brain to bring us into contact with such physical objects is here exerted by the brain alone: feelings of warmth The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 232 (Delgado, 135), pleasure and sexual pleasure (Delgado, 142 ff.), euphoria (ibid., 143), good mood (ibid., 147), inhibitions (ibid., 155 ff.), disturbances of associations (ibid., 146 ff.). The same is true of countless other brain-dependent disturbances up to cretinism and idocy. Thus these experiments – some of which are highly questionable morally speaking – present an empirical confirmation of the results of a priori philosophical insights, at least they do not contradict them in any way. For the fact that physiological events and non-intentional experiences can have physiological causes is perfectly compatible with their intelligible essence and corresponds also to universal human experience. For they are not rationally engendered by their objects like cognition or motivated by the known characteristics of objects such as moral acts. New in Delgado’s experiments were only the method (stimoceivers) of generating these phenomena physiologically instead doing this by alcohol, drugs, coffee, hammers, etc. These experiments also confirm the need for differentiated interpretations of experiments and for distinguishing conditions and causes of mental events and free acts. For truly rational acts the brain can only provide conditions and never cause them; brain events can onmly impede or disturb the rational and free personal life (by irrational elements or by producing irrational states which incline towards, or motivate certain acts). Never can these acts be electrically produced. Nevertheless, Delgado claims overwhelming consequences of the results of his research for our understanding the human being. Confusing intentional and spiritual forms of happiness and joy with mere non-intentional sates pof pleasure and euphoria, he believes that happiness can now be produced by electrodes; confusing free voluntary dominion over the body with mere muscle contractions, he believes to have proven that human volition can be electrically generated in the psycho-civilized society. He speaks of „electrical activation of the will“ in cases where his experiemnts only prove electrically initiated muscle contractions against the will (ibid., 184 ff.). The confusion here is immense: it is as if someone claimed that he can activate my will with his fist because when his fist approasches my eyelids, these close in virtue of a reflex not in my power. The fact that the same movements (closing my eye-lids) can be innervated also spontaneously by my will, is here confused eith other cases of unfree reflexes which can have the same result. But from the identity of the result we cannot infer to the identity of the cause, which in one case is an involuntary reflex or an electrical stimulation of The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 233 the brain, in other cases free volition. In reality, none of these acts which are characteried by the two discussed moments of spirituality and rationality can be thus prodiced opr have been demonstrated to be generable by electrodes. My will is precisely not thus enegendered and Delgado’s experiments prove this. For the patients did precisely not want to make fists – and did so against their will. They themselves possessed the free auto-determination of their volitional acts – but in spite of their will and against their will the hand moved. This has absolutely nothing to do with an electrical activation of the will. On a much higher level are interpretations given by Delgado to completely different experiments in which indeed it seems as if intentional and volitional acts, as well as anger and anxiety, were electrically produced. While movements of the head or of the legs, even of paralyzed limbs (ibid., 114 ff.) would only physical movements which to produce electrically presents no bigger problem than reflexes, there is a deeper problem in other cases in which the patient claimed that he moved his head for certain motives – but this happened regularly after his receiving electrical impulses via stimoceivers (ibid., 116). Similarly, some patients reported anxiety and fear in the face of something threatening in the room which they could not explain as motive of certain free bodily movements, or they burst out into anger against the experimenting doctor. These experiments present even deeper problems to the philosopher than the electrponically induced hallucinations and memory-awakenings (ibid., 150 ff.), because we all know that hallucinations and dreams as well as memories, though they cannot be explained in their intentional rational contact with objects simply by physiological causes, can be induced and set into motion by irrational causes such as drugs, sleep, other physiologhical disturbances. This apparent physiological causation of such experiences presents also a far deeper problem than mere irrational disturbances or destructions of (impediments to) volitional or free actions or spiritual centers. For causal disturbances of rational acts can evidently be caused by irrational or physiological causes. This is not surprising because the irrational interferences with rational acts (such as disturbances of attention span, intelligence, and perception) are compatible with irrational or brain causation (by lesions, drugs, electrical stimuli) – in contrast to these rational or free acts themselves. However, if Delgado thinks that he has proof that free and rational acts themselves can be electrically produced, this would constitute a major The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 234 objection against our theses regarding the relationship between rational and free acts and the body; this would justify the thesis of Delgado that the will depends on neurological events (ibid., 185). Here we are not faced with the simple logical mistake of inferring to the presence of the same cause from the same effect: movement of eylids (which can be caused by electrical impulses)→will. Here it seems instead that the will itself is caused electrically. But this is no so. The experiments Delgado reports on do not prove that volitions and other rational acts are electrically generated. Often, for example in some cases of anger provoked electrically, we find only a causation of irrational disagreeable states which generate the irrational irritation and irrational moods we all know from experience and which can certainly be caused physicologically or electrically (ibid., 136 ff.) in virtue of psycho-physical causal relations. The actual anger against the physician is on the one hand, dispositionally prepared by the state of irritation, on the other hand is a rational feeling and free actions of angry words because of the awareness of the patient how mean and bad such experiments, forcing on patients very disagreeable states, are. Delgado and his team, on other words, deserved some anger and angry words. Here we have a meaningfully and intentionaly motoivated anger and speech of reprimanding, complaining etc. These are not proven to be caused by the stimuli but are meaningfully motivated by the situation and presuppose the understanding of the difference between having a head-ache because of some fatugue and a physician deliberately inflicting it on us. This is confirmed by a person who said the director of the experiment should immediatly stop because she did not want to have to become mean against him. This shows that this woman was free to will „not to be mean“, that she understood the fact that the leader of the experiment was free to stop, that she wanted not to become angry, etc. (ibid., 139). Delgado sees this at places where he speaks of „our knowledge gap between understanding electrical events at the cellular level and deciphering the chain of phenomena taking place in ... (our mind).“ (ibid., 190; see also ibid., 190-192; 194). On the other hand, he affirms his Darwinistic and Freudian mateialistic and utopian Creed according to which man is wholly dependent on the brain and has no spiritual rational autonomy in relationship to matter and soon will be entirely steered in "„sycho-civilized"“society (ibid., 231 ff.). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 235 There is thus a difference between the effect of feeling pain or fatigued simply by physical causes and feeling and knowing to feel so by the activity of experimntators. In the first case we are just tired and fatigued, in the second we are angry with the doctor who turtures us prompted by his whimsical and unbounded scientific curiosity. Also the movements because of some threats in the room (Delgado, 116 ff., 134 ff.) have a motive, even frequently some hallucinatory noises, images, dark impressions of objects, etc. Here the will to flee is intentionally motivated by believing that such threats exist and not mechanically generated. Many further points have to be raised... Josef Seifert, Leib und Seele. Ein Beitrag zur philosophischen Anthropologie (Salzburg: A. Pustet, 1973), pp. 283-288.xxx As we have already mentioned, we hold as unfounded, and, when applied to living and free beings, as philosophically erroneous, the view which, often claiming to be based on the „principle of the conservation of energy,“ denies any causal operation of psychic upon physical being. On the contrary, there are clearly causal effects of the mind on the body, although the objections held by Lersch as well as by many phenomenologically oriented thinkers against interpreting the body-soul relation exclusively in the light of mere causal interaction, are quite well-grounded. These objections concern not only many static and dynamic relations from body to soul, as already shown, but also many dynamic relations from soul to body, as we shall now see. For many of the dynamic relations which take their beginning in the mind and proceed from it to the body are far more than causal relations whereby the mind produces bodily effects such as an ulcer that is caused by exceeding worries. Already the free and as such lived governance of the body in speaking or acting is much more than a causal action of psychic being upon physical being. Here the conscious act does not merely precede the bodily „effect“ or produce it. Rather the bodily „event“ is the expressly intended goal of free action, at least as a means towards a further end of action; as such, the bodily movement is given as standing in our power and to be realized by us freely and responsibly. The radical novelty of this free and conscious relation to the body in comparison with a mere causal one is shown in that only the will can assume this kind of influence on the body, while also other experiences (e.g., affective experiences) can have many causal bodily effects. It is here a matter of a governance of the body which indeed includes causality (through freedom), but far The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 236 transcends a mere efficient causal relation and contains in itself an objective unconscious as well as an essentially conscious relation to the body. In parenthesis, this free authorship of bodily activities could also serve for a further criticism of the Parallelist and Occasionalist theses because it can never be explained in terms of them. A particularly important dynamic relation from the soul to the body lies in the relation of expression. Here we are not thinking of the „static relation of expression“ discussed above, in which the general essence of man or that of masculinity or femininity expresses itself in the human body, but of the fact that the lasting qualities and attitudes, or the changing experiences and acts of individual persons express themselves in their face or in their voice. It is here a matter not merely of a bodily phenomenon being a sign of something mental or of an indirectly inferred relation between conscious being and the body, which would have to be accepted merely based on the observation of facts. What is here in question is much rather a relation that is directly given and highly intelligible, although it is a striking and in some respects incomprehensible phenomenon. Within the visible and the audible realm we find a noble quality and beauty or an ugliness which are emanations from something purely spiritual: a gracious gaze full of love or an ugly and dirty look, a happy or a cynical smile, a suspicious or a brave, a conniving, fearful or a hopeful look, a kind or harsh tone of voice, etc. What are the characteristics of this relationship of expression? In the first place, we do not deal here with a conventional relation in which we decree in a special act that such and such a physical sign or object shall signify this or that mental phenomenon. It is not necessary to make such choices, rather the phenomenon of expression, although it can be modified by conventions in China or Europe, etc., is quite universal and natural. This is evident since we find this phenomenon of expression already in small children who are also able to understand many qualities of expression without ever having been taught their quality or meaning. Moreover, we could in no way arbitrarily change the relation between a specific physical appearance and the mental or psychic content it expresses. We could never choose the expression of utter despair in a voice or face to become the expression of happiness and joy, or that of wild cruelty to become expression of softness and kindness. Rather the link in virtue of which a certain physical gestalt The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 237 expresses a certain attitude, feeling or character trait is non-arbitrary and nonconventional. Further, the relation between body and mind in expression is not some mere link of a given meaning with a content as when a given word means a certain feeling. Not only is this relation between a word and its meaning conventional and not natural but the content that is only meant by a word does not manifest itself through the word, it does not become intuitively given through the word. Rather, the meaning of the word has to be learned and studied. The link between a word and its meaning is comparatively external. When love, happiness or despair express themselves bodily, however, they become manifest; their content truly ex-presses itself and unfolds itself intuitively before us. A painter, pantomime, or actor can exhibit before us through movement, voice, tone, facial expression, etc. a highly differentiated world of psychic life. We also can learn in the bodily expression of other persons many qualities which we never know from our own experience. This applies to negative qualities such as brutality, rage, stupidity, pride, as well as to nobility, charity, femininity, etc. which may express themselves in a real but also in a painted face in such a way that we are surprised by the new qualities in personal consciousness which become apparent to us through their expression. Hence it is impossible to claim that we know about the qualities of expression only through observing how we look or which muscle-contractions go on in us when we express certain feelings. 98 This body language and the expression of the inner life of a person can also involve actions such as caressing, kissing, sexual donation. Here, too, there are countless distinctions between the objective logic and meaning of this body-language and the subjective qualities that can be expressed in it. For example, it lies in the objective meaning of the sexual act that it should express a certain totality of a mutual gift and love. But this act and the way in which a person engages in it can also express brutality, meanness, a dirty attitude of the rapist, a brutal disrespect, some diabolical coldness, etc. The relation in virtue of which the body expresses spiritual qualities is clearly a matter of a relation from psychic, spiritual being to the body (which does not exclude Compare Michael Waldstein, „Expression and Knowledge of Other Persons,“ Aletheia II (1981), 124-129; Ästhetik. 1. Teil. Gesammelte Werke, Band V (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1977), pp. 163 ff.; Ästhetik. 2. Teil. Über das Wesen des Kunstwerkes und der Künste. Nachgelassenes Werk. Gesammelte Werke Band VI, (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1984), pp. 268 ff., 337 ff. 98 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 238 the possibility of a given expression being of merely apparent spiritual qualities. Normally, however, a man appears brutal or loving because he possesses these characteristics.) The relation of expression is never itself a conscious relation. It is of its very essence that it is a purely objective non-conscious relation like similarity, analogy, and others such as that between beauty and its bearer. Moreover, normally we do not have in ourselves any consciousness of this relation at all and also can influence it only at times, in part and indirectly. For all relations to other persons, for community, for human knowledge of other persons, for the existence of the theater and music this relation (examined by Scheler 1973, 209ff.; Lorscheid; Hengstenberg; von Hildebrand 1977; the present author 1973 and others) is of fundamental significance. Although it presupposes the causal action of the soul upon the body, the relation of expression itself cannot possibly be explained as a causal relation or in analogy with any other discussed relation between body and soul. Indeed, the most intimate union of body and soul is present where one and the same „total phenomenon“ (Gesamtphänomen), one and the same activity or one and the same act has both a „bodily“ and also a „psychic“ side, and that in indivisible unity, so that we must speak of one act of the whole human being. This confronts us both within the static relations of body to soul as well as within both basic dynamic modes: in bodily feelings, sense perception, smiling or laughing about something funny, in speaking, acting or really being touched as person in the body. Here it is not the case that the act or the total phenomenon could in principle exist completely without entering into relation with the body, as in thinking, loving, worshipping, etc. Rather it is the case in the instances mentioned that a cooperative role and a peculiar being drawn into the psychic-spiritual life is granted to the body. In many instances (in opposition even to sense perception as such), it is the case that certain activities and acts cannot be ascribed to a purely spiritual being as such, but are primordially human (as laughing). Bergson (82/1947), Hengstenberg, Buytendijk and many others have pointed this out. (On the analysis of other body-soul relations within the third - dynamic - „direction,“ cf. the present author, 1973, 307ff.) The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 239 G. Application of the Results of the Systematic Analysis of Body-Soul Relations to the Critical Discussion of Contemporary Views In connection with the investigation of three basically different „directions“ of body-soul relations and their many subdivisions, we return to the critical discussion of various dualistic and monistic views. Idealism of every stripe cannot really explain the various dynamic body-soul relations clearly experienced as running from the body [Leib (Körper)] to consciousness. If the body (Husserl, Reininger et al.) is conceived of as merely constituted by (transcendental) consciousness, many of these relations are completely unintelligible. Still more, the clear phenomenological givenness of these relations will be plainly contradicted. How should these body-soul relations that are clearly experienced as causal effects of brain disturbances upon consciousness be explained from the point of view of transcendental philosophy? For example, should an entity constituted by the mind which is nothing more than noema (object) of conscious acts, have causal effects upon other similarly constituted objects (empirical subject or soul)? Or must one even hold that transcendental consciousness’ capacity for constitution (which allegedly constitutes empirical objects and subjects) be impeded or limited by the physiological processes which it constituted? (In 2/1976 and various articles the present author attempted to show that Husserl adopted, not only a methodic idealism, as Ricoeur interprets Husserl’s transcendentalism; but a radical genetic-real one. Yet even a methodic idealism contradicts the described data and fails to acknowledge the clear message of their self-given nature.) All forms of Materialism and Epiphenomenalism still more clearly fail to explain the body-soul relations. They can indeed explain many of the dynamic relations (with the limitations mentioned earlier), in which conscious experiences are caused by and depend upon corporeal processes. Still, as Straus already brilliantly showed, senseperception can in no way be explained on materialistic premises. All the more, Materialists or Epiphenomenalists (Ryle, Rohracher, Armstrong, Feigl, Diamat, etc.) must either generally argue away, or doubt, or reinterpret each body-soul relation belonging to the third group in terms of essentially different body-soul relations: they must interpret them as causal operations of two material processes upon each other or The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 240 even as causality within one identical reality (Identity-Theory), as causal relations of matter upon mind or as other radical relations of dependency of consciousness upon matter. But all such relations that dynamically move from matter to mind are clearly distinguished from the relationship of expression or of volitional dominion over the body. Indeed, the body-mind relations such as free governance of the body, on the one hand, and causal dependence of a pain on physiological events, on the other, have contradictory and mutually exclusive attributes. Or how can one explain the metaphysical contradiction accepted in Diamat that, on the one hand, matter causes all mental processes, and that the latter, on the other hand, still receive such a real being and such causal power in themselves that they can really operate back again upon matter? Again, the various types of Neutral Monism appear to be able to give a partial explanation at best for those relations which are of a static nature. But how can one aspect or one mode of a substance express itself in another or be able to operate upon it? At least, expression of one sphere of being (spirit) in another, and free dominion over the body seem clearly to presuppose a distinction between expressed content and expression, governing freedom and commanded movement which remains unexplained by the introduction of two modes of one and the same identical substance. The solution of this problem appears still more difficult for the Non-Substantial Neutral Monism that is more wide-spread today than for Spinoza’s Substantial Neutral Monism. How, e.g., can the soul, understood as mere „aspect“ of a non-substantial sort, freely govern the body as another „aspect,“ express itself in it, and be able to operate upon it (as Ornstein assumes)? If a feed-back operation is introduced here as analogy, we deal with various parts and functions of the same kind but not with aspects of one and the same identical thing. Similar problems, insoluble in our opinion, result for Engelhardt’s theory and for similar theories. However, various forms of Dualism, above all the theory of Causal Interactionism (Polten, Eccles and others), also appear to be untenable in view of their inability to explain all clearly given body-soul relations. We have already pointed to a series of relations between body and soul which cannot possibly be reduced to a mere causal interaction (cf. above, pp. 143ff.). Likewise we have already indicated the absurd epistemological and anthropological consequences of a mere causal Interactionism The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 241 strikingly developed, at least in part, by Ryle (above, pp. 86ff.). „Dualist“ Interactionism appears to be a far more solid doctrine and even appears to follow from all we have said about the substantial distinction between body and mind. Therefore we shall now dedicate an entire section to this question. H. The Relationship Body/Mind – Brain/Soul According to the Interactionism defended by Eccles Let us then turn to Eccles’ and Popper’s famous defense of interactionism that is thoroughly and solidly based on the results of empirical research. After having developed in the last chapter the highly significant contributions to the knowledge of a soul contained in their position which arose from empirical scientific investigations, we shall now attempt to sever the positive philosophical contributions contained in this theory from any narrowing conception of the body-mind relation in terms of mere causal interaction. Eccles’ conceptions, at least as they were discussed until now, had as their primary object the problem of the essence of the self-conscious mind or of the soul of man and the question of whether it existed, as well as the existence of a mental activity and of a life of the mind that can neither be identical with the brain nor just a passive side-effect of its operations. Now, we want to turn to those conceptions of Eccles which refer to the relationship between mind and body, between mind and brain. a) As the positions already discussed show, Eccles defends a very strong form of the position of bodily-mental interactionism. For he assumes that there is a twofold relationship between mind and body, namely as well one from the mind to the body as well as another one from the body to the mind. The term „interactionism“ and the relationship to Descartes (Eccles calls his position sometimes a neo-Cartesian one) appear to suggest that Eccles regards this relationship between body and brain in principle only as a mutual causal relationship between cause and effect, between mind and brain: some events in the brain are caused by the mind; other experiences of the soul are produced by the brain or caused by brain events that can be produced by brain lesions. Clearly, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 242 we find here a whole array of mental and psychic as well as of motoric and perceptual consequences and disturbances caused physiologically. 99 Also the clear psychic effects of drugs such as alcohol used in large quantity on neurotransmitters and on the brain are universally known. The effect of psychoparmaca of more complex consequences are presently intensely investigated. Interesting studies were done recently on the widely known antidepressant Prozac which appear to show both the existence and the limits of direct biophysiological causes of mental states and tendencies such as depression, aggressivity, suicidal tendencies, etc. 100 In some cases, however, as for example in sense perception, in memory, etc. these two forces can operate in form of a mutual penetration of two causal influences which occur between the brain and the mind in opposite directions. b) The second main thesis which we find in Eccles regarding the relationship between mind and matter, is his insistance on the mysteriousness of this relation. The exact manner in which an unextended mental entity, as the soul, is connected with a physically extended reality composed of many parts, such as the brain, the exact kind and manner in which the mind comes into contact with the brain, remains mysterious for man and cannot be comprehended by him fully. One is reminded here of Augustine’s word: „The manner, in which a mind is linked with a body, is entirely wondrous and cannot be comprehended by man – and nevertheless exactly this is man.“ 101 See the discussion of Global Lesions of the Human Cerebrum, of Commissural Section, Commissurotomy, and Hemispherectomy and of their psychological effects in Karl R. Popper/ John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (Berlin/Heidelberg/London/New York: Springer-Verlag International, 1977/ corrected printing 1981), pp. 311-333. See also the discussion of the circumscribed cerebral lesions of the temporal, parietal, occipital, and frontal lobe, as well as of limbic system lesions ibid., pp. 334-354. Clearly documented are also the psychic effects of brain leasures such as those seen in the famous case of Phineas Gage who died in 1861. In him one noted serious defects in rational decision -making and in conspicuous changes in his arising emotions and in his response to these emotions. See Hanna Damasio, Thomas Grabowski, Randall Frank, Albert MUSS. Galaburda, Antonio R. Damasio, „The Return of Phineas Gage: Clues about the Brain from the Skull of a Famous Patient“, Science 264 (20 May 1994), 1102-1105. We shall discuss in detail the question of causal influences from the brain to consciousness. 100 In the course of conducting them the question was raised whether this drug can worsen depression, cause suicidal tendencies, etc. What emerges clearly from these studies (is that simplistic methods of relating suicide to a decreased amount of serotonin in neurotransmitters (serotonergic nerves) fails as well as the idea that one can simply affect the brain and the mind by inducing increased production of serotonin fails. The roots of depression and even the complex connections in the brain are far too complicated to solve problems of suicidal tendencies in this fashion. Equally weel documented is the fact that at least in some patients serious and negative mental changes (such as depression, restlessness, agressivity, etc.) took place after, and in all likelihood because of, taking Prozac. 99 101 Augustine, De civitate Dei (The City of God), XXI,x. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 243 c) The third main thesis of Eccles in this respect is that the old body-mind problem shows itself in the light of modern brain science as reducible to the problem brain-mind. d) A fourth thesis is that an infinitely differentiated correspondence takes place between the events in the liaison brain and in consciousness. For the infinite differentiation of the world and of our interior life must find some exact correspondence in the infinitely many spatio-temporal patterns of neurons. In other words, only very specific and individually distinct objects, containing infinitely many diversities, are seen in one perception and others in another one, and not some vague general contours. Now, if for these different and very distinct perceptions the brain and its functions are necessary, one must assume some exact coordination and correspondence between both. This constitutes according to Eccles also an immense manifestation of meaning and teleology. A more exact study of the works of Eccles reveals, however, that his position is even more open and differentiated than suggested by these distinctions and by the term „interactionism“ that suggests a mere relationship of efficient causality between body and mind. The terminology of which Eccles serves himself particularly often in his book The Human Mystery is that there exists a mutual relationship of giving and receiving between mind and brain. Many further relationships apart from causal ones and even relationships which are in principle distinct from causal relations are implied by these terms. In addition, many other expressions used by Eccles in order to specify the relationship between mind and brain suggest relationships which are irreducible to mutual causal interactions. Such terms include: „encoding information,“ „modifying,“ „reading off patterns from brain modules,“ „screening,“ „correcting informations which were received by the body,“ etc. Here we find the recognition of extremely meaningful teleological body-mind relationships. Nevertheless it seems that we find no systematic attempt in Eccles to work out more exactly the precise relationship between brain and mind, especially those relationships which go beyond causal interaction. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 244 I. Critical Reflections on Eccles’ and Popper’s Philosophical Interpretations of the Body/Mind-Brain/Soul Problem This leads us to some critical comment regarding Eccles’ position. What concerns the results of Eccles regarding the nature of the mind and its distinction from the body, we find a practically complete agreement between the philosophical results of the present book and the results and interpretations given by Eccles of the brain and or cerebral events. As we have already explained, a systematic use of a phenomenological realist method with regard to the data in question here could be used to unfold these results even more clearly. The essential marks of the human soul, its ontological statuts, the arguments for its distinction from the body, all of these and many others could be developed through a systematic application of a philosophical-phenomenological method and could be further clarified – a task which Eccles understandably does not fulfil himself, since he is primarily a brain-researcher and not a philosopher. Nevertheless, in the face of the enormous philosophical interest attaching to Eccles’ experimental results and their theoretical interpretations by him, and in the face of the fact that he has passed many years in collaboration with the philosopher Popper, we may suggest the usefulness of a similar interdisciplinary collaboration with phenomenological philosophers. Such a collaboration would be much more successful in fulfilling that task which stands in the center of Eccles’ work: namely to unify the results of natural science with the philosophical penetration of the body-mind problem. For Popper’s and Eccles’ own positive contribution to the body-soul problem finds an insufficient and even inadequate basis in the empiricist epistemology of Popper. All decisive results, and at any rate any contentual philosophical theses are, according to a Popperian theory of knowledge, ultimately relegated to a sphere of totally uncertain assumptions and hypotheses. And knowledge in the sense of a grasping of necessary and highly intelligible states of affairs and of objective truth accompanied by certainty – this ideal of knowledge which almost all classical philosophers from Plato and Aristotle on until our century have upheld – is actually being denied. Eccles appears to see, in many of his criticisms of the opinions of Popper, these insufficiencies of the philosophical method used by Popper. He cannot overcome them, however, as long as he attempts to ground his philosophical theses on the same type of methodology which The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 245 critical rationalism has developed. For from this method one could in no way justifiedly deduce the chief philosophical contributions and consequences which Eccles has formulated in his important life-work. All these proposals touch not only a complementary accompanying of empirical and philosophical research but also a radically new reflection on the philosophical method and its relationship to experimental evidence above and beyond the agreements or disagreements regarding the content of the body-mind problem itself. The farthest reaching critical question that should be posed regarding the last mentioned point relates to Eccles’ thesis that the relationship between mind and brain could in principle be reduced to a causal interaction and indeed even consists exclusively in a causal interaction. This assumption lies partly at the root of his thesis that the mindbody problem can be reduced to the mind-brain problem. Let us begin with a simple observation. The entire relationship between brain and consciousness, however important it is, lies, as we have seen in the present book, entirely outside the realm of the conscious relation to our body. We do not experience our brain consciously at all – we are in our normal human experience in no way aware of the fact that we even have a brain. We do not feel our brain and do not experience it. We learn of its existence only through science. Our brain is neither identical with our conscious experience nor given to us consciously from within as other parts of the body which we experience in our lived body-experience, perceptions and movements, nor is it an object of perception and attention within the natural experience of the world. The brain is normally only experienced as the object of conscious acts, and even this only when it is turned into an object of perception or thinking, for example when we study it in scientific studies and brain research. Even then it is usually not our own brain but the brain of another human being which we observe. This is partly responsible for the radically different character which, as Popper rightly observes, belongs to WORLD 1 to which the brain belongs and distinguishes it from the WORLD 2 of consciousness. In view of this simple fact of experience we must also raise some doubts regarding the terminology used by Eccles, according to which the conscious Self examines the brain, selects some brain activity, modifies it, etc. This whole language appears to The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 246 suggest that there is a conscious relationship of man to his brain which ressembles the relationship between a computer and his programmer or user. For certainly we read information when we use a computer. Such a relationship, however, is precisely absent from that relationship which we have in our conscious life to our brain. Therefore it appears necessary to translate the language used by Eccles into another language which, on the one hand, takes into account the fundamental distinction between both relationships and, on the other hand, is aware of the activation, selection, etc. which our conscious Self in some other mode exercises with respect to brain activity. For all these relationships between mental activity and brain functions, inasmuch as we can speak of them, are entirely unconscious although quite meaningful. In the face of similar reflections, Walter Hoeres doubts that those relationships which Eccles assumes: of programming, of selection, of reading codified information, etc. exist in any sense of the term between mind and brain. For such relationships to a computer used by us are essentially conscious activities which precisely do not exist between consciousness and the brain.102 Making this point quite convincingly, however, Hoeres does not prove that there could not be a relationship between mind and brain that lies outside our conscious experience and in which nevertheless all the selections, programmings, etc. of which Eccles is speaking, do objectively occur, albeit in a purely analogous sense. In view of a similarly objective rationality in the sphere of body-mind relationships as they dominate the sphere of the purely biological reality in an obvious fashion, one can attribute analogous predicates to these as to conscious relations. In other words: storing information, reading encoded information, etc. would have their full meaning only for the sphere of conscious acts but possess a valid analogous meaning also with reference to the correlation between acts of memory retrieval and brain processes or traces in the brain. Obviously, we find in the body and in the brain the rule of a rationality and systems of detailed „information“ which surpass without comparison that of all the systems of information of computers. Think of the rationality in the inner organisation, 102 See on this our notes above. Similar critical reflections could also be applied to the reference to information language and information theory in the context of genetics. If one speaks for example of complex information in the double helix of the chromosomes, it is a question whether one does not presuppose that there is somebody who decifres this information, reads it, acts on the basis of it, etc. The question of other causal and teleological paradimes in order to explain these relations hips poses itself here. Think of the attempt of Aristotle to use the notion of "entelechy" or the "rationes seminales" (Augustine; compare on this Seifert 1988) The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 247 finality, or in the form of the body, in the spheres of biological growth, of genetic codes, of the wonderfully manifold and rational care which nature takes of the unborn child in the uterus, or in the rejection of infections. Also the relationship of the organs to each other, of breathing with the blood circulation and oxygen transfer, and the mutual accordance and complementation between the different organs is governed by rationality, although the subject does not experience or know any of it. Similarly we must assume a comparable and superior objective rationality in the manifold body-brain relationships and in the complexity and precision of „information“ that is in some way transmitted by the brain to the conscious subject. Otherwise one could neither explain that the functioning of the brain is a condition of expressing and formulating the inner life of mental acts in the body, for speaking and for acting, nor that the slightest change or disorder of brain functions can lead to a multitude of psychic disturbances and consequences. How could brain activity be presupposed for sense perception if there were no precise correspondence of the diversity and immense differentiation of perceived objects and sense-experiences with with highly differentiated patterns in the brain which contain some „information“ about each object of perception? If this were not the case in some sense - which certainly needs to be explored carefully - one could not explain how some very distinct acts or mental attitudes manifest themselves in the body and physical gestaltqualities of a human face, or how it is that we perceive not only some objects but quite specific ones which contain an infinite variety of differentiations. In some sense the brain, if its function is indispensable for perception, must transmit the exact information regarding the object. Furthermore, just as one speaks in the purely biological sphere of information, of codes, etc., although there is no conscious transmission or reception of information, one must not necessarily reject justification of such linguistic terminology with respect to the relationship between brain and mind. For not every reason originating in the mind, particularly not the rationality which governs the relationship between mind and brain, has to be a conscious one. Of course, one meets here with two radically distinct forms and meanings of „information“: One thing is the personal act of transmitting or receiving information which involves an intentional, conscious relation, the use and understanding of conceptual meanings, and many other elements. An entirely different thing is the non- The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 248 personal objective event in the sphere of life or in computer technology of transmitting by sequences of signs, electro-chemical events, etc. „information.“ Here we are faced literally speaking only with a storage of causal conseuences, or with a transmitting of physical objects, sequences of physical events, signs, traces, etc. Nevertheless, either these physical objects have a meaning - such as words - which a conscious intellect understands, or it is the case that in virtue of the objective bond between body and mind in the brain, certain brain events play a precise role in shaping the body (in expression) or in leading to the mediation of precisely delineated objects. 103 Once one recognizes the fundamental role of the brain for consciousness and nevertheless the experiential radical oblivion and unconsciousness of our brain that is a fact of our experience, we grasp the mystery within the mind-brain relationship only more clearly. With regard to insisting on the mysterious character of this relationship, I agree entirely with Sir John Eccles and attempted in the present book and in an earlier work (Leib und Seele) to interpret a word of Cardinal Newman who sees an apory and mystery in the relationship of the visibible body and the invisible spiritual mind which can only be compared to the mysteries of faith and which we would never believe if we did not experience this mysterious and incomprehensible fact every day. I tried to explain the exact meaning of natural mystery and of apory found here more exactly and to elaborate the meaning in which the body-mind relationship involves an apory and the sense in which it does not. Let us return to the problem of identifying the body-mind relation with the brainmind relation. The mere observation that the relationship of our conscious life to the brain lies entirely beyond the reach of our conscious experience, is sufficient to show that a dramatically significant dimension of the body-mind problem (our whole conscious experience of the body and most of what we call the „lived body“) is not reducible to the brain-mind problem but indeed lies entirely beyond the brain-mind problematic. I do not mean here only the entire sphere of consciously experienced relationships to our body which are of great significance because they involve essentially and necessarily consciousness irreducible to the unconscious relationship between mind and brain. Rather, I am aiming here also at other meaningful relationships On this distinction, see Josef Seifert, "Genetischer Code und Teleologie. Information, Kausalität und Finalität", Arzt und Christ, 1988, H 4. 103 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 249 between mind and body in which the body is given to us as object of our experience. Let us think, for example, of the expression of attitudes and feelings of other persons perceived by us in their gaze, in their facial expression or in their voice. Also these relationships cannot be subordinated under the general relationship between mind and brain, however significant the role of the brain is for these different body-mind relationships. The foundational role of the brain-mind relation, which is largely only activated and receives its teleological meaning only through the conscious body-mind relationships as they dominate for example our sense perception – does not dissolve the radical distinction between unconscious and conscious body-mind relationships and the utmost significance of the latter in their irreducibility to the former. Precisely in view of Eccles’ emphatic insistance on the absolutely fundamental significance we must attribute to consciousness, to love, to the experience of beauty in music and nature, it is significant to recognize that human consciousness is not experienced as something separate from the body and does not constitute a separate „WORLD 2“ that is entirely absolved from the lived body in the way in which this conscious life is indeed a world apart from the activities of the brain of which we are unaware and with which the mental life never forms the intimate unity as with the lived body. For this reason it appears to us equally significant as to acknowledge the importance of the brain for our conscious life, to recognize also the inner and human significance of the body-experience which is entirely irreducible to the unconscious mind/brain relation. The consciously given relationships between the subject and his body are not less important than the unconscious mind/brain relation but - together with the phenomena of expression, etc. - they constitute the teleogical end, the raison d’être of the unconscious relations to the body. This relation to our lived body and the bodyexperience involves the general experience of the body as such but is also inseparable from many diverse sense experiences, experiences of speaking, acting, etc. and from our experience of the world. This whole Leiberfahrung, this conscious relation to the body, can never be reduced to the relationship brain-mind. The consciously lived experience of our body constitutes precisely body in the narrower sense (that is called in English „lived body“ and in German Leib in distinction from Körper). A whole world of meaning and of deep intelligibility as well as of differentiation is unfolding here, a world which is in no way reducible to the WORLD The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 250 1 (bodies). This world of the lived body and of its experience reaches from our elementary feeling of the body, from the experienced localization of our consciousness and of our conscious acts in the sensible world, from feelings of hunger of thirst, of pleasure and pain and the experiences of the manifold sense perceptions up to the experience of rational acts in which we possess a meaningful and intentional contact with the material world, with its perspectives and horizons and with the myriades of objects that populate the world, up to the highest forms of knowledge and love of other persons. Even our experience of sacred places, of the numinous, of the religious sacredness of places, etc., include such a conscious experience of our body. Also the entire sphere of conscious and free actions must be mentioned here, inasmuch as also this sphere of free actions involves a conscious dominion of the mind over the body that is essentially more than a mere causal interaction between both, an interaction as its exists obviously also between brain and mind. Think further of the world of expression of spiritual acts and spiritual qualities, such as of love, hatred, ressentiment, joy, suffering, but also of lasting attitudes such as of virtues and of vices, which can express themselves in the visible and audible gestalt qualities of the body as well as in bodily actions and deeds. Think further of the unique form of intuitive contact which we have with other persons in virtue of the visible or audible expression of their interior life in speech but also in the body-language of their face and in their entire body. Then we will realize of which fundamental significance those relationships to our body are which involve necessarily conscious experience or which are at least irreducible to mere causal interaction and lie entirely beyond the mere causal interaction as part of the brain-mind relationship. This theme we have already touched in earlier chapters of the present book. It is immediately clear that none of these many relationships between our consciousness and the body can be reduced to the brain-mind relationship or to a relationship of mere causal interaction. Phenomenological research has brought to light extremely precious insights regarding the body-mind relationship and it is in the last analysis with reference to these and in order to elucidate them that Eccles engages in his brain research. Implicitly he grasps therefore the significance of these conscious relationships to the body and their weight for his own research as well as the significance of his research for the The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 251 understanding of these conscious relationships, for example when he speaks of volitional movement, which underlies the entire sphere of human and moral action, or when he refers to the community among persons and seeks to elucidate them by various experiments. But it is not only our intentional, conscious intercourse with beings which we see or hear through our lived and consciously experienced body which proves that the bodymind relationship is irreducible to a mere causal interaction. An interactionistic interpretation of the body-mind relationship on the order of sense perception would also deny the objective validity of human knowledge, just as much as that materialistic determinism which Eccles and Popper criticize, as we have seen, precisely for that very reason. For a mere cause-effect-relationship between body (brain) and mind (knowledge) would in no way distinguish itself in a fundamental way of the relationship between physical excitation and the headaches caused by it. But as the headache does not include any knowledge of its cause and must in no way ressemble its cause, so also our sense perceptions, if they were nothing but causal effects of physiological processes, could deviate in their content entirely from the real nature of the perceived world and stand in no essential relationship to it, though being caused by external events. Only if we do justice to the entirely new and meaningful intentional relationship which links consciousness from within with its objects that are disclosed to us in perception, we shall understand that relationship which rules over the body-mind connection in sense perception. This meaningful relationship we discussed before as „medial.“ It is found in the body not exclusively inasmuch as the body is consciously experienced from within. Rather, such a medial relationship, as we have seen, exists also on the level of an unconscious relationship between brain and consciousness. In other words, also our brain, not only the consciously lived body, must be a medium that enables us to enter into intentional conscious relationship to objects which disclose themselves through our consciousness in their own character, form, beauty, etc. This short summary of some results of the preceding studies shall suffice here, in order to point out the significance of such phenomenological research for the elucidation of the conscious relationships to our body and their significance for the understanding of brain physiology. E. Straus further has shown which radical isolation of the subjects from the world of perceived objects, from the world of other persons, etc. would result The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 252 and which scepticism would occur if the body-mind relationship were interpreted as a mere relationship of causal interaction. I have to emphasize here, however, that these phenomenological contributions, although they lead to a certain criticism of some opinions of Eccles, in no way reject the deepest object of the life-long commitment of this great scholar to the investigation of the body-mind problem (brain-soul problem). On the contrary, Eccles’ openness for everything human as well as many of the single contributions made by him can only be strengthened by such a dialogue between phenomenological philosophy and brain research. For example, Eccles analyzes volitional movement and the free dominion man possesses over his body and in this investigation he precisely points out such essentially conscious relationship to the body, and he relates them to such phenomena as „receiving information through the brain“ or the amazing programming of the brain through the mind, and particularly the influence the conscious activities have on the cerebellum. In such contexts he is speaking of relationships between brain and mind which precisely are the results of the mentioned phenomenological investigations and presuppose these. At the same time the utterances of Eccles call for a further phenomenological analysis. Only on their basis the full meaning and the far-reaching significance of empirical brain research and of its philosophical interpretations through Eccles can be fully unfolded. And on this basis, I think, it can be possible for Eccles and other brain researchers to develop much more consistantly and fruitfully their empirical research about the brain and particularly to arrive at correct interpretations of the results of this empirical research in the light of philosophical insights into the very essences of things. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 253 VII. BODY LANGUAGE AND HUMAN SEXUALITY AS THE CLIMAX OF THE „LIVED BODY“ The lived human body is in many ways more than just a material object, as we have seen. We live in it consciously, the soul is present objectively and feels the body from within and thus transforms the body into a lived body (Leib). There is a wide variety of different body experiences: we perceive through the body, are bodily really reached and reach other persons through the body, in violent acts and caresses, we act consciously in our body, the body expresses human feelings and general characteristics of the human personality and character, etc. For this reason, in view of its specifically human character as lived body, we can understand the eminent moral relevance of how we act in our body and of what we do to our body. As one unique case and climax of the depth of the unity of body and soul, and of the moral relevance of the human body, we can refer to human sexuality which is linked on the one hand to the most central sphere of human love between two persons and to the interrelation of the two sexes, and thus to the dignity of persons, as well as to the consensus and marriage, and on the other hand to the coming to be of new human persons. . Human sexuality constitutes in a certain sense the primordial and most central case of body-soul-unity, in which not only body and soul are united but also the spouses, and not only the unitive meaning of the sexual act but also its procreative meaning that is threatened by a general will not to have children, by contraception, and also by In Vitro Fertilisation. 104 Twenty five years ago, Humanae Vitae spoke of the "inseparability" of the unitive and the procreative meaning of the conjugal act, this "inseparability" being the basis for Church teaching on the responsible transmission of human life and on contraception. This central point of the inseparable link between spousal union and procreation has since been stated in the completely different context of "In Vitro Fertilization." Cf. also Josef Seifert, "The Problem of the Moral Significance of Human Fertility and Birth Control Methods. Philosophical Arguments against Contraception?" in Humanae Vitae: 20 Anni Dopo, Acts of the Second International Congress of Moral Theology, Rome, 1988,, S. 661 -672. See also my "Abortion and Euthanasia as Legal and as Moral Issues: Some Reflections on the Relationship between Morality, Church and State", in Bioethics Update. Proceedings of 1987 Annual Conference on Bioethics, ed. N. Tonti-Filippini (Melbourse: St Vincent's Bioethics Center, 1988); "Substitution of the Conjugal Act or Assistance to it? IVF, GIFT, and some other Medical Interventions. Philosophical Reflections on the Vatican Declaration 'Donum Vitae'" in Anthropotes, 2, 1988; the same author, "Il Dono dell' Amore e Il Dono di Una Nuova Vita. Verso una visione più personalistica dell' Matrimonio. Humanae Vitae - Familiaris Consortio. 1968-1988", in: Per una transmissione responsabile della vita umana, a cura di Anna Cappella. IVo Congresso internazionale per la famiglia d'Africa e d'Europa (Rom: Università dell' Sacro Cuore, 1989); "Problem moralnego zcaczenia ludzkiej plodnosci i metod kontroli pocze'c", transl. J. Merecki SDS and P. Mikulska, in: Bp K. Majda'nski/T.Styczen, Dar ludzkiego Zycia Humanae Vitae Donum. W swudziesta rocznice ogloszenia encykliki Humanae 104 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 254 In recent writings we find a new and stunningly impressive personalistic vision of sexuality and marriage, which marks many writings on marriage in our century, most notably those of Dietrich von Hildebrand105 and Karol Cardinal Wojtyla,106 II. THE HUMAN BODY AS A GIFT OF LOVE AND THE GIFT-CHARACTER OF NEW LIFE AS BACKGROUND FOR UNDERSTANDING HUMAN SEXUALITY We shall reflect, in the following, on the different levels of the gift of love and the gift of new life. Such a reflection will help us to understand better the meaning and value of marriage and the deeply personalistic reasons for which both artificial insemination as well as in vitro fertilisation and contraception are morally wrong. 1. The Beloved Person as a Gift Before we turn to a consideration of the specifically human meaning of the body in the context of sexuality, we have to consider the value and dignity as well as the giftcharacter of the person in relationship to himself and to another person. 1.1. The beloved person as a gift in himself how good that you are! Vitae (Lublin: KUL-Verlag, 1991), 247-259; "The Role of the Christian Family, Commentary on Articles 42-48 of Familiaris Consortio" in Pope John Paul and the Family, ed. M.J. Wrenn (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983). 105. See D. von Hildebrand, Marriage. The Mystery of Faithful Love, with a Foreword by John J. Archbishop O'Connor (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2 1984). The first German edition appeared 1928. See by the same author, In Defense of Purity (originally published in 1926), and other works, including Die Enzyklika "Humanae Vitae" - Ein Zeichen des Widerspruchs (Regensburg: Habbel, 1968). 106. See Karol Cardinal Woytyla, Love and Responsibility (New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux, 1981). This part of his thought also on the level of philosophy and theology - was developed in various Encyclicals and letters as well as in the famous Wednesday noon addresses during several years. They are also a distinguishing mark of recent Church documents since Pius XI and Pius XII, which is continued and in some respects deepened in Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio. The Pope - both as a philosopher and as the author of Familiaris Consortio, addressing himself to "all men and women," - adds to Humanae Vitae and to the philosophical and theological background of Church teaching a profound theology and philosophy of the human body, of the personal gift of love, and of marriage as a personal communion of love. Thereby, he has laid the foundations for any proper and timely interpretation of the specific teaching of the Church on marriage, abortion, contraception, etc. See also Giovanni Paolo II, Uomo e donna lo creò (Vatican City: Città Nuova Editrice/Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1987), and English translation. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 255 When we speak of the gift of love, we may think first of all of the beloved person as a gift. Hence a first level on which we must speak of the gift of love also within marriage - is the gift of the person whom we love in marriage and family - be it the spouse or the child. Whenever we love a person, the beloved person stands before us as a gift. He does not stand before us only as a source of our subjective satisfaction. 107 The other person does not even stand before us exclusively as an objective gift for us, as the source of our profound happiness and delight. Rather, we see the other person in love primarily as somebody who is endowed with intrinsic preciousness and intrinsic value. We realize in love that the preciousness of the other person is never reducible to his being a means for our own happiness and satisfaction. Rather, we might call the beloved person „a thing of absolute value“, or better a personal being of absolute value: he possesses his dignity and preciousness of a person in himself and not only for us or for anybody else. It would contradict the essence of this value and dignity of the person to ask: „for whom“ does he possess his dignity, for whom has the person value? When we speak of the dignity of the person, we speak of a preciousness of the person in himself. When we love him, we love him first for the sake of his own being as intrinsically precious and good. Love is a value-response, as D. von Hildebrand puts it. The unique preciousness and the gift-character of the person goes along with his being a person, in virtue of which he possesses this extraordinary value - unique in the entire cosmos - which we call „the dignity of the person“. This personal dignity and value is due in the first place to somebody’s being a person, not a lifeless thing, not a plant that has mere vegetative life, not even an animal that can sense and react to the world in many admirable ways. Being a person, man is endowed with reason, with understanding, with the ability of distinguishing truth from falsity, with the ability of realizing free acts, of becoming just or unjust, good or evil, of knowing and entering into relation with God in religion. A being capable of all these things, endowed with the fundamental faculties of the person: with intellect, freedom, spiritual forms of affectivity, such as happiness, and with the ability to enter into relationship with the absolute Being - only to mention a few of the most central traits of the person - possesses 107. For the following analysis, cf. D. von Hildebrand, Ethics (Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 2 1973), Kap. i-iii; xvii-xviii. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 256 a unique value, dignity. We can understand philosophically that a being of this nature of the person is not a neutral thing or even a being of little importance, but is endowed with an immense value and dignity which becomes apparent as we delve into the very nature and the distinguishing marks of the person. Yet, this preciousness of the person, this dignity of the person, is - as Gabriel Marcel put it - not only a possession of the person, but also must be conquered. Marcel coined the famous phrase „to be a person is not a possession but a conquest“. We must, in a way, conquer our own being and „become who we are“, as already the Ancients said. For the deepest values of the person, moral and religious values, are inseparably linked to his freedom, to his ability of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to truth, to the good, to other persons. For this reason, there is also a terrible risk in being a person, as Cornelio Fabro put it: the risk of abrogating in a certain way one’s innate dignity, of contradicting this dignity of the nature of the person in such a way that the value and preciousness of being a person is turned into its opposite and the person becomes the most terrible thing, the most monstrous being in the universe. This was stated forcefully by the chorus in Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone - and it prompted Christ himself to say of Judas Ischariot the most terrifying thing one could ever say of a being and of a person: „It would have been better for him never to have been born“. It is, then, as if the moral evil is so powerful and atrocious that it even absorbs the inborn dignity of the person’s nature and lets it be overshadowed so much by the evil that the non-existence of this person would have been better than his existence and it would be gain for him not to exist at all. This thought is also expressed in Plato’s Apology by Socrates, where he says that for the evil man death (and a dreamless sleep and annihilation) would be a gain because he would thereby be liberated from his injustice together with his life. 108 And also Soeren 108. Socrates adds, however, that such a liberation from one's injustice is neither possible nor would it be honorable. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 257 Kierkegaard in his profound analyses of despair arrives at similar conclusions, 109 in various passages. 110 Thus, in order to understand the dignity of the person, we must not only consider his natural endowments and his nature, his capabilities, but also his vocation as a person. Only when he fulfills the vocation of his free and hence non-fixed nature, he fulfills also his dignity. Now if we consider this human dignity, and its two sources: the nature of the person and the right use of his freedom, then we can see in which way the beloved person stands before as endowed with such intrinsic preciousness, with such extraordinary dignity, which derives from these two sources, that we ought to love him for his own sake. Moreover, love responds to the other person as a whole. Love does not respond to just certain qualities of the person. It does not just say, „I love you inasmuch as you are a brilliant writer, or I love you qua superb actor“. Admiration may well extend to a person for such reasons: I might very well say, I admire a man as an actor, but not as...Yet love is in this sense an unrestricted response, an unconditional response, a total response to the other person as a whole. We love him, not something in him, we love him as such, not under certain points of view, we love his being and not only some features which he merely „possesses.“ Sören Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode, übers. und komm. v. L. Richter (Frankfurt a.M., 2 1986), I,A,c., S. 20-21: Sokrates bewies die Unsterblichkeit der Seele daraus, daß die Krankheit der Seele (die Sünde) sie nicht verzehrt, wie die Krankheit des Körpers den Körper verzehrt. So kann man auch das Ewige in einem Menschen daraus beweisen, daß die Verzweiflung sein Selbst nicht verzehren kann, daß eben dies die Qual des Widerspruchs in der Verzweiflung ist. Gäbe es nichts Ewiges in einem Menschen, dann könnte er überhaupt nicht verzweifeln; könnte aber die Verzweiflung sein Selbst verzehren, dann gäbe es dennoch keine Verzweiflung....Von dieser Krankheit erlöst zu werden durch den Tod ist eine Unmöglichkeit, denn die Krankheit und deren Qual - und der Tod - ist gerade, nicht sterben zu können. 110. Cf. also Sören Kierkegaard, Krankheit zum Tode, a.a.O., S. 18-19: Doch ist Verzweiflung gerade eine Selbstverzehrung, aber eine ohnmächtige Selbstverzehrung, die nicht vermag, was sie selbst will. Sondern was sie selbst will, ist sich selbst verzehren, was sie nicht vermag, und diese Ohnmacht ist eine neue Form der Selbstverzehrung, in welcher doch die Verzweiflung wiederum nicht vermag, was sie will, sich selbst verzehren; dies ist eine Potenzierung oder das Gesetz der Potenzierung. Dies ist das Aufflammen, oder dies ist der kalte Brand in der Verzweiflung, dies Nagende, dessen Bewegung immer mehr sich nach innen richtet, tiefer und tiefer in ohnmächtiger Selbstverzehrung. Weit entfernt, daß es ein Trost für den Verzweifelnden wäre, daß die Verzweiflung ihn nicht verzehrt, ist es gerade das Entgegengesetzte, dieser Trost ist gerade die Qual, ist gerade das, was das Nagen am Leben erhält und das Leben im Nagen; denn gerade darüber - nicht verzweifelte - sondern verzweifelt er: daß er sich nicht selbst verzehren kann, nicht sich selbst loswerden kann, nicht zu Nichts werden kann. Dies ist die potenzierte Formel für die Verzweiflung, das Steigen des Fiebers in dieser Krankheit des Selbst... Denn gerade dies ist es, worüber er verzweifelt Fehler! Verweisquelle konnte nicht gefunden werden., und gerade dies ist es, was er zu seiner Qual nicht kann, da durch die Verzweiflung etwas in Flammen geraten ist, was nicht brennen kann oder nicht verbrennen kann, das Selbst. 109. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 258 Hence we come to see that and why in love the other person as a whole, in his very being, is experienced as intrinsically precious, and thus as a gift. A father may say, contemplating his child in love, „What a gift that you are!“ But what do we mean by that? In the first place, so we have come to understand, the other person is „a gift in himself“ because it is good that he is, because he is good prior to any relationship of his being to my happiness. We may express this with J. Pieper’s transcription of the fundamental „word of love“: „How good that you are!“ This does not mean, „How good for me that you are“ but simply „how good that you exist“, how good that an individual being of such preciousness - who is unique and absolutely irrepeatable and irreplaceable - exists!“ 1.2. The beloved person as a gift for himself how good for you that you are! A second meaning of the beloved person being a gift, however, implies that he is a gift for himself, his own existence is an immense good for him - for the person who exists, inasmuch as his existence is the source of everything good in him if he remains in the good and becomes happy. Hildebrand would say that the existence of a person is not only bearer of intrinsic value but also an objective good for the person.111 There is a German poem by Matthias Claudius, Täglich zu singen, of which Claudius suggested one say it daily as a prayer of thanksgiving. This poem expresses the way in which each person is an objective good for himself, and each man is a gift for himself. In this poem, we read the lines: „I thank God and I rejoice like a child upon receiving his Christmas gift, that I am, am!, and that I have thee, noble human countenance“. 112 This gratitude for having been granted existence, and for having been given the nobility and dignity of a person, presupposes certainly many other things: such as the fact that we do not exist by necessity but contingently, and that only a free and benevolent God can be the author of our existence and can therefore be thanked for our existence. Yet I shall draw attention to the magnificent manner in which this poem Dietrich von Hildebrand, Ethics (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 2 1978), ch. 1-3; 6-8. 112. Matthias Claudius, Täglich zum Singen: Ich danke Gott und freue mich, wie's Kind zur Weihnachtsgabe, daß ich bin, bin, und daß ich dich, schön menschlich' Antlitz, habe. 111 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 259 formulates the gratitude for our own being as a gift for ourselves. The gift each person is, then, is not only a gift in itself, but also a gift for him who receives existence. In each true love, also this aspect of the gift is responded to. I rejoice in the gift which the existence of the other is for him. In the family, and particularly in parenthood, this is important. Parents often „plan a family“ as if all they had to consider were only the questions of their own health, their own happiness in having another child, and the question whether their child would be a gift or a burden for them. But rarely they lift their minds and hearts up to considering their child like themselves and to ask themselves: what else in the lives of my parents would have been so important that they rather should not have had me as their child. When we think of our own existence, it comes relatively easy to awaken to this gift. What a gift is my existence for me! It is the basis and condition of all other gifts including my eternal life. Yet if this is so, parents must consider this: What a great gift will it be for the child to be, that is to receive that same gift which will be just as great a gift for him or her as it is a gift for me to have received my own existence. Often a truth becomes most evident through considering its opposite. Therefore it is perhaps when we think of the horror of it being true to say of somebody, „it would have been better for him never to have been born“, that we can measure the immensity of the gift for him who reaches his final happiness. It cannot be uttered in human words how great that gift for the person is which is his existence. 113 Every other good becomes possible through his being. What great joy that „a man was born into this world“, and what a gift for him. 114 1.3. The beloved person as a gift for others how good for me that you are The gift character of the person is not reduced, however, to his being a gift for himself. Rather, we might even say that the person as gift is primarily addressed to a Thou, to another person who can fully respond to him, love him, delight in him. The duo-or pluripersonal structure of love-community, in which the person becomes a gift, See on this J. Seifert, "Essence and Existence. A New Foundation of Classical Metaphysics on the Basis of 'Phenomenologicval Realism,' and a Critical Investigation of 'Existentialist Thomism'," Aletheia I (1977), pp. 17-157; I,2 (1977), pp. 371-459. 114. provided that the ultimate vocation of man is, as Christians believe, a blessed eternal life. 113 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 260 was well expressed to me 115 by a three year old girl, Petulette, when she once said to me: „Nest-ce pas, pour aimer, il faut être deux“ (Isn’t it so? To love, one has to be two). Those who love a person will experience more vividly the gift the beloved person is for them than the gift they are for themselves. For the whole preciousness and lovableness of a person addresses itself primarily to the other, to the thou. In love, we shall say: „what a great gift you are for me!“ Each person is called to become a gift for other persons who love him , and to be experienced by them as a gift. Inasmuch as man fulfills his dignity as a person and realizes moral values, he can indeed become a gift for others. Those who love him will experience him as a gift for themselves. Each person can become an objective good not only for some individuals but for the community in which he is a member. An analogous phenomenon we find in the family in which a new child becomes a great gift for parents, brothers and sisters. Of course, it is quite possible that a man turns to evil and to this extent becomes a great source of grief, of sadness, of crosses of all sort to his fellowmen. He may, to speak with Sartre’s No Exit, become even hell for the other person. Yet even this is only possible to understand against the background of man’s vocation as person to become a gift for the others. Moreover, however deeply a man falls, as long as he can turn to the good and is not irreparably evil, there is some core of his being in which even the most miserable and evil beggar of India is an immense gift for the other persons. 116 Love not only responds to this dimension of the gift, but love makes this precious core in each person visible and reveals it often even to the one who has ceased to be a gift to others in any experientially accessible way and who has, in despair, ceased to believe that he is lovable. In all of these ways, then, we may understand the beloved person as a gift. 2. Love itself as a Gift Let us turn, now, to a consideration of the sense in which love itself, not only the person whom we love, is a gift. 115 116. In 1966. In such cases it takes the eyes of such lovers as Mother Theresa of Calcutta to discover this lovableness. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 261 Again, we may distinguish and identify many respects and many dimensions in which love is a gift. 2.1. The Gift of Being Affirmed as a Whole Person in Being Loved In the first place, consider again that love is a „total response“. We could say that love is a „total yes“ to another person, not of course necessarily to everything in him, because there are aspects of each person which one might deplore, but to him as a whole, as this person, not merely to some aspect of him. To receive this response, to be loved, is an immense gift. Psychologists such as Roger W. Sperry have studied the fact that children who are not loved, even when they are praised for certain achievements, as long as they are not loved for their own sakes, and as this irreplaceable person, become psychologically crippled. If they find nobody who loves them, they may remain psychologically unbalanced and even become mentally retarded. This central role of being loved may be illustrated by a very moving story told by Mother Theresa at the family Congress in Madrid in 1987 117. A little boy, whose mother lived on the street and could not properly feed the child, had been taken in by the sisters of Charity who certainly were very loving. Nevertheless, the child ran away very soon and disappeared several times for hours. After the sisters had repeatedly searched in vain for the child, they found him at his mother’s side on the street, eating a most miserable little dish his mother made especially for him on a stone. Asked by Mother Theresa why he had run away from a place where he was so well taken care of, he said: „I could not live without my mother, for she loves me. „ One cannot measure this gift of being loved, this gift of a total affirmation of one’s own person, which this poor child received from his mother in the slums of Calcutta and which is not given even the wealthiest person except when he is loved. The richest man, when he is unloved, is poorer than this little Indian boy, a fact we often experience tragically in the case of the suicide of immensely wealthy persons. Many extraordinary elements of love such as the moment of trust, of belief in the other, of the credit of hope and other moments that are contained in love, constitute this gift of love. 118 117. See Vuelve la Familia. Por encima de las ideologías. Actas del X Congreso Internacional de la Familia (Madrid: Encuentro Ediciones, 1988), p. 16. 118. See on this D. von Hildebrand, Das Wesen der Liebe (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1972), Kap. iii ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 262 2.2. The Gift of the Benevolent Intention Contained in Love Besides being a gift in virtue of its character as a total response, love is a unique gift because it contains what D. von Hildebrand calls the intentio benevolentiae. In each love, we affirm the good of the other person, we wish his good, we bring it about when we are able to do so. We are interested in the well-being and happiness of the beloved person. We also consider all the gifts for him as they address themselves to his person. We bridge, as it were, the abyss which separates our own happiness and what is good for us, from his happiness and what is good for him. And we share in his happiness and in the objective gifts for him because they are gifts for him. From this comes a unique warmth and transcendence of love, an intimate sharing in the other’s happiness. To receive this interest from another person - in our very own affairs and in our fate because they are ours - is a precious gift. But in love, we do not merely wish that the other person becomes happy and view his happiness under this very aspect that it is happiness for him. Rather, albeit in very different modes in the different categories of love, we desire ourselves to render the other person happy. We want to become a gift for him and we want our love to become a gift for the other person. Thomas Aquinas has stated this profoundly when he said that the „greatest of all gifts is love itself.“ Love itself is the first and primary gift - also because the very interest of the loving person in our well-being is a more precious gift in itself than all the good effects, the food, shelter, education, communicating knowledge, and other presents which can spring from love. More fundamental than all these is the gift of love itself. 2.3. Love as a Gift because of the Desire for Union Contained in It In each love, albeit in many different forms, we find some desire of union with the beloved person. In the different kinds of love, this desire expresses itself quite differently: in wishing to be with the other person, to converse with him, to see things together, to share his life by hearing about him, by asking about his well-being, his fears or hopes, wishes and desires, etc. This desire for union is by no means just selfish opposed to the benevolent intention of love. In fact, the true desire of personal union with the other person cannot be severed from the affirmation of his person for his own The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 263 sake. Only the mutual affirmation of two persons for their own sake can ground the authentic desire for union. Otherwise we only seek to possess the other. The non-selfish character of the desire for union with the beloved person can be gathered also from the fact that the priority of his good, the priority of the intentio benevolentiae must always be preserved. Finally, we see the noble character of this desire for union forming part of the gift of love when we consider what a great gift this is for us, if the beloved person does not only desire our good, does not marry us only because of his wish to see us happy, but because the union with us is also his happiness. The desire for union in love is itself a great gift! In spousal love, this feature of all love takes on a unique form: to want to live with the other person for the rest of one’s life, to become one with him. It is in in the context of such a love that the most intimate bodily union becomes the adequate expression for the desire for such a lasting and irrevocable and complete union as the spiritual act of spousal love involves it, while sexual intercourse would be a radically improper expression of the more limited modes and very different forms in which the intentio unionis exists in other kinds of human love. 2.4. To Love as Gift Not only to be loved but also to love is a profound source of happiness, as Goethe said: „Lieben, Götter, welch ein Glück!“ (To love, o Gods, what an immense happiness!). The act of love, the ability of losing oneself, of transcending oneself in love, gives rise to a unique happiness not only for him who receives such love but also for the person who loves. Certainly, man must never love just in order to become happy, he ought to affirm the other person for his own sake. In fact, he will be happy only if he loves the other person because he is lovable. Happiness itself comes to a person gratuitously, as a gift, and only when one does not seek to attain it directly, to grab it, or even to „use“ the other person as a means towards it. On this, we owe to M. Scheler D. von Hildebrand and to Karol Wojtyla precious insights. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 264 3. The Unique Gift of Spousal Love 3.1. The Gift of Being Loved and of Loving with Spousal Love In order to see that all the ways in which love is a gift are uniquely perfected in authentic spousal love, turn your minds now to the fact that all the elements of love which were hitherto discussed, achieve a radically new note in spousal love: we affirm the other person more fully in his uniqueness, in such a way that we cannot even love a second person with the same kind of love. While we also love each friend or each of our children with an absolutely untransferrable love, we nevertheless can love several persons with the - categorially speaking - „same“ love. The word of spousal love, however, forbids such a simultaneous loving two persons with the same kind of love. Bridal love or spousal love contains the element of the „totus tuus“, of a total and undivided word of love so that the spousal „I love you“ does not admit that (in the same meaning of the word „love“) we tell another person „I love you“, something which is quite normal in the other types of human love. In spousal love we affirm the good and well-being of the beloved person more fully, reaching into the most private and intimate spheres of his happiness. In authentic spousal love, we want to give ourselves to the other person, in the way so beautifully described by Karol Wojtyìa/Pope John Paul II as leading to the gift of one’s very self, to an auto-donation in a unique, spousal sense of this term. The gift of spousal love involves again the gift of loving. Which human experience is more blissful than falling in love and loving with authentic spousal love? To the extent to which the totus tuus to one’s spouse is spoken with one’s will and with one’s heart, and faithfully renewed every day (Gabriel Marcel points out that faithfulness is something dynamic, a fire, and not something static), the true act of loving is most profoundly a gift. Yet the gift of being loved is here so essential that without it also the gift of loving turns into a painful experience, unhappy love. In a tragically unrequited love, the unhappiness may even prevail over the happiness. Yet in a happy marriage, both the gift of loving and of being loved reach a unique intensity and depth. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 265 3.2. The Gift of Spousal Love as Self-Donation of the Person and the Sexual Gift of Man and Woman Human sexuality differs from all other bodily experiences: it is deep by its nature and touches the very core of the being of the person, something hunger and thirst do only in some limit-cases; its has a quality of intimacy and exstatic intensity which - as we shall see - find their human dignity and meaning only when they express mutual human love and a lasting covenant. Human sexuality and the intense and unique pleasure accompanying sexual activity have their attractiveness also independently of love. And yet, only an ugly, unworthy side of human sexuality appears, either in the form of a throwing oneself away, or in the demonic perversion of pornography or in the radical, cold isolation of sex from love, when the sexual sphere is deprived of its bond with spousal love which alone can give it its inner meaning, its purity and its nobility. Sexuality does not have the same meaning when someone seeks it out of love as opposed to when he seeks to satisfy only his lust. An entirely new aspect of sexuality emerges in the light of love, one which disowns all others, as is magnificently expressed by Shakespeare, other poets, and philosophers. 119 All of the aforementioned dimensions of spousal love may be expressed in this bodily „gift of love“: in the sexual tenderness and union. Through the mutual gift of oneself in love, sexuality - with its own bodily mystery, depth and intimacy - becomes formed and transformed into something of high value and nobility. It becomes a most precious and moving gift. On the contrary, when human sexuality is divorced from love, it becomes something mean, vulgar, or violent, destructive of the person, or ludicrous and most ugly. It turns into a throwing oneself away or an abuse. Pornographic sex, prostitution, and other forms of sexual behaviour are the opposites of that sacred gift of love. They are a desecration of the person, as the murderer Raskolnikow sees so deeply in Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment and as Sonya comes to see through his love. 119. I think here especially of W. Shakespeare, Theseus. Prince of Tyrus, which contains a scene of a pure St. Agnes-like princess being led to a whorehouse, and of her words to the governor who wants to seduce her but then is converted by her and marries her. See also D. von Hildebrand, In Defense of Purity. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 266 The gift-character of sexuality is therefore not just the pleasure, which - isolated from any good or evil human and spiritual context - is an abstraction anyway. For there is in man no purely bodily sexual pleasure but this pleasure is always experienced against some - proper or improper - human and moral background which gives it a significance beyond the „physical“ aspect of pleasure. Sexuality becomes a gift only through love and yet at the same time - when it is formed by love - it fulfills and completes spousal love. Man and woman are made male and female in order to be permitted to become a gift for each other. In the conjugal act, the wife gives in a sense the greatest and most total gift - herself - to her husband, and the husband gives himself to his wife. We should add that the unitive force which the sexual sphere possesses when formed by love, the possibilities of expressing tenderness and to realize the union in „two becoming one flesh,“ are ordained to fulfill the spiritual spousal love. When motivated by love, the sexual self-donation expresses the gift of personal self-donation and becomes so integrated in the personal love that it is not a „separate gift“ but is assumed into, and turns into part of, the one central „gift of love“ in marriage: the spouses’ being and persons. The sexual gift of love thus can constitute a unique gift of oneself to another. And yet it is only potentially that sexual union becomes such a gift. For it is a mutual donation only when it is motivated by a love which itself is radically different from sexuality and yet which alone can make the sexual act a gift of self. Through the power of spousal love, the sexual sphere unfolds its latent power to become a gift that cannot be replaced by any other gift the spouses may give to each other, by their attention, gifts, sharing things, etc. 120 120. Saying this, I do not wish to deny that in the case of some higher religious calling a couple might abstain from sexual union because of a vow of virginity, as Christian believe this of St. Joseph and Mary. Nor do I wish to deny that in these cases a deeper spiritual love may indeed "replace" or transcend in a certain way the bodily union of the spouses. The same may apply to couples who love each other deeply although some physical ailment hinders the sexual union. This applies to all couples during certain periods of their married life. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 267 4. The Gift of Love and the Gift of New Life 4.1. The Gift of the Life of a New Child in Itself A third sense of the gift of love refers neither to the person who is a gift nor to his love but rather to the gift of a new life, the gift of the new person who comes to be through love. In marriage, the gift of spousal love as it is incarnated in the conjugal act, is profoundly linked to the gift of new life. We must say that our age - as is expressed in the most atrocious manner in the over 50 million abortions each year, in the abortion laws and the abortion mentality - is an age in which the gift-character of the child is most cruelly contradicted. The new child is seen under the aspect of a burden and of a cross so that he is killed by his own mother or by the medical doctors at her request. The new life is seen also by a contraceptive mentality as an enemy to spousal love and happiness. At a time of millionfold contraception the child is primarily seen as a burden. Noone will deny the many aspects in which a child imposes burdens, difficulties, and problems on parents. Every realistic parent knows these. It is also true that a kind of intimacy of spousal life is broken with the arrival of the child. The external life is shared with him and countless forms of new obligations may easily prevent the parents from turning fully to each other, dedicating enough time to each other, living their own love, although children also enrich their parent’s lives immensely. And yet, what immense blindness prevents us from seeing the gift of any new child. We must consider and contemplate the great gift a new child is. In the first place, as we have seen, we ought to consider what a great gift a new person’s life is in itself and is for the new child himself. In himself, each child is a world unto himself, an abyss of being and endowed with a dignity which no human tongue can praise adequately. As parents, we must again and again break through our superficiality of seeing the child just as causing all kinds of discomforts and problems to us, and say: how good that you exist! We may understand this to some extent by just contemplating the nature and dignity of the human person as we have done before. We grasp the irreplaceable The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 268 precious being of each child best when we look at his face or his smile and when in his „visage“ the mystery and world unto itself becomes transparent which each human person is.121 If we consider the value and dignity of new life, that is,. of a new human person in this way, which is the only adequate way, we could rightly say that each new child possesses in a sense infinite value. If we then love a child, we want to last this person in all eternity, to be happy in eternity, and we realize that his value is in a sense wholly incommensurable when compared with any temporal, finite, historical, social or economic good as such. A loving parent will say that he will not give his child away even if all treasures on earth are offered for him. 4.2. The Gift of New Life For the Child Secondly, we can consider again the life of the child as a gift for this child himself, and not just in itself. In this way, to be conceived, to be born, to exist, is that immense good for the child which Claudius mentions in his poem. This becomes much more evident to us - egoists as we are by nature - when we place ourselves for a moment into the place of the child. When we reflect thus: „Let me assume that I would not yet exist, as I did not exist for an eternity that preceded me. And let me think of my own father and of my own mother before I was conceived. Let me think realistically of all their problems caused by my birth. Under which circumstances would I advise my parents not to have a child - if this child is: me!?“122 Normally we do not even consider the gift of the new child from the point of view of the gift his life is for that child himself, but we imagine the happy or unhappy mothers, uncles, aunts, grandmothers, etc. Normally, when we discuss birthcontrol with our doctors, spouses, or counsellers, we do not spend a minute considering the gift of the new life from the point of view of the child to be - forgetting that we were, an extremely short time ago, just possible like that child; forgetting, too, how grateful we ought to be A note from the point of view of our faith: We can understand the gift of life of each new child even much more profoundly, however, when we see him in the light of faith as loved by God, as redeemed by Jesus Christ, as destined for an eternal, irreplaceable, unique happiness and value which no other being in any possible world could possess or replace. Each person as individual and unique being contains in himself the whole world of meaning again in a unique embodiment, nay contains in a sense God another unique time as „his God“ and as „his Creator“ and as „his Redeemer“. 122 Any advice on using birthcontrol - even by using the rhythm - should be the answer to such a question. And then, I believe, all of us would ask our parents to consider only very weighty reasons, and not a new car or some similar good, as important enough not to have us. 121 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 269 to our parents who may have had us under great difficulties, at a time of war or famine, and who were ready to share generously their lives and the little they had, with us. Normally we do not consider that to exist makes that child share the infinite gift of life and of love of God himself, and we do not consider, being drowned in the little or big temporal woes of our lives in this „valley of tears,“ what an immense and unspeakable gift it is for each man - in the last analysis - to be conceived and to be born. 4.3. The Gift of the New Child for Those Who Love Him Again, we may consider the gift of the new child as a gift for others, for his parents, brothers, sisters, future spouses and children. Here, too, parents often deceive themselves, thinking that - maybe because of a difficult pregnancy - the new baby is just a disfortune for the mother. Which mother, after the baby is born and after she sees his first smiles, would sell her child or would give it away in order not to have lived through painful nine months?123 Thus we should always consider all kinds of valid reasons for not having a child, but never forget to contemplate the child from these three points of view: the gift of the life of a new person in itself in virtue of the value of the person; the gift of new life from the point of view of the child as his gift; and the gift of the life of the child for his parents, and for his brothers and sisters and for all those who love the child including God himself. 4.4. The Gift of New Life as a Gift of, and From, Spousal Love: As „a Gift from a Gift“ (Donum de Dono) A new dimension of the gift of the new life is linked to the bond between the love of the parents for each other and the new life. If two spouses truly love each other, they give in a certain sense to each other the child which they engender. In this way, the child is in a unique way a „mutual gift“ of the spouses, an immense gift which the wife makes to her husband and the husband to his wife. The two acts of giving are so interwoven that none could give this gift alone and on his own, it is the mutual gift par From the point of view of Christian faith we ask: Do we have a right to consider the gift of the new child only for us, the parents, and not also for all the other persons who will love him, for the community, for the Church, and in a certain way, f or Christ Himself who descended down unto this earth and suffered the death of the Cross just out of love for each single one of our children? 123 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 270 excellence. In this way, the essentially mutual gift of the new child is also profoundly meaningfully connected with the similarly essential mutuality of the gift of spousal love itself. The life of the new child is a mutual gift the spouses make to each other and it is also a gift they make together to the child. Thus the spouses are givers par excellence when they have a child. They receive this gift but they make it also to each other. In this way indeed we should describe the gift of the new life, the gift of the child, as a donum de dono, as a gift from a gift. 124 The child is indeed a gift from a gift, that is, a gift that proceeds from a mutual gift of love between the spouses, and a gift of one of the spouses to the other, and a gift of both spouses to the child. When we consider this character of the child as a gift and the mutual love of the spouses as a gift, we must now consider that the bond between these two gifts is anything but accidental or arbitrary. It possesses, on the contrary, profound meaning. It is most meaningful, in the first place, that children are not procreated by chance, by mere changes in the material universe like those produced by lightenings or by a gush of lava that proceeds from a vulcano. Yet it is also profoundly meaningful hat children are not procreated by a medical team „in vitro“, in a glass-dish in a laboratory. It is indeed most meaningful that God entrusted the coming to be of a new person to the mutual gift of the spouses to each other. The most notable end of human sexuality is the procreation of a new life. We are confronted with a clear instance of finality in which organs stand in the service of a specific end. Yet it is clearly not this merely biological finality of nature and of the organic being which imposes moral obligations upon us. We are allowed, for example, to sterilize or kill an animal out of practical considerations without incurring any moral guilt even though such procedures are clearly in opposition to the immanent biological finality of the animal’s fertility. The reason for this is that „nature,“ understood as the purely factual nature or even the meaningful finality of a living being is not morally relevant, as is clearly indicated by the above example. Even in the case of man, a merely factual biological characteristic or finality, such as the growth of a beard in a man, does not generate any moral obligation. 124. Inspired by the phrase of the Nicean Creed: "Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum Verum de Deo Vero". (I believe..."in God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God"). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 271 Therefore, we can comprehend the moral relevance of human procreation only when we transcend the purely biological conception of human sexuality and grasp the fact that in the case of man sexuality serves the coming into existence of a human being. In procreation, human sexuality leads to the existence of a new human person who is endowed with intellect and free will, called to community with other persons, ordained to realize moral values and finally, to be united with God for eternity. When we comprehend this dignity and overwhelming depth of human sexuality we also gain an insight into the evident truth that the connection of human sexuality with the end of procreation imposes many moral obligations upon us, above all the obligation of a great reverence and respect for the sphere of human sexuality together with the duty to avoid strictly whatever is incompatible with its dignity. Similarly, the spousal obligation of a generous cooperation with this noble end of human sexuality is also grounded in the dignity of procreation. We could say that human procreation, far from being only a biological fact, involves a whole metaphysics of the person and a metaphysics of love. It is in the light of such a metaphysics that the bond between the mutual gift of love of the spouses and the gift of new life must be understood. 125 5. The New Human Life as a Gift of God We have seen that the new human life is a gift from the parents and to the parents and to the child. But there is still a deeper level of the gift of life in relationship to the gift of love. Not only when we consider the new human life in the light of faith, also when we reflect on the philosophical reasons that show that each man must possess a spiritual soul,126 then we will understand that the parents can never be the ultimate origin of the Hence it is a very shallow criticism, which is often launched against Humanae Vitae, that one says: „well, Humanae Vitae is a mere return to a biological understanding of human nature. It bases itself only on blunt biological facts and regards these as normative in an ethical sense. It claims that you must not manipulate with biology. But why should we not do so, given all the other instances of human intervention in nature?“ 125 In truth, Humanae Vitae is based on the profound and personalistic bond between the unitive aspect of marriage and the mutual loving gift of the spouses, and the coming to be of a new person. 126. See on this J. Seifert, Das Leib-Seele Problem und die gegenwärtige philosophische Diskussion. Eine systematischkritische Analyse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2 1989). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 272 life of their child. Not only do they themselves as temporal and contingent persons require an origin which holds them in being;127 they can never bring into being a spiritual and absolutely indivisible, free substance, the soul of their child. They can only contribute „the clay,“ the living cells which unite after intercourse but only the First Cause, only a free and divine Author of all things, can be the origin of the soul and hence of the personhood of the child by an immediate creative act. Thus it is not true that the new life is really just the gift of spousal love and of the physiological generative powers of the couple and that these could be the ultimate cause of the gift of new life. No, we also find a vertical cause, a „vertical bond“ which links any human procreative activity with the divine act of creation of a person. Hence there is not only the bond between the spousal love of the parents or the physiological processes which as such can be severed from love, and the child which issues from them. Not only the bond between spousal love and the offspring, the child, must morally be respected and forbids that this unitive aspect of marriage be actively divorced from the procreative one. But there is also that vertical bond between the human sexual act and the divine creation of a person, in the service of which human procreative activity must stand. For this reason, too, Humanae Vitae says that man is not the master but a minister of procreation. The act from which a person proceeds is a far deeper metaphysical act than any act of which human persons could be capable. No man can call the new person, the soul of the child, from nothing to being. The creation of the new person can never be explained sufficiently by the couple. Hence the conjugal act is in the most amazingly direct way linked to God’s own creative act. In the light of these two bonds, the one between spousal love and procreation, and that between man and God in procreation, we can understand the evil of contraception, because we may apply the words: „What God has joined, no man shall put asunder“ But can we infer from the mere fact of such a bond that „God has joined“ his divine creative act and the conjugal act and that this is „intended by God“ rather than being an accident? We reply: what is united in such a profoundly meaningful way, as the divine loving act and the conjugal act which should be the supreme act of interhuman love, cannot be united just by accident. The value of the gift of new life and the awe127. See J. Seifert, Essere e persona. Verso una fondazione fenomenologica di una metafisica classica e personalistica. (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1989). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 273 inspiring value of God’s calling a person from nothing prove that this bond is not neutral but morally relevant, and must be respected - and hence that the conjugal act must not be actively „closed“ to its metaphysical link with divine creation. B. Marriage and consent Consent is a second element that belongs inseparably to the true meaning of human sexuality. This is the free decision of the will and the special „promise“ of a man and a woman to belong inseparably to each other and to bind themselves in a mutual union with each other in the formally deepest way that is possible between two human beings. The promise, or better yet, the „covenant“ (Familiaris Consortio) through which this union between two human beings is accomplished, involves a self-donation and a granting of the most intimate right over one’s own body. And it includes the self-chosen obligation of fidelity and mutual self-donation until death. This unique act of consent acquires its ultimate meaning only in terms of spousal love. Nevertheless, it can be motivated by other considerations and still constitute a valid marriage. The sexual act is such a profound and intimate mutual self-donation and creates such an extraordinary and intimate union between two persons that it is morally legitimate only when it is the expression of an exclusive, lasting and irrevocable union which the two persons enter into formally through the act of consent. Otherwise, the sexual act has the character of throwing oneself away. Many moral obligations are grounded in the meaningful relation between human sexuality and such a profound and irrevocable bond which follows from the consent and which is demanded by the very nature of human sexuality. Examples of such obligations are the prohibition of pre- and extramarital sexual intercourse, even when motivated by real love; the commandment to respect the indissolubility and uniqueness of the marital bond; the prohibition of adultery, which remains immoral even when one intends to conceive a child (for the sake of the good of procreation and a new person) which may not be possible within the marriage. These moral norms cannot be explained by the relation between human sexuality and procreation. Rather, they can be understood only in terms of the ordination of the sexual act toward consent. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 274 Nevertheless, it must be added that the end of procreation and the consent cannot in any way explain of themselves the innermost meaning of marriage, much less the source of the most profound happiness in marriage. Indeed, both of these elements alone cannot even be adequately understood as long as we do not take into account their ideal and natural source, namely, the spousal love which forms and grounds them from within. C. Marriage and Spousal Love The deepest natural meaning of marriage, of the consent as well as of procreation can be understood only in the light of that love between man and woman which, among all the forms of love between human beings, realizes the fundamental essential traits of love in a uniquely explicit fashion. 128 Every genuine love of another person is distinguished by the fact that it is a response to the inner preciousness, the goodness and the beauty of the beloved. Love is not exclusively the response of the will to the preciousness of the other person - which is revealed to our knowledge as a gift - but also a response of the heart. Nevertheless, in virtue of the cooperative freedom, the free personal center, by an act of the will, makes also the affective act of love its own, as it were, and transforms it into a free act. The essential traits of love as such find their culmination in spousal love. The innermost preciousness and the irreplaceable nature of the other person become transparent to us and touch our heart in a way that is different from any other kind of love. We respond and give ourselves to the other person in his or her lovability. We belong to him or her, as expressed in the classical ancient verse: Du bist mîn Thou art mine. Ich bin dîn; I am thine; des solt Du gewiz sîn Of this shouldst be assured: Du bist beslozen in Held captive in my heart, mînem herzen; verlorn ist das sluezzelîn, 128. The key is lost, Cf. Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae, No. 8 and 9 for a brief but beautiful presentation of the nature of spousal love; for an extensive and enlightening philosophical analysis of the nature of love, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility ( ) ; Dietrich von Hildebrand, Das Wesen der Liebe (Stuttgart, 1971). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 275 muosst immer darinne sîn. Forever more must thou abide within. In spousal love we give ourselves as a gift to the beloved person. We do this to a higher degree and in a different manner than in any other form of human love. We give ourselves with our whole heart and yearn to devote our very being to the other in the desire to belong exclusively and irrevocably to the beloved. This essential moment in spousal love is also the natural motive and soul of the „Yes“ of consent. Insofar as the sexual self-donation springs from such a love, it acquires a new inner significance and becomes a source of the most intimate happiness. In spousal love we long to live for the beloved and to make the response to the other in his or her preciousness the central theme of our life. The mere irrevocable self-donation through our will in the act of consent is an impoverished substitute in the absence of the genuine love which should motivate the consent. In a similar fashion, the desire of every kind of love to make the beloved happy and to see her achieve her highest good finds a singular expression and achieves a unique summit in spousal love. Our yearning for the happiness of the beloved is not simply more intimate and personal than our desire for the happiness of friends and relatives. Much rather, we are filled with an ardent interest in her spiritual and physical well being, and, what is more, we long for her happiness in those most intimate spiritual and bodily dimensions into which no other form of human love can reach. And above all, we long to make ourselves and our love an irreplaceable gift for the other in many areas where one person can become a gift for another and which remain closed for other forms of love. Here we can also discern a basis for the fact that spousal love is possible only between a man and a woman. For this complete spiritual and bodily self-donation presupposes the difference between the sexes and their mutual ordination for each other. This trait of spousal love finds its unique expression and fulfillment in the marital act. In its specific uniqueness, human sexuality is destined to be an expression of this love. The desire for union with the beloved is another decisive essential trait of love that must be noted. This element, which belongs to love in general also finds its singular expression in spousal and marital love. For here, more than in any other human love, we desire to participate in the inner life and thought of the beloved. We seek her presence and above all, in a highly thematic way, we long for a requital of our love. For only in The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 276 the requital of our love does the beloved disclose herself completely to us, become fully present and thereby unite herself with us. No other human love is comparable with such a love, in which we desire to be bound to the other in all the dimensions of human existence, even unto death. Indeed, as was shown especially by Gabriel Marcel, the orientation toward immortality, which characterizes love as such, finds in spousal love not only a more intense and clearer articulation but manifests itself in the fullest realization of this love in a unique dimension of fidelity, which in the case of some lovers, does not allow a second marriage after the death of the partner. No other kind of love between two human persons calls for a similar exclusive union with the beloved person in the sense that it would exclude in ourselves and in the beloved another love of the same kind a s long as it endures actually and authentically. This longing for an ultimate being-one endows the „Yes“ of consent with an inner meaning in as much as we strive irrevocably, spiritually and bodily to become one spirit and one flesh with the other person. As already noted, the most profound significance of the marital bond as well as of sexuality and procreation discloses itself in the light of spousal love. Indeed only this love makes it possible that the noble spousal „Yes“ of consent can be in principle - and under normal circumstances - responsibly and morally justified. Understood in its deepest dimensions, then, marriage is much more than a marriage contract by means of which two individuals grant each other mutual rights to their bodies and to acts which naturally aim at procreation. And it is precisely from this perspective that a decisive clarification is cast upon the meaning of procreation. Children can be called the superabundant end of marriage because marriage should not be a mere means for this end but should already possess in itself the profound significance of a community of love. And it is this significance which presupposes a difference, indeed, an opposition between true spousal love and isolated sexual desire. 129 One has reason for profound gratitude for the encyclical Humanae Vitae, for the section on marriage in Gaudium et Spes, for many of the addresses of Pope Pius XII. Special recognition must be given to the works of Dietrich von Hildebrand and Karol Cardinal Wojtyla (above all his Love and Responsibility). For these works were normative precursors of these teachings of the Church and expressed truths which were 129. This decisive distinction was made by von Hildebrand, The Encyclical, p. 13f.; Cf. also his In Defense of Purity, Part I, Ch. 3. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 277 brought out in their full scope for the first time since the Second Vatican Council by Pope John Paul II at the Wednesday audiences in his talks on the theology of the body. We repeat, these authors deserve our great gratitude for emphasizing in a masterful way the role and the significance of spousal love in marriage as well as its personal meaning. This specific spousal love is not necessary for the full validity of the marriage and the reasons for the moral prohibition of artifical birth control can be intuited apart from the understanding of the character of marriage as a community of love. But this does not diminish in any way the significance of spousal love as the fulfillment of what marriage should be according to its inner meaning. II. The Reasons for the Immorality of Contraception Against the background of the understanding of the main dimensions of the meaning and the end of marriage and of human sexuality we can now turn to the grounds for the immorality of contraception. A. The Value and the Sacredness of the Natural connection between the Spousal Act and Procreation as the First Reason for the Immorality of Artificial Birth control Between the spousal act and procreation there obtains a profoundly meaningful bond which Humanae Vitae identifies as „inseparable.“ Naturally, the philosopher as such cannot build upon the Pope’s religious authority which is accessible only to the faithful Catholic. Rather, his considerations must be based exclusively on the ethical and naturally knowable truth of a position and the strength of the logical arguments in its favor as well as on the evidence of the intuitable grounds for these arguments. Consequently one must ask what is meant by „inseparable“ in this context. This expression certainly does not mean that the The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 278 connection is inseparable in the sense that it always obtains in actuality. That this cannot be the case is already clearly proven by the fact of the woman’s cycle and the restricted number of fertile days which follows from it. Nor does this characterization of the relation between the spousal act and procreation mean that the marital union is justified only in the expectation of fertility as if the only motivation which could justify the spousal act were the intention to endow a child with life. For in such a case „natural birth control“ through temporary abstinence would be just as immoral as „artificial birth control“ and any couple that could not have any children at all would be bound to observe complete abstinence. What, then, is meant by the term „inseparable?“ It means primarily that it is not morally permissible for man to actively separate the spousal act from procreation. The bond between the two is inseparable in the sense that on the side of the couple, an „openness“ toward conception should always exist in the spousal encounter. In other words, man should respect this connection absolutely during the relatively restricted time that it actually obtains. 130 Man is absolutely forbidden to break, intentionally and directly, the bond between the spousal act and procreation, or even for that matter, the bond between the initial stages of the process of fertilization which leads to conception and the conception itself. 131 Why is contraception not allowed? Such a prohibition does not seem rational in the face of the fact that marriage, both as a community of love and as remedium concupiscentiae (for avoiding the sin of impurity), has a meaning apart from procreation. This meaning justifies the marital act and, in the case of spousal love, even endows it with a high value. 130. This bond exists "actually" only during a limited number o f days each month for a limited number of years during a lifetime, a number often shortened by natural obstacles, operations, etc. Sometimes - as in the case of sterility - this bond never exists "actually." 131. In this context I abstract from the question whether this point refers exclusively to marriage and whether contraception ceases to be immoral in the case of a crime such as rape or of a sin such as adultery or premarital intercourse. This problem deals with the difficult and disputed ethical question whether an act that is immoral in itself (such as adultery) becomes more immoral in every instance where it is accompanied by another immoral act (such as contraception). This question involves the further problem concerning the procedures that may be legitimately undertaken by the innocent victim of a rape after the process which leads to conception has already been initiated. It seems that even here some of the reasons for the immorality of contraception remain valid while others do not apply. (The question also arises whether it is not the case that most or even all forms of the pill are effective only after conception and are therefore abortifacient and hence also for this reason, even when used for purely therapeutic reasons, are always immoral.) The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 279 Both the answer to this question as well as the reason for the moral inviolability of this bond, and hence for the immorality of contraception, can be derived, in the first place, from the moral relevance of the bond between the spousal act and procreation. It is not the mere facticity of this bond as a naturally given datum which imposes the moral obligation. Were this the case, it would have to follow that even the shaving of one’s beard would be forbidden. The moral relevance of the relation between act and procreation follows, much rather, from the considerations which follow. 1. The moral relevance of the bond in question is grounded, above all, in the high value of the new human person possessing an immortal soul. The dignity and the importance of the child that is about to be conceived (the procreandus) accounts for the necessary moral relevance of the bond. This is manifestly clear, even prior to any consideration of the problem of contraception. The very possibility of the parents to endow a child with life as well as their vocation to live their marriage already lays upon them the fundamental obligation of being ready and willing in principle to stand in the service of the coming into existence of a child. 132 And yet, even though this is true, it cannot be denied that the obligation to endow a new child with life can be suspended under certain circumstances. Would not these circumstances also justify contraception? One might wish to make one’s case by raising the following objection: How can a human being that exists only „potentially“ establish the moral relevance of the bond between the spousal act and procreation, and this in such a way that contraception would be absolutely forbidden? In the moment that the spousal act is accomplished, it is no longer a question of the abstract possibility that the child could come into existence; nor is it even a question of the „real“ possibility that the child can come into existence here and now, under the present empirical conditions (during the wife’s fertile days, for example). Much rather, we are now confronted with the uniquely new situation brought about by the marital act. The preciousness of the future child is no longer a mere possibility or even an immediately actual potentiality. No, in those concrete instances which are the sole reason for using contraception, namely, in the case of fruitful marital acts, the child is „about“ to enter into life. The accomplished marital act will in fact give him life if one 132. According to Catholic teaching - in profound harmony with the given nature of marriage - this general openness to children is even a necessary and decisive condition for the validity of a marriage. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 280 does not intervene and actively prevent it. (It may be that subjectively one does not know that a specific marital act leads to conception, but the contraceptive means are used only in case the act would lead to it!) The first step in the direction of the existence of the child has already been taken. The process that is constituted and ordained for the transmission of life has already begun. Because of its extraordinary and immediate proximity to the real existence of an unrepeatable human being, its value acquires a quite new level of moral relevance. We are no longer simply invited to give a child the gift of live. For now we are obliged not to hinder actively the incipient existence of the child that is about to receive life. The moral relevance of the child once again acquires a completely new level as soon as the child is actually conceived. After that point, any action which aims at taking its life is murder, a criminal deed, incomparably more immoral than contraception. 2. Another reason for the moral relevance of the bond between the spousal act and procreation lies in the profoundly significant finality according to which the marital act is destined to bring a child into existence during the fruitful periods of the woman’s cycle. This finality is not at all a merely accidental, factual relationship. Rather, the marital act as such is profoundly stamped by the (possible) transmission of life toward which it is oriented in virtue of its ownmost nature. During the time of ovulation this capacity, as the natural end of the marital act, becomes actual. Normally a mere possibility, this natural capacity is „actualized“ during the fertile period. It is this actually existing capacity of the spousal act to transmit life, in its profound meaning and value, that imposes upon the united couple the obligation not to interrupt actively the power of the spousal act. It forbids the misuse of marriage by frustrating the naturally given and noble end of an act that would otherwise have been fruitful. 133 In other words, contraception constitutes an intrinsically immoral form of mutilation. While the cutting off of a limb or permanent sterilization is the mutilation of the body in its permanent structure and integrity, contraception is the mutilation of the structure and integrity of a bodily act of man. Moreover, this mutilation of the marital act with regard to its generative power is especially grave for various reasons all of which have to do with the personal structure and meaning of this act. Not only is human sexuality, as the whole 133. Cf. Humanae Vitae, No. 13. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 281 human body, human and thus belongs to the body of a person; the sexuality of man is also related to the existence and to the world of the person in two other important ways. First, it should be the expression of a personal act of union and communion between persons; second, it is the only sphere of the human body which is destined to play a decisive role in the coming into being of new persons. In addition, all these three dimensions of the personalistic meaning and value of the human sexual act are intrinsically related to each other and are severed from each other and therefore „mutilated“ in an additional non-biological sense when contraception is used. For all of these reasons, the biological mutilation of the most significant act and dimension of man’s bodily being, the marital act, is more seriously immoral than the mutilation of the body by severing a hand or a foot from it which is never morally permissible except if that limb directly and unavoidably endangers the total good of the body. The mutilation of the marital act by contraception is never permitted because, first, it can never unavoidably endanger the good of the whole body and second, it has essentially different and more metaphysical and personalistic implications which will emerge more and more clearly in the light of the following investigations. 3. The meaningful bond between the spousal act and procreation becomes more manifest when one considers the fact that this act is not only immanently ordained for the transmission of life but that it is also created to be the expression and fulfillment of the indissoluble human and sacramental union between the spouses. Even when we do not consider marital intercourse as the expression of spousal love (which may very well be absent in an unhappy marriage), it remains, nevertheless, the exercise and accomplishment of an unbreakable personal and even - as Catholics believe - a sacramental bond between the spouses. (Of course, this last point is evident only for a catholic or an Orthodox. Still, the fundamental meaning content is accessible to anyone who understands that in its original nature marital love longs for an exclusive and inseparable communion with the beloved and that this community is realized when the spouses enter into the marriage through the mutual consent to give themselves to each other as man and wife and to remain faithful until death). A sublime value inheres in this bond between the spousal act in its orientation toward a becoming-one and procreation. For the sexual act which accomplishes the indissoluble and lasting self-donation of the spouses which they sealed with the words of mutual consent and The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 282 which, as such, already possesses a value and dignity, - this sexual act is ordained to become the cause of conception. 134 This bond possesses a high value and sacred character which absolutely forbid any manipulation which would actively separate and isolate the meaning of the marital union from procreation - be it in contraception, artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization. 4. Finally, the value and the moral relevance of this bond can be understood in the light of the fact that this meaningful bond does not simply exist as a brute fact, but that God, as the Creator, chose and determined this act to find its fulfillment in conception within a restricted period of the woman’s cycle. This final point can be clearly perceived by anyone who has faith in a personal God (Christian, Jew, Moslem, or any theist). Indeed, it can be understood even on the basis of purely philosophical proofs for the contingency of the world and the existence of an absolute, eternal and personal God who transcends this world. Because of the the depth of the union of the spouses who „become one flesh,“ on the one hand, and in consideration of the sublime character of the coming into existence of a new person, on the other hand, we cannot conceive of the relation between God and this bond along the lines of God’s relation to any other natural phenomenon. On the contrary, from the bond’s quasi-sacral value, which demands special reverence, we can recognize how God has quite specifically willed it and established it and how, consequently, this bond is subject only to Him. Man is allowed to approach this bond only with a profound reverence before its mystery and with a consciousness of both the majesty of its Creator and the biblical injunction, „What 134. Thus, we consider the connection between procreation and an essential, constitutive trait of marriage as the decisive root of the moral imperative prohibiting contraception. In this we differ in only a minor way from what is in fact meant by von Hildebrand. But there is a major difference on this point in what concerns the literal meaning of some of the passages in The Encyclical Humanae Vitae (pp. 35, 40-41, 43-44) in which von Hildebrand takes the twofold meaning of the spousal act - namely, in as much as it leads to procreation and is destined to be the expression of a unique kind of love, that is, spousal love - as the most important ground for the immorality of contraception. With this, something which, as we have seen, can be absent in a valid marriage becomes the central consideration. And this in turn leads to the question raised in the text above, whether a reference to the fact that the unique love, or "spousal love" (von Hildebrand) between man and woman, should constitute the inner meaning of marriage, (making the expression of this love an objective "vocation" or determination of the spousal act) suffices to establish the immorality of contraception. It must be noted that von Hildebrand also notes the other reasons for the immorality of contraception which we have listed. Cf. Note 26 below. We do not exclude here that one ultimately decisive metaphysical and simultaneously personalistic reason for the creation of marriage and the marital act lies in the specifically spousal love, to which the human marital act is ordained by its very nature. We also do not doubt that the highest moral justification and meaning of the marital act lies in the union of love of "two in one flesh." Nonetheless, it seems important to recognize that other "ends" of marriage justify the marita l act, that marriage may be contracted validly and licitely for reasons other than spousal love, and that, therefore, the primary reason for the immorality of contraception must not be placed in the relationship between that unitive love between man and wo man (spousal love) and procreation but must be recognized in more essential, i.e., more indipensible moments of marriage. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 283 God has joined together , let no man put asunder,“ which, in a wider sense is also applicable to the bond here under discussion. The abuse of marriage through the practice of artificial contraception violates strict obligations which are grounded in the profoundly meaningful nature of the spousal act and its bond with procreation. a) Three General Sources of the Obligations that Forbid contraception The immorality of contraception can be derived from three important sources of moral obligation. 1. The morally relevant value135 In this context the concept of value means the inner preciousness and the intrinsic dignity of a being. A being that possesses a value demands of us that we respond adequately by giving it the due response. We should respond with awe to whatever calls for awe; with respect to whatever demands respect, etc. The concept of the „morally relevant value“ refers to a value, which is to be distinguished from something like the admirable talent of an artist, namely, to the value of a being that adresses a moral call to us or imposes a moral obligation to respond adequately. When a morally relevant value is in question, it is morally right or even obligatory to give the adequate response. While one does not incur any moral guilt in failing to respond adequately to the beauty of a work of art, it is morally wrong not to give the required response to a moral obligation that is grounded in a morally relevant value, as, for example, when the value of a human life is endangered. In conjunction with the fact that the marital act has been ordained for procreation we find a number or realities that possess a morally relevant value. First, we have the morally relevant value of the child as a human person that will come into existence when one does not actively intervene to hinder it. Second, there is a morally relevant value inherent in the finality and determination of the 135. Cf. Note 3 above. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 284 spousal act as the faculty for the transmission of life, when this faculty is actualized during the fertile period. And thirdly, a morally relevant value belongs to the very bond which unites the two determinations of the marital act, namely its power to express and realize the most intimate human union of the spouses and its power to endow a child with life. 2. The metaphysical situation and limitation of man Another general source of moral obligations is to be found in the metaphysical situation and limitation of man. Because of this, man is not permitted to perform certain acts which „in themselves“ could very well be good if considered exclusively in their relation to the morally relevant object without taking into account the morally relevant elements in the finite subject. Inasmuch as he is a contingent person, man necessarily has his boundaries and therefore lacks certain rights. When he claims rights which he does not possess, or decides to do what, as man, he is not allowed to do, he transgresses his metaphysical situation as contingent person. In our relations to earthly authorities there are analogies to the metaphysically determined limits to human rights. Thus, for example, parents have certain rights over children and their education which a third party may never claim, not even when he possesses a greater knowledge about the raising and handling of children. (In this context we abstract from the situations in which the parents voluntarily transfer their rights to someone else or in which they forfeit their rights by abusing them). Similarly, a judge possesses a jurisdiction which allows him to legally condemn or exonerate an accused individual brought to him for judgment. However, someone without the proper authorization would be usurping a right not his own were he to attempt (assuming he had the power) to sit in judgment over the individual in question, pronounce a sentence or execute it. If our fellow human beings - be they parents, judges, kings or emperors, presidents or mayors - possess rights which we cannot claim, then it is not surprising that God, as absolute person, posesses exclusive rights which are grounded more deeply in his absolute nature than the above mentioned rights are grounded in the nature of their The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 285 bearers who acquire these rights in virtue of merely factual or accidental circumstances, such as social decrees, for example. It is essentially and necessarily impossible for man, in virtue of his human and contingent nature, to possess those rights which proceed from the nature of the divine Being. An instance of such a right that belongs to God alone is the decision as to when the life of an innocent human being should come to an end. For God is the Lord of life, while man has no authority with respect to the termination of human life. In a similar way, man is not the lord of the beginning of human life. The exception to this is that limited sphere within which he has been given responsibility for the origin of human life. And this responsibility is tremendous and awesome enough, despite its limited character. For man is free to enter into marriage, to consummate it and even to exercise natural family planning when there are serious enough reasons for avoiding the conception of a new child. Yet man has no sovereignty over the bond that exists between the spousal union and fertility. Hence, any active intervention or any rupture of this sacred bond constitutes a transgression of the essential limits of justifiable human action. Similarly, man has no right to end another’s life by euthanasia or his own by suicide. One of the reasons for this is that in doing so man arrogates for himself a right which he absolutely does not possess.136 The fact that he lacks such a right is grounded, in the first instance, in his essentially limited knowledge which prevents him from comprehending all the secrets of human existence. Another, more important basis for the fact that man does not have certain rights lies, quite simply, in his condition of being a contingent person that depends on God absolutely. Plato already expressed this in his Phaedo and Apology when he compared the human condition with that of the „cattle of the gods“ or that of the soldier who has been ordered by his commander to guard his post. The Platonic Socrates notes that we would become angry if the cattle that belongs to us would take its own life and separate itself from the herd without our permission; 136. Cf. Humanae Vitae, No. 13, where the same point is emphasized, namely, that we must recognize that we are wh at we are, that is, created persons. As such, the Encyclica continues, we have no sovereignty over the sources of human life, but rather, are called to serve a divinely ordained plan. Man does not even have an unlimited sovereignty over his body in general and all the more so over the power of procreation in particular since the latter, in its innermost nature, is ordained for th e generation of human life, whose source is God. The fact that contraception does not recognize God as God and man as man was developped brilliantly in a profoundly theological speculation by Carlo Caffarra in various works, eg., in his contribution to Elternschaft und Menschenwürde (Schönstadt: Patris Verlag, 1984) and in his contribution to the First World Congress on "The Philosophy and Theology of Responsible Parenthood" (Rome, John Paul II Institute at the Lateran University, June 5-7, 1984). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 286 and that the general would consider it wrong for the soldier to abandon on his own initiative the post entrusted to him. Analogously, we can say that since God alone has the right over life, we are only in a position to accept death out of his hand when He sends it and are not allowed to usurp God’s exclusive right through the act of murder or euthanasia. Plato’s image can be applied to our problem insofar as, with respect to the beginning of a new life, man is called to be a servant and has no right to manipulate at his own discretion the connection between the spousal act and procreation.137 In a certain sense this source of moral obligation is the most important for the determination of the immorality of contraception. For man’s use of contraception constitutes an overweening rebellion against his own creatureliness. In a Promethean gesture he claims all rights for himself and wills to be Lord over everything, even over those things and situations which are subject only to God’s divine authority. Such an attitude constitutes the common element, even if with essentially different modifications, between the proponents of abortion or euthanasia and those that approve of contraceptive practices. 3. Freely contracted obligations as a source of moral obligation. A third general source of moral obligations, namely, freely contracted and chosen commitments, is also a partial ground for the immorality of contraception. We are frequently quite free to decide on some specific measure. But the moment we freely set it into action, it imposes inevitable moral obligations whose actuality is no longer subject to our free choice. Thus, for example, we are free to marry or to remain single, to adopt a child or not, to make a promise or not. In this sense we are often admittedly free to decide whether we want to endow a new child with life or not. But once we make a promise we lose the freedom of choosing whether what has been promised is to be fulfilled or not. And in a very similar sense, in accomplishing the spousal act we incur an obligation which demands that we „be open“ towards its essential structure and meaningful consequences. From the 137. Cf. Note 16. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 287 moral perspective we may have been originally free either to assume this responsibility or to refrain from the marital act. Yet, the moment husband and wife decide to perform it, they freely give up the kind of freedom they had before. They have taken the first step toward the possibility of endowing a child with life and are no longer free to prevent the „second step.“ 138 138. For the Catholic there is still a fourth general source of moral relevance. It is the theoretical authority of the Chu rch, that is, the God-given authority to teach the truth in matters of faith and morals. The Church disposes of this theoretical authority not only when she speaks ex cathedra or proclaims dogmas through conciliar decrees, but also whenever she exercises, even if not with the same explicit clarity, the official magisterium grounded in tradition. There is perhaps also a fifth source of moral obligation for the believing Catholic. It is the positive or practical authority of the Church. The simple fact that the Church has clearly rejected contraception as immoral should be a sufficient reason for the Catholic not to practice it, if only out of obedience to the Church. For the Church posseses a positive authority in general, in virtue of which she can impose obligations and make positive prescriptions which bind us morally, even when the matter in question is neutral in itself (such as abstinence from meat on Fridays). In such cases the simple command of the Church imposes a strict moral obligation upon us to comply with such a positive prescription. It would appear that the position of the Church in the matter of artifial contraception would (and per eminentiam) include this source of moral obligation which would be binding at least in the same measure as other postive Church laws. On the question of the different general sources of moral obligations see D. von Hildebrand, Moralia (Regensburg, 1980). But apart from this and much more important is the fact that every believing Catholic is bound in conscience to be lieve - as long as he believes in the divine origin of the Church and its divine government and illumination as it is manifested in the theoretical authority of the Church - that the position of the Church on a moral question (even when it is not presented with a formally infallible authority) is much more reliable than his private judgment and much safer from error than any other private opinion. This is especially true when the individual Catholic has no clear evidence to the contrary of a position taken by the ordinary magisterium of the Church. Such an insight, in conflict with non -infallible teaching of the Church, is in principle possible in what concerns the truths that can be known naturally (although with respect to error, there can be only a pseudo-evidence which is fundamentally different from genuine evidence). Since a statement of the ordinary magisterium of the Church is not infallible in principle and safe from error, there is the possibility of a conflict between a genuine philosophical insight and some contrary position of the magisterium. Some authors claim that this is concretely the case with Humanae Vitae. Yet as soon as philosophical cognition yields the truth that contraception is immoral, one readily sees the consequence that there is no possibility of genuine insight into a real state of affairs that would contradict Humanae Vitae. Every such supposed insight, whenever it is invoked, would, upon closer examination, turn out to rest upon pseudo-evidence. Nevertheless, in the absence of a clear insight to the contrary in a difficult matter, in which no one can truly claim to possess an evident insight into the moral neutrality of contraception, the individual Catholic must accept, on the basis of faith and obedience (both external and internal) and in trust of the superior theoretical authority of the Church, its magisterial decision that artificial birth control violates the natural moral law. Furthermore, no one can claim earnestly, after serious investigation, that the teach ings of Humanae Vitae are merely the singular individual opinions of one Pope rather than recognizing them for an expression of a teaching of the Church that has been repeated and formulated throughout different periods of time. It is unquestionable that the Church has always and continuously defended this teaching. (Even most Protestants have held the same until the Lambeth Conference in 1930). Hence, the rejection of Humanae Vitae is in some sense an undermining of our whole faith. For even if it is not a matter of a dogma or even a central ethical question, it still remains the case that in this case we are confronted with the continuous teaching on an important ethical problem of great existential and personal consequence. Indeed, we can even go further and say - in agreement with the position presented in Hans Küng's Infallible?, even though in a sense contrary to his - that if the Church's teaching on this point for hundreds of years has been erroneous, it would be incompatible with the general infallibility of the Church. For the general infallibility of the Curch means that in all important questions of faith and morals the Church as a whole and its tradition cannot err. Cf. The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, No. 12. The position that the teaching of Humanae Vitae is infallible was defended with good arguments also by Germain Grisez, William May and others. Cf. also J.F. Constanzo, SJ, "Papal Magisterium and Humanae Vitae," Thought, XXIX, No. 4 (October, 1970), especially pp. 640, 642-653. Constanzo's article contains a theological analysis of the strictly obligatory character of Humanae Vitae. Costanzo gives a critical discussion of the dissidents as well as of those who falsely c laim and even distort certain historical facts as examples of a change in the positions held by the authentic Magisterium, that is, a change in the moral teachings proposed by the Church tradition. The sources of the mcral prohibition against contraception that have been brought forth in this note apply especially to those Catholics who are not convinced by the rational ethical reasons that have been brought against contraception. Indeed, for such Catholics that do not understand the inner evidence of the arguments and the rational grounds for the immorality of contraception, the argument from authority retains its full validity. This remark does not contradict what was affirmed at the outset of this analysis, namely, the fact that the immorality of contraception is accessible to our rational, philosophical understanding. For there are many realities, such as the existence of The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 288 B. The Value and the Specific „Sacredness“ of the Connection between Human Actions and Divine Creation of Procreation: The Second Specific Reason for the Immorality of Contraception Our presentation of the specific reasons for the immorality of contraception would remain quite incomplete if we were to restrict ourselves exclusively to the relation between the parental union and conception. Certainly, the special bond between these two goods is the most accessible to our understanding and experience. Still, there is another „bond,“ less obvious, which nevertheless discloses itself on the basis of a metaphysical intuition into the fact that the parents, their sexual union and all the physiological processes that are initiated by conception are completely incapable of calling a new human person into existence. As soon as we recognize that man is composed of body and soul, and that his soul is a spiritual substance distinct from his body and that this soul is unique, free and immortal, we also grasp the fact that the soul of the child, in its innermost being and essence, does not come from the parents but, rather, that it must come from God in an act of immediate creation. 139 God, which can be grasped by reason without the presupposition of faith. Nevertheless, they can be known philosophically only with great difficulty and by relatively few individuals, with the additional danger that such insights can be obscured by moral obstacles or other sources of errors that so often trouble human cognition. Because of this, as St. Thomas in the Summa contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologica and later Vatican I explain, it is proper that such realities also be objects of faith even though they can be known naturally by reason alone. For if they were not also revealed by God, only a few men, who have great intellectual gifts and much leisure time, would get to know them. And even so, they would frequently mix their knowledge of these truths with error. Since these truths are necessary for the good life and salvation of all men, howe ver, it is proper that God revealed them to us. But this does not lessen our task of philosophically analyzing contraception, of weighing the evidence belonging to the insights and proofs which are accessible to human reason without the help of faith. This task is important not only because it involves a philosophical demonstration of what Humanae Vitae affirms, namely, that it is possible to understand by natural reason that contraception is immoral. In this respect, philosophy helps to demonstrate the truth of the teaching of the Church. But even apart from this, the task is also important because in general it is good that one actually grasp for oneself every truth that can be intuited by man. Hence, it is good that we comprehend the immorality of contraception as we have done and understand the reasons for this "from within," as it were, without having having to rely exclusively upon our faith and an obedient submission to the judgment of the Church. In this way we realize that striving of a faith "seeking understanding" (fides quaerens intellectum) which is so characteristic of the thought of St. Augustine and St. Anselm. 139. Cf. L. Hoelscher, The Reality of the Mind (IAP Studies, 1984); also Christoph Schönborn criticizes well in various articles the unclear thesis of Karl Rahner that asserts as "transcendence of secondary causes" which would allow human sexuality to produce the soul of the child on its own. Cf. also J. Seifert, Leib und Seele. Ein philosophischer Beitrag zur philosophischen Anthropologie (Salzburg, 197 4) for the question concerning the soul and its origin. The fact that the soul can only be created by God directly is accessible to philosophical cognition. Naturally, the fact that it is created at the moment of conception rather than after or even before can be rendered only p robable, rather than certain, by the philosophical arguments that demonstrate the intimate body-soul unity. Our certitude in this matter, therefore, has its source in faith. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 289 When we consider this fact we also come to understand that a unique cooperation occurs between God and man in the fruitful marital community. God alone has the power to call an individual soul into existence, to create it „out of nothing.“ He alone can „breathe“ a soul into a body. Because of this the parents in fact play only a very modest role in the whole process of conception, a role that despite its great dignity simply does not have the capacity, of and in itself, to call into being a new human person with an immortal soul. It is the role of the parents to generate the body, but they cannot instill a soul into it. Their role consists, as it were, in the preparation of the „dust“ and the „rib“ out of which the bodies of Adam and Eve were fashioned. Of course it is an organic being, a new living entity that comes into existence out of previously existing „living cells“ contributed by the activity of the parents. But the soul in this living, organic body must be directly created by God. Hence, man is invited and challenged to a most intimate cooperation with the Divine creative power in the procreative act. The divine activity of creating a soul is bound in a mysterious way to the procreative act freely initiated by the spouses. In a mysterious and awesome way God even makes his creation of a soul in a certain sense „dependent“ on the parental union. When the marital act takes place by a free decision of the parents and a conception becomes possible and realized, God Himself creates a personal soul out of nothing and summons it to its eternal destiny. Therefore husband and wife should consider themselves as humble servants of a wonderful and above all a divine and divinely initiated process to which the child owes its existence. It is absolutely immoral for the spouses to break, actively and freely, the bond between their union and procreation and no longer to remain „open“ for the latter. For when they do this, they seek, in an objectively or also subjectively sinful manner to exclude God from an act which, in effect, He Himself ordained to be bound with His own act of creating a person. It is a frightful hybris, a rebellion against God when one initiates an act in connection with which God would create a spiritual and immortal soul, and then intervenes to exclude God from this act by quite consciously and actively destroying the intimate bond which unites it with the infinite depth of the divine creative love. This becomes evident against the background of a deeper reflection about all the given factors that enter into this situation. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 290 The three previously discussed general sources of moral obligation are equally decisive with respect to the second specific main reason for the immorality of contraception. C. The superabundant Finality between Spousal Love and Procreation A third specific reason for the immorality of contraception stands in the center of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s pamphlet, Die Enzyklika Humanae Vitae: Ein Zeichen des Widerspruchs140, namely, the superabundant finality between spousal love and procreation. What is an expression of the most intimate spiritual love is, or at least, according to its proper nature, should be bound in a deeply meaningful way to procreation. The marital union as an expression of spousal love does not simply have the meaning of an „instrument“ serving as means for procreation. The spousal union bears a high value and has a theme that deserves to be taken seriously on its own acccount.141 But above and beyond this, God has made it fruitful for the purpose of procreation. This type of finality will be designated in this context as a „superabundant finality“ in contradistinction to a merely instrumental finality in which the meaning of something is exhausted in the fact that it serves as a means for something else. Spousal love of two human beings for each other, an image of the eternal Love that is the fount of all creation, is destined to be the source of human life over and above the meaning that it possesses as properly its own. It can be said that the immorality of contraception lies in the separation of what is or should be the expression of spousal love and complete self-donation from the fruitfulness which the spousal act should serve in a superabundant manner. In fact, contraception violates several essential traits of love. It goes against a) the superabundant procreative finality of spousal love; against b) the essential generousity of love and the intrinsic gesture of a mutual gift of love; against c) the integrity of the gift, that is, of the persons who give themselves to each other in love; and against d) the love of God, which should be the ultimate of all personal acts of man, especially of the spousal act. 140. Cf. D. von Hildebrand, The Encyclical, pp. 29f., 35-36, 43-44. Some of the other grounds for the immorality of contraception are also mentioned in this book. See Note 26 below. 141. Ibid., p. 33ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 291 Perhaps this third specific reason against contraception presupposes the actual existence of spousal love and is not sufficient in itself to explain the moral wrong of contraception. It is much rather the case that next to other reasons the ordination of the marital act to spousal love on the one hand and of the marital act to conception on the other hand shed a new, additional light on the meaningful bond between the marital act and procreation. As soon as one perceives the marital act as the fulfillment of love one also sees the child in a new light since one experiences it as the fruit and gift of a tender spousal love. Considered in this manner, the meaningful relation between spousal love and procreation yields a deeper understanding of the just discussed reasons for the immorality of contraception rather than a sufficient reason, in and of itself, for distinguishing between natural and „artificial“ regulation of births. Perhaps we may go on to affirm that apart from immorality of contraception as intelligibly grounded in the previously noted reasons, the use of contraception in a marriage filled by spousal love involves an additional sin, namely a sin against the inner logos and generosity of spousal love. For in the active obstruction of conception in the performance of an act motivated by love there occurs a desecration of that same love, a betrayal of the inner meaning of spousal love. We also find a profound indication of this in the philosopher and Pope Wojtyla, who has repeatedly emphasized the fact that the mutual and unconditional self-donation of the spouses in the marital act contradicts any contraceptive exclusion of new life from this act. 142 One ought not to violate the integrity of the act of love by betraying the mystery that belongs to it, that out of it and a tender love a new child should come to be. III. Responses to Some Objections 142. This thought stands in the center of the article by Karol Cardinal Wojtyla in the present volume as well as in two important works by Cardinal Wojtyla to appear shortly in German, "The Teaching of the Encyclical 'Humanae Vitae' about Love (Textanalysis)", in which is shown the personalist character of the central concept of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, and "The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics. Reflections and Postulates." Both works present the beautiful relation between Humanae Vitae and the wonderful personalist understanding of love and marriage, which is also found in Familiaris Consortio. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 292 A. Why is „Natural“ Regulation of Conception Legitimate? Since contraception is immoral one could ask why is this not also the case with „natural“ measures, all the more since here too the marital act is intended as an expression of love (or as remedium concupiscentiae) in separation from its purposeful ordination toward generation. Why is the marital act not equally sinful in those cases in which the couple either knows that conception is excluded (eg., for reasons of age) or even intends sexual intercourse quite explicitly on those days when conception is impossible. Once it is admitted that procreation is the „primary end“ of marriage and inseparable from the significance of the marital act as a fulfillment of spousal love, how can one then avoid the conclusion that the so-called „natural“ regulation of conception is just as immoral as the artificial one? If one maintains the latter one must also accept the former. In answering this objection, which brings us to the theme the natural regulation of conception, we must first note that there are different possible meanings and kinds of „primary end.“ 1. In the first instance we have the case where the primary end is something that can never be realized without our intending it as an end. Wherever we have to do with this kind of primary end we are always under the obligation to give it at least implicitly the requisite priority in our motivation. The „primary end“ of a painful operation which also includes a risk to the patient’s life and leads to a deformity is the health of the patient. This end should always be intended primarily and should be subordinated to any scientific or material interests of the doctor. If procreation were the „primary end“ of marriage in this sense, then every marital union without the explicit intention of procreation would indeed be immoral, as some maintain. 2. Second, something is a „primary end“ in the sense that it is forbidden us to actively hinder or oppose this actual end. Here we are not obliged to realize something exclusively when we intend its primary end. The clearest example of this is precisely the marital act. We have already discussed the reasons for the prohibition against going against its ordination toward procreation. Yet it is evident that there are other meaningful The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 293 realities of a high order of value which also justify the marital act even when conception is not possible or when, for serious reasons, children are not desired. Instances of the things that justify or even render the marital act noble are spousal love and fidelity, the accomplishment of the sacramental bond in the becoming-one in one flesh, and others. We see, then, that in the second sense of „primary end“ here under consideration, only an active obstruction of the „primary end“ of marriage is always and essentially wrong for the already mentioned reasons. On the other hand, when the spousal act is performed, for legitimate reasons, at a time that conception is precluded, or when the spouses justifiably intend to avoid the conception of a new child, the marital acts remain legitimate and noble and are in no way immoral. 143 Indeed, one may even raise the question whether there exist circumstances serious enough to make natural family planning morally obligatory. Examples of such situations would be the danger to the physical or mental well-being of the mother or some serious neurological or other condition under which the pregnancy would be the occasion for a profound bitterness. B. Why is the „Active“ Separation of the Marital Act and Procreation Sinfull, Since such a Separation Often Occurs „Naturally? „ One could argue against the position that contraception is immoral by invoking the observation that nature or God frequently bring about a separation of the marital act from procreation. From this it becomes clear that the bond between the two can not be so inseparable and naturally given. Hence, one could draw the conclusion from this that man could also do what occurs in nature and through God, and thus be allowed to actively separate the marital act from generation. 143. This was emphasized in Gaudium et Spes and in Humanae Vitae. Still, there is a third kind of "primary end" where we are fully justified in an active obstruction of the primary end of a thing, at least as long as this is done for good reas ons. This is certainly the case in all instances of things that are not morally relevant, that is, those which do not issue a specifically moral "ought." Even in the case of animals and plants, where we are not allowed a completely arbitrary attitude with regard to the use and manipulation of nature, it is still permissible to obstruct a primary end such as procreation through sterilization just as it is permissible to kill animals for a good end. It would also be legitimate to use the human blood or cells, which are not necessary for life or bodily integrity, in important scientific experiments even though in doing so one hinders the primary end of these things, namely, their function in the service of the human body. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 294 In responding, one must first of all uncover the disastrous fundamental error about the nature of moral action hidden in the objection. It is a currently widespread notion that it is morally permissible for man to do whatever occurs often or with some regularity in the order of nature without human intervention. If this were true, we could in due order cause others every conceivable injury that is often brought about by natural catastrophes, through accidents or through natural events that afflict man, such as sickness and death. In other words, by invoking such a false principle we could justify almost any immoral or criminal behavior. The absurdity of such a consequence clearly brings to light the erroneous nature of the underlying principle. This principle is not wrong only with respect to evil. It would be just as wrong to apply to many goods that often accrue to men without any human intervention but which can not be procured by us intentionally without any further ado. Thus, for example, we are not morally permitted to take someone’s life in order to free him from the evils of a pain which he cannot bear patiently or from the temptation to despair, - not even when that person begs it of us as a favor or when death in such cases would really be a form of relief and salvation for which we could otherwise pray and hope. The fact that something occurs in nature must not be interpreted in any way as a normative sanction of these events or as a license for their active realization. Returning to our theme, the objection is grounded in a completely false interpretation of morality as well as in a mistaken attempt to turn empirical data into a norm for moral action. 144 C. Why Should the Mere Factual and Biological constitution of Man be Morally Binding on Us? Why should we not manipulate a merely biological fact such as the time of fertility? 144. Such an attempt is undertaken with a philosophically incredible naiveté by W. Wickler in h is book Sind wir Sünder? In this work he not only uses merely factual behavioral patterns of men but also general animal behavior and statistical data on their sexual behavior in order to establish or reject moral norms. Thus, Wickler attempts to attack Humanae Vitae and to justify artificial birth control on the basis of ethological research. Cf. Wolfgang Wickler, Sind wir Sünder? (München, 1969). For an analysis of the relation between biological facts and morality see also D. von Hildebrand, The Encyclical and A. Laun, Die naturrechtliche Begründung, p. 51ff., where this naive interpretation of "nature" as moral norm is thoroughly refuted. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 295 In answering this question we must first note that it is obvious that we are allowed to intervene in many neutral biological states or processes but that there are also many biological facts that impose moral obligations upon us even if, considered in themselves, they are neutral. The basis for this suprising state of affairs is the connection of these facts with very important and morally relevant goods. It is because they are in fact related to such morally relevant goods that they deserve to be morally respected as a matter of pure fact, not because of their own morally relevant nature but on account of the factual connection with morally relevant realities. The neutral, merely biological fact that, for example, some specific food harms a baby, imposes a moral obligation not to give it to the baby simply because the biological fact in question is as a matter of simple fact connected with the baby’s health or sickness. Biological data, which, considered in themselves are quite neutral, acquire a high degree of moral relevance through the factual occurence of their connection with spheres of moral relevance. The marital act is connected with generation only during the fertile periods and as long as this connection actually obtains it should be respected. A specific Manichean pride reveals itself in the practice of contraception; a pride which refuses to recognize and accept the dignity that certain facts, in themselves neutral, draw from their factual connection with important goods in whose importance they participate. IV. The Regulation of Conception in the Light of the Absolute Primacy of the Moral Sphere. The Sufferings and Problems Arising from Moral Obligations. The teaching of the Church, as contained in Humanae Vitae and in the more recent pronouncements of the Magisterium, is often presented as an inhuman moralizing in which one forgets the real circumstances and the really important facts and problems, the sufferings and the existential situations in which many couples find themselves and which they cannot possibly overcome, in the way The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 296 demanded by Humanae Vitae, and which in effect forces them to practice contraception. Now, one should certainly have compassion and full understanding for those married couples who must bear the difficulties and suffer the tragic concequences that may result from their compliance with these and other moral demands. And it is precisely Pope John Paul II who projects understanding and loving compassion of the Church in both his teachings and deeds. Nevertheless, it is necessary to identify the fatal error in this objection, an error which fails to grasp the very nature of the moral sphere and its relation to reality (and the real problems). Morality, the question of moral good and evil, does not refer to a theorizing in an abstract void, but rather aims at the very heart of reality and the drama of human existence. Every moral evil, no matter how small, outweighs in an incomparable way any extra-moral evil and in the calculus of goods weighs more heavily on the negative side than all the extra-moral goods on the positive side, goods that may accrue to the individual or the state as consequences of the morally evil acts. Therefore, because of the specific absoluteness of the moral sphere, there can be no grounds whatever for permitting an act that is morally evil in itself. Indeed, if we could save the whole world through one single, intrinsically immoral act, we would still not be allowed to perform such an act. Both the utilitarianism and consequentialism that are so widespread in ethical circles as well as the principle that „the end justifies the means“ obscure this fundamental truth which was already recognized by Socrates, namely, that a moral injustice is an incomparable more serious evil than other evils. It „is a lesser evil for man to suffer injustice than to commit it.“ 145 Unfortunately, many of those who attack Humanae Vitae, among them some Catholic moral theologicans, defend their positions by using arguments grounded in situation ethics and utilitarianism. They do this by not only pointing out the difficulties that would burden some couples who would submit to the teachings of the Church, but 145. This decisive point is expressed very clearly by D. von Hildebrand in connection with his discussion of the problematic of Humanae Vitae in the English text. Cf. The Encyclical, p. 70: The argument in question "equates a moral evil, the use of artificial contraception, with a misfortune, a morally relevant evil - the harming of marriage. And here all the amoralism of situation ethics appears, which showed its ugly face in the 'majority report' of the papal commission on birth control. We must say here with the greatest emphasis that we are never allowed to do something morally evil in order to prevent a misfortune. Sins, which offend God, and great misfortunes (the destruction of high values through no moral fault of ours) are absolutely incomparable. Sin alone offends God; no misfortune - however great - is commensurate with the fearful disharmony issuing from an offense of God." The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 297 by making these hardships the decisive argument against the teachings presented in Humanae Vitae and other documents. In itself it is quite legitimate and even necessary to point out the really difficult and even terrible burdens that can often result in practice from the obedience to Humanae Vitae, especially if the partners who must cooperate intimately happen to be of radically different opinion. These problems should be honestly recognized. The Christian can never love or sympathize too much with those who are undergoing serious trials. Yet he must beware of a false compassion and disorderd sympathy which carries with it the risk of leading to an opposition against moral obligation. (In the course of this, the situation is often falsified in that the moral prohibition against contraception is presented as a personal, unfeeling and even cruel demand on the part of a celibate Pope.) What is ignored in all of this is the central fact of the above noted absolute primacy of the moral sphere. What is more, one also overlooks - usually because of an implicit or often even an openly held hedonistic philosophy - the profound happiness that is possible in marriage even when the marital act is excluded for a short time or even for longer periods or, indeed, for ever. There are certainly great sacrafices involved for the couple, be it because of external separation, travel, war or imprisonment or of the demands implied by moral obligations. But the authors in question usually forget the numerous possibilities outside of sexual intercourse in which one can express and fulfill the intention of marital love to give oneself to and be united with the beloved, to bring happiness to the beloved and receive it in return. Normally the observance of the prohibition against contraception demands abstinence for only a relatively short period of time. That such a temporary restraint from sexual relations leads to a deepening and spiritualization of love rather than harming it is borne out by the experiences of numerous married couples, even non-Christians, as reported by M. Horckheimer in his response to Humanae Vitae, in which he speaks of the necessity of overcoming a consumer attitude which takes sexual self-donation for granted. As much as suffering should move us to love and compassion it is, nevertheless, irrelevant as an argument in our ethical discussion. For when it is a question of an act that is immoral in itself, no suffering can be so great as to allow the commission of a sin in order to avoid it. From an assumption to the contrary it would follow that adultery, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 298 sacrilege, pornography, lying, yes, every infraction and crime could be allowed in view of the possible consequences of avoiding suffering. On the basis of such a principle every call to martyrdom could also be rejected or simply explained away. It must be added that it is precisely in the light of spousal love that one can discern an intrusion of a contraceptive attitude even among the defenders of „natural methods,“ an attitude that can make even the natural family planning immoral. For it is certainly morally questionable or even objectionable when one uses the natural regulation of conception in order to escape the noble obligation and vocation of husband and wife to cooperate generously with God’s creative intentions. A self-centered refusal to cooperate with God’s plans for the creation of a new life can also make use of the natural means of birth control. In concluding these reflections it is necessary to stress the profound openness of spirit and the attitude of reverence that are of central importance in training an understanding of the moral difference under consideration. What is already a presupposition for any perception of moral value is of special importance in this context, i.e., the need to attend reverently to the voice of being and truth if one is to understand the difference at hand. Pope John Paul II says correctly of this difference that it is not something superficial but that in the final analysis it presupposes two radically different philosophical anthropologies. 146 We must open our souls in order to grasp the profound meaning and value of marriage. We must „descend into our own depths“ if we are even to begin to understand the mystery of the cooperation between God and man as it unfolds in procreation. Here, more than in other areas of ethics, pride and concupiscence can blind us to the truth which we have touched from many different perspectives. 146. See the passages from Familiaris Consortio, No. 31 and 32, quoted on pp. 2-3 of this article. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 299 The results of our investigation are of great significance for our lives, but they disclose themselves to us in their evident character only when we approach them with a pure heart. Contraception is especially dangerous because of its hidden character, even though it does not number among the more serious sins such as the heinous crime of abortion. It occurs not only in secret but it easily escapes notice and the voice of conscience. Hence the moral obligation, the clarification of which was the task of the present investigation, issues a special call to us to strive toward and to yearn for a liberation from that secret arrogance and rebellion against God which hinders us from seeing the moral difference between natural and artificial regulation of conception. In order to be understood, this truth demands that we grasp without any reservations the fundamental fact that God must be affirmed as God and man as man in all his contingency, and that „only one thing is needful:“ 147 that God not be offended but rather glorified, and that it profits a man nothing „if he gain the whole world but suffer the loss of his soul.“148 147. 148. Luke 10:42. Mark 8:36. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 300 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 301 IV. FAMILIE, HOMOSEXUALITÄT UND STAAT149 Die Familie ist die Kernzelle jeder menschlichen Gesellschaft und sie verdient – als primärer Ursprung und erste Heimat menschlichen Lebens –erstrangige Beachtung und Schutz durch den Staat und die Gesellschaft. In heute lebhafter denn je geführten Diskussionen um neue Rechtsbestimmungen in Verfassung und Grundgesetz, die die Rolle der Familie im Verhältnis zu alternativen Geschlechtsgemeinschaften und Formen des Zusammenlebens relativieren sollen, treffen wir in zunehmendem Maß die Forderung an, homosexuellen Beziehungen eine ganz andere und ihrer bisherigen diametral entgegengesetzte Rechtsstellung zuzuerkennen. Weit über die Abschaffung jedes gesetzlichen Verbots der Homosexualität hinaus zielt man mehr und mehr auf einen gleichen gesetzlichen Status homosexueller Lebensgemeinschaften mit der Ehe ab. Da ohnehin z.B. im § 6 des deutschen Grundgesetzes die Ehe, der „ein besonderer gesetzlicher Schutz“ gewährt werden soll, nicht definiert wird, solle man Ehe als eine „grundsätzlich lebenslange Verbindung zweier Partner (des gesetzlich vorgeschriebenen Mindestalters)“ definieren, um den Weg für gleichgeschlechtliche Ehen und womöglich für die Gründung von Familien durch homosexuelle Paare – via Adoption von Kindern – zu ebnen. Die stets verstärkt vernehmbare Forderung nach einer neuen rechtlichen und sozialen Stellung von praktizierenden Homosexuellen 150 in Staat und Kirche und deren Gleichstellung mit der Ehe läßt sich in sechs verschiedene Einzelforderungen aufspalten, wobei wir eine siebte Forderung, daß nämlich jegliches Sexualverhalten Vortrag, gehalten am 24. IX. 94 in Feldkirch. und hier ist selbstredend ausschließlich von homosexuellen Akten und nicht von bloßen homophilen Anlagen die Rede, die niemals Anlaß zu irgendeiner sozial-staatlichen Ungleichstellung geben sollten, sondern höchstens zu Klugheitsentscheidungen, wie sie überall zwischen Menschen verschiedener Anlagen und Charaktereigenschaften unterscheiden lassen. 149 150 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 302 überhaupt, wie z.B. sexueller Mißbrauch von Kindern oder Vergewaltigung, jedem anderen gleichgestellt werden solle, wegen ihrer Absurdität unbeachtet lassen. 1. In ihrer radikalsten Form ergibt sich die Forderung nach staatlicher Anerkennung der Homosexualität letztlich aus der umfassenderen Forderung nach einer totalen Gleichstellung alles nicht durch Gewalt, Verletzung von Rechten anderer oder Verletzung der Jugend kriminellen Sexualverhaltens. Auf diesem Boden müßte nicht nur eine totale Gleichstellung Homosexueller mit Eheleuten im Staat verlangt, sondern sogar die Forderung erhoben werden, daß keinerlei inhaltlich wertende Konzeption und bestimmte Philosophie der menschlichen Sexualität vorausgesetzt werden dürfe, die zwischen förderungswürdigen und staatlicher Förderung unwürdigen Geschlechtsgemeinschaften unterscheide. Es dürfe innerhalb der Sexualität keinerlei Diskriminierung und Unterscheidung geben. Dies gelte zumindest dann, wenn keinem der Partner des Sexualverkehrs ein rechtlich relevantes Leid151 geschehe152 und wenn Volljährigkeit oder das gesetzlich vorgeschriebene Mindestalter beider vorliege. Innerhalb aller frei von (zwei oder mehr) erwachsenen Partnern gewählten sexuellen Betätigungen dürfe von Staats wegen keinerlei Unterschied gemacht werden und sie seien alle gleichermaßen zu erlauben, anzuerkennen, zu schützen und zu fördern. 2. Eine zweite und immer noch ziemlich radikale Forderung ist die folgende: Der Staat müsse das Menschenrecht auf sexuelle Freiheit, das etwa staatlichen Zwang zur Ehe naturrechtswidrig macht, dahingehend interpretieren, daß es jedermann persönlich freistehen müsse, wie er sein persönliches Sexualleben und die von ihm gewählten Lebensgemeinschaften gestalten wolle - solange diese außerhalb der Grenzen offensichtlicher Kriminalität fallen. Dabei dürfe das Subjekt solcher sexueller Freizügigkeit jedoch keinerlei automatischen Anspruch auf staatliche Anerkennung oder Förderung erheben. Wir sprechen hier - analog zu Hildebrands Terminus 'sittlich relevant' - von 'rechtlich relevantem' Leid, weil es natürliche viele persönliche Leiden gibt, die mit der sexuellen Sphäre verbunden sind, die aber keinerlei Relevanz für das Recht besitzen. Zum Begriff der sittlichen Bedeutsamkeit (Relevanz) vgl. Dietrich von Hildebrand , Moralia, Gesammelte Werke Bd IX (Regensburg: Habbel, 1980). 152 Dies wäre - in einem übrigens auch die Grenzen der Religionsfreiheit aufzeigenden Beispiel - der Fall bei heute gängigen Satanskulten, in deren Rahmen 'rituelle Vergewaltigungen' eine wesentliche Rolle spielen, wie unlängst ein Priester einer Satanskirche während einer Fernsehdebatte über Satanskulte im deutschsprachigen Raum hervorhob. 151 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 303 3. Eine dritte Forderung geht dahin, daß der Staat nicht jeglichem Sexualverhalten überhaupt, das keine Rechte anderer verletzt, etwa Sexualität mit Tieren usf., sondern nur humanen Beziehungen einer gewissen Stabilität und ‘eheähnlichen’ Struktur und insbesondere privat gelebten homosexuellen Beziehungen - hinsichtlich gesetzlicher Duldung, staatlicher Anerkennung, staatlichen Schutzes oder sogar Unterstützung durch die öffentliche Hand - keinen geringeren Stellenwert zuweisen dürfe als der Familie. Der Staat dürfe also der Ehe und Familie keinen prinzipiell besseren Rechtsstatus als Einzelerziehenden und anderen Lebensgemeinschaften wie z.B. homosexuellen Paaren einräumen, gerade weil homosexuelle Verhältnisse ähnliche personale Beziehungen einschlössen wie die Ehe und weil es ein Menschenrecht gebe, als Homosexueller die eigene Sexualität zu leben. Homosexuelle Männer und Frauen sollten heiraten dürfen, für sie sollten dasselbe Steuerrecht, dieselben Zivilrechte gelten, sodaß sie z.B. Kinder adoptieren dürften, usf. 4. Man erhebt mitunter auch eine etwas weniger radikale Forderung. Ohne ein Menschenrecht auf homosexuelle Handlungen zu behaupten oder staatlich anerkannte homosexuelle ‘Ehen’ zu fordern, verlangt man nur eine Abschaffung jeder Form der Diskriminierung gegen Homosexuelle. Denn jede Form frei gewählter Lebensgemeinschaften zwischen Personen habe einen Anspruch auf den Schutz vor Diskriminierung. Dabei geht man von folgender Erwägung aus. Auch wo man in modernen Staaten homosexuelle Handlungen nicht bestrafe, gebe es eine Reihe von abzuschaffenden Formen der Diskriminierung Homosexueller: z.B. indem Lehrerposten und Militärposten Männern, die sich als Homosexuelle und Frauen, die sich als Lesbierinnen bekennen, verwehrt würden oder homophile Handlungen durch Entlassung beantwortet würden. Soziale Diskriminierungen gegen Homosexuelle seien auch darin zu erblicken, daß mancherorts nur weibliche heterosexuelle Prostituierte und keine homosexuellen Prostituierten zugelassen würden, oder daß Staaten die Verführung Minderjähriger zu homosexuellen Handlungen strenger oder länger ahnden als ähnliche heterosexuelle Beziehungen mit Jugendlichen, wie dies z.B. im Deutschen Strafgesetz bestimmt ist. Mit einer solchen Forderung nach Entdiskriminierung von Homosexuellen kann man sich auch auf Kulturen wie die römische oder griechische berufen. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 304 5. Fünftens gibt es die begrenztere Forderung, nur alle strafrechtlichen Sanktionen gegen Homosexuelle abzuschaffen. Verteidiger der Homosexuellen, die diesen Standpunkt vertreten, möchten nicht notwendig sämtliche Formen der Ungleichbehandlung von Homosexuellen und Heterosexuellen abgeschafft sehen und werden diese nicht notwendig als Diskriminierung betrachten. (Sie werden es z. B. akzeptieren, daß homosexuelle Lebensgemeinschaften kein Recht auf Adoption von Kindern haben). Diese fünfte Forderung verlangt nur, der Staat müsse jede strafrechtliche Sanktion gegen Homosexualität abschaffen. Moderne pluralistische Staaten müßten sich von christlichen und von solchen Vorurteilen befreien, wie sie selbst in atheistischen und kommunistischen Ländern als Relikte einer jüdischen, christlichen, islamischen oder verwandten religiös fundierten Kultur übriggeblieben seien, indem homosexuelle Handlungen als moralisch schändlich oder sogar als strafwürdige Taten angesehen würden, wie etwa in der ehemaligen Sowjetrepublik und in einzelnen neuen russischen Teilrepubliken. Die Ausübung homosexueller Akte sollte im Gegensatz dazu im modernen Staat keinerlei Art sozialer oder gar strafrechtlicher Sanktion nach sich ziehen. 6. Um einen entscheidenden Schritt maßvoller ist schließlich die Forderung, daß sich der Staat von Gesetzen und die Gesellschaft von Gepflogenheiten und Urteilen freimachen sollten, die in der Tat eine mehr oder minder schwere Beleidigung der Menschenwürde Homosexueller darstellen. Diese letzte Forderung ist voll berechtigt und ich teile sie voll und ganz und möchte sie zu Ende der folgenden Überlegungen näher begründen. 1. HOMOSEXUALITÄT UND MENSCHENWÜRDIGE SEXUALITÄT: INWIEWEIT SOLL SICH DER MODERNE NICHT-KONFESSIONELLE NACH EINER INHALTLICHEN PHILOSOPHIE STAAT DER SEXUALITÄT RICHTEN? Zunächst zur radikalsten Forderung nach einer völlig philosophie- und wertfreien Konzeption menschlicher Sexualität im Rahmen staatlicher Ordnung: Daß eine solche an Max Webers Prinzip der Wertfreiheit der Wissenschaft orientierte Forderung letztlich The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 305 unhaltbar ist, geht schon daraus hervor, daß auch die Anerkennung der von niemandem ernsthaft bestrittenen Tatsache, daß Vergewaltigung und andere Sexualdelikte strafwürdige Akte sind (was heute sogar für Vergewaltigung innerhalb der Ehe anerkannt wird), bereits die Unterscheidung zwischen wertvollem und unwertigem, ja verbrecherischem Sexualverhalten voraussetzt. Damit aber legt der Staat notwendig einen Maßstab zugrunde, der zwischen Wert und Unwert, Perversion und legitimem Sexualverhalten unterscheidet. Auch kann der Staat zweifellos nicht auf alle Werte teilnahmslos blicken, die mit menschlicher Sexualität verbunden sind, etwa auf den mit heterosexuellen Beziehungen verbundenen Wert des Nachwuchses, ohne den der Staat nicht fortbestehen könnte, oder auf Wege der Überwindung eines nahezu auf Null oder unter Null gesunkenen Bevölkerungswachstums in den meisten Ländern Westeuropas, das durch eine Überalterung der Bevölkerung viele ökonomische und politische Probleme stellt und z.B. der jetzigen jungen Generation in relativ wenigen Jahren unzumutbare Soziallasten auferlegen wird. Ein wertfreies Ehe-, Familien- und Sexualgesetz kann es also ebensowenig geben wie ein wertfreies Strafrecht. Die von Staat und Recht jeweils vorausgesetzten Werte freilich lassen sich nur dann rechtfertigen, wenn sich objektive Werte erkennen und Werterkenntnisse begründen lassen. 153 So muß also nicht nur der Einzelne, sondern auch der Staat sich kritisch fragen, was der objektive Sinn menschlicher Sexualität sei und ob die einem Handeln oder einer Gesetzgebung zugrundeliegende philosophische Konzeption der humanen Sexualität der sittlichen Ordnung und der Würde des Menschen, oder wenigstens jenen grundlegendsten Wert- und Sinnzusammenhängen Rechnung trage, in deren Rahmen menschliche Sexualität stehen sollte. Wenn menschliches Sexualverhalten radikal gegen diese Ordnung verstößt und dabei Rechte Einzelner oder den öffentlichen Raum verletzt, sollte es verboten oder bestraft werden, wie etwa Vergewaltigung, Exhibitionismus und Sittlichkeitsdelikte diverser Art. Nur wenn ferner konkrete sexuelle Handlungen in vollkommenerer Weise im Rahmen der erwähnten Güterordnung, soweit diese rechtlich Vgl. dazu Dietrich von Hildebrand, Sittlichkeit und ethische Werterkenntnis, in: Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Bd. V (Halle a.d.S.: Niemeyer, 1922; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2 1969; Valendar-Schönstatt: Patris Verlag, 3 1982); Ethik, Gesammelte Werke, Bd II (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2 1973), Kap. 1-3, 4, 9, 15-19. 153 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 306 relevant ist, stehen, sollte der Staat sie anerkennen oder gar fördern. Diesen Wert- und Sinnzusammenhängen gelten die folgenden Ausführungen. Dabei werden wir nur solche philosophische Gesichtspunkte der Debatte um Homosexualität berücksichtigen, die prinzipiell in der öffentlichen Welt des nichtkonfessionellen Staates ethischen und gesetzgeberischen Erwägungen zugrundegelegt werden können und rein konfessionelle Gesichtspunkte ausklammern, die für die staatliche und rechtliche Ordnung nur vom Gesichtspunkt der Religionsfreiheit oder der Meinungsfreiheit aus in Betracht kommen. Die folgenden Gedankengänge haben also für die öffentliche Diskussion der rechtlichen, staatlichen und allgemeinen ethischen Aspekte der Homophilie Bedeutung, da sie sich nur auf natürliche und prinzipiell jedem vernünftigen Menschen154 einleuchtende Wahrheiten stützen sollen. Allerdings wird es sich nicht vermeiden lassen, bei der Betrachtung des Sinnes menschlicher Sexualität über den engen Rahmen des direkt staatlich und rechtlich Relevanten hinauszugehen, um den tieferen humanen und moralisch relevanten Sinn menschlicher Sexualität und ihrer Bezogenheit auf Ehe und Familie zu verstehen. Erst durch ein derartiges Verständnis kann eine eigentliche philosophische Grundlegung für die rationale Debatte um rechtliche Gleichstellung der Homosexualität mit der Ehe geboten werden. 1.1. Die hauptsächlichen Sinnzusammenhänge menschlicher Sexualität und die Unzulässigkeit ihrer Reduktion auf die Achtung vor der Personwürde 1.1.1. Sexualität und dauernde Bejahung der Personwürde des Partners als Momente heterosexueller und homosexueller Beziehungen Menschliche Sexualität steht zweifellos, wie oft richtig bemerkt wird, unter dem Diktat der personalen Würde. Die Person des anderen Menschen, mit dem ich in eine Damit meine ich hier nicht jeden Menschen mit hohem Intelligenzquotienten, sondern nur jeden Menschen, der seinen gesunden Verstand nicht zu sophistischen, unmoralischen oder verbrecherischen Zwecken benützt, sondern der offenen Geistes mit seiner Vernunft klare Gegebenheiten zu erkennen sucht. 154 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 307 sexuelle Beziehung eintrete und den ich liebe, soll, um mit Kant zu sprechen, niemals ausschließlich als Mittel, sondern immer auch als Zweck in sich selbst betrachtet und bejaht werden. Jede Person - und in besonderer Weise die Person des Partners sexueller Beziehungen - soll immer als ganze von ihrem Partner bejaht und um ihrer selbst willen geachtet werden. Zweifellos ist dies in jeder echten Freundschaft und Liebe der Fall, umso mehr, je humaner und edler die Liebe ist. Wegen der tief in die psychisch-geistige Struktur des Menschen eingreifenden Eigenart des Geschlechtsakts und wegen seines Charakters als leibliche Ganzhingabe oder - im negativen Falle - als sich selbst Wegwerfen oder den anderen Vergewaltigen und Entwürdigen verlangt der Geschlechtsakt zu seiner echt humanen Verwirklichung nicht nur nach der beiderseitigen freien Zustimmung und gegenseitigen Achtung, sondern auch nach einem dauernden geistigen Band gegenseitiger Liebe, deren Ausdruck zu sein die sexuelle Beziehung bestimmt ist. Die sexuelle Sphäre im Menschen hat einen das ganze psychisch-geistige Sein der menschlichen Person berührenden Charakter, der sie - im positiven Fall - zum organischen Ausdruck und zur Erfüllung einer auf Dauer abzielenden Liebe und Gemeinschaft macht und - im negativen Fall - zur Vergewaltigung, sonstigen Entwürdigung oder zum Mißbrauch des Partners. In dieser ganzheitlichen und tiefen Bezogenheit der sexuellen Sphäre auf das Sein und Glück, ja auf die humane Integrität der menschlichen Person in ihrem Kern, liegt es auch begründet, daß sexuelle Beziehungen, wenn sie Ausdruck einer solchen ganzheitlichen Liebe sind, auf Dauer abzielen und einen exklusiven Charakter besitzen, weshalb flüchtige sexuelle Verhältnisse und Sexualbeziehungen zu verschiedenen Partnern Untreue, Ehebruch oder unwürdige Formen des sexuellen Lebens bedeuten. Wie verhält sich Homosexualität zu diesem ‘Diktat menschlicher Würde’ als Maßstab für menschenwürdige Sexualbeziehungen? Zweifellos kann auch ein homosexuell veranlagter Mensch seinen exklusiv und der bräutlichen Liebe analog geliebten Partner oder seine gleichgeschlechtliche Geliebte echt lieben und seine sexuelle Beziehung als Ausdruck solcher Bindung erleben. Selbst der für die Würde einer sexuellen Beziehung, die die tiefsten Bereiche des leiblich-personalen Seins des Menschen berührt, entscheidende Wert der Dauer bzw. des Abzielens auf sie kann vom homosexuellen Paar verstanden und bejaht werden. Auch kann der homosexuelle Partner zweifellos, auch wenn dies nur unter - in den The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 308 nächsten beiden Punkten erwähnten - radikalen Einschränkungen gilt, in einer homosexuellen Zärtlichkeit oder sexuellen Ausdrücken seiner Liebe diese personale Bejahung des anderen Menschen zum Ausdruck bringen. Man wird nicht behaupten wollen, Sapphos angeblich lesbischen Liebesgedichte, Alkibiades’ glühende und eindeutig homosexuelle Rede auf Sokrates in Platons Symposium oder andere homosexuell inspirierte Dichtungen entbehrten einer tiefen personalen Liebe und Achtung vor der Person der Freundin oder des Geliebten. Wäre dies die einzige Voraussetzung sittlich guter sexueller Betätigung, gäbe es also sicher sittlich gute wie auch sittlich schlechte homosexuelle Handlungen und dann müßte auch der Staat, zumindest solange er Sexualität nur unter diesem Gesichtspunkt betrachtete, homosexuelle Beziehungen als prinzipiell gleichberechtigt mit heterosexuellen anerkennen. Doch gerade damit kommen wir zum ersten entscheidenden Punkt der Kritik an vielen Diskussionen über die grundrechtliche und moralische Bedeutung der Homosexualität: Man klammert in solchen Diskussionen155 alle weiteren sittlich relevanten Güter aus, in deren Zusammenhang menschliche Sexualität stehen sollte und ohne deren Berücksichtigung ihr Wesen verkannt wird. Durch eine Verletzung dieser weiteren noch zu diskutierenden Güterbereiche durch homosexuelle und andere Handlungen wird übrigens auch die Objektivität sexueller Hingabe als wahrhafter Bejahung der Personwürde verfälscht und damit auch der erste und elementarste Güterbereich verletzt, der heute in der ethischrechtlichen Debatte eines gewissen Niveaus fast universal anerkannt wird: die Personwürde.156 Das gilt auch für viele Diskussionen der Rolle der Homosexualität innerhalb der katholischen Kirche und anderen christlichen Gemeinschaften. 156 Diese Anerkennung ist bis zu einem gewissen Grad Gegenstand eines nahezu universalen Konsenses, da kaum jemand behaupten wird, daß keine Form gewaltsamer und perverser Erniedrigung sexueller Partner die Menschenwürde verletze und deshalb jedes Sexualverhalten erlaubt sei. Allerdings gibt es, etwa in den öffentlichen Debatten um Pornographie, viele, die Formen sexuellen Verhaltens billigen und erlaubt sehen möchten, welche einen gemeinen Agriff auf die menschliche Würde implizieren. Es gibt in solchen Debatten sogar viele, die theoretisch jeden Gesichtspunkt der Menschenwürde, ja jeden Gesichtspunkt außer vielleicht Gesundheit, subjektiver Lust der 'Kunden' und dem freien Markt ausschalten wollen. 155 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 309 1.1.2. Zweiter Teil des anthropologisch-ethischen Exkurses: Der unitive Sinn des Geschlechtsaktes und seine Verletzung durch homosexuelle Handlungen Sexualität, Ehe und Zweigeschlechtlichkeit Menschliche Sexualität ist ihrem objektiven Wesen nach zweigeschlechtlich und auf heterosexuelle Beziehungen zugeordnet.157 Die Angelegtheit der besonderen Liebe im engeren Sinn auf einen Menschen des anderen Geschlechts und die Zweigeschlechtlichkeit der Ehepartner ist eine anthropologische Grundtatsache und kein bloßes historisches Konstrukt. Dies ist nicht nur wegen des zu erörternden Bezugs zwischen sexueller Einheit und potentieller Prokreation der Fall, sondern auch wegen der biologischen und anthropologischen Komplementarität und Zuordnung zwischen Mann und Frau, die in der Ehe und der jeweiligen Rolle von Mann und Frau in der Familie ihren Ausdruck findet. Schon die biologische geschlechtliche Struktur des Menschen erlaubt eine sexuelle Vereinigung - die ja viel mehr ist als bloß Mittel zum Orgasmus oder auch als Ausdruck der Zärtlichkeit - nur zwischen Mann und Frau. Bei gleichgeschlechtlichen Partnern, vor allem bei Männern, kann ja die Vollendung sexueller Beziehungen nur in einer Art gegenseitiger Masturbation oder auch in einer biologisch-anthropologisch unwürdigen Form von Pseudo-Vereinigung in oraler Sexualität oder Aftersexualität erreicht werden.158 Während der Ausdruck der Zärtlichkeit als solcher in einer ersten Phase sexueller Beziehungen (Küsse, Umarmungen, Streicheln) bei Homosexuellen vielleicht nicht weniger als bei heterosexuellen Partnern möglich ist, so ist die volle und des Menschen würdige sexuelle Hingabe und vor allem die geschlechtliche Vereinigung Man verwendet heute oft den Ausdruck, der Mensch sei 'biologisch bisexuell angelegt' doppeldeutig, so als ob dies nicht nur Zweigeschlechtlichkeit, sondern auch bedeute: von Anfang an auf Beziehunge n mit Menschen beiderlei Geschlechts angelegt zu sein, wobei hier wieder human-freundschaftliche Liebe zu Menschen des gleichen Geschlechts mit sexuellen Beziehungen verwechselt werden. So entsteht eine heillose sprachliche und philosophische Verwirrung. 158 Transvestiten erleben das oft in Form des Wunsches nach einer operativen Umwandlung der eigenen Geschlechtsorgane. 157 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 310 von zwei Personen nur im Rahmen heterosexueller Beziehungen möglich. In homosexuellen Beziehungen muß an deren Stelle eine der Liebe unwürdige ‘Masturbation zu zweien’ oder eine niemals die vereinigende Potenz des Geschlechtsaktes von Mann und Frau erreichende Nachäffung jener wahren Vereinigung von Mann und Frau treten, zu deren Würde und Sinn viele Faktoren gehören: daß sich die menschlichen Geschlechtsteile von der Afterregion, wo sie sich bei vielen weiblichen Tieren befinden, gelöst haben, daß die menschlichen Partner als Personen im Geschlechtsverkehr einander das Gesicht zuwenden, einander küssen, einander ihre Liebe in personaler Weise und auch durch Worte der Liebe bekunden können, daß der Mensch im Unterschied zum Tier geschlechtliche Scham empfindet, die erst durch personale Liebe im positiven Sinne überwunden werden kann etc. 159 Wenn in oraler Sexualität oder in einer Aftersexualität oder in anderen der personalen Würde unwürdigen Formen die Geschlechtsteile eines heterosexuellen Partners nachgeahmt werden, um den Orgasmus zu provozieren, tritt ein ganz anderes Phänomen an die Stelle der geschlechtlichen Vereinigung, des „Zweiseins in einem Fleische“, wie das Evangelium dieses Phänomen auch rein phänomenologisch höchst treffend beschreibt. Da aber gerade die echte sexuelle Einswerdung nicht nur biologisch naturgemäß ist, im Gegensatz zur homosexuellen Pseudo-Vereinigung, sondern auch tiefe anthropologische Bedeutung besitzt, widerspricht die homosexuelle Betätigung jenem tief personalen unitiven Sinn menschlicher Sexualität, der andersgeschlechtliche Partner voraussetzt. Abgesehen davon ist der Unterschied zwischen Mann und Frau nicht nur ein biologischer, sondern ein tiefer psychisch-geistiger Unterschied. Und für den anthropologischen Sinn menschlicher sexueller Beziehungen ist nicht nur die Anerkennung und Bejahung der Würde der Person und die Intaktheit der sexuellen Vereinigung, sondern auch die Bejahung des Wertes des Männlichen und Weiblichen im Partner Bedingung. Auch die häufige Nachahmung dieser strukturell tieferen Unterschiede zwischen Mann und Frau im Rahmen homosexueller Vgl. Max Scheler, "Über Scham und Schamgefühl", in: Max Scheler, Schriften aus dem Nachlaß, Bd. I, Gesammelte Werke Bd. 10 (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1957), S. 65-153; ders., Vom Umsturz der Werte (Bern-München: Francke-Verlag, 1955), S. 28 f., 53 f., 207, 228. 159 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 311 Beziehungen, in denen die Rolle des Mannes oder die der Frau von einem der Partner übernommen wird, legen von dieser sittlich relevanten Hinordnung der Sexualität des Menschen auf den psychisch-geistigen Unterschied von Mann und Frau Zeugnis ab. Vielleicht tritt der sinnvolle Charakter der komplementären männlich-weiblichen Natur als Sinnhorizont humaner Sexualität am deutlichsten hervor, und wird auch von homosexuellen Paaren, die kein Recht auf Adoption fordern, anerkannt, wenn man an die Familie denkt. Hier wirkt sich ja der Unterschied zwischen Mann und Frau keineswegs nur auf die sexuellen Beziehungen der Partner, sondern auf die tragende Grundstruktur der Familie aus. Der Vater und die Mutter sind ja Urtypen, Archetypen menschlicher Gemeinschaft und der Geborgenheit des Kindes in der Beziehung zu zwei nicht nur physisch, sondern auch psychisch-geistig verschiedenen Persönlichkeitstypen. Deshalb ist der Gedanke an die „Familie“, in der das Kind zwei Papas oder zwei Mamas statt Vater und Mutter hat, eine radikale Verfehlung gegen das Kind. 1.1.3. Dritter Teil des anthropologisch-ethischen Exkurses über menschliche Sexualität: Verbindung zwischen unitivem und prokreativem Sinn menschlicher Sexualität Auch wenn dies für sich allein gewiß nicht Grundlage der Gesetzgebung sein kann, so spielt doch als Hintergrund einer vertretbaren Gesetzgebung die natürliche Einsicht eine Rolle, daß sinnvolle und sittlich vertretbare, und auch eines besonderen staatlichen Schutzes würdige sexuelle Beziehungen im Zusammenhang von Akten stehen müssen, die ihrer Natur nach zur Zeugung neuen menschlichen Lebens geeignet sind. Selbst beim unfruchtbaren heterosexuellen Paar oder bei Zärtlichkeiten, die nicht auf das Entstehen neuer Menschen bezogen sind, ist es immer Prinzip ethisch intelligibler Sexualmoral gewesen, daß menschliche Sexualität eine wesentliche Dimension ihres Sinnbezuges von dieser inneren Einheit und sinnvollen Beziehung von sexueller Vereinigung und Fortpflanzung erhält. Das gilt auch The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 312 wenn man mit Max Scheler160 und Dietrich von Hildebrand161 jede reine prokreative Finalisierung der Sexualität ablehnt und den inneren Sinn des Geschlechtsaktes als Ausdruck der Liebe anerkennt, sodaß die Prokreation als superabundante Frucht und nicht als ausschließliches Ziel der sexuellen Einheit erkannt wird. Auch bei der Vereinigung von Mann und Frau besteht zwar in der unfruchtbaren Zeit oder bei Infertilität dieser Zusammenhang nicht aktuell, aber er bleibt gleichsam als ein sinnbestimmender Güterhorizont mit Akten verbunden, die sich ihrer Natur nach eignen, zur Prokreation zu führen und die vor allem eine innere Dignität besitzen, die durch diesen Zusammenhang mitbestimmt wird. Sowohl die mögliche bzw. tatsächliche Verbindung zwischen Geschlechtsakt und Zeugung als auch die sinnvolle und wertvolle Verbundenheit beider in der objektiven Struktur und Natur des heterosexuellen Geschlechtsakts unterscheidet die sexuelle Vereinigung von Mann und Frau radikal von homosexuellen Akten. Und dieser Unterschied ist auch für die Gesetzgebung und das Grundgesetz relevant, da gerade der Staat am Gut der Geburt und Erziehung von Kindern eminent interessiert sein muß. Man wird vielleicht nicht einsehen oder zugestehen wollen, daß sowohl Kontrazeption als auch in Vitro Fertilisierung und künstliche Insemination in je verschiedener und ethisch unzulässiger Weise die sexuelle Beziehung aktiv von dem Zusammenhang loslösen, der wie eine innere Form menschlicher Sexualität zugeordnet ist: dem objektiven Band und Sinnzusammenhang zwischen unitivem und prokreativem Sinn menschlicher Sexualität. Selbst wenn man jedoch nicht nur vom staatlichen, sondern auch vom ethischen Gesichtspunkt aus in solchen Praktiken nichts Negatives erblickt, 162 wird man vielleicht zugestehen, daß die radikale Trennung beider Sinnbereiche in der homosexuellen Beziehung sowohl vom ethischen als auch vom rechtlichen Standpunkt aus negativ zu beurteilen ist, zumindest in einem Grade, der jede rechtliche Gleichstellung homosexueller Beziehungen mit der Ehe und die offizielle Anerkennung oder Förderung Vgl. die vorhergehende Anmerkung. Vgl. D. von Hildebrand, Die Ehe, 3. Aufl. (St. Ottilien: Eos, 1984); ders., Reinheit und Jungfräulichkeit, 4. Aufl. (St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 1981). 162 Vgl. auch J. Seifert, "Der sittliche Unterschied zwischen natürlicher Empfängnisregelung und Empfängnisverhütung" in Elternschaft und Menschenwürde (Salzburg: Patris-Verlag, 1984). 160 161 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 313 der ersteren ausschließt. Bei homosexuellen Beziehungen wird nämlich diesem Zusammenhang zwischen den Werten personaler Vereinigung und Prokreation in noch viel prinzipiellerer Weise entgegengehandelt als in der Kontrazeption. Der Orgasmus und Samenerguß des Mannes wird nicht nur aktiv von der potentiellen oder wirklichen Prokreation getrennt, sondern völlig außerhalb des Zusammenhangs von unitivem und prokreativem Sinn gestellt und die lesbische Homosexualität wird in ähnlich radikalem Sinn von diesem Sinnziel der Ehe und auch von jenen Akten losgelöst, die ihrer Natur nach auf das Ziel der Fortpflanzung hingeordnet sind, auch wenn das Entstehen eines neuen Menschen keineswegs den inneren Sinn der ehelichen Vereinigung und personalen Liebe, das einzige Ziel des menschlichen Geschlechtsaktes oder gar dessen alleinige Rechtfertigung ausmacht. 1.2. Die radikale Forderung der Gleichstellung der Homosexualität mit der Ehe und die Verwerfung der Idee eines für die Ethik und - indirekt - auch für den Staat maßgebenden ‘Naturrechts’, das die erörterten Güterbereiche als rechtlich relevant anerkennen dürfte Die Debatte im Rahmen der ersten radikalen Forderung nach rechtlicher Gleichstellung der Homosexualität mit der Ehe geht nun dahin, alle drei und zumindest den zweiten und dritten moralisch und - in gewissem Maße - auch rechtlich relevanten Sinnzusammenhang der humanen Sexualität auszuschalten und für irrelevant für den Staat zu erklären. Hand in Hand mit einer Interpretation der Homosexualität als gleichberechtigter Form natürlichen menschlichen Sexuallebens geht oft die verächtliche Rede von einer naturrechtlichen Ethik, die aus einem metaphysischen Wesen des Menschen und menschlicher sexueller Beziehungen im Sinne der von uns erörterten Sinnbereiche menschlicher Sexualität sittliche oder gar rechtliche Normen ableiten wolle. Ein derartiger Vorwurf kann uns nicht schrecken, wenn er auch zu Recht darauf hinweist, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 314 daß - wie David Hume und G.E. Moore gezeigt haben 163 - aus einem bloßen Faktum kein Sollen abgeleitet werden kann. Der Vorwurf kann uns dennoch nicht schrecken. Denn eine Ethik, die prinzipiell nicht naturrechtlich ist, d.h. die keine solche Natur berücksichtigt, wie wir sie oben in unserem konkreten Fall durch die sittlich relevanten Güter, in deren Zusammenhang Sexualität steht, kennzeichnen wollten, hört überhaupt auf, als Ethik zu existieren. 164 Soll es ein prinzipielles Recht auf Sexualität geben, das es einem in jedem Lebensstand und mit jeden Anlagen erlaubt, sexuelle Beziehungen zu haben? Was, wenn einen Pederasten oder Unzüchtigen nur Kinder des eigenen oder des anderen Geschlechts oder sogar Babies anziehen? Soll man solche Menschen dann auch nicht ‘umpolen’ oder sich nicht dagegen aussprechen, wenn sie ein Recht beanspruchen, Kinder zu verführen bzw. ihre Naturanlage ausleben wollen? Oder soll man ihnen nur gut zureden, aber sie nicht durch Gesetze diskriminieren? Der Moraltheologe Andreas Laun beschreibt kritisch in seinem Buch über Abtreibung genau diesen Plan und die Forderung der Pederasten, auch sexuelle Beziehungen mit Kindern zu entkriminalisieren.165 Die Realisierung eines solchen Plans würde den Zusammenbruch der öffentlichen moralischen Ordnung hinsichtlich sexueller Beziehungen bedeuten. Rechtsordnung, Und auch eine die keine zu schützenden Rechtsgüter und Vgl. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (1903); 14th edn (London, 1971); Dietrich von Hildebrand, Ethik, Gesammelte Werke, Bd II (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2 1973), Kap. 1-3. 164 Wir können in diesem Zusammenhang nicht auf das Problem der formalistischen Ethik Kants eingehen, die versucht, aus der reinen apriorischen Form des Wollens ohne Bezug auf ein Objekt das sittliche Sollen zu begründen (Vgl. etwa I. Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten Ba 89, 95) . Doch selbst Kant führt dies nicht streng durch. Denn er formuliert den kategorischen Imperativ in der überzeugendsten Weise als personalistisches Prinzip, das die Achtung vor der Person und vor ihrer besonderen ontologisch und qualitativ inhaltlich bestimmten Würde gebietet. Vgl. Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft A 61-62. Auch weist Kant in Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten BA 64-65 ausdrücklich darauf hin, daß nur "etwas, dessen Dasein an sich selbst einen absoluten Wert hat" und "nicht bloß bedingten Wert" hat wie Gegenstände der Neigung, ein sittliches Sollen begründen könne. Vgl. dazu neben Max Schelers klassischem Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, 5. Aufl. (Bern: Francke, 1966) auch J. Seifert, Was ist und was motiviert eine sittliche Handlung? (Salzburg: Universitätsverlag A. Pustet, 1976). 165 Andreas Laun, Das Kind. Zur Abtreibung in Österreich heute (Mödling: Missionsdruckerei St. Gabriel, 1991), S. 81 ff. 163 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 315 Quellen der Menschenrechte anerkennt, verletzt das Prinzip der Rechtsstaatlichkeit. Dazu kommt das eminente und nicht rein ethisch fundierte Interesse, das der Staat an der Familie als Urzelle menschlicher Gemeinschaft haben muß und das es ihm völlig verbietet, alle sexuellen Beziehungen auf dieselbe Stufe zu stellen wie die Ehe und Familie. 2. GIBT ES EIN UNIVERSALES MENSCHENRECHT AUF FREIE GESTALTUNG DES SEXUALLEBENS UND DESHALB AUF HOMOSEXUELLE BEZIEHUNGEN ODER NUR EIN MENSCHENRECHT AUF DIE PRIVATHEIT DER SEXUELLEN SPHÄRE? In Antwort auf diese Frage möchte ich behaupten, daß es weder im öffentlichen noch im privaten Leben ein ‘Menschenrecht auf Homosexualität’ gibt. Denn jedes Menschenrecht setzt voraus, daß dessen Gegenstand etwas objektiv Wertvolles ist, was aus den besagten Gründen für homosexuelle Handlungen nicht zutrifft. Wegen der Fundierung der Menschenrechte in objektiven Gütern und Werten gibt es auch kein Menschenrecht, andere zu beleidigen, zu stehlen, usf. Auch der Staat muß sich also notwendig bei seiner Anerkennung von Menschenrechten auf gewisse Wertintuitionen beziehen. Deshalb ist im Licht der obigen Einsichten, denen zufolge Homosexualität in gewissem Ausmaß die personale Würde und zumindest die Güterbereiche der Einswerdung, der Komplementarität von Mann und Frau und des Sinnhorizonts der Prokreation, mit denen menschenwürdige Sexualität verknüpft ist, verletzt, jedes Recht auf Homosexualität und jedes Menschenrecht auf staatliche öffentliche Anerkennung durch Institutionalisierung homophiler Beziehungen abzulehnen. Es gibt deshalb auch kein Menschenrecht auf homosexuelle Akte per se im privaten Bereich. Auch kann kein Menschenrecht zu einem naturwidrigen und gegen den Sinn menschlicher Sexualität gerichteten Verhalten in Anspruch genommen werden. Wohl aber gibt es ein Menschenrecht auf die Intimsphäre des privaten Lebens. Und wegen dieses Rechtes hat wohl der Staat kein Recht, das, was rein privat The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 316 geschieht, solange keine Rechte anderer verletzt werden, auszuforschen oder zu bestrafen. 3. GIBT ES EIN MENSCHENRECHT AUF UNIVERSALE ANERKENNUNG ALLER ZWISCHENMENSCHLICHEN UND FREIEN DESHALB AUF RECHTLICHE GLEICHSTELLUNG SEXUALBEZIEHUNGEN UND DER HOMOSEXUALITÄT MIT DER EHE Die verneinende Antwort auf diese Frage ergibt sich schon aus der Antwort auf die vorhergehende Frage. Doch möchten wir an dieser Stelle einigen Aspekten derselben näher nachgehen. Obwohl durchaus anzuerkennen ist, daß jede primitive Gleichstellung homosexueller Beziehungen mit Perversionen wie sexuellen Beziehungen von Menschen mit Tieren abzulehnen sei, da es in der Homophilie um den Ausdruck zwischenmenschlicher personaler Liebe gehen kann, fehlt doch den homosexuellen Akten - außer einem höherem oder geringerem Maß personaler Liebe als ihrem Fundament - jener wertvolle Bezug zu den weiteren Güterbereichen, denen menschliche Sexualität ihrer Natur nach zugeordnet ist. Homosexuellen Akten fehlt der für den Sinn der Sexualität wesentliche Bezug zur leiblich-psychisch-geistigen Verschiedenheit von Mann und Frau. Ihnen fehlt erst recht jegliche Form der Bejahung des Bandes zwischen Prokreation und Sexualität und die Fähigkeit zu echter geschlechtlich-geistiger Einswerdung. Auch fehlt der Homosexualität jener ‘natürliche’ und naturgemäß gute Charakter, der zu staatlicher Gleichstellung Anlaß geben könnte. Nun kann zwar für den Staat der Gesichtspunkt der moralisch gesehen adäquaten Beziehung eines Verhaltens zu seinem sittlich relevanten Sinn und Wert nicht unmittelbar maßgebend sein wie er es für die Ethik ist. Aber dennoch setzt der Staat für die volle soziale und rechtliche Anerkennung eines Verhaltens voraus, daß dieses in prinzipiellem Einklang mit der sittlichen Ordnung steht. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 317 4. ABSCHAFFUNG JEGLICHER STAATLICHER ‘DISKRIMINIERUNG’ GEGEN HOMOSEXUELLE Gewiß sollten wir jede falsche Diskriminierung von Homosexuellen, die der menschlichen Würde nicht Rechnung trägt, überwinden. Wenn wir aber auch auf das legitime Anliegen hinter dieser Forderung zurückkommen werden, so darf doch nicht behauptet werden, daß jegliche Ungleichbehandlung homophiler Paare mit heterosexuellen Paaren eine Diskriminierung sei oder gar, wie vielfach behauptet wird, daß sie einem Ressentiment entspringe. Man begeht deshalb eine schwere Verfälschung, wenn man die Ablehnung der Homosexualität nur durch negative Gründe wie Ressentiments, historische Vorurteile usf. erklärt, anstatt die oben erwähnten tiefen anthropologischen und sittlichen Gründe ihrer Verwerfung auch nur zu verstehen, geschweige denn zu berücksichtigen. Mündliche Äußerungen und Veröffentlichungen, die eine solche negativ moralisierende Genealogie der Verwerfung der Homosexualität geben, besitzen einen ausgesprochen sophistisch-demagogischen Charakter, und benützen unser aller Ablehnung von Verklemmungen und Vorurteilen, um die ethische und religiöse Ablehnung der Homosexualität, oder auch den Einspruch gegen ihre rechtliche Gleichstellung, als Frucht von Ressentiments zu kennzeichnen. Max Scheler hat in Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen gegen Nietzsche, der das Phänomen des Ressentiments und seine große Rolle bei der Schöpfung moralisierender Kodizes entdeckt hat, gezeigt, daß echte moralische Werte und wahre ethische Urteile niemals als Frucht des Ressentiments erklärt werden können, sondern nur falsche Moralen oder falsch motivierte moralische Ansichten und Pseudo-Werte. Auch wenn der Staat - wegen des Schutzes des Rechts auf die sexuelle Privatsphäre - Homosexualität im privaten Bereich nicht verfolgen sollte, so gilt doch die objektive Güterordnung insoweit für ihn, als er an staatlichen Schulen nicht einen Sexualunterricht einführen darf, der die Homosexualität als gleichberechtigte Form menschlicher Sexualität neben der Ehe einführen würde. Auch darf der Staat die Sorge der Eltern vor entsprechenden Verführungen ihrer Kinder an Schulen nicht einfach ignorieren, oder z.B. der Schule gestatten, Gelegenheiten zu homosexueller Betätigung zu schaffen, entsprechende Information zu verteilen usf. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 318 Aus dem Obigen geht hervor, daß homosexuelle Anlagen, selbst wenn 90 Prozent der Menschen sie hätten, nicht nur Anlagen zu unsittlichen Handlungen (wie sexuelle Konkupiszenz), sondern auch pervers und widernatürlich bleiben, wobei man freilich die oben eingeführten Unterscheidungen beachten und die Möglichkeiten menschlich edler homophiler Liebesbeziehungen beachten muß, deren sxueller Ausdruck aber damit nicht objektiv gerechtfertigt zu sein braucht. In der Diskussion um staatliche Anerkennung der Homosexualität, und selbst in kirchlichen Dokumenten, begegnet man häufig der Verwechslung zwischen Verständnis für Homosexuelle und Billigung der Homosexualität, zwischen Hilfe Homosexuellen gegenüber und Abschaffung der negativen Bewertung homosexueller Handlungen. 166 Vor allem argumentiert man von einem Standpunkt aus, der jede in sich schlechte Handlung ablehnt. 167 Aus den oben angeführten Gründen aber ist homosexuelle Betätigung in sich, ihrer Natur nach schlecht. In Wirklichkeit hat das Verständnis für die Person und für die Tragik der Homosexualität auch nichts mit deren Billigung zu tun, ebensowenig wie das Verständnis für Eifersucht oder für einen Eifersuchtsmord etwas mit dessen Billigung zu tun hat. Im Gegenteil, das einzige Verständnis, das dem Homosexuellen, der im Innersten um das Unrecht homosexueller Handlungen weiß, wirklich hilft, ist das achtungsvolle oder sogar liebevolle Verständnis für seine Person, das mit dem Verständnis für das Unrecht seiner sexuellen Betätigung, aus der man ihm heraushelfen und die man nicht noch durch falsche Theorien bestärken soll, verbunden ist. Auch die Anerkennung der Perversität der Homosexualität in der Gesetzgebung sollte unterstützt und nicht bekämpft werden. Wenn Homosexualität heute oft als ‘zweite natürliche Form sexuellen Verhaltens’ bezeichnet werden soll, was man sogar innerhalb kirchlicher Kreise fordert, sollte man auch homosexuelle Ehen, Adoption von Kindern in sie usf. sanktionieren. Will man eine solche volle Gleichstellung mit der Ehe wirklich unter dem Namen einer mißverstandenen Entdiskriminierung erreichen? Die So wird mitunter aus der geforderten Achtung für die Person abgeleitet, daß Sexualität in ihren vielfältigen Formen [inklusive Homosexualität] als Gabe Gottes dankbar erkannt und in Verantwortung und Liebe gestaltet werden kann. 167 Dieser der klassischen Ethik, die unlängst im päpstlichen Dokument Veritatis Splendor verteidigt wurde und eine neue Debatte ausgelöst hat, widersprechende Standpunkt, den man impliziert, wenn man eine unsittliche (sittlich unrichtige) Handlung von den Folgen und äußeren Gegebenheiten allein bestimmen will, haben Schüller, Böckle, Auer, Curran u.a. in die katholische Moraltheologie eingeführt. Vgl. zur Kritik J. Seifert, "Absolute Moral Obligations towards Finite Goods as Foundation of Intrinsically Right and Wrong Actions. A Critique of Consequentialist Teleological Ethics: Destruction of Ethics through Moral Theology?", Anthropos 1 (1985), pp. 57-94. 166 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 319 staatliche Gesetzgebung und das Grundgesetz müssen sich ganz von dieser Verwechslung freihalten. Ganz etwas anderes ist es, Formen grausamer und pharisäischer Gesetzgebung zu bekämpfen, worauf wir zurückkommen werden. Wenn die ausgeführten wesentlichen Unterschiede zwischen homosexuellen Beziehungen und Ehe zutreffen, darf dem Staat auch das Recht nicht streitig gemacht werden, zwischen einem naturwidrigen Sexualverhalten und einem natürlichen und vor allem zwischen Ehe und Homosexualität zu unterscheiden und deshalb praktizierenden Homosexuellen bestimmte Stellen zu verwehren, ihren Einfluß auf Kinder und Jugendliche zu verhindern oder auch ihre Anstellung im Militär so weit als möglich auszuschließen. Eine berechtigte Ungleichbehandlung objektiv verschiedenen Verhaltens als solche ist nicht Diskriminierung. 5. ZUR FORDERUNG NACH ENTPOENALISIERUNG DER HOMOSEXUALITÄT Ein ganz anderes Problem, auf das wir hier nicht einzugehen brauchen, betrifft die Frage, ob homosexuelle Handlungen, auch zwischen Erwachsenen, staatlich bestraft werden sollten. Dabei stellt sich die Frage nach der Strafe durch das Gesetz anders für die reine Privatsphäre, wo eine Bestrafung für homosexuelles Verhalten, das etwa nur Freunden oder Nachbarn bekannt ist, wohl wirklich abgeschafft werden sollte - nicht wegen eines angeblichen Rechtes auf Homosexualität, wohl aber wegen des Rechtes auf Schutz der Privatsphäre, solange dort nicht die Rechte anderer oder die Prinzipien des Jugendschutzes flagrant verletzt werden. 168 6. DIE BEFREIUNG DER GESELLSCHAFT DIE PERSONWÜRDE VERLETZENDEN GEGENÜBER UND DES STAATES VON ALLEN GESETZEN UND EINSTELLUNGEN HOMOSEXUELLEN Viele Schriften über das Thema der Homosexualität, auch wenn man an ihren Grundpositionen m.E. schärfste Kritik üben muß, beziehen eine gewisse Dieses Thema des Verhältnisses zwischen staatlichen Strafsanktionen und in der Privatsphäre begangenen unsittlichen heterosexuellen Handlungen hat Shakespeare genial in Maß für Maß behandelt, wo er sowohl eine gewisse Hypokrisie der Inhaber der Staatgewalt in der Verfolgung privater sexueller Delikte als auch einen Staatstotalitarismus, der aus den Gesetzen für private sexuelle Handlungen folgt, kritisiert. 168 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 320 Anziehungskraft aus ihrem Widerstand gegen zahllose Formen grausamer, liebloser, zur Verzweiflung treibender Einstellung und Ächtung von Homosexuellen, die vom Mittelalter bis heute zum Selbstmord und Selbsthaß Homosexueller und zu schweren physischen und psychischen Mißhandlungen gegen Homosexuelle führten und oft homosexuell Veranlagte, die von religiösen Menschen grausam behandelt wurden, zum Abfall vom christlichen Glauben brachten. Es ist eine Selbstverständlichkeit, daß jeder Mensch die Pflicht hat, jedem Menschen mit Respekt zu begegnen und daher jedem pharisäischen und lieblosen Verhalten gegenüber Homosexuellen entgegentreten muß. Auch von einer versimplifizierenden Gleichsetzung moralisch niedrig stehender homosexueller Beziehungen zum Zweck der Befriedigung der Lust, die oft in unbeschreiblichem menschlichem Elend und primitiven Perversionen enden, mit edlen menschlichen Beziehungen homophiler Art sollten wir klar Abstand nehmen. Man kann nicht leugnen, daß die großen Beispiele von homophilen Lieben in der Antike, wie etwa Platon sie im Beispiel des Alkibiades und dessen - in geistiger Hinsicht durch besondere Freundschaft erwiderten, in physischer Weise unerwiderten - homosexueller Liebe zu Sokrates im Symposium beschreibt, daß die leidenschaftliche und tiefe Liebe, die Sappho in ihren lyrischen Versen, die von einer unübertrefflichen Zartheit und Poesie des Gefühls geprägt sind, verherrlicht, von denen manche angeblich an lesbisch geliebte Mädchen gerichtet waren, echte und tiefe menschliche Liebesbeziehungen einschließen und nicht alle auf der Stufe der Degradierung des anderen zum bloßen Lustobjekt oder auf der Ebene des homosexuellen ‘Strichs’ stehen. Auch sollte das differenzierte Verständnis für die wirklichen Ursachen und Wurzeln, sowie für die diversen Formen der Homosexualität pauschalen Vorstellungen weichen. So ist es evident, daß jeder Einzelne und auch der Staat nach geeigneten Mitteln und Wegen suchen sollte, um aus einem angemessenen Verständnis heraus Homosexuellen gegenüber Achtung zu beweisen, Verletzungen ihrer Personwürde zu bekämpfen und ihnen beizustehen, was die Wahrung ihrer Grundrechte und Bürgerrechte betrifft. Die Gesellschaft sollte vor allem auch für jene Menschen Verständnis haben, die auf Grund ihrer homophilen Neigung sich einem gleichgeschlechtlichen Partner in der ganzheitlichen leib-seelischen Weise sexueller Begegnung hingeben wollen, zu der sie einerseits durch ihre homophile Anlage und The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 321 andererseits durch ein tiefes Gefühl der Liebe, das sie andersgeschlechtlichen Partnern gegenüber nicht empfinden können und das doch als solches zutiefst menschlich ist, getrieben werden. Darin kann eine große menschliche Tragik liegen. Mutter Theresas liebevolle Zuwendung zu Aidskranken und Homosexuellen, ohne jede Diskriminierung, aber auch ohne jede Billigung der Homosexualität, ist für die richtige Haltung zu Homosexuellen beispielhaft. Der Staat hat eine begrenztere, aber sehr wichtige Aufgabe in diesem Bereich. Er muß darüber wachen, daß weder die Rechte Homosexueller noch die Rechte und Würde anderer sexueller Minderheiten verletzt werden. Er sollte verhindern, daß Menschen aus der inhaltlichen Ablehnung homosexuellen Sexualverhaltens das vermeintliche Recht ableiten, Homosexuelle oder Aidskranke durch Schrift, verbale Beleidigungen oder Taten in ihrer Würde und in ihren Rechten zu verletzen. Sosehr man konkret am Inhalt von Schriften zur Homosexualität, in denen die Homophilie praktisch der Liebe zwischen Mann und Frau gleichgestellt wird, Kritik üben wird, so muß man mit diesen Schriften hervorheben, daß es nicht nur im Mittelalter, sondern auch in unserer Gesellschaft viele ebenso verbreitete wie beklagenswerte Fehlhaltungen gegenüber Homosexuellen und Aidskranken gibt. Wir sollten deshalb viel mehr tun, um jede Identifizierung homosexueller Neigungen mit homosexuellen Handlungen, jede Gleichsetzung von homosexuellen Anlagen mit Schuld zu überwinden und jede wirklich diskriminierende persönliche und gesellschaftliche Lieblosigkeit gegen Homosexuelle ablehnen. Auch hier fällt dem Staat eine wichtige Aufgabe in der entsprechenden Aufklärung bzw. in der Förderung von Schriften, die in diesem Sinne wirken, zu. 7. SCHLUSSBEMERKUNGEN Weder im privaten noch im religiösen noch im staatlichen Bereich werden bei der Diskussion des geeigneten sozialen, rechtlichen und persönlichen Schutzes Homosexueller und bei der Suche nach entsprechender Achtung vor ihren Rechten die erörterten Unterscheidungen gemacht und dadurch die Grundlagen für eine gerechte soziale und rechtliche Ordnung gelegt, deren Strukturen wir durch die Unterscheidung The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 322 und Beantwortung der sechs erwähnten Forderungen Homosexueller auf eine entsprechende neue rechtliche Stellung innerhalb des Staates anzudeuten suchten. Die sittlich richtige Einstellung und auch die adäquate staatliche Antwort auf das Problem der Homosexualität muß den komplexen sittlich und rechtlich relevanten Eigenschaften der Sexualität Rechnung tragen und darf diese nicht verkürzen. Im Suchen nach einer sittlich richtigen Haltung zum Problem der Homosexualität muß man auf einer umfassenden Kenntnis des sittlich und rechtlich relevanten Charakters der Sexualität aufbauen, der neben der Personwürde auch andere entscheidende Aspekte umfaßt, die von der Achtung vor der Würde des Geschlechtspartners ganz verschieden sind. Doch läßt sich zugleich die wahre Achtung vor der Würde der Person vom Respekt vor diesen anderen moralisch bedeutsamen Aspekten menschlicher Sexualität nicht loslösen. Ähnliches gilt von einer angemessenen staatlichen Position zur Homosexualität, die sich auf die rechtlich und für das öffentliche Leben relevanten Aspekte der Sexualität beschränkt. Vom Bemühen um eine umfassende Sicht menschlicher Sexualität ist häufig in der allgemeinen öffentlichen Diskussion und vor allem im Sexualunterricht an den Schulen keine Rede. Die sittlich lobenswerte Einstellung zum besonderen Sinn menschlicher Sexualität wird im Rahmen staatlicher und auch religiöser Aufklärungsschriften oft auf Haltungen wie die Bereitschaft, für die eigenen Handlungen Verantwortung zu übernehmen, verkürzt, die gewiß nicht ausreichen, um die Probleme der Sexualethik und der angemessenen rechtlichen Stellung Homosexueller richtig zu stellen und zu beantworten. 169 So können wir die beiden Hauptresultate unserer Untersuchung so zusammenfassen: An dieser Stelle ist man noch einmal versucht, einen Blick über eine rein rechtlich -staatliche Betrachtungsweise des Problems der Homosexualität hinaus tun und über ein hedonistisches Ideal der Lusterfüllung und des Wohltuns als 'Ideal' zu sprechen, das nicht nur zu einem weichlichen Standpunkt des Staates führt, sondern in besonderer Weise der christlichen Tradition widerspricht, sich aber dennoch gerade in die heutige moraltheologische Diskussion eingeschlichen hat. Die gegenwärtige Diskussion der Homosexualität zeichnet sich durch einen ausgesprochenen Hedonismus aus, der es für unhaltbar erklärt, Homosexuelle prinzipiell entweder 'umpolen' oder ihnen rechtlich gleichgestellte sexuelle Betätigung untersagen zu wollen. Die selbstverständliche sittliche Pflicht, auch unter größten Opfern bis zum Tod eine unsittliche Handlung zu unterlassen, wird überhaupt nicht mehr erörtert. Was sollen dann Eheleute tun, deren Partner sich ihnen sexuell verweigern, weglaufen, usf., oder was sollen verheiratete Heterosexuelle tun? Soll es ein universales Recht auf sexuelle Betätigung geben, das es einem in jedem Lebensstand und mit jeden Anlagen erlaubt, sexuell so zu leben, wie man will und sich geneigt fühlt? Wenn es die erörterte objektive Ordnung gibt, gewiß nicht. 169 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 323 1. Der Staat soll alle wirklich die Würde und Rechte Homosexueller verletzenden Gesetze abschaffen und mit seinen Mitteln des Gesetzes und der staatlichen Gewalt dafür Sorge tragen, die Freiheit und Rechte Homosexueller zu schützen. 2. Zugleich darf der Staat die objektiven Gründe nicht ignorieren, die eine rechtliche Gleichstellung homosexueller Beziehungen mit Ehe und Familie sowie die Aufhebung aller differenzierenden Rechtsverhältnisse zwischen homosexuellen und heterosexuellen Verhaltensweisen und Lebensgemeinschaften, z.B. betreffend das Recht zur Adoption, verbieten. Abschließend können wir sagen: Wenn unsere Verfassungen und Grundgesetze nicht mehr in Ehe und Familie den einzig adäquaten und rechtlich in besonderer Weise zu schützenden Ort menschlicher Sexualität und den Ursprung des Staates und der menschlichen Gesellschaft erkennen und anerkennen, sondern stattdessen beginnen, aus jeder sexuellen Anlage und aus einem angeblichen allgemeinen Recht auf schrankenlose sexuelle Freiheit Menschenrechte abzuleiten, werden Gesellschaft und Staatsordnung zusammenbrechen und wird es bald nur noch subjektives Wollen als Basis des geltenden positiven Rechts geben. Nach einem furchtbaren Zusammenbruch der gerechten Ordnung in Deutschland haben Deutsche sich erfolgreich gemüht, ein Grundgesetz und eine Verfassung zu schaffen, die auf immer durch den Bezug auf Menschenrechte und damit auf eine von jeder staatlichen und gesetzgeberischen Willkür unabhängige Wahrheit bezogen bleiben. In dem Maße aber, in dem die positiven Gesetze sich - in stetiger Annäherung an die erste und radikalste eingangs erwähnte Forderung nach rechtlicher Gleichstellung sämtlicher sexueller Verhaltensformen - von der Wahrheit über den Menschen als Maß entfernen, werden sie Unordnung statt Ordnung, Unrecht statt Recht, Verlust der Menschlichkeit statt Humanität und Kultur fördern und sich so gegen ihre innerste Aufgabe der Bewahrung einer gerechten und guten Ordnung des Gemeinwesens richten, ja sich mit der Zeit selbst ganz zerstören. Dieser Prozeß, der längst begonnen hat und für dessen stetiges Fortschreiten viele Anzeichen bestehen, kann nur aufgehalten werden, wenn positive Gegenkräfte in der Gesellschaft das große Erbe bewahren, das im Bezug des Staates zu Rechten, deren Geltung von jeder gesetzgeberischen Setzung, und zu Gütern wie Ehe und Familie, deren Wert und grundrechtlich zu schützende Stellung von jeder Willkür des Einzelnen, aber auch der demokratischen Mehrheit unabhängig sind, liegt. Ohne solche Grundrechte und Güter The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 324 zu achten, die nicht nur Grenze demokratischer Freiheit sind, sondern dieser erst Sinn geben, kann kein Rechtsstaat Bestand haben. VII. THE UNITY OF MAN AND THE DISTINCTNESS OF BODY AND SOUL IN THE ANIMA-FORMA-CORPORIS DOCTRINE (IN ITS TRADITIONAL FORM AND IN ITS NEW FORMULATION IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY) After the discussion of the various static and dynamic body-soul relations and after a consideration of human sexuality as a primary example of understanding the mystery and depth of the body-soul union both of the spouses and of the new person who proceeds from their sexual union, as well as after a discussion of feminity and masculinity in the context of human sexuality, we turn back to another aspect of the unity of the human being. We are looking now for the ultimate anthropological and metaphysical categories in terms of which the entirety of the body-soul relationships could be subsumed. At the same time we make an effort to express the general nature of man with reference to these two parts which make up his nature or are part of his irreducible essence. We seek to answer the question, „What is man?“ with reference to the body-soul-unity which constitutes such a central factor in the answer to this question. We are taking our point of departure here in two results, or we have at least to respect in the answer to our question, two results which we have already reached: namely 1) that the human soul possesses a distinct and spiritual substantial reality and is not only an epiphenomenon of the human body. Thus all general categories which are either straightforwardly materialistic or spiritualistic-idealistic are useless for our purposes. 2) We have reached, furthermore, the result that the unity of body and mind is a real and a profound one that cannot be reduced to causal interaction. Therefore all pure occasionalist, parallelist, but also all mere interactionist conception of the fundammental relationship between mind and body (for example that of a „ghost in a machine“ or of body and soul which stand in a relationship of mere mutual causal interaction) are to be dsimissed from the beginning. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 325 In the history of philosophy there have been many responses given - within the context of a „dualist“ philosophy of body and mind in the second sense of „dualism“ to the question of the general nature of the relationship between body and soul: it has been described in terms of the captain commanding a ship, in the image of the soul as prisoner of the body or as finding herself in the tomb of the body, an image which can play with two similar Greek words: svma - shma. The soul has been also described as having been thrown into the body as a sort of punishment, etc.; but however many interesting and true aspects of human experience are captured in these images, they do not do sufficient justice to the naturalness and intimate unity of body and soul. In Patristic times, under the influence of Neo-Platonism, we also find the general definition of man as „a soul (spirit) that uses a body.“ This conception expresses beautifully the intrinsic existence of the soul and the fact that it is the soul which constitutes the primary being of the person. It also refers to the existing relationship of „usership“ but it appears to be too reductionistic to do justice to the closeness of the unity of the human person. For in the first place, the body is not just one among other things „used“ by the mind and the fact that it is used by the mind does not express the difference between any physical instrument and our own body; the unique sense of „use“ is not expressed in this position. Secondly, the body-mind relationships cannot be reduced to use: they include such wholly different relationships as expression. Quite another definition both of man and of the body-soul relationship in its most general terms is that man is „a soul having a body“. While this terminology does more justice to the wide spectrum of relations within the body-soul-unity and insists on the distinct being of the soul by speaking of a relationship of having instead of being, it is still insufficient because it does not take into account that the lived body in a certain sense is part of our being, at least of the complete human being. The formula that man is a „soul-in-a-body“ or that he is a „spirit-in-the flesh“ is therefore still better because it leaves open whether this „in“ indicates a relationship of being in addition to one of „having.“ One could also call the human person an „incarnated person“ (against which formulation, although it stresses well the unity of man, one can raise objections listed below) or „a person-in-a-body.“ These formulations for the essence of man go in the same direction of seeing the primary identity of personhood in the soul but are more universal and do not restrict the relationship of the The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 326 soul to the body just to one of usership, a thesis which would contradict the phenomenological results which we have reached before. The way of getting at the core of the human nature by describing man as a „person-in-the-flesh“ (distinct from an incarnated person whose nature it was not to dwell in the flesh) shares with the definition of man as a soul that uses the body the advantage that it stresses primarily the personal character of man and that it adds to this decisive generic feature that of the corporeity. I have argued elsewhere that these definitions of man are far superior to the traditional Aristotelian-Thomistic one that man is a „rational animal,“ seeing his fundamental nature primarily in his animality instead of seeing it primarily in his soul and in his personhood, adding the relation to the body as the specific difference - rather than adding rationality and thus personhood to his animality as specific difference. This notion sees the primordial link of man with other beings of the personal spiritual world, with angels and God, and sees the link to animality and bodily nature as the specifically distinguishing mark of the human soul and of the human person. 170 The above mentioned attempts to capture the essence of the body-soul-unity in the form of seeking a „definition“ of man have a certain advantage over the metaphysical categories for the body-soul-relationship to be discussed below. For they are looking for a starting point of understanding the body-soul-union in a general category of human nature. This approach has the further advantage that it is more „holistic“ than a definition of man or an approach to the body-soul-unity that takes its point of departure primarily in the soul’s relation to the body. Nevertheless, there is another way of seeking the general ontological category for the nature of man: and that is to clarify primarily the general nature of the soul’s relationship to the body. Also this approach to the problem of the unity of man as whole is no doubt a worthy mode of getting at the core of the unity of man, describing the relationship of the soul to the body in order to find the general metaphysical understanding of the body-mind unity that we are looking for. See in the Appendix to this chapter a German text of mine on this question from the German original of a lecture given in Madrid during a Summer course in 1994. 170 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 327 The most brilliant and historically speaking the most noteworthy attempt to offer a general categorial solution to the body-soul problem on this level of an ontology of man is undoubtedly the Aristotelian-Thomistic thesis that the soul is the „form“ of the body.171 The doctrine developed by Aristotle, received and further developed by Thomas Aquinas and used in some dogmatic formulations of the Catholic Church, is that the human soul is forma (morfh) corporis, the very form of the human body. The same thesis is also advocated in contemporary philosophy by many thinkers, especially by Thomists. It is regarded by many contemporaries as the most adequate philosophical conception of human unity and duality. Among the most prominent Thomists of the twentieth century who advocate this doctrine and have further developed it we might mention Gredt, Fabro, de Vries, Pegis, Rahner, Coreth and Pieper. Moreover, Rahner and Coreth (in agreement with Maréchal and Kant) have provided a transcendental philosophical ground for this doctrine. But for reasons previously given (pp. 1ff.; p. 30), we cannot more closely enter into this approach here. Other thinkers (such as the early Lotze, Geyser, Becher, Brentano, Driesch, Pfänder and Stein) defend the Aristotelian doctrine of the soul in a non-Thomistic or at least in no strictly Thomistic form. In the light of this doctrine, the view we have presented and advocated must appear to be a Dualism already long surpassed in the tradition. Keeping in mind the previous distinctions made within the vague term „dualism,“ we can say that this definition could very well be explained „dualistically“ (in the first two senses), at least after making the necessary distinctions. And undoubtedly it has the great advantage of insisting on the inner unity of the human being (that the human soul is not an angel in a body, on the adequate proportion between body and mind and on a certain active role of the soul with respect to the body). Now I shall defend the thesis of the soul being the form of the human body and hope to show that our phenomenology and ontology of body and soul as well as of their unity allows us to come to a clearer and deeper understanding of the true meaning by means of which the relationship of the soul to the body can indeed adequately, although not exhaustively, be described in terms of it being the forma corporis. At the same time, Aristotle also defined the general nature of man in term of a zvon politikon and a of a zvon logon exvn, a political animal or an animal endowed with reason (rational animal). See the Appendix to this chapter. 171 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 328 more or less serious misunderstandings or even errors often connected with this view must be excluded. In order to understand this view, one must keep in mind that this doctrine appeared in the corpus of the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrinal tradition within at least four different contexts: philosophical anthropology, philosophy of nature, epistemology and metaphysics. Within the philosophical doctrine of man, the main Aristotelian concern can be seen in the attempt to overcome Platonic Dualism in the sense of a separation of body and soul. According to certain Platonic passages, the body is a mere tomb of the soul which - at least in our non-purified world - can also exist in the bodies of animals. This is not the „whole Plato.“ (In Timaeus, the body is described as „house of the soul.“) It is a major concern of Aristotelian philosophy of nature to obtain a correct view of the essence of natural and transitory substances, above all of plants and animals, and to come to know the principles and causes of their becoming. In the areas of metaphysics and epistemology too, Aristotelian doctrine stands in the overall context of the matter-form doctrine. This central point of the Aristotelian doctrines of being and nature, the so-called hyle-morphism, is supposed to solve two completely different problems. The one is specifically Aristotelian; the other is taken over from Plato, but is solved in opposition to Plato. The specifically Aristotelian problem is to grasp the essence of substance as such and in particular of changing substance as well as the constitutive principles of individual substance (prvth oysia). The second problem - one that has governed philosophy since Plato - is the problem of universals or the question how the particular entity is related to the universal essence, and how man can attain to the knowledge of the universal from the experience of the particular entity (cf. the present author’s work, 1977). The general background and content of hyle-morphism could be sketched out in the following way. Since all natural substances arise and decline, they must also be composite, since the completely simple cannot be destroyed (Plato). The two basic principles of which all natural substances are composed Aristotle characterizes as „matter“ and „form.“ Within „matter“ Aristotle first distinguishes „prime matter,“ the pure „stuff-like“ as such. It must be posited as a constitutive moment of all physical substances, although it is never given in its purity and complete formlessness and cannot so exist. Since it can neither exist for (in) itself as a principle (potential constitutive The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 329 element) of substance nor is it a substance, it could not possibly be the bearer of accidental determinations (forms). The „form“ which corresponds to prime matter is thus the „substantial form“ or the „first act“ through which concrete natural substances are first constituted as such. Since matter does not possess a determinate content in itself and is open to all kinds of determinations, it is also a principle of potentiality, whereas form is determined in itself and, giving content to matter, is not itself receptacle of forms; it is a principle of act. (Only the intellect is regarded as a „form“ which is in potency towards all forms and hence bears some resemblance to prime matter.) The substantial „form,“ which constitutes as well certain kinds of concrete matter as determinate substances, is thus, according to Aristotle, likewise to be conceived as the first active principle, whereas first matter is the passive principle of pure receptivity or possibility. The substantial form is thus the act of prime matter. The accidental forms which actualize potentialities in the substance are the „second(ary) acts.“ Thus, next to prime matter Aristotle distinguishes „second matter.“ He also calls the individual substance „matter,“ in so far as it can receive new („accidental“) forms. At the same time he suggests that it is precisely the principle of materiality as such which signifies receptivity and potentiality also within the already constituted substance, and can be bearer of forms and actuality. Since according to Aristotle exclusively „first matter“ is bearer of a substantial form and in each substance only one substantial form can be present, and since the substantial form of a living thing (plant, animal, or man) is the soul, man must likewise have one and only one substantial form, namely the soul, which directly informs „first matter“ and in its unity with matter constitutes the individual human being. Thus the soul is, as Neo-Thomism especially emphasizes, the „form“ which gives to the body being (since „first matter“ cannot itself possess being) as well as all attributes of the material substance (extension, etc.) and life and perception and thought as well. Thus the body is not - or, as many Thomists and Thomas himself would indeed say, not primarily - a proper material substance, but it merely is the dynamic unity of „first matter“ and soul; or rather the body and indeed the whole man is one single substantial entity which is constituted solely out of these principles of prime matter and soul. What would thus remain after death would be a radically different substance (the corpse) which only seems similar to the body (Körper), but would not be the numerically or The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 330 essentially same substance. The distinction between the human soul and „animal soul“ or lower substantial forms is often explained by Thomas in such a way that the human soul is not completely immersed in the body, but transcends it in its intellectual acts, and that at the same time it is a proper spiritual substance (Coreth) which already in itself possess substantiality and esse which it would then, as it were, „communicate“ to the body (Pegis, pp. 33ff.). In that here the human spirit is conceived of as a soul (Coreth) and the perfection of all lower substantial forms would be contained in the soul as the single substantial form of man, every dualism would be in principle overcome. While the aspects of the doctrine we have described are designed to explain the constitution of particular substances and especially of man, other aspects of this view hold for the relation between the particular substance and the universal. And here it is affirmed that materia quantitate signata, thus the individually distinguished matter, ultimately the ever-concrete „first matter,“ would be the principle of individuation. The individual self-being of the human person would be determined by the body, and indeed by its special „first matter.“ This doctrine leads Pieper, for example (cf. the present author, 1973, pp. 343ff.), into the greatest difficulties in holding to the real spirituality and substantiality of the soul which he, following Thomas, maintains, and into greater difficulties still in defending immortality, i.e., the individual existence of the „separated soul“ after death. This questions of the soul’s individuality after death is usually answered within Neo-Thomism in the following manner: it is only because of matter or rather in virtue of the „transcendental ordination of the soul to the first matter of the body (decaying in the grave after death),“ that the human soul remains an individual. Otherwise, the soul in itself (i.e., without its relation to the body and individualizing matter) would have to be like a quasi-Platonic „Whiteness in itself“ (Thomas), a separate and essentially abstract or non-individual form (Thomas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 75, a. 7). To be sure, Thomas holds in other places (which, in my opinion, cannot be brought into agreement with the many sections on matter as principle of individuation) that the soul possesses esse as well as individuality in itself (Quaestio Disputata de Anima, a. 3, 2 ad 5. On the problem of individuality in Thomism, cf. especially Manser, 677ff., Bernath, 38-44; de Raemaker, 164-66). Aristotelian-Thomistic epistemology also belongs in this same context. According to this teaching, in knowing, the universal „form,“ individuated by matter, is abstracted again from individualizing matter as it still The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 331 characterizes the phantasma which our senses receive from the individual material thing. Indeed, Thomas continually emphasizes (Summa Theologiae, q. I, q. 75, a. 5) that the soul can only perform this process of abstraction because it is not individual in itself (as the senses) - else, like the senses, it would have to receive „individuated forms.“ The „intellectual soul“ (anima intellectiva), i.e. the human soul, is „absolute form“ (forma absoluta), for, if the soul (by containing matter - which Bonaventure postulated in the form of „spiritual matter“ precisely in order to safeguard the intrinsic individuality of the soul) were individual in itself, „the forms of things would be received by it as individuals and it would only know the particular, as this occurs in the senses.“ For „matter is the principle of individuation of forms“ and therefore the soul and „any substance which knows forms absolutely“ (in their universality) must back composition of matter and form, according to Thomas clearly because such a composition would make an intellectual soul individual in itself and thus reduce it to receiving forms as particulars. Without being able to go further into the exposition of the general doctrine here, let us only emphasize that in individual Thomists this doctrine is developed in widely different ways. There are, e.g., far ranging differences between Rahner and Coreth on the one hand, and Greth or Pegis on the other. But the general merits of this doctrine can be evaluated in the following way. Thomas teaches - at least in many places - that the one human nature (substance) is at the same time a composite of two substances, one material and one spiritual (Summa Theologiae, I. q. 75, Introduction). While many dualists are led by this same knowledge to the opinion that these two substances are united merely externally or not at all really united, according to the teaching of Thomism, body and soul are so closely united that they form one complete and unified human nature of which they are the two „essential parts.“ Thus the soul, although really a substance in itself, does not possess in itself a complete specific nature. Complete human nature exists only in the totality of body and soul. Likewise it is certainly correct that the human body - in any case, in some significant sense - is constituted through the human soul and from the very beginning receives meaning and formation through the soul. The eyes or hands of a corpse can only be called eyes or hands equivocally. Still, although the soul constitutes the body as lived body, it is not wholly immersed in the body, but transcends the body in its highest acts and in its perfection (Thomas, Summa The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 332 Theologiae, I, q. 76, a. 1c). Spiritual knowledge, e.g., is no act of the whole composite being of man (actus conjuncti) as Thomas rightly observes. The body does not play a direct role in it as it does in the case of sense knowledge which occurs by the mediation of corporeal organs. Likewise the position that the substance of the human soul is not itself composed of matter and form, that the soul is capable of truth and also because of this must be immortal (Thomas, Pieper) is, in our opinion, a deep insight, but we will not be able to go into it further here. On this point Thomism also avoids - in spite of taking matter as the principle of individuation - the Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle according to which there is only one single intellect common to all men and thus the „individual“ soul ceases to be characterized by personal uniqueness and freedom and perishes at death (cf. Schneider, pp. 66ff.). In spite of these indubitable merits of the anima-forma-corporis doctrine, it seems to us necessary to exercise criticism on a few points of this Thomistic teaching and to work out major distinctions in the „form concept“ which, in our opinion, are either overlooked or too little noted in the Thomistic teaching (cf. the present author, 1973) First of all, we might underscore the view that the concept of „matter“ in the Aristotelian tradition is a very problematic notion. Indeed, we find no objection against the distinction between „prime matter“ as pure „stuff-ness“ and „formed matter.“ But the identification of potentiality with matter as well as the theses that only „prime matter“ can directly be bearer of a substantial form and that each being consists only of prime matter and of one single substantial form, are, in our opinion, more that problematic. It is certainly correct that matter (both „prime matter“ and substance as „secondary matter“) is open to all kinds of determinations and actualization; and that the principles of „form“ which actualize these possibilities are determined in themselves and are, insofar as they are determined in their nature, not themselves receptacles of form and actualization but principles of act(uality). Without developing these important Aristotelian insights any further here, we might briefly indicate the lines along which a critique of the identification between potency and matter would have to proceed. Already the example given by Aristotle himself of the soul (intellect) being „in potency towards all forms“ shows that there is an immaterial substantial being (the souls had been proven to be an immaterial substance) which is „in potency towards all things,“ i.e. which can receive through knowledge all forms and be actualized through knowledge. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 333 But also the will, as well the power of self-determination as the power to act, involves a possibility of actualization of the person the principle of which is precisely not matter but spirit (soul). Thus it seems necessary to consider matter only as one principle of potency, not at all as the principle of potentiality. Secondly, the identification of potency with receptivity seems to overlook the possibility of a perfectly actualized mind whose knowledge would nevertheless „perfectly receive“ and stand open to what is. In another work (2/1976) I have tried to show that there is a unique and irreplaceable act and actualization in receptivity of knowledge which refutes any identification of receptivity with passivity or „potency.“ Further designation of any substance or „secondary matter“ leads to the unproven and, in the present author’s view erroneous assumption that the principle of potency in the substance is „pure Stuffness“ or it leads to an ambiguity and dangerous equivocation of the notion of matter (materiality as „stuff“ and as potency). The theses that only prime matter can directly be the bearer of a substantial form and that there can be only one single substantial form in each being, are no less problematic. These theses are not only not immediately evident, but they also run counter to evidence. For example, there definitely is something in common, beyond appearance and prime matter, between the bones of the living body and the bones of the corpse. And this „form“ which makes the „bone“ this particular material cannot be identified with the soul because it exists as identically the same in the corpse as well. Moreover, the distinct and mutually exclusive attributes of soul and body as well as the composite structure of man and the divisibility of the body (the biological „parts“ of the body - e.g. the cells or organs - can be transplanted without the „cell-lives“ being destroyed or replaced) make it impossible simply to identify the clearly indivisible spiritual soul with an alleged „one single substantial form“ without which the body would only be „prime matter.“ (For further discussion of this point see the present author, 1973.) From what we have said earlier (cf. pp. 105ff.) it follows that we hold the thesis to be radically false that matter is also the principle of individuation and the soul thus would attain individuality through the body. Indeed, in a certain sense we defend the opposite view and hold that matter and the body are individualized through the soul. Moreover, it seems first possible through a critique of this doctrine of individuation (a critique likewise resting upon the Thomistic texts mentioned above) to support persuasively the anthropological state of affairs envisioned by Thomism without having The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 334 to put up with incongruities and without referring to constructions such as a transcendental orientation of the separated soul to the body as basis of its individuality. All of this does, of course, in no way deny that the human body belongs to the integral being and complete nature of the human person. The full reality of man as person requires the body; precisely the human body qua lived body and qua body of this individual man presupposes the uniqueness and intrinsic individuality of the soul. Only on this basis can man’s body give a concreteness to human existence and place him into the specifically spatial and historical circumstances which express and fulfill his individuality and thus „individualize“ him in a secondary manner. With respect to the concept of form it seems to us first of all that a sharp criticism of an equivocation of „spirit(ual)“ and „form“ appearing in Plato’s Phaedo is required, according to which the soul (i.e., the concrete reality of the personal mind) and universal forms (the abstract of Platonic ideas or abstracted „forms“ as Aristotle interprets them) are considered „similar“ to each other and are both characterized as „form“ and as „spiritual“ which terminology leads the philosopher who uses it to run the risk constantly of confusing two radically different things: the personal mind (soul) of man, or the person as such, and „form“ in the sense of an abstract idea or abstracted form which is embodied or concretized in matter or in individual particulars. But while certainly the intelligible forms of things are known by the personal mind, while, as Plato noted, both are invisible, both are immaterial, and while the soul may find intellectual „nurture“ in the contemplation of these ideas (as Plato describes in the Phaedrus), the human mind is a substance which is an individual, concrete entity and the forms are abstract, both not possessing „real being“ in the same sense. The „forms“ are universal and cannot be conscious of anything or of themselves; the human soul is essentially characterized by its ordination to consciousness. The human soul (person) is free and capable of spontaneous auto-determination; the ideas are in no way free, etc. It is from such a confusion of two radically distinct senses of „form“ that the entire problem of the „individuation“ of the human soul arises, as if the human spirit (the most concrete of all things in the world) were by nature originally something like a universal „form“ for which one would then have to seek out some principle of „individuation.“ In reality, the human soul is no less originally and primordially „individual“ than matter; it is even, as we have seen, individually unique in a sense The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 335 which cannot ever be attained by matter and which could never be explained by matter with its essential „manifoldness“ of being or by the body which precisely can be fully „individualized“ only by the presence of the soul which, in its indivisible, intrinsic unity, vivifies it, senses in it, and „forms“ it by its own mental and spiritual life which makes of matter and material substance a „lived body.“ (On this equivocation, detected by von Hildebrand, cf. the present author, 2/1976, pp. 238f.) Here one might refer to another type of ambiguity in the concept of „form“ whose elimination, in our opinion, makes the deep care of truth in the anima-forma-corporis doctrine incomparably more plausible. First, one can mean by „form“ of the body the external impression and shape of a material thing. Indeed, according to the strict doctrine developed above, form in the sense of shape is to be characterized merely as an „accidental form“ (second act). But it appears grounded precisely in the weak mode of the substantial being of matter that, as we have seen, the exterior form of the material thing can lead to a new thing, indeed to a new substance (e.g. in a work of art or the impression - form - of the silver coin brought up by Pieper as an analogy of the soul. For neither all the silver or marble in the world nor the individual silver atoms are substances. It is only the concrete things consisting of silver of marble which are substances). It is certainly true that form as shape can exist as individual only in matter. To be sure, here - and also many Thomistic texts can be referred to in support of this it is not only matter that contributes to the individuation of the form, but vice-versa, the form gives rise to an individual thing coming to be, in place of an „anonymous“ piece (of silver, etc.) which existed before its formation. In the human body this kind of form is, of course, not the human soul, but the exterior shape and form of the body, of the organs, the bones, etc. Secondly, „form“ of matter - to be approximately identified with the „substantial form“ - can refer to the „form“ of a material thing which impresses the pure „stuff-ness“ („prime matter“) and makes it from within into a determinate kind of matter (silver, lead, etc.). Only as a constitutive moment can this „form“ be distinguished from the pure „stuff-ness“ within the material entity. (The thesis that every material thing has only a „single“ such substantial form which directly informs the „prime matter“ appears to us unclear and not philosophically demonstrable as has been already mentioned. Besides, it indeed contradicts the results of modern physics which shows that the smallest parts The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 336 of matter, the atoms as well as the elementary particles, have already „form“ and can „build up“ completely different kinds of matter which have „in common“ not only prime matter but very „formed“ atoms and particles. In the human body this „form“ is, on the one hand, the unitary, anatomicphysiological formedness of the body as a whole or what - immanent to the body - lies at the basis of this formedness. On the other hand, this „form“ of the body is something enormously complex, since the human body consists of innumerable cells and diverse materials which in part already precede the constitution of the body (genes). Although many Thomistic authors (and texts in Thomas himself) appear to identify the soul with this „form“ of the body, it seems to us doubtful whether this is the correct Thomistic view. In our view, this thesis would involve a crass Materialism and a confusion of the distinction of mind and matter, because this „form“ as intrinsic anatomic-physiological „formedness“ of the body is inseparable from matter, has a share in the complexity and manifoldness of the material being, and could not possibly exist separated from the materiality of the body. In virtue of these characteristics it could not explain consciousness any better than, according to a crass materialistic interpretation, the formed body of the brain can produce consciousness. For in nothing would „form“ as intrinsic „principle“ of the material being, i.e. as its „inner formedness“ and as that in matter which distinguishes the human body (Körper) from prime-matter, be better able to explain cognition, will, etc. than the whole body. On the contrary, since this „form“ would lack any substantial standing in itself but would be as clearly dependent on matter as the informedness of the silver-coin is dependent on silver-matter, the whole body, credited by materialists as accounting for consciousness, would be far better suited to explain consciousness (because it is a concrete substantial thing) than a mere abstract „aspect“ or principle of material being which is no thing distinct from matter and indeed no thing (substantial subject) at all. Moreover, identifying the human soul with the inner formedness of the body would contradict the experience, e.g., of the partial identity between the body of the living man and the corpse which goes far beyond the same „materia prima.“ This „immanent form“ constituting the body qua material thing can, in our opinion, possess neither the spirituality nor the indivisible simplicity of the soul. In a third sense of „form“ (to be further articulated), the life-principle of plants and animals can be characterized as „form“ of the organic body. „Form“ in this sense is The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 337 indeed also an active principle informing matter, but in our opinion cannot be identical with „form“ either in the first or in the second sense. It is precisely not the immanent form-principle of matter which can at best be the effect of the soul. But it is a lifeprinciple distinct from matter and matter’s inner „material“ form-principle which, to be sure, in a certain sense exhausts itself in its being „the entelechy of the body“ (ConradMartius 1963, pp. 276-362; the present author 1973, pp. 71-89; 344f.). The distinction between this active principle of the vegetative (anima vegetativa) and sensitive soul (anima sensitiva) and „form“ in the second sense as intrinsic substantial formedness of matter (which „form“ in the third sense as life-principle and entelechy may indeed produce in living things) does not need to be developed here because it suffices for our purpose to distinguish form in a fourth sense from the first two senses of „form,“ since every distinction that could be demonstrated between „form“ in the third sense of „lifeprinciple“ and „form“ in the second sense is surpassed and found a fortiori in the distinction between „form“ in the fourth and in the second sense. In a fourth sense, then, one can speak of „form“ when one characterizes the human soul as „form“ or also as the substantial form of the body or of man. Here it is indeed a matter of a reality substantially distinct from the body and from all matter as has been demonstrated. It exercises its form-giving power upon the body as a spiritual substance really distinct from and transcending the body as material substance. Thus the spiritual soul of man not only does not „exhaust itself“ in its animating and informing influence on the body, is not merely „more“ than form of the body (matter), but in regard to its spiritual and most meaningful acts it is not at all primarily to be understood or to be defined as „form of the body.“ (Thomism also correctly emphasizes this point.) Moral goodness, love or religious acts represent a spiritual world in themselves which does not allow that the essence of the human soul be conceived of primarily in terms of its being „form“ of the body. Here also the Aristotelian thesis that matter only exists for form obtains a completely new significance. Next to the a-personal functions of the bodily organs such as the heart or the lungs which operate solely for the good of the organism as a whole, there are completely different functions of the human body in the service of the mind. While in the case of the animal the paws or claws, the eyes, ears, and so forth stand completely in the service of biological well-being, the human eye and ear are freed for the mind. The eyes also serve for knowledge and the contemplation of beauty; the The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 338 ears permit man to hear music; the mouth serves for speech as well as for eating; the hand for greeting or prayer. Thus the spiritual soul of man is, on the one hand, infinitely more than forma corporis as ground (locus) of the spiritual personality of man. Still, the human soul is forma of the body in a much deeper sense than could even surmised from considering only the other meanings of „form.“ In this sense we agree with Coreth (pp. 152-8) when he affirms (indeed in opposition to Aristotle where the ........... is not „form“ of the body, and to most Thomists where the highest spiritual operations of the soul do not belong to the „form“-character of the soul) that the spirit of man is the soul (form) of the body. Not only do we reject the denial of the real identity of the sensitive and intellectual soul of man by Peter Olivi (a Medieval philosopher of the fourteenth century), but we think that precisely those dimensions of the human psychic-spiritual life which transcend being the form of the body are, in the deepest sense, the „form“ of the human body. The soul makes the human body to be a lived body (Leib), not merely by its influence on the „form“ (in the first sense) of the human body which, as we have seen, expresses the human soul (Hengstenberg, Coreth), not only by its influence on certain biological facts (A. Portmann), and not only by its contributing to the human body sense experience, without which, e.g., the eye would not be an eye because it would not serve sight through which function precisely it becomes an eye (even the material structure of the eye as sense-organ would remain wholly unintelligible without reference to sight). Above and beyond all this, the deepest reason for the human body becoming a Leib (lived body in the specifically human sense) lies in its being essentially destined to be an expression of the mental and spiritual life of the soul. In that the human body stands in the service of the „Logos“ (spirit, mind, meaning), as Gregory of Nyssa especially emphasizes, and in that it serves a spiritual life which transcends it, the human body receives from this spiritual life its „form“ in the deepest sense. The body is not only assumed into the life of the spirit but is also, according to its innermost structure, ordained to union with the spiritual soul. The body visibly expresses the mental and spiritual life which unfolds the wealth of its meaning in the human soul; and the human body cannot at all be understood in its significance without reference to the spirit-soul. The logos-bearing functions of the human eye, mouth, hands, voice, etc. provide as it were the sole key for understanding the essence and nature of the human body, even for comprehending its The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 339 biological properties and exterior shape and form, all of which receive their ultimate and specifically human form through their reference to the spiritual soul of man. In this sense the human spirit is indeed the form (the principle of unity and intelligibility and meaning) of the human body (Coreth). Through this conception, the „unity of the substantial form“ of man is not placed in question, even though its strict (or perhaps only its narrowly?) Thomistic sense in contested. Not only is the sensitive principle (sensitive soul as origin of sensation) in man identical with the intellective „principle“ (the intellective soul), as the German term Geistseele (spirit-soul) well expresses and as we experience immediately in our inner awareness of the identical sameness of the conscious subject of perception and of mental acts in us, but also the physiological and external formedness of the human body is constituted only in ordination to the spirit and receives its deepest sense from it. For this reason, a human body inhabited by an ape’s or dog’s or cat’s „soul“ which would be capable only of animal functions would be a monstrous thing (much more so than a human being prevented only empirically, for example, by idiocy or by a complete bodily malformation, from the exercise of his specifically human faculties). The human soul is thus the single „substantial form“ of man and therefore also of the body (forma corporis), not in the sense of literally being the only principle - besides materia prima - of man’s being, so that there would be only the soul and materia prima as sufficient constituting principles of the entire human being and of the human body this we have recognized to be impossible and contradictory. Rather, the sense in which the human soul is the single substantial form of the human body can only be grasped if simultaneously the distinct substantiality of the human soul is recognized (which leaves to the body qua material entity its own ‘substantial form’ in the second sense of „form distinguished above). If one objects that such a view breaks up the obvious unity of the human being, we reply: it is not at all evident why there could not be different „substantial forms“ (in some sense of the latter term), or even different substances, in one and the same being. Without recognizing this possibility, how can one account for Thomas’ true statement (see quotation above) that the one man is composed of a corporeal and a spiritual substance? How can one account, without accepting this multiplicity (in the limited sense described) of „substantial forms,“ for the given anthropological facts? Finally, is The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 340 not the substantial distinction between body and soul, and thereby also some sense in which the body has its own substantial form, the condition of the possibility for immortality and for the body remaining as Körper (corpse) also after death? Man is thus, while he is truly one single entity or substance (whose substantial „form“ is the soul), also to be recognized as „microcosm“ (Coreth), as combining all elements and forms of creation under one single principle: material being, vegetative life, sensation and spiritual personhood, all of which are not dissolved in their distinction but, according to each one’s nature, brought into unity by the soul. But what is required for each of these elements to be integrated, each according it is nature, into the unity of the human nature? Let us briefly answer this question in reference to the main moments within human nature. The sensitive life of man, in order to be part of the unified human nature and in order not to be separated from the spiritual soul of man, has to be experienced by the one, single, substantial Geistseele (spirit-soul), but not by the soul insofar as it possesses a distinct spiritual and intellectual life which is distinct from the body and unmingled with it, but by it in its essential conjunction with the human body. The biological life and the material form of the human body, in order to be united with the human soul, must precisely not coincide with it (which would contradict the essence of the soul and thus also the specific unity of the human nature) but participate in its life and be ordained to it. The body would indeed become another thing (distinct from a human body) a corpse, without the meaning and formation which it receives from its union with the spiritual soul of man. The human soul makes, then, in the last analysis, the body (Körper) into a human body (Leib) by informing it and giving it intelligibility through the spiritual and mental life which impresses its own form upon the body; through the fact, moreover, that the one, single, human Geistseele (spirit-soul) not only thinks, wills, speaks, makes things, and acts meaningfully in and through the body, but also sensibly perceives and feels in the body. The soul, furthermore, lends unity and meaning to the exterior shape and interior biological-anatomical formedness of the body which the soul is not but determines and orders as a „final cause“ or raison d’être for the entire being of the body. Thus man is both one, single substance and yet „composed of a material and a spiritual substance.“ Both of these statements, which stand in a certain tension in Thomas’ own The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 341 texts and in the subsequent history of Thomism, are now seen to be reconcilable and to make perfect sense. In fact, only the clear distinction between body and soul, only the recognition of the substantial and real distinction between body and soul and the related distinctions between various meanings of „form“ can lead to understanding the specific unity of the human being which is, somewhat analogous to the union of persons in love, not any less union because of distinction, but a „unity-in-distinction.“ However, it is a very specific and unique kind of unity-in-distinction, namely - in contradistinction to the communion of persons - a unity of one, single, substantial being consisting, nonetheless, of two substances. And the most profound sense in which the human soul is form of the human body is precisely not its dimension of „being in and for the body“ which may be said for plantand animal-souls. Rather, the real sense in which the soul is form of the body is precisely in those transcendent dimensions of love, moral virtues, spiritual acts in which it reaches infinitely beyond the body. In incorporating and expressing and incarnating even the highest spheres of spiritual life in the body, in the fact that what is invisible and spiritual becomes visible and expressed in the flesh, and in truly in-dwelling in the body, forming and transforming it into a lived body, a human and humane body, the soul is form of the body. In this sense the body is truly destined to become a place of the incarnation not only of the soul or the animalic parts of man but of the spirit. Man as ‘spirit-in-’matter’ may here be a truly remarkable formula for the human essence. At the same time, we arrived at a truly personalistic understanding of the animaforma-corporis teaching: the human soul is called to become form of the body in a far more profound sense than just being it. Being a person, Marcel says, is a conquest, not a possession. We can say the same here: being incarnated in the body, infusing the life of the spirit, of love, of the good into the body is a high moral task and not a safe possession. Nowehere has this become more evident to us than in the analysis of the sexual sphere. But it is also evident in cruelty or bodily deeds of kindness towards other human beings. At this point it becomes also clear that at the highest personal level of the soul being the „form of the body“ ist can also become the principle of vilification and destruction of the body and lead to the latter’s deformity, ugliness, grossness not only The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 342 in the aesthetic sense and in the sense of the expressive qualities of the body but also in being the place of an evil life, of the incarnation of the kingdom of darkness. To understand the innermost meaning in which the human soul is form of the body in all the described senses, and particularly to grasp the highest sense in which precisely the deepest spiritual acts which no sense can reach and whose primary meaning does not consist in forming the body are destined to become „form“ of the body - requires the understanding of the utter ontological difference between body and soul, as we have seen. It requires also to see that the human soul is not form in the first three senses and can also not be properly characterized as „not being a body but something in and for a body.“ Much rather, the human soul is precisely form of the body by not primarily being form of the body. It informs the body, both raising it up and „incarnating,“ concretizing and „expressing the life of the spirit in the body“ most deeply in those dimensions of its life which are not „for the sake of the body.“ And in all the ways in which it is really present in the body and makes the body human it does so and can do so only because it is not immersed in the body but raised above the body. If we distinguish carefully this distinctness of mind and body - which is, I would submit, indubitably demonstrated through the arguments sketched above - from any separation, keeping also apart entirely different senses of 'dualism', we shall find that the unity of man as consisting of body and soul is not threatened or rendered impossible by the mind but that the difference of the mind from the body constitutes the only conceivable basis for doing justice to the unity of man, in whom body and soul are joined to form a much more unified being than two sorts of matter - or a material thing and its accidents - could ever constitute. For then it becomes evident that only a mind distinct from the body can become 'form' and animating spiritual principle of the body, in sense perception, in action, in speech or in love, etc. Not merely by its influence on the form of the human body in the first sense, on the duration of the gestation period (Portmann, Hengstenberg, Coreth) and by rendering possible sensory experience, without which e.g. the eye would not be the eye, but precisely by its spiritual life. In that it stands in the service of the Logos (Gregory of Nyssa) and serves of a spiritual life which transcends it, the human body receives from this spiritual life the deepest „form.“ The body is not only assumed into the life of the spirit, but is also ordained to union with the spiritual soul according to The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 343 its innermost structure. The body visibly espresses the spiritual life and cannot at all be understood in its significance without reference to the spiritual soul. Likewise, in our opinion, through this conception the „unity of the substantial form“ of man is not placed in question, even though its strict (narrowly?) Thomistic sense is contested. Not only are the sensitive and intellective „principles“ in man (the spiritual soul) identical, but also the physiological and external informing of the body are constituted only in ordination to the spiritual soul and receive the deepest impression from it. The human soul is the „single substantial form“ of man (the body) not in the sense of a literally single form constituting the corporeal substance out of materia prima, but in the sense of man as microcosm (Coreth) in that the soul makes the body into a human body by perception and spirit and also most deeply shapes biological life, the inner impression, indeed the external forming of the material body. Thus man is a single (composite) substance, although at the same time he is „composed of a material and a spiritual substance.“ The unquestioned manifold dependence of the mind on the body, and particularly on the brain, too, is by no means incompatible with the superior actuality, life, and reality of the mind. Moreover, neither the psychophysical dependence on the body nor the manifold dependence of bodily movement and action, speech, expression, etc. on the life of the soul are incompatible with the unity of man. For as the union of two persons who love each other requires the duality of persons, so that of man requires the duality of body and mind. Only a dualism in the second sense of the word allows us to do real justice to the admirable unity of man who is a „person-in-the flesh,“ a „soul-in-and-with-a-body.“ In this sense we can conclude our exposition with Bergson’s words (which we disassociate here from the evolutionism Bergson developed in Creative Evolution): By pushing dualism to an extreme, we appear to have divided body and soul by an unbridgeable abyss. In truth, however, we were indicating the only possible means of bringing them together. (H. Bergson, Matière et Mémoire, pp. 221-2.) The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 344 Appendix (German Text on Definitions of Man)172 Der Mensch wird seit Aristoteles, ja seit dem Vorsokratiker Heraklit, oft als zoon logon echon, das heißt als animal rationale, als ein „vernünftiges Tier“ oder besser als „ein mit Vernunft begabtes Lebewesen“ bezeichnet. Aber ganz abgesehen von der Frage, ob und, wenn überhaupt, in welchem Sinne Wesen wie jenes des Menschen „definierbar“ sind, erhebt sich die Frage, ob der Mensch in erster Linie als eine Unterart innerhalb der Lebewesen zu verstehen ist, ob also der Mensch in seinem Wesenskern als Lebewesen gefaßt werden soll, was für Pflanzen oder Tiere sicher zutrifft. Dabei ist der Begriff des zoon (animal) bzw. des „Lebewesens“ noch doppeldeutig. Einmal kann dieser Begriff nämlich auf jedes Wesen abzielen, das Leben besitzt und so kann der Begriff des ‘Lebewesens’ (wie ihn etwa die Apokalypse des hl. Johannes voraussetzt, wenn sie die Engel als animalia apostrophiert) eine allgemeine metaphysische Eigenschaft bezeichnen, die wir von den Pflanzen an bis zu rein geistigen Personen finden. Sodann kann ‘Lebewesen’ (animal) aber auch im spezifischeren Sinne des organischen Lebewesens oder Tiers verstanden werden, das sich gerade nicht nur vom Leblosen, sondern auch von rein geistigen lebenden Wesen unterscheidet. Im ersteren Fall bezeichnet Leben eine nicht weiter zurückführbare und in den jeweiligen verschiedenen Seinsbereichen nur analog verwirklichte Urgegebenheit, im letzteren Falle gewissermaßen das ‘gemeinsame Element’ von Pflanzen, Tieren und Menschen, das diese von den rein geistigen Lebewesen ebenso wie vom Leblosen und Toten abgrenzt. In Pflanzen, Tieren und im biologischen Leben des Menschen (in dem wir außerdem auch ein völlig andersartiges, rein geistiges Leben antreffen) äußert sich das Leben in einer Reihe erstaunlicher und origineller Phänomene, die man in der Philosophie seit Heraklit, Platon und Aristoteles unter allgemeinen Begriffen wie jenen der Selbsterzeugung und Selbstbewegung zu erfassen versucht hat. Im rein biologischen Bereich unterscheiden sich Lebewesen von leblosen Dingen durch Ernährung und Stoffwechsel, durch Wachstum und Regeneration, sowie durch Fortpflanzung; und so erzeugen sie gewissermaßen sowohl sich selber (durch Stoffwechsel, Wachstum und Regeneration) als sie auch (durch Fortpflanzung) ihre Art in neuen Individuen 172 From a Madrid Conference „What is a Person?“ (1994). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 345 hervorbringen. Noch tiefer für das Leben bezeichnend sind vielleicht die Phänomene der Eigenbewegung und spontanen Selbstbewegung sowie der Adaptation an die Umwelt und der differenzierten Reaktion auf sie gemäß sachlich vom Objekt bestimmten, aber zugleich eigenen und dem jeweiligen Zustand des Lebewesens entsprechenden Gesetzen. Die letztgenannten Eigenschaften führen uns übrigens wieder zum ersten und umfassenderen Sinn von ‘Leben’ zurück. Sie finden sich nämlich (im Unterschied zu einigen der vorhergenannten Eigenschaften) nicht ausschließlich in organischen Lebwesen, sondern ebenso, ja noch pointierter, auch auf der überlegenen Sphäre rein geistigen Lebens und zwar dort auf der prinzipiell höheren Ebene intentionaler Akte wieder, in denen die geistige Person sich der sie umgebenden Wirklichkeit ‘angleicht’ und auf sie ‘reagiert’, und zuvor in der Erkenntnis der Welt mit dieser in intentionalgeistige Berührung tritt. In der erkennenden Teilhabe am Seienden, aber auch in der freien Selbstbestimmung und in der Antwort auf Werte sowie in durch die Freiheit sanktionierten affektiven Akten wie der Liebe adaptieren sich Personen nicht nur an die Umwelt, sondern sie gehen bewußt, frei und sinnvoll auf die erkannte Welt und auf andere Personen ein und antworten auf sie. Das Urphänomen des Lebens als solchen, das sich von Pflanzen an bis zu den höchsten rein geistigen Lebensformen in analoger Weise findet, hebt sich von allem rein Dinglichen und rein Stofflichen, aber auch von allen rein abstrakten Gegenständen wie Zahlen, ab und ist niemals auf die chemisch-physikalische Welt oder deren Wirkungen reduzierbar. Dies gilt auch für das rein biologische Leben (des animal im spezifischeren Sinne). Sogar der homme-machine-Gedanke setzt noch die Unzurückführbarkeit des Lebens auf das rein Stoffliche voraus, da eben ein auf eine Maschine reduziertes Lebewesen nicht wirklich lebendig wäre, sondern nur so erschiene. Indem also das Lebewesen als Maschine deklariert wird, wird ihm der Charakter des Lebens abgesprochen - und auch dies setzt die Einsicht voraus, daß Leben wesenhaft mehr ist als ein Effekt der leblosen Materie und daß deshalb dem wirklich Lebendigen ein Prinzip oder eine Seele zugrundeliegen müßten, die mehr wären als Eigenschaften der leblosen Materie. Und nur deshalb ist die These des Menschen (des Lebwesens) als Maschine die Leugnung, daß das anscheinend Lebendige wirklich lebt. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 346 Leben in all seinen Formen, also auch das rein biologisch-organische Leben, ist jedoch nicht bloß nicht auf das rein Stofflich-Materielle, sondern nicht einmal auf jene Äußerungen reduzierbar, die zwar für das Leben charakteristisch sind und dieses voraussetzen, wie spontane Selbstbewegung, die aber in gewissen Zuständen des Lebewesens ganz oder fast ganz abwesend sein können, ohne daß deshalb notwendigerweise das Leben, das hinter allen diesen Phänomenen liegt, aufhören würde zu bestehen, wie wir dies etwa im gefrorenen oder kryokonservierten Tier oder menschlichen Embryo beobachten. 173 Die Beobachtung, daß das Leben selbst beim nahezu vollständigen Aufhören jener Phänomene weiterbestehen kann, in denen sich das Wesen des Lebens normalerweise äußert und aktualisiert, enthüllt eine philosophisch gesehen schlechthin entscheidende Eigenschaft des Lebens: Das Leben ist immer letztlich mit einem die Materie als solche transzendierenden Prinzip, einer Entelechie, einem Lebensprinzip oder einer Tierseele oder - in der Person - mit einem lebendigen Geist oder einer menschlichen Geistseele verbunden. Das Leben kann sich also nicht nur auf der Ebene bloßer akzidenteller Eigenschaften vom Toten unterscheiden, sondern unterscheidet sich vom Leblosen auf der substantiellen Ebene des Seins; es unterscheidet sich vom Toten durch die konstitutive Wesenheit der ihrer Natur nach lebendigen Substanz. Ein lebendiges Wesen ist also eine dynamische Natur, die sich besonders deutlich in spontaner Eigenbewegung oder Selbstbestimmung und in einer Reihe von anderen Merkmalen manifestiert, dabei aber letzten Endes ein allen ihren Erscheinungs- und Aktionsweisen gegenüber tieferes Fundament in einem Geist, einer Seele oder zumindest in einem pflanzlichen Lebensprinzip besitzt. In seiner zweiten und ganz anderen, eingeschränkteren Anwendung bezieht sich der Begriff des Lebewesens jedoch, wie bereits gesagt, nicht auf alle Ebenen des Lebens, sondern auf eine bestimmte Klasse lebendiger Wesen: und zwar nicht auf die rein geistigen, sondern nur auf organische Lebewesen oder noch spezifischer nur auf Tiere (das lateinischen „animal“ meint ebenso natürlich „Tier“ wie „Lebewesen“). Untersuchen wir also die aristotelische Definition des Menschen im Hinblick auf die beiden Grundbedeutungen von animal (zoon), doch zunächst nur insofern in ihr der Begriff ‘Lebewesen’ im ersten, allgemeineren Sinne von Lebewesen verstanden wird. Diese hier nur angedeutete Unreduzierbarkeit des biologischen und erst recht des geistigen Lebens auf materielle Phänomene versuche ich in einem bald erscheinenden Buch What is Life? (Rodopi 1994) nachzuweisen. 173 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 347 Sollte der Mensch in diesem Sinne von „Lebewesen“ als „vernunftbegabtes Lebewesen“ definiert werden? Zweifellos ist es wahr und bleibt unbestritten, daß der Mensch lebt und daß er deshalb, wie Pflanze und Tier, wie Gott und Engel, in die allgemeine Klasse bzw. in die sehr universale Seinsart der Lebewesen gehört. Aber diese Zugehörigkeit zur umfassenden Klasse aller lebendigen Wesen kann kaum Grundlage einer Definition des Menschen sein. Denn eine Definition des Wesens einer Art von Lebewesen sollte, wie schon von Aristoteles in seinem Organon (dem corpus seiner logischen Schriften) klargestellt wurde, die nächsthöhere und deshalb für ein bestimmtes Wesen charakteristischste Gattung (das genus proximum) angeben und dann durch Hinzufügung der spezifischen Differenz das Wesen der Spezies bestimmen. Insofern deshalb das Wesen des Menschen überhaupt in diesem aristotelischen Sinne durch genus proximum und durch seine spezifische Differenz definierbar ist, müssen wir fragen: Ist der Begriff des Lebewesens im umfassendsten Sinne das gesuchte genus proximum für den Menschen? Die richtige Antwort auf diese Frage scheint eindeutig negativ zu sein, da das Lebewesensein eine so allgemeine und zugleich in verschiedenen lebenden Wesen nur analog verwirklichte Eigenschaft ist, daß man diese Seinsverfassung bzw. allgemeine Kategorie unmöglich als die nächsthöhere oder charakteristischste allgemeine Seinsgattung, unter die der Mensch fällt, betrachten kann. Es wäre dies ähnlich wie wenn man den Elephanten als ein lebendes Wesen mit einem Rüssel definieren wollte anstatt die nächstliegende Gattung der Tiere, ja der Säugetiere zur Grundlage der Definition zu wählen. Denn es gibt offensichtlich dem Menschen viel näher liegende Allgemeinheiten, die als Oberbegriff für eine Definition des Menschen in Frage kommen, als das allgemeine Lebewesensein. Daher können wir die Definition des Menschen als animal rationale getrost ablehnen, wenn animal dabei im allgemeinsten Sinne lebender Wesen verstanden wird. Denn dann ist die Kategorie der Lebewesen eine viel zu allgemeine, um als Grundlage einer guten Definition zu dienen. Es ist ja ganz zu Recht eines der in der klassischen Philosophie festgehaltenen Erfordernisse einer guten Definition, daß in ihr die jeweils nächsthöhere Gattung (das genus proximum) als Grundlage der Definition zu verwenden ist und nicht eine allgemeinere Gattung. Man wird deshalb einen Elephanten nicht als ein Ding mit einem Rüssel, und auch nicht als ein Lebewesen mit einem Rüssel, ja nicht The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 348 einmal als ein Tier mit einem Rüssel bezeichnen, eine Definition, die auch für bestimmte Fische und Reptilien zuträfe, sondern den Elephanten vielmehr als ein Säugetier mit einem Rüssel (und einer Reihe anderer Eigenschaften) definieren, da die Gattung des Säugetiers die nächst-höhere Allgemeinheit zum Elephantsein bezeichnet. Und so muß man auch beim Menschen nach der ihm nächstliegenden allgemeinen Gattung, dem genus proximum fragen, von dem her seine spezifische Differenz dann bestimmt werden kann. Diese nächsthöhere Allgemeinheit muß eine bestimmte Art lebender Wesen sein (da der Mensch gewiß zu diesen gehört), wobei dann diese Art lebendiger Wesen in Relation zum Menschen eine Gattung, und zwar die dem Menschen nächstliegende Gattung wäre, zu der der Mensch gehört. Aber um welche Gattung handelt es sich hier, welche Art lebender Wesen gibt die allgemeinere Seinsform des Menschen an? Was also ist diese nächsthöhere Allgemeinheit, unter die der Mensch fällt und mit deren Hilfe man versuchen kann, ihn zu definieren? Zwei ganz verschiedene Antworten auf diese Frage bieten sich an: einmal die Antwort, er sei ein ein organisches Lebewesen (ein vernunftbegabtes - Tier), zum anderen die, der Mensch sei eine Person. Welche dieser Antworten aber ist korrekt? Oder sind beide gleich gut? Wir werden im folgenden die These verteidigen, daß der Mensch primär Person ist. Daß der Mensch primär als leibhafte oder leibliche Person, als eine Person, die einen Leib hat, und nicht als rationales Lebewesen bezeichnet werden sollte, erkennen wir klar, wenn wir bedenken, daß der Begriff des Lebewesens (des „animal“) heute kaum mehr in dem oben angesprochenen umfassenden metaphysischen Sinn, sondern vielmehr bloß im zweiten von uns unterschiedenen Sinne organischer Lebewesen verstanden wird. Wenden wir uns also genauer der Frage zu, ob der Mensch in seiner Natur richtig gekennzeichnet oder ‘definiert’ wird, wenn man ihn nicht ganz allgemein als rationales lebendes Wesen, sondern spezifischer als organisches Lebewesen (oder Tier) bzw. als Hominiden oder Pongiden (Menschenaffen) mit der hinzutretenden Differenz der Rationalität bestimmt, die ihn vom Gorilla und anderen Menschenaffen unterscheidet. Um diese Frage beantworten zu können, müssen ein logischer und zwei ontologische Sachverhalte ins Auge gefaßt werden. Um mit einem ontologischen Sachverhalt zu beginnen, so ist erstens zu bedenken, daß nichts der Tatsache im Wege The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 349 steht, daß ein und dasselbe Wesen, nämlich der Mensch, zugleich unter zwei verschiedene nächsthöhere Gattungen bzw. unter zwei ihm formal-ontologisch gleichermaßen nahestehende höhere Allgemeinheiten fällt: nämlich einerseits unter die Gattung der organischen Lebewesen, andererseits unter die Wesenheit der Personen. Das scheint allgemein betrachtet unmöglich zu sein, da sonst alle Dinge und organische Lewesen nur unter eine nächst-höhere generische Allgemeinheit zu fallen scheinen. So ist Gold ein Metall, rot eine Farbe und der Hund ein Säugetier. Warum aber ist es möglich, daß der Mensch unter zwei verschiedene, gleich weit und gleich nahe von der Spezies Mensch entfernte Gattungen bzw. Allgemeinheiten fallen kann, nämlich unter die der Person und unter jene des Lebewesens im Sinne des Organismus, was bei allen anderen organischen Lebewesen, zumindest wenn man sie in ihrem eigenen Wesen und nicht unter ganz anderen Gesichtspunkten (etwa dem eines farbigen Objekts) betrachtet, unmöglich wäre? Wir antworten: auf Grund der Tatsache der im Laufe der Geschichte der Philosophie oft hervorgehobenen Zwischenstellung des Menschen in der Mitte aller endlichen Wesen, auf Grund deren der Mensch einerseits mit der materiellen Welt und den lebenden Organismen und zugleich andererseits mit der geistigen Welt von Personen verbunden ist, ja zu ihnen gehört. Die zwei höheren Allgemeinheiten (genera proxima) des organischen Lebewesens (oder des Tieres) und der Person, unter die der Mensch als „Zwischenwesen“ fällt, liegen freilich nicht beide auf der gleichen Ebene und auch fällt der Mensch keineswegs im selben Sinne unter sie. Außerdem ist die allgemeine Natur des Personseins nicht im eigentlichen Sinne als ‘Gattung’, sondern als eine andere Art von Allgemeinheit aufzufassen, und dies einerseits wegen der Einzigartigkeit jeder Person, andererseits wegen des analogen und nicht gattungshaften Charakters des Personseins im allgemeinen, das bis in die göttliche Wesenheit reicht und deshalb eher ‘transzendental’ im mittelalterlichen Sinne als eine Gattung ist, insofern diese eine gewisse Univozität bzw. eine Gleichheit des Seinssinnes und der Seinsart voraussetzt. Man könnte freilich Gattungen im strikten Sinne (bei denen die allgemeine Natur von allen Spezies im selben Sinne geteilt wird, wie etwa die Gattung der Farbe im Verhältnis zu allen einzelnen Farben) von analogen Gattungen unterscheiden, bei denen die Allgemeinheit von den verschiedenen unter sie fallenden Wesen in jeweils radikal verschiedenem Sinne besessen wird. Letzteres gilt von der Weise, in der alle Seienden The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 350 vom Sandkorn bis zu Gott seiend oder alle lebenden Wesen lebendig und alle Personen Personen sind. Im Lichte dieser Überlegungen dürfen wir also die nächsthöhere Stufe der Allgemeinheit nicht immer als genus proximum im strikten Sinne betrachten, indem dieses (die Gattung) eine fundamentale Selbigkeit der Seinsweise voraussetzt. Insbesondere gibt es keine allgemeine Gattung „Person“ in einem univoken Sinne, die sämtliche Personen durch Merkmale, die jeder Person prinzipiell in gleichartiger Form zukämen, verbände. Dennoch ist das Personsein und nicht das Lebewesensein das analog zu verstehende nächsthöhere Allgemeine zum Menschsein. Der zu bedenkende logische Sachverhalt nun ist der, daß in dem Falle, in dem ein und dasselbe Artwesen unter zwei nächst-höhere Gattungen oder Allgemeinheiten fällt (wie der Mensch zugleich organisches Lebewesen und Person ist), rein logisch betrachtet sowohl eine Definition des Menschen als ‘organisches Lebewesen rationaler Natur’ als auch eine Definition des Menschen als ‘eine leibliche Person’ oder als ‘einen Leib habende Person’ möglich ist. Aber es gibt eben nicht nur rein logische Forderungen an eine gute Definition, sondern auch rein metaphysische Erfordernisse einer adäquaten Definition. Dies führt uns zum zweiten zu bedenkenden ontologischen Sachverhalt, der eben eine rein metaphysische Bedingung einer guten Definition ergibt. Es ist nämlich bei einer guten Definition eines Wesens wie des Menschen, das gleichermaßen unter zwei höhere Allgemeinheiten (das Organismussein und das Personsein) fällt, darauf zu achten, was logisch gesehen gleichgültig ist: ob nämlich die eine oder die andere der dem Menschen logisch und formal-ontologisch gesehen gleich nahen nächsthöheren Gattungen für das Wesen des Menschen charakteristischer und grundlegender ist. Und hier wird eine biologistische Sicht des Menschen, die diesen in erster Linie unter die anderen Arten, die die Erde bevölkern, rechnet, den Menschen als eine Unterart der anthropoiden Tiere oder als mit Vernunft begabtes Lebewesen oder Säugetier bezeichnen. Doch trifft eine derartige Definition keineswegs den Wesenskern des Menschen. Obwohl nämlich der Mensch zweifellos ein organisches Lebewesen ist und obwohl man die Natur des organischen Lebewesens (das animal-Sein) rein logisch und formal-ontologisch gesehen durchaus als eine nächsthöhere Gattung bezeichnen kann, unter die der Mensch, wenn man ihn unter den Tieren und Pflanzen auf der Erde betrachtet, fällt, so ist es doch irreführend, diese Seinsart des organischen Lebewesens The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 351 als die nächsthöhere Gattung aufzufassen, zu der der Mensch zählt und zu welcher dann sein Personsein (seine Rationalität) nur hinzuträte. Vielmehr muß man das Personsein als das erste und für den Menschen grundlegendste Wesen ansehen und kommen erst das organische Lebewesensein und die übrigen besonderen Bestimmungen des Menschen zu dieser seiner grundlegendsten metaphysischen Eigenart hinzu. Denn eine gute Definition soll ja mit jener allgemeinen Seinsart beginnen, die nicht nur irgendeine nächsthöhere Art bezeichnet (was beim Menschen zweifellos auch sein ‘organisches Lebewesensein’ ist), sondern wenn ein Wesen innerhalb zweier verschiedener ‘genera proxima’ angesiedelt ist, sollte man jene Gattung als Grundlage der Definition wählen, die für das betreffende Wesen am wichtigsten ist. Und dies ist zweifellos beim Menschen nicht sein organisches Lebewesensein, das er mit dem Tier und der Pflanze teilt, sondern sein Personsein, das ihn mit Engel und Gott verbindet. Der Mensch ist in erster Linie Person. Die erste dem spezifischen Wesen des Menschen viel näherkommende Allgemeinheit als jene des Lebewesenseins ist also der Charakter des Menschen als Person. Der Mensch ist zuallererst als Person gekennzeichnet: Sein Personsein mehr als das viel allgemeinere Lebewesensein gibt seine grundsätzliche Seinsform an. Die gesuchte, dem menschlichen Wesen nächstliegende Allgemeinheit ist also zweifellos weder die allgemeine Gattung des ein ‘lebendes Wesen’ Seins noch der Charakter des animal-Seins im Sinne der Natur des organischen Lebewesens oder Tieres, sondern vielmehr sein Personsein. Die erste dem spezifischen Wesen des Menschen viel näherkommende Allgemeinheit als jene des Lebewesenseins ist - so enthüllt uns eine tiefere Betrachtung der einschlägigen Sachverhalte - eindeutig der Charakter des Menschen als Person. Der Mensch ist zuallererst als Person gekennzeichnet: Sein Personsein mehr als das viel allgemeinere Lebewesensein oder auch das ein ‘organisches Lebewesensein’ gibt seine grundsätzliche Seinsform an. Ich habe deshalb in Essere e persona174 die Ansicht ausführlicher zu begründen gesucht, daß es vielmehr das Wesen des Personseins als des ‘Lebewesen-Seins’ ist, das den Menschen zuinnerst charakterisiert und das ihm als nächsthöhere Allgemeinheit entspricht. Schon aus diesem Grunde darf Rationalität (Personalität) nicht als eine erst zu seinem Josef Seifert, Essere e persona. Verso una fondazione fenomenologica di una metafisica classica e personalistica . (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1989). 174 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 352 ‘Lebewesensein’ hinzutretende ‘differentia specifica’ betrachtet werden, was nur in dem Sinne stimmt, daß das Lebewesensein eine allgemeinere und das Personsein eine spezifischere Natur bezeichnet und damit ihr Verhältnis einige allgemeinere logische Bedingungen einer Definition erfüllt. Aber das Grundlegendste an der Seinsart des Menschen ist sein Personsein. Deshalb ist der Mensch in erster Linie als Person zu kennzeichnen und dann erst ist der spezifisch verschiedene Charakter aufzusuchen, der die menschliche von anderen Personen abgrenzt. Diese differentia specifica (dieser spezifische Unterschied) des Menschen, dieser den Menschen grundlegend unterscheidende Charakter, den man in vielen Aspekten des Menschseins erblicken kann, z.B. mit Henri Bergson in der Fähigkeit zu lachen, liegt zweifellos als in seiner tiefsten Wurzel in der Leiblichkeit oder leibhaften Natur der menschlichen Person und in deren ‘inkarniertem Charakter’ begründet, welcher die spezifische Differenz der menschlichen Person in ihrem Unterschied zu anderen Personen ausmacht. So müssen wir die aristotelische Definition des Menschen als animal rationale in ihren beiden erörterten Bedeutungen verwerfen, nicht weil wir sie für falsch, sondern weil wir sie für unpassend, aus logischen und metaphysischen Gründen für schlecht, und deshalb für irreführend erachten. Der Mensch ist also, wenn man sein Wesen adäquat auszusprechen sucht, „Person-in-einem-Leib“ und nicht „animal rationale“. VIII. DEATH AND BRAIN DEATH: A CRITIQUE OF REDEFINITIONS OF MAN'S DEATH IN TERMS OF 'BRAIN DEATH' The 1968 statement of an 'Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medicine School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death' has given rise to a world-wide movement towards a new conception of death as brain death. While death in the ordinary sense is a fundamental albeit mysterious datum in the experience of every man and easy to The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 353 'diagnose' by anyone, 'brain-death' is such a highly technical and scientific notion of death that both its theoretical discussion and its concrete verification seem to be reserved to medical staff only. In the face of such a 'death for specialists only', those who are not medical researchers feel easily intimidated and ready to cede all rights to pronounce themselves authoritatively on life and death to medical scientists. Of course, there are many empirical facts about life and death which can be established only by empirical science. Yet in allowing ourselves to withdraw from the central issues in a discussion of life and death, and in leaving the definition and determination of death entirely up to medical scientists, we forget two important things: 1. Every man has a basis in his experience starting from which he can understand many facts about life and death. For these experiences and cognitions he does not need science. All men and all scientists must take their starting point from such fundamental data as life and death and try to understand them rather than creating them through some definition or explanation. Moreover, inasmuch as those intelligible aspects of death which touch upon its ultimate metaphysical nature are open to human knowledge, they are the proper domain not of science and medicine but of philosophy. Philosophy has a certain precedence over medicine with respect to the question of death because it explores - within the limits of human wisdom and knowledge - the ultimate nature and essence of death, and of its relationship to man's life, while medicine as such concentrates on partial, scientific aspects of death and dying. Besides, no scientist can even have a 'purely scientific notion' of death or of 'brain death' without making some philosophical assumptions, as we shall see. 2. No living man, however - whether scientist or ordinary person - has experienced his own death and every one of us is likewise ignorant about many aspects of the death of others. The philosopher's role is twofold: On the one hand, he has to explore those highly intelligible and essentially necessary aspects of death which no other human science investigates.i This task includes an analysis of the language of death and life and of the logical structure of the arguments used in the debates about life and death. It likewise includes a phenomenology of life and death, an ontology and metaphysics, as well as a philosophical anthropology of death. ii On the other hand, the philosopher has to warn representatives of other disciplines against concluding too much from the little they The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 354 know, or of extending their methods to areas where they are not appropriate or of which they know nothing. This will turn out to be important for the discussion of 'brain death'. Careful reflection on both philosophical knowledge and philosophical ignorance concerning death shows, I shall argue, that the definition of death in terms of 'brain death' ought to be rejected. iii 1. What is 'Brain Death'? Arguments against Killing People on the Basis of Scientific, Linguistic and philosophical Confusions Brain death is defined in many different ways. Some have spoken of brainstem death, which today is a widely accepted definition of death. Others prefer to speak of 'mid-brain death', referring only to part of the brainstem. Still others have used expressions such as 'total brain death' or 'whole-brain death'. Some authors assume that brainstem death or whole-brain death should be adopted because they involve also 'hemispheric death', or 'cortical (neocortical) death'; other authors make no such claim but want precisely to replace a definition of whole-brain death by 'neocortical death' as a sufficient definition of human death. iv The latter term risks the additional confusion between '(whole-) brain death' and the 'vegetative state' (which is also called 'cerebral death' or 'neocortical death'). Several authors (such as H.T. Engelhardt, Jr., J. Eccles, and - prior to 1989 - D.A. Shewmon) have extended the category of brain-dead humans or 'anthropoid animals' further and even feel entitled to accept the death of starvation and dehydration in 'hopeless cases' which they do not regard as live human persons but only as live human beings. Let us first review some of the common definitions of brain death. In America, 'The President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research' suggested in 1981 that "we recognize as dead an individual whose loss of brain function is complete and irreversible" (Byrne, E., 1984, 1986 pp. 47-54). In this definition, there is no clear identification of the kind of brain functions which are at stake. One could consider this definition as a definition of total (whole-) brain death. A similar definition of brain death was given by the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Chamber of Physicians in Germany (Wissenschaftlicher The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 355 Beirat der Bundesärztekammer), which defined brain death as "complete and irreversible collapse of the overall function of the brain while a circulatory function is still being maintained in the rest of the body" (Laufs, 1985, pp. 399-403). Another definition of brain death by the Bundesärztekammer is a more explicit definition of total or 'whole-brain death' because it speaks of the "irreversible loss of cerebral and brainstem function" (Laufs, 1985, p. 309). v Christopher Pallis has suggested a very different definition, which takes its starting point in consciousness and breathing but implies whole-brain death: "The irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness combined with the irreversible loss of the capacity to breathe" (E. Byrne, 1984; 1986, p. 48). This is partly a medical, partly a 'philosophical' definition of death, as he says. It remains open to many interpretations, depending on how the term 'consciousness' is interpreted. Is perception, or only thinking, to be identified with 'consciousness'? If it is only thinking, is it only linguistically communicable thought, or does there exist also a 'private' thinking? These philosophical questions become crucial in the consideration of brain death. Even more ambiguous are some other definitions of brain death, because they leave it entirely up to the clinician to decide what definition of brain death he personally wants to accept. An example of this is the definition suggested by the American Bar Association: "For all legal purposes, a human body with irreversible cessation of brain function according to usual and customary standards of medical practice shall be considered dead" (Byrne, E., 1984, 1986, p. 48). In England, Australia, and other Commonwealth countries, brain death is defined as brainstem death rather than as 'whole-brain death'. While it could appear that the introduction of a brainstem death definition is less problematic than the whole-brain death definition or some vaguer descriptions of what constitutes brain death, in reality this definition can be shown to be even more problematic than the whole-brain definition, because it is established beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that not all patients with brainstem death will suffer immediately from an irreversible breakdown of activity in the cerebral hemispheres. From experimental evidence we can see that even neocortical activity is still possible in some persons who are 'brainstem dead'. vi Yet other definitions of death and brain death do not directly refer to the brain at all, but make explicit reference only to consciousness or to mental activity. They are The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 356 philosophical definitions, under the mere appearance of medical definitions, because the referent of the term 'consciousness' as such is not open to medical language and method and because the identification of the permanent loss of (higher) consciousness with death is a purely philosophical thesis which cannot be verified by scientific medical means.vii Still other definitions refer exclusively to the unifying biological role of the brain (brainstem, etc.) for the control and regulation of vital functions of the body. The lack of clarity in the public debate on 'brain death' extends not only to the question of what constitutes 'brain death'; it also refers to the problem which physical phenomena brain death does or does not involve, and which criteria we can therefore use to establish that it has occurred (for example, repeatedly observed flat EEG-values). While it concerns a crucial question, which touches the matter of life and death of human beings, the new definition of 'death', as it appears in the public medical and legal discussion, frequently even in one and the same text, is deplorably devoid of precision, also from a medical point of view, and still more devoid of philosophical clarity and foundation, as we shall see. This becomes clear when we ask what exactly 'brain death' means in prephilosophical discourse and particularly when we ask about the philosophical meaning of that term: First, it could mean merely the breakdown of the diverse functions of the brain; or it could mean the 'complete destruction of the brain', or of its 'cerebral hemispheres' (as some authors demand, leaving it open what distinguishes 'complete destruction of the brain' from 'irreversible break-down of brain-function'). Then we could with the same right call an irreversible breakdown of the functions of the liver or of the kidneys 'liver death' or 'kidney death', indicating that the particular organ has once and for all ceased to function. Often the term brain death seems to suggest just that, and is originally introduced without any further ado, as an equivalent to 'a complete and irreversible loss of brain-function'. One will have to agree with Youngner et al., when they say (1989, p. 2205): "The persistence of the term 'brain death' - rather than 'death' - indicates some ambiguity and confusion about its meaning and implications. Its use can all too easily imply that it is only the brain, and not the patient, that has died." This leads to a further question and to a different interpretation of 'brain death'. Second, the term 'brain death' could mean the 'death of the whole human being because of the complete irreversible breakdown of brain-function', or because of the The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 357 'complete destruction of the cerebral hemispheres'. Some authors have pointed out the unwarranted transition from the first to the second definition of brain death (Byrne, P.A., et al.: 1982/83, p. 453 ff.). Under the same assumption, one could, third, suggest (with Engelhardt, 1986) that, in the event of 'brain-death' neither the human being nor just the brain but the human person has died, implying a dualism between human person and human being. Fourth, one might assume (with earlier work of Shewmon, 1985, 1987) that a substantial change and deanimation have taken place, changing what had been a man into an 'anthropoid animal', while the rational soul could then live separately from the body. This position comes close to Engelhardt's, although the 'humanoid animals' are in Shewmon (1985) an incomparably more restricted class than 'human non-persons' in Engelhardt (1986), who includes normal embryos and even children up to the second year of life under this category. Thus, as long as these distinctions are not even noticed, the philosophical thinking implied in medical language about 'brain death' is utterly confused - with respect both to its content and to its elementary philosophical-semantic-logical structure. This profound ambiguity, however, is intolerable in such an important matter as the question of the medical-philosophical determination of life or death - especially since the alternative relates (as the leading 19th century German jurist von Savigny said) to a very simple phenomenon, known by everybody almost as easily as birth: man's death. An equally profound methodological confusion surrounds the concept of verifying 'brain death'. There is no doubt that medical staff is competent in principle to diagnose the total brain infarction or other physical states which are called 'brain death'. But only the instantiation of the first sense of 'brain death' (total or partial brain destruction or total brain infarction) can be verified competently by medicine. Yet organ- and especially heart-explantations from 'brain-dead' humans presuppose the truth of the second or of the third or fourth meanings of brain death. But to determine that one of the medical states which doctors call 'brain death' is actual death is a purely philosophical task. Therefore, if brain death as actual death is introduced by a mere medical 'determination' of the physical states called 'brain death', the weighty philosophical issue as to whether or not a human being is dead just because his brain is destroyed by brain-infarction while other vital functions continue is decided not by The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 358 scientific knowledge and careful analysis but by a mere (and possibly arbitrary) 'pseudophilosophical decree', using confused medical and legal definitions. This is wholly inadmissible. The lack of clarity, however, in the medical definition and in the philosophical meaning and epistemology of brain death, is neither the only nor the worst unclarity in the brain death debate. More serious still is the lack of clarity about the reasons for which the irreversible loss of brain-functions or the destruction of the brain is defined as death. Eminent American doctors and medical researchers correctly observe in 1989 that "the controversy over the definition of death remains alive" and that "defenders of the whole-brain definition have yet to make a convincing case, at the conceptual level, for equating loss of all brain function with the end of life" (Wikler and Weisbard, 1989, p. 2246). Some authors introduce 'brainstem death' as definition of death because they hold it to be practically certain that in a brainstem dead person no other function of the brain and specifically no neocortical function is possible. This was proven to be false, at least in some cases. Therefore, other authors recommend the introduction of 'whole-brain definitions of death'. A second reason advanced in favor of defining death as brainstem death is that the latter excludes, with neocortical activity, also mental activity ('cognitive death'). However, recent medical research clearly presents evidence that even patients afflicted with 'brainstem death' can still have neocortical activity - and hence presumedly be conscious - for some time. Engelhardt (1986), for example, concludes that, because man's rational life depends upon higher brain functions, not brainstem death or whole-brain death but neocortical death should be adopted as definition of death. viii That neo-cortical death should be the death of the human person is a logical consequence of the second argument for the introduction of a brain death definition of death, for this argument, taken from the irreversible loss of higher consciousness, supports higher-brain-centers-oriented definitions of death. Accordingly, a person should be declared dead if, in virtue of irreversible and irremediable structural brain damage, he can never regain consciousness. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 359 Irreversible loss of higher consciousness is also the real basis for the definition of death in terms of neo-cortical death: brain death consists not in the mere irreversible loss of cortical activity as such, but in the irreversible cessation of consciousness. By this criterion, also patients in the 'vegetative state', hydranencephalic and anencephalic children would have to be declared brain-dead. Such is indeed proposed today by Engelhardt and others. Anencephalic children were actually declared brain-dead by various courts. Others argue that in fact in a brainstem-dead patient the dynamic integration of his biological life has completely broken down, so that life-activity goes on only in individual cells or organs, not in his body as a whole. This argument underlies the 'Report of the Swedish Committee on Defining Death' (1984); it presupposes a definition of life, not in terms of the customary signs of life, but in terms of 'integration of functions': "A person is dead when he has suffered total and irreversible loss of all capacity for integrating and coordinating functions of the body - physical and mental into a functional unit" (Ingvar 1986, p. 67). Ingvar sees an instantiation of this definition only in 'total brain-infarction'. With similar arguments, however, Nicholas Tonti-Filippini advances a brainstem definition of death. Since it is the brainstem, rather than the neo-cortex, which unifies and coordinates vital functions into a 'functional unity', the Swedish Committee's cited definition favors a brainstem or a whole-brain definition of death. Yet the loss of vital integration cannot be identified with death if some brainstem-dead patients may show cortical activity and thus, presumably, possess consciousness: consciousness in a non-living (non-integrated) patient is unthinkable or, rather, a sign that the patient is not dead. Ingvar and many others do not face this difficulty because they adopt a wholebrain definition of death. Interpreting the integration - as the above definition suggests - in 'physical and mental' terms one could demand with Engelhardt (1986) or Eccles some cortically and consciousness-oriented definition of death, seeing consciousness as a condition of 'integrated life'. We may reduce the described reasons for adopting the definition of death as brain death to two: on the one hand, the opinion that the biological death of the whole body can be sufficiently identified with 'the total destruction of the brain' or with the irreversible breakdown of brainstem or other brain functions; and, on the other hand, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 360 the view that the irreversible dysfunction of the whole-brain or of the brainstem proves that those parts of the human body will never function on which human consciousness directly depends, and that for this reason the patient should be declared dead. Thus one reason is anthropological, and implies that a man who is prevented irreversibly from exercising higher conscious functions is dead. Even under this assumption, however, it remains unclear why a man with irreversible loss of consciousness is dead. It is either A) because the brain (rather than a soul) is regarded as seat and origin of consciousness; this thesis implies some materialism or actualism; or B) because the soul is thought to depart from the body when the higher brain centers are destroyed (Eccles, Shewmon); or C) because mental integration is conceived as an indispensable part of biological life. In this case, however, the question arises as to how much mental activity is required for integration of bodily functions and whether, for example, conscious life which is unable to influence the body outside the brain (in the case of complete paralysis or brainstem lesions) performs any such integrating role. The second fundamental reason for calling irreversible destruction (nonfunction) of the brain 'death' is biological but separates disintegrated organ and biological activity (which is equivalent to death) from 'integrated biological activity and its functional unity', which alone is life. It is indeed clear that not each 'live organ' or cell-culture is a living human person. Human life thus involves some integrated wholeness of the organism. One needs to clarify then 'how much integration' is required for life and whether natural death ('clinical death') is not the only case in which truly 'all integration of the life of the human being as a whole into functional unity' ceases. The notion of 'integrated life' is too vague to say much. And there are certainly criteria of functional unity which - if they were meant by 'life' - would imply that many persons who obviously are alive are 'brain-dead': for example, in a paralysed patient many parts of his body are not part of the integrated functional whole; in a psychotic patient, many psychic spheres of experience fall outside any psycho-physical functional unity; we cannot speak either of completely integrated life in a drug-addict or a sexually promiscuous person, although there is no doubt that these groups - too - contain live human persons. The confusion - of which most authors on brain death seem to be unaware but which we must become quite conscious of in order to develop the necessary clarifications - also involves the question of concrete medical criteria for brain death. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 361 Codes of practice, such as the Harvard criteria for brain death (1968), have suggested the cessation of neocortical activity as one important criterion for brain death. ix In this Harvard definition of brain death (as whole-brain-plus-spinal-cord death) and in the associated criteriology, it was believed that a completely flat EEG was necessary for the diagnosis of brain death. Only one year later, however, this view was revoked by another Harvard report. x This report, and other subsequent ones in many countries, spell out many and partly contradictory medical criteria for brain death. In the discussions about medical criteria of brain death, there are also clearly absurd criteria which are frequently used in brain death discussions - and sometimes even introduced as reasons why 'brain-dead' patients are actually dead - e.g., that a braindead patient is really dead when he cannot breathe spontaneously and will die within minutes when disconnected from a machine. If this dependence meant death, many persons who depend on dialysis, heart-machines, etc. for reasons other than brain death would likewise be dead. All patients in intensive care stations who depend on machines would be dead, as would be all babies in the womb. The question whether such a dependence is irreversible or not makes no difference. Would a man whose lungs are irremediably paralysed and who remains conscious be dead because he needs ventilation? Although the argument is indeed obviously false, it is still being defended.xi Even if we do not expect the medical profession or the legal system to base their codes of ethics and laws on a deep philosophical reflection on the nature of life and death, we must certainly expect that the medical data, or the set of medical phenomena which are declared to be death, are clearly and carefully spelled out. As we have seen, this is in no way the case. And in fact, it cannot be the case as long as it remains unclear what brain death means. While one can have clear medical criteria for death without a developed philosophy of death, it is impossible to introduce clear medical criteria for 'brain death' as long as the latter's meaning and definition remain hopelessly ambiguous. The first observation, then, on brain death definitions and criteria of actual human death, refers to the inherent ambiguity of the notions, definitions, criteria and reasons attached to the definition of death as brain death. To observe this ambiguity is first of all a condition for understanding the following clarifications and arguments against brain death. Second, to demonstrate the existing confusions about brain-death is an The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 362 objection to the present adoption of brain death definitions prior to the necessary clarifications and cognitions which would prove the coinciding of brain death with the actual death of man. Since I have not yet proved the lack of cogency of all of the brain death definitions advanced, this objection per se does not yet prove that some true meaning of death as brain death could not be ascertained. Yet it demonstrates that a tenable account of brain death cannot be found prior to the required level of clarification. Therefore it is irresponsible to 'redefine' death in legal systems all over the world without introducing first any clear notion of what constitutes 'brain death' and without providing cogent arguments for why 'brain death' should be considered as 'actual death'. In the following, I shall argue that no defense of brain death definitions given thus far has provided the necessary clarifications. Furthermore, no argument has yet shown that the state of irreversible dysfunction or destruction of the brain is actual death. This is being decided chiefly by confusing - in the very term 'brain death' - 'the empirical fact of irreversible loss of brain function as such' with 'the death of the human person in virtue of the destruction of the brain'. Moreover, I shall try to prove that it is intrinsically impossible to provide both clear and cogent reasons in favor of 'brain death' because both the premises and/or logical inferences of the arguments in favor of brain death contain errors and faults. And falsity cannot be proven true by evidence or cogent argument. 2. Critique of the Shift from the Question 'What is Death?' to a Pragmatist Definition of Death Apart from its inherent ambiguity and unclarity about the definition and nature of human life and death, the new definition of death lacks any properly philosophical or scientific foundation and has instead a purely pragmatic motivation, without providing any theoretical justification for identifying 'brain death' with actual death. xii The phenomenon itself which is designated today as 'brain death' was scientifically explored in France by P. Mollaret and M. Garlin in 1959. This state (under the name 'coma dépassé') was not equated with death, but was proposed as a criterion for death only in 1968. This redefinition of irreversible coma as death in the Harvard statement, however, had no philosophical foundation in a proper explanation of what constitutes The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 363 the death of a man. One finds in the original proposal and in the statements describing brain death as criterion of death chiefly two - purely practical - reasons for introducing this new definition of death: 1. the desire for a clear moral and legal ground for disconnecting patients from artificial life support systems; and 2. the need to have a moral and legal justification for heart-transplants, which had become possible in 1967, as well as for other organ-transplants. Only the second motive presupposes the acceptance of the new definition of irreversible coma dépassé as (brain) death. For the discontinuation of extraordinary means of life-support (artificial respirators, etc.) could be justified without maintaining that irreversible breakdown of brain functioning is identical with death. One could certainly say that, in the event of an irremediable breakdown of brain function, it is no longer obligatory to continue the prolongation of human life by artificial means. In fact, one might even say that it is obligatory to let a man or a woman die under such circumstances, by discontinuing extraordinary means of life-support. It is quite generally admitted in the literature that there are also other reasons for disconnecting artificial systems of life-support, under conditions in which they are deemed to be extraordinarily expensive or extraordinarily painful and just prolong life at a point in time where this life is without prospect of real recovery and takes on the character of a prolonged agony or process of dying. Among ethicists and also Catholic moral theologians it has been long accepted (at least since the declaration of Pius XII in 1957) that there was no absolute obligation to prolong the life of a patient by extraordinary means. xiii Thus we may fully accept the view that the irreversible breakdown of the function of the brain is in itself sufficient ground to discontinue extraordinary means of life support. Yet this does not necessitate calling this state death. Often this is recognized by defenders of brain definitions of death when they demand that 'brain-dead' patients should be allowed to die. In 'letting them die' one should not declare them dead. On the contrary, a dead man cannot die anymore, as Wikler and Weisbard (1989, p. 2246) and Youngner et al. (1989, p. 2205 ff.) recognize with reference to the contradictory notion contained in the first widespread motive for brain definitions of death expressed by the Harvard statement and by many defenders of brain death definitions: namely, that one should have to declare patients dead in order to have a right to disconnect them from heart-lung machines and to let them die. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 364 In view of the untenability and non-cogency of the first pragmatic argument for a cerebral definition of death, the only cogent pragmatic motive for introducing the criterion of brain death is its purpose of allowing organ-transplantations without committing active euthanasia or murder by killing persons who are still alive. For this happens in organ-explantations if the organ-donor whose vital signs still function is not dead. I speak here of cases like the Harvard Report of 1968, in which the pragmatic motive from organ-transplantations would be the only reason offered for introducing brain death definitions and I do not suggest yet at this point that there might be no others. I do not even assert that this pragmatic reason could not be brought forward in defense of something objectively true. But then this would have to be shown by other, nonpragmatic, arguments. The pragmatic motive from organ-transplants for introducing the new definition of death, however, if it is the only reason for introducing it, makes it the more suspect, not only because it becomes most likely that the more powerful practical interest in organs (cadaver organ donors) than in 'freeing heart/lung machines' dictated the content of the definition of brain death, but also for the reason that an incorrect judgment on death leads, in the context of organ explantation, to manslaughter. It confirms this suspicion and smacks of a certain disinterest in the non-pragmatic truth about death when Engelhardt (1986, p. 207) suggests that it is of little interest whether the respective person still lives because "a possible survivor with severe brain damage may not have a life worth living." Here the real possibility that organexplantations involve manslaughter is openly admitted. The fairly obvious origin in practical purposes and the simultaneous absence of a deeper scientific and philosophic reflection on the nature of death - in the original texts that introduced 'brain death' definitions - render the new definition of death as brain death most suspect. For it does not seem to be the question of the truth about the nature of death which gives rise to this new definition (and one will find evidence of this in many articles and papers on brain death), xiv but rather the usefulness of the reformulation of death for practical purposes. xv Not this usefulness as such but the consequent and well-nigh invincible influence on falsifying the judgment on the true nature of death or the openly pragmatist substitution of truth by usefulness are to be feared. xvi The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 365 3. Human Life, Human Minds, and Human Persons: 3.1. The Dependence of Concepts of Death on a Philosophy of Human Life, Human Personhood, and Human Mind It does not require great power of mind to see that the nature of human death depends very much on the nature of man, and in particular on the nature of human life. If a man identifies human life primarily or exclusively with the organic life of the human organism taken as a whole, he will identify death with the end of man's bodily life. If, however, human life is seen by someone to involve primarily man's higher consciousness, thought, will, action, speech, etc., he is faced with having to choose between different replies to the question, 'What is death?', mainly between: (A) Either the human mind as subject of man's higher consciousness is inextricably bound to neo-cortical and other bodily functions and has its ontological bearer in the brain; or (B) there is a mind which possesses ontological autonomy (existence in itself) as well as some independence from the body in virtue of its rational acts (cognitions, decisions, etc.) which can have conditions but not causes in the brain. According to (A) there is no mind distinct from the body. In this case, the 'mind' is either identical with the body or it is some effect or epiphenomenon thereof. The second alternative (B) is defended by philosophies which assert the reality of the mind; these are either idealist philosophies according to which matter exists solely as object of the mind, or realist philosophies which admit the full reality of the body but assert the existence of a mind (soul) which is really and substantially distinct from matter. From the materialist-monist position (A) it follows necessarily that 'brain death' is indeed the destruction of any person or self in man because, according to it, the very seat, origin, or subject of thought is nothing but those neo-cortical functions which are irreversibly lost after total brain-infarction. The view is not basically different when the mind is conceived, as by T. Engelhardt, as identical with the body and as only categorially and experientially distinct from it. From any such identification of the mind with the brain or with some epiphenomenon of it it follows that in a 'brain-dead individual' the mind is gone and that he is therefore actually dead. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 366 Those who admit position (B) and insist that there is a human mind distinct from matter, might still defend brain-death, but for other reasons; they might hold, with Eccles, that the mind leaves the body when the bodily instruments of the mind, the cortical hemispheres of the brain, irreversibly cease to function. Many adherents of position (B), however, hold that the mind leaves the body when biological life ends. In other words, those 'dualists' who defend a mind which has being in itself - as ultimate subject of consciousness and not only as a side-effect or accident of matter - have a sound philosophical basis for rejecting the identification of the irreversible termination of brain-function with death. For according to them, human life and human mind do not have their primary seat in the body or in the brain. The brain is not cause or subject of the being and of the rational acts of the human person, but at most their condition; it is not even their absolutely necessary condition but only their empirical and extrinsic condition in intramundane life. According to their philosophical understanding, the mind (soul) exists and has its own life in itself, although 'dualists' in this sense should admit that the human mind stands to the body not only in a relation of mutual causal interaction but also in a close and manifold union in phenomena such as perception, expression, action, etc. This union makes of body and mind two 'incomplete substances' which only together form the one human being. A defender of a real human mind does not have to hold that the mind is a 'ghost in a machine' but may admit so close a body(brain)/biological life/mind-union that both the unity of man is affirmed and the presence of the mind in the body is assumed to cease only in the event of biological death. 3.2. The Burden of Proof lies with the Majority of Those who Deny the Reality of the Mind and Defend Brain Death Of course, many a reader will not agree that man has a spiritual or rational soul or mind; possibly, ninety nine percent of my readers will disagree. Yet, while I plan to offer, in summary form, the strongest proofs for the real existence of the mind, I wish to make clear from the very beginning one important point: When it comes to organtransplantations on the basis of diagnoses of brain death, the burden of proof lies with those who deny the autonomous reality of the mind, not with those who assert it. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 367 (Similarly, the burden of proof lies with those 'dualists' who claim that the mind leaves the body prior to physical death.) For those who deny the presence of the mind in human beings in so dogmatic a way that they justify the explantation of organs, if they are wrong, promote manslaughter. Thus they must be quite certain of their position and offer refutations of the opposite position. Therefore, even if 99.9 % of the readers were to disagree with the following defense of the reality of the mind, the burden of proof would still lie with them, regardless of how great their majority and how pluralistic our society. For the question as to who has the burden of proof does not depend on majority opinion but on the kinds of action someone defends, on the one hand, and on the kind of evidence he offers or combats, on the other. As we shall see later, the slightest plausibility of the truth of what I am going to expound about the reality of the mind must be refuted by the defender of brain death who admits organ-explantation. 3.3. Proofs for the Reality of the Mind (Soul) as Ultimate Subject of Personhood As a matter of fact, however, we do not deal here with mere probabilities but the proofs for a soul or mind possess apodictic certainty and scientific-philosophic evidence. The critique of the 'actualism' involved in brain death definitions is based on philosophical arguments for the substantiality of the mind which were expounded above. 3.4. The irreversible cessation of cortical activity is neither a morally certain proof of the destruction of mental faculties nor of the death of their subject We are now able to see that even if the irreversible loss of brain-function and the consequent irremediable loss of consciousness in 'brain-dead' human beings were proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, it would still not be justified to call the irremediably unconscious state of a patient 'brain death'. For such a designation implies that he and not only his brain is dead and presupposes a pure 'actualism', in which the actual state or at least the actual capacity of conscious activity is identified with the reality of the subject of (real or potential) consciousness. It is then a priori and dogmatically excluded that man may exist as a person, that he, as a subject, with the potentiality of consciousness, may continue to exist when the doctor concludes that an irreversible breakdown of central brain activity has taken place. Yet neither brain death nor the ensuing irremediable loss of consciousness as such can in any way be identified The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 368 with death once the evidence is acknowledged that there can be objectively the subject who, in virtue of his metaphysical nature, retains his being as person and his rational potencies and faculties - even in the absence of the real ability to evoke thoughts, and to perform conscious and free acts. In other words, since it has just been shown that there is a spiritual subject (soul) in man, which is distinct from its activation in consciousness, this subject can perfectly and really exist and be alive, although the respective patient has irreversibly lost any capacity to recover his consciousness. Brain death in most of its forms presupposes a pure actualism in which it is a priori and dogmatically excluded that man can exist as person when the irreversible breakdown of central brain activity prevents conscious activity. This actualism prevails likewise when 'brainstem death' is called death simply because it is seen as a sure sign of the irreversible cessation of cerebral activity and therefore also of consciousness. This 'actualism' hidden in the brain death ideology omits the insight that all actualizations of consciousness presuppose a subject that has the potencies and real faculties for such acts - even when they cannot actually be exercised. 3.3. Critique of a materialist anthropology as the most frequent foundation of the 'actualistic' brain death definition The pure actualism, and the consequent idea of brain death, will more often than not be based on a pure materialism which considers human consciousness either as identical with brain functions (as the Australasian mind-brain identity theory), or as epiphenomenon of the brain. Then it is quite logical to consider the irreversible breakdown of brain-functions as identical with death. Since the reality of the self-existing mind can be established, however, by the above arguments, the brain function is seen to be neither the subject nor the cause of consciousness. It is an empirically necessary condition for the activation of consciousness but certainly not an absolutely necessary one, given the substantial character of the mind. Hence the mere irreversible loss of the ability of activating the brain as the extrinsic physiological condition of exercising such faculties does in no way imply that the subject of these faculties is not still present and existent. (It does not even prove that 'extraordinary' forms of exercising mental faculties are impossible.) To hold The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 369 the opposite is a pure materialist actualism for which there is no empirical evidence and which contradicts the most reliable ontological insights and arguments regarding the reality of the mind. To reject the 'actualistic' and materialist identification of the person with the actual ability of conscious actualization of his being, it is sufficient to refer to Boëthius' discovery of the person as 'individual substance of rational nature' (Boëthius, Contra Eutychen iii) and to refer back to our arguments for the existence of a substantial mind.xvii In the light of these truths, the brain is seen to be only the extrinsic condition of conscious actualizations; the fundamental spiritual potencies themselves must be attributed not to the brain but to a mental subject in man which possesses an existence that does not depend on that of the brain, even if its present ability of activation and its link to the body does. We are entitled to reject the thesis - as if it were a clearly established truth - that the reality of the mind is reducible to those conscious activations which depend on the brain. Once one clearly recognizes, moreover - by a demonstration of the subsisting human mind - the falsity of such an actualism and sees the brain as a mere extrinsic and empirical condition of human thought which as such is the activity of a mental subject, the view that the person is dead or that the mind leaves the body as soon as the neocortex no longer functions appears as entirely unfounded. R. Chisholm (1981) has demonstrated - from the enduring and indivisible nature of the self - the existence of such a substantial mind (even on the hypothetical assumption of its conceivable identity with an elementary material particle, an assumption which I reject). If the existence of a substantial mind or human soul is known or even considered as a possibility, then one is not justified in identifying the irreversible collapse of the whole cerebral activity or of brainstem activity with death. For then the personal mind can be present in the body and exist, with its rational nature and faculties, even if all brain activity has irreversibly stopped. 4. The Definition of Death as Brain Death falsifies the real Nature of Human Life and Death The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 370 4.1. On the Difference and Relationship between Metaphysical and Medical Conceptions and 'Signs' of Death The question of human life and death, as it enters into the bioethical discussion and the examination of brain death, moves primarily on two levels. On the one hand, in view of the philosophically evident distinction of body and mind, we must indeed follow Plato and a long tradition, defining death as 'the separation of the soul from the body'. This separation could occur, in principle, also in a moment of annihilation of the spiritual soul. Upon recognizing, however, that a spiritual substance, the mind, cannot be destroyed in death and must continue to exist consciously after death, we can define human death also more positively as 'the separation of man's rational soul from the body' (Seifert, 1989, 2). Of course, this 'definition' as such does not do justice to M. Heideggers and G. Marcel's phenomenology of death, or to the terrible fear of sinking into nothingness, to the no longer-being-present-with -others, etc. (Hildebrand, 1989). Yet it does do justice to an essential and objective aspect of the ontological structure of death. Understanding that death objectively is the separation of the soul from the body, death could still be variously understood: as a gradual temporal process in which this separation is accomplished, or as the last and definitive moment in which the spiritual subject which is necessarily presupposed for conscious and intellectual acts of man, is no longer bound to the body, does no longer vivify the body, is no longer present in it. Some of those who recognize the existence of a soul will believe that it is annihilated in death (as the whole death-theology assumes), others that it is immortal and still continues to exist after the death of the body. (To the latter view there corresponds the conviction of another kind of life after death - either in a non-incarnated spiritual form or in a new embodied form.) At any rate, since we can know philosophically that man must have a real mind, we must also maintain as philosophers that the individual human personal life on earth objectively begins no later than when the spiritual human soul is present in the human body, that it continues as long as the soul is united with the body, and that our bodily mundane life objectively ends at the moment when the human soul definitively leaves the body and the latter becomes a soul-less material thing. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 371 Although we do insist on the metaphysical correctness of this definition as expressing an essential aspect of the objective nature of death, it cannot be that definition of death, and even less the corresponding criteria, which medical science uses. For the soul is not directly perceptible, nor is its leaving of the body. For this reason, medicine needs to use another, and more empirically accessible, notion of death. This is not so difficult to find. For mundane human personal life is obviously intimately tied up with the biological life of man. Therefore, medical science can content itself with more external aspects and 'empirically observable' criteria of life and death. It shall be suggested that the criteria of life relative to medicine and law must coincide with those of biological life and the medical notion of death with the cessation of biological human life - not of the life of all isolated cells and organs but of all basic vital functions and of the human organism as a whole. But is it not obvious that there must be some distinction between biological and personal human life - especially in view of the divisibility and lack of strict individuality of biological life-processes and genetic codes versus the absolute indivisibility of the mind? There is indeed a distinction here. Yet admitting this difference does not force us to admit the separability of man's soul from his vegetative and sensitive life and to assume living human vegetables whom the soul has left. On the contrary, the close union between personal human life and the biological life of the human organism as a whole is obvious. As long as the biological life of man as a whole is present, we have, in virtue of the unity of body and soul in man, and in virtue of the profound formation of the human body by the human spirit, the best reason to assume the presence of the personal human mind. In fact, death in the biological sense is without any doubt intimately tied up, either as its cause or as its consequence, with the parting of the mind from the body. Since biological human life is so closely united with man's personal life and since it can be more directly observed, it must be our criterion in medicine. Yet this does not sufficiently solve the problem of a medical sign or criterion for life and death. When we speak of biological human life, we must indeed consider this human life as the life of the human organism as a whole, and not just as the life-processes in a single isolated organ. Thus if one can keep 'alive' some cells in a cell-culture, these The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 372 certainly do not possess the biological life of the human organism as a whole, they do not possess human life in the sense of the life of a man. Organs and cells can outlive their master. The same applies when a heart is kept alive artificially outside of the human body on a machine, or in another patient. Thus the death of the 'human organism as a whole' cannot be identified with the death of the 'whole human organism' including all its organs and cells. Does it follow that the brain-dead man is dead as man? Does it follow that growth, metabolism, oxygen acceptance and transfer, most complex biological processes which steer and order the development of healthy pregnancies, regeneration, production of new reproductive cells, etc. can occur in an organ-bank? Is a brain-dead human truly a 'living corpse'? Hardly. Yet we have to consider two extremely important factors for the determination of human biological life: 1) its 'integrated wholeness' and 2) the question of the 'mind-incarnating tissue'. 4.2. Difficulties in defining 'integrated wholeness' of life and in locating the (necessary and irreplaceable) 'mind-incarnating tissue' or the 'mind-incarnating functions' in the body. Impossibility of identifying the brain or cortical functions with that 'core of the body' on which the presence of the human person's life depends Ino man are all vital functions fully integrated into a functional whole. As long as essential parts of the integrated dynamic structure of the biological life of a human organism as a whole are present, however, we must assume, at least as highly probable, that this man's personal human life is present, too. xviii With Kant and Conrad-Martius, we may characterize life as a unique form of being which dynamically brings itself forth, generating and regenerating itself: through growth, nutrition, regeneration, and through procreation. As long as some of these occur together (albeit externally supported), the essential self-engendering character of life is preserved. In an actually dead man none of these things will happen, however many machines we use on him, and only when they have ceased can we declare with any degree of probability that a given man is dead.xix It is thus this life which appears as condition and criterion of the life of the The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 373 human person. Nobody will hold that single organs such as an explanted liver are conditions and signs of the life of a human being. The second important factor to consider is the difficulty of determining the 'mindincarnating tissue' in the human body. Evidently, there is some such a 'mind-incarnating tissue' in contradistinction to other parts of the body which are not indispensable for the presence of the person. Certain extremities and organs of the body can definitely show signs of organic life without the human person being alive to whom this body tissue belongs or belonged. The same body-parts can be removed or die without causing the death of the human person. Hence some parts (tissues) and/or functions of the body must be essential, others inessential for the life of man. The question, however, as to which tissue exactly is the seat of the life of the human person and the indispensable core of the body - while the rest of the body would be something like 'secondary additions' - is very difficult to settle. These parts of the body do not coincide with the totality of the parts which are necessary for the 'unaided' continuation of life. For some of these, including the heart and lungs, can be removed or replaced. One cannot successfully defend the view that this 'mind-incarnating tissue' or this 'body within the body' simply coincides with the brain or that the cortical functions are the 'mind-incarnating functions'. For a) there are some parts of the brain which do not constitute the 'liaison brain' and can easily be removed surgically without killing the person; b) some human beings (embryos in the early stages) certainly live without a brain; c) there are cases of implantations of brain tissue without transfer of a person, and d) the empirical basis for determining the exact locus and limits of the 'mindincarnating tissue' or of the mind-incarnating functions in the body cannot be established with certainty as long as not all necessary experiences and experiments have been made, scientifically explored and philosophically interpreted. Nobody knows exactly which parts of the body and of the brain are the 'mindincarnating tissue' one is looking for. Even the question as to whether there is a clearly delineated or a flexible 'mind-incarnating tissue' of the body cannot be settled at the present time. This is one of the great difficulties with thought-experiments concerning decapitated persons or transplanted brains (Shewmon, 1985). Is the human person after decapitation present in the head (brain) only? Or in the relatively integrated trunk? Or in neither one of them? Or in both? (If one does not hold a primitive materialism or The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 374 body/mind identity theory, it is not evidently wrong to imagine that in a decapitated man the mind's presence continues for a short time in both parts of the body.) In view of the considerable measure of 'integrated wholeness' of the body and of life in brain-dead humans, and in considering the difficulty of determining the 'mindincarnating tissue' in the body, it can thus well be argued that brain-dead persons are alive. As the human body as a whole is kept from disintegrating, from putrefaction, from collapsing into mere inorganic substances, as the body-temperature and the processes that are conditions of it, and a number of other signs of life are still preserved throughout the organism, it seems to be wrong to declare a 'brain-dead' person in irreversible coma actually dead. There is no sound and certainly no cogent reason for this. 4.3. Gradual de-soulment and humanoid animals? - If not materialism, an unacceptable neo-Cartesian dualism between biological and personal human life is contained in brain death definitions All of these conclusions could be denied by either one of two theories which deny the possibility that the mind can 'survive' the body: namely by a radical materialism or by a new Neo-Cartesianism. Both of these postulate the separability of biological human life from human personhood. If the mind coincides with, or totally depends in its existence on, higher brain functions, then of course the mind cannot survive irreversible dysfunction of the brain (H.T. Engelhardt, 1973, 1986). For then the mind is either nothing but these functions themselves, albeit perhaps experienced in different categories, or it is some set of effects or epiphenomena of brain processes. Thus a materialist and monistic ontology of the mind logically leads to a radical dualism between biological human life and human personhood in the sense that many live 'human beings' are not 'human persons' and that, in fact, all those whose brain does not function cannot have a mind or be persons. And those whose brain will never function again, even if they are biologically clearly live humans, will never again become human persons. Not only materialist ontologies divorce human life from human personhood. A similar dualism also follows from versions of dualist body-soul theories according to The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 375 which 'ensoulment' takes place only when the brain is formed and/or the soul leaves the body at the moment of irreversible brain damage. According to such theories, before rational life begins in a member of the species man by a late infusion of the soul, the embryo or baby is an 'anthropoid organism' but no person. Likewise, such a dualism denies personhood to man after his rational life irreversibly ends, when this happens prior to the end of the biological life in the 'body as a whole'. Then we have an animal or vegetable in front of us which was deserted by his rational soul. Eccles holds the late ensoulment and early desoulment thesis, Shewmon only the early desoulment thesis. By assuming, however, that 'personal life' leaves the body when cortical brain-activity has irreversibly come to an end, this theory introduces a strange version of dualism.xx In effect, there are two 'dualisms' to be found here. The first denies the substantial unity of man with respect to biological and rational-spiritual life. The other even denies the unity between the principle of sensitive and that of rational life. The latter contradicts the experience and evidence of the identity of the subject of sensation and intellective life in man. It is difficult, however, to maintain any form of strict identity of rational soul and the principle of vegetative/biological life, because biological life does not require one identical and indivisible subject. It is found in each organ and cell which can be isolated in cell-cultures, etc. (The 'live heart' can be preserved after the obvious death of the patient.) Thus, at least on the level of single biological life-processes, strict identity of the subject which gives rational and vegetative life to man seems impossible to maintain (Seifert, 1973). However, the biological life of the organism (of man) 'as a whole', the deeper unification of the life-processes, and especially the ultimate principle of their unity and integration, as well as of their being informed by and their essential contact with the spirit, must proceed in man from the single, indivisible rational soul. In this sense, too, the rational soul in man is the 'single form' of the body (Seifert, 1989, 2). Thus as long as a man as a whole is alive biologically, he must not be declared dead as a person. The very notion of 'brain death' implies a strong dualism between personal and biological life. Since few thinkers today will defend a theory of successive ensoulment in a Thomistic sense, we can safely assume that in most authors a body-mind identity theory or an epiphenomenalism constitute the philosophical basis for having introduced the criterion of brain death and the new dualism between biological and personal human The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 376 life. Since, however, it can be shown against the materialist versions of the man-person dualism that the account of the human mind as a brain function or epiphenomenon or as 'a different categorial structure of the body' are fundamentally incorrect, the identification of the cessation of brainstem activity or of the brain function with death has to be abandoned. If, against the Neo-Cartesian dualism of entrances and exits of substantial souls in human bodies, we shall recognize the profound unity of man's rational and of his biological life, we must assume that, as long as a man is biologically alive, he also lives as a human person. Whether its philosophic background is materialism or the theory of desoulment, an unbearable dualism (which separates the spiritual-personal life of man from the biological life of the human organism as a whole) is contained in the idea of 'humanoid animals', i.e., of living human embryos or of adults whose bodily and biological integrity and life are preserved but whose personal life or soul is absent. 5. Critique of the Postulation of A Necessary Bond Between 'life of the organism as a whole' and functioning of the brain(stem) 5.1. Critique of the 'Partializing Concept of Human Life': Towards a Holistic Understanding of Human Life There are at least two different lines of thought which are used in order to defend the idea that the biologically live human body of the brain-dead is not a living human person. The first group of arguments claim that the human being of the brain-dead human is only a collection of live organs and not any more a human organism and human being. These arguments rest on the distinction between the life of individual cells and organs and human life understood as the life of the human organism as a whole. The second group of arguments, based on the idea of 'stages of human ontogeny' (Engelhardt, 1977), supports the thesis that a live human organism (human being) can be admitted but that this human being is not a human person any more - just as the zygote, according to this view, was no person. We shall turn to these arguments separately: The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 377 5.1.1. Is the brain-dead man no live human being? It is certainly to be admitted that the biological life of man has the character of a life stream that can go on in different cells or organs, even though the organism as a whole is dead. Thus a heart may be kept 'alive' on a machine; sperm and ova may be kept alive artificially outside of the human body. Hence it would not be absurd in principle to suppose that we have in front of us a corpse in which single cell-cultures or organs are artificially kept alive. We must, therefore, distinguish the single functions and the life of individual cells or cell-cultures, from the life of the organism as a whole. While it is quite easy, however, to apply this distinction to living cell-cultures outside of the human body, it becomes extremely precarious to apply it to persons whose whole body is, from the point of view of the man in the street, alive. xxi I do not say that it is absolutely impossible that the whole body of the brain-dead man is a mere colossal 'cell-culture' and that he himself is dead. I argue here only from strong plausibilities to the contrary.xxii How can one claim that a body that can still be fed intravenously and accepts nourishment is dead? How can one claim that an organism - as a whole - is dead when most of its organs function completely or partially? How can one justifiably call someone dead who actively produces procreative cells? How is a mother dead who can carry her child to term?xxiii Kant remarks well that the dynamic self-generation of the organism through regeneration, growth, metabolism, and procreation is the most central of the exclusive marks of a living being. But all or some of the basic marks of this 'dynamic self-generation' are preserved in the brain-dead patient. Some argue, with N. Tonti-Filippini, that life must be rethought completely in terms of 'dynamic auto-organization and integration of the whole living organism'. Yet is not in the brain-dead patient some dynamic auto-organization and integration of the whole living organism still intact? What else - if not life - would keep the countless substances contained in his body from disintegrating, what else would keep the body from rotting? Moreover, the ability to maintain a body temperature and to run a fever and other vital processes are not only intact in one single organ but in the whole body. The fact that the organism cannot survive without mechanisms to sustain respiration and The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 378 to reinstate cardiac functions, has nothing to do with the question of his being alive, "for such assistance is not that much different from assistance given to the bodies of persons considered unambiguously to be alive" (Engelhardt, 1977, p. 18). The arguments from beheaded torsos that are 'kept alive' and from 'transplanted brains' refer still to science fiction and do not constitute decisive objections. To call brain death "physiological decapitation" (Pallis, 1983, p. 34) does not acknowledge the difference between an integrally preserved and a truncated body. The brain-dead human may live for days or even for months (the longest survival period of a brain-dead human being on record known to me being 201 days); decapitated men will cease to move or show signs of life almost immediately. In the decapitated man the function of the whole brain and the other organic functions in the head and trunk will cease within a very short time; even the most rudimentary integrity of the human living body as a whole is destroyed. None of this applies to the 'brain-dead' human organism. In addition, one cannot exclude with certainty that the decapitated man continues to live for the short time during which the life-processes in his body as a whole continue to go on. One might object that the famous experiments performed by Dr. Robert J. White on cephalic exchange transplantation in monkeys (whose isolated brains showed significant electroencephalic activity and 'survived' for 1 1/2 hours) prove that the mentioned distinctions between decapitation and brain death are not significant. xxiv Moreover, the result of these experiments might prove that the brain alone is decisive for the life of the monkey. Such an empirical argument, however, does not prove any philosophical thesis about brain death nor the alleged fact that the biological life in the isolated monkey brain continues to be the seat of the monkey-identity. 5.1.2. The arguments from the distinction between 'live human being' (man) and 'live human person' H.T. Engelhardt would agree with all of this. He would admit that the brain-dead human being is not dead in the sense that he would no longer be a live man, a living human organism. But he would claim that he is not a human person any longer. For personhood requires consciousness and self-consciousness, language, etc. (Engelhardt, 1977). This position makes sense from the substance-less concept of the ego as identical The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 379 with the operating brain (although it is categorially distinct from it). Space limits do not permit me to examine in detail this and similar other positions which distinguish a live 'humanoid animal' from a human person. However, all the preceding arguments in favor of the human mind and against actualism, as well as all the following arguments from the incalculability of the eyact moment of death and others deal with Engelhardt's position by implication. Moreover, elsewhere in the present issue of this Journal, Crosby criticizes in detail the distinction between human being and human person. There are two further arguments against identifying the irreversible cessation of brain function with death, arguments which are not touched by Dr. White's research but which have a bearing on Engelhardt's distinction between human being and human person, at least in the light of the preceding proofs for the existence of a substantial mind. 1) Does not the human embryo live before he gets his brain? Thus his identity cannot be situated in the brain. 2) Moreover, nobody has as yet proven the impossibility in principle of implanting into a 'live body' a new artificial or live brain which will then be used by the same person whose brain has been destroyed? Cannot even now the same child, after brain lesion or even after the separation of one hemisphere of the brain, use the other one for the same functions? The injection of fetal brain tissue from aborted embryos is even now possible - without transfer of the person - in such a way that the person who receives the brain tissue uses it for his memory? While I condemn these operations - when they involve abortion - from an ethical standpoint, do they not prove that a brain-dead person might regain his consciousness if the progress of science led to the possibility of more sophisticated brain-transplants or injections of brain-cell solutions? There are also ethically neutral recent experiments which show that neuroncell-cultures can be made to grow outside the body.xxv But if we must not dogmatically exclude this for the future, we cannot exclude the presence of the same person in the brain-dead man now. The facts show how difficult it is to ascertain on which functions of the brain exactly the presence of the mind depends. It is equally difficult to determine to which parts of the body the mind is related in such a way that the removal of that part of the tissue means the transfer of the person. Maybe there is not even such a magic tissue; maybe the presence of the person in the body is to be conceived more holistically? It is clear that there is not enough philosophical and not even scientific reflection present in the foundation of this new definition of death to exclude all this. But if this so, then The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 380 the brain death thesis - at least in its dogmatic form which is required for organtransplants - collapses. If the function of the brain is deemed to be so decisive for the life of the body that on it alone it shall depend whether a person is dead or alive, it seems that a small and very partial sphere of phenomena related to human life is taken as identical with the biological life of the whole organism. This seems entirely unjustified in view of the nature of biological life. Moreover, this position fails to recognize that the brain is biologically a late result of embryonic life, is preceded by the living organism without a brain and must already for this reason not be regarded as the center of the unity of the organic life of the organism. 5.2. Critique of the biophilosophical argument for brainstem death from the cessation of consciousness As we have seen, usually it is said that the brain has a singular significance because conscious life is associated with it. And this reason is certainly presupposed also by any other definition of brain death, at least negatively. For no sane man will call a man dead when he is proven to continue to have conscious experiences linked to his bodily existence. Yet if neither cortical death nor whole-brain death can be established with certainty (which is one of the arguments in favor of introducing brainstem death as criterion), how can brainstem death suddenly turn into a sufficient criterion for cortical death, if we cannot even know that higher brain functions discontinue in brainstem dead persons? Moreover, we have pointed to positive evidence that higher brain functions may persist in brainstem dead patients. Thus the contrary assertion is not only arbitrary but contradicts experimental evidence. 6. Objections against Brain Death from certain theoretical and practical Consequences of Brain Death Definitions The following arguments could convince someone for mere consequential reasons to reject the definition of death in terms of brain death. They can also bring out the philosophical falsity of the theory which leads to them. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 381 If brain death is accepted as death, it is logical to say that 'to be a human person' is totally inseparable from 'having a (functioning) brain'. Then, however, it becomes equally logical to say that embryos are not yet human persons as long as they do not yet possess a developed brain activity or even a brainstem. Even children who possess a functioning brainstem may be called 'dead' if, by 'brain', we mean the functioning neocortex. In May 1987 doctors at the University Hospital Münster had transplanted successfully organs (kidneys) from anencephalic children to children and adults. Professor Fritz Beller justified this by a logical application of the criterion of cortical brain death, saying: "The anencephalic child is being developed, not born - for he does not live." The irony is that these children precisely do have brainstem activity - dysfunction of which (brainstem death as such or as part of whole-brain death) constitutes in many legal systems today the criterion of brain death in adults. Where lies the justification of such an assumption of the exits and enterings of the human personhood (soul?), like a ghost in the machine, in accordance with brain death speculations and the calculations of some professors of medicine or of philosophy, an assumption to the effect that fully live embryos are not human persons or indeed not even living? Of course, one could object and claim that no such consequence must be drawn from the criterion of brain death. For in the embryo from the first moment of conception there is a dynamic unfolding of life that will give rise to the formation of a brain. In the brain-dead person, on the contrary, there is no such potentiality. This objection is valid if irreversibility as the mere 'fact of never possessing brain-activity again' is the reason for the declaration of brain death. However, if the reason for the new definition of death in terms of brain death lies in the idea that brain activity is equal to life, then it is perfectly logical to say that as long as no brain exists and operates, we have biological human life but no personal human life. Then it would not only be consistent to say that anencephalic children but also that patients in the 'vegetative' or 'apallic' state, who can live for years, are 'brain-dead'. Yet many individuals and legal systems today will reject this consequence (Pallis, 1983, pp. 32-37.). But then they ought to reject also the notion of brain death. This constitutes a major argument that addresses itself to all those who acknowledge the personhood of embryos. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 382 Hans Jonas and other authors unfold before us the gruelling vision of what might - quite logically - follow from accepting the new definition of death: vivisection on brain-dead patients, their use as organ-banks, as research objects with infectious diseases, etc. Such 'gruelling visions' are even now being seriously proposed. xxvi In addition, the acceptance of 'brain death' as death of the whole human person should lead to abandoning those present laws which forbid certain surgical operations, for example in Germany, in 'merely brain-dead' persons, as long as the body is warm and the biological life of the patient and of his organs continues. xxvii If one were really to accept 'brain death' as death, one could bury also persons whose heart is still beating (assuming here a cortical death which does not give rise to actual death within minutes after disconnection of such patients from heart-lung-machines). One could also dissect and vivisect brain-dead persons by teams of medical students, etc. All of these seem brutal violations of human beings and until now are, as a matter of fact, legally forbidden, at least in many countries. These laws prove that the law-makers do not consider 'brain-dead' persons really dead. For if they were nothing but corpses, it would make no sense to forbid, for example, their being 'dissected'. But does not anybody's intuition and humanity revolt against such consequences? Should we then not reject the notion of 'brain death' if we reject its logical consequences? 7. Linguistic, phenomenological, and logical Arguments against the Introduction of 'Brain death' One could also advance a linguistic philosophical argument against the definition of death in terms of brain death. Interpreted more deeply, the argument is a phenomenological and logical argument which shows that in the use of language and in various other legal and medical considerations even the adherents of the criterion of brain death still have a clear awareness that the human persons of whom they say that they are brain-dead are still alive. For example, it is quite naturally asserted that the brain-dead people should not be 'artificially kept alive' or it is even claimed that artificially keeping them alive violates their fundamental human rights. One certainly presupposes hereby that they are still living persons. For a dead man can no longer be the subject of rights. The same applies The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 383 when one argues that the brain-dead persons are in such a state that their process of dying should not be unnecessarily prolonged. For if one speaks not of death but of a process of dying, then it is quite clear that a process of dying can only occur in a living being. A corpse cannot be in the process of dying, nor can his process of dying be prolonged, nor can his life be prolonged etc. In using this terminology, and people do so quite inevitably in order to voice their concern, even the strongest adherents and defenders of the brain death definition reveal their awareness that the subjects of whom they speak are still alive. Such language contains a contradiction in terms and clearly presupposes what the users of such language seek to deny: namely that human persons also exist when they are 'brain-dead'. Moreover, the very ground of the moral objection against keeping 'living corpses' alive proves that one regards them as more than cellcultures. People do not object against 'kidneys being kept alive' too long, etc. Such a complaint presupposes that a human being and not an anonymous cell-culture is at issue. All these problems came to the fore quite clearly in a case in Germany which arose over the question of whether the vital functions of a brain-dead woman who expected a healthy embryo should be maintained. The defenders of the baby had proposed to preserve the mother's life in order to save the life of the nasciturus until the point at which caesarean section would become possible and the embryo viable. xxviii Yet the German law prescribes that brain-dead persons must not be 'kept alive'. xxix Nevertheless, it was decided by the courts that, where a second human life is at stake, the laws against continued life-support of brain-dead persons should not be applied. In the discussion the court, as well as the defenders and prosecutors used arguments which indeed implied the fact of the life of the mother. 8. Defense of a Modest 'Tutiorism' If it turns out impossible to reach moral certainty about the death of 'brain-dead' individuals, a minimal ethical tutiorism, that is a position which acknowledges the degree of moral certainty required for a given action, demands that we refrain from actions which risk killing a human person. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 384 8.1. Doubts Concerning Verifiability and Actual Correct Diagnoses of 'Brain Death' Widely discussed incidents of patients who awoke from 'brain death' have led to an intense discussion, and for a time to a virtual cessation, of organ-transplants. Such cases are well documented (P.D.G. Skegg, 1984, p. 195, and note 52; Edward Byrne, 1984, 1986, p. 50; David Lamb, 1985, pp. 65-66). One should argue from such incidents to the easy and frequent occurrence of false diagnoses of brain death and to the insufficiency of flat EEG's as well as to the insufficiency of 'simpler' brainstem criteria to assure death. Perhaps a close study and interpretation of such proven recoveries of patients who had been declared 'brain dead' can establish not only the incompetence and inadequate training of actual medical staff or the insufficiency of the accepted criteria for the state called 'brain death' but point to the impossibility of identifying actual death by such criteria. Even those who do not believe in supernatural miracles should also study all incidents of reported extraordinary cures (recoveries) from 'brain death' and ask the question whether they indicate that the methods and criteria of confirming 'irreversibility' are insufficient or faulty. 8.2. Four Roots of False Diagnoses of 'Brain Death' 1. It is clear and widely recognized that doctors who are interested in transplantations may be easily influenced in their diagnoses of brain death in concrete cases by their practical purposes. Thus the decision may be taken that 'irreversible brain death' has occurred when it actually has not occurred. As long as the easy falsification of the judgment in concrete cases is recognized, one can in principle avoid this danger which alone does not provide any cogent reason against the definition of brain death, since similar pragmatic falsifications of diagnosis may happen in other situations. 2. Recent findings (Youngner et al. 1989, p. 2208) show that "only 35 % both knew the whole-brain criterion of death and were able to apply it correctly to identify the legal status of patients A and B." This means that more than 60 % of all examiners of 'brain death' neither know the criteria well nor apply them correctly. Such a percentage is an intolerable quota of incompetent staff. An insufficiently trained The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 385 medical staff is a source of avoidable and yet scandalous uncertainty of concrete diagnoses of what is called 'brain death' and must lead to.a large factual error margin. Even if there were no more fundamental reasons against identifying 'brain death' with death, this reason alone should suffice to put a halt on using brain death criteria until only a minimal percentage of the staff fails to understand and to apply them correctly. 3. It is doubtful whether the complete cessation of all cortical activity or of all brain stem activity can be proven as long as the human organism as a whole lives. It is even more doubtful whether the irreversible cessation of all cortical activity can be secured with moral certainty sufficient not to risk committing manslaughter when killing the 'living corpse' of a 'brain-dead' human being. This is most doubtful because of the approximately ten billions of cerebral neurons and because of the much more immense number of synapses between them, all of which can hardly be observed in an otherwise 'living body'. How do we know that in all these synapses, neurons, and brain-modules patterns of brain-activity have irreversibly stopped? Even if this were knowable in principle, for example indirectly (by knowing for certain how long the oxygen-flow had been arrested), the tests presently required by the law in England, Australia, and other countries, refer at most to flat EEG's and to the total absence of reflexes and life-signs which are not even located in the neocortex but in the brain stem. Moreover, prominent doctors and defenders of lower brain death definitions admit cortical functions in some brain stem dead persons, and extend their primary tests only to the brainstem, which mainly controls the connection of the brain with the rest of the body, not neocortical activity itself. Thus all the refined, revised and corrected criteria proposed in Australia and many other countries do not even prove the decisive point for the biological fact of 'brain death', namely the actual and irreversible cessation of brain-activity in all those modules and neurons the activity of which is directly associated with consciousness. Yet only this is the medical condition meant by neo-cortical death or total brain-infarction and 'whole-brain death'. Engelhardt (1986, p. 207 ff.) admits this. He speaks, however - in what appears to be an improper and all-too light tone - of "living and dying with less than absolute The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 386 certainty," belittling the tremendous negative importance of the fact of eventually false concrete diagnoses of brain death leading to manslaughter by organ-explantations - on proportionalist grounds of weighing chances of positive and negative errors of diagnosis. When, however, one weighs seriously the manifold and partly invincible, partly not yet unconquered obstacles to a correct diagnosis of concrete cases of 'brain death', one should consider this argument alone sufficient to stop taking the risk of killing human persons. (Although Engelhardt does not consider all living humans as human persons, he does of course admit the personhood of those whose condition of cortical brain death had been misdiagnosed and who die under the scalpel of the transplantation-team.) 4. Furthermore, as long as the very definition of the medical state of 'brain death' is unclear, one cannot devise any method adequate to confirm 'brain death'. Moreover, even if the medical condition of 'brain death' were clearly defined, and if the presence of this state in the concrete case were established beyond the shadow of a doubt, the actual death of a man because of this condition would not have been verified concretely. This is simply the consequence of the discussed lack of adequate theoretical reasons which prove that the medical condition designated as 'brain death' coincides with actual death. The only cogent reason for this assumption lies in a false materialist philosophy of the mind, according to which the functioning of the upper cerebral hemispheres is the necessary condition for being a person. From this assumption it would follow that the person is dead if the necessary condition of his being is lacking. But this has been proven false. Therefore the argument, while not suffering from a logical flaw, arrives at a false conclusion from false premisses. As a simple consequence of the absence of cogent arguments or, rather, the falsity of the reasons offered for identifying brain-infarction with the actual death of the patient, the relevant sense of brain death (death of the patient because of brain infarction) can also not be 'diagnosed' concretely. 8.3. The death of 'brain-dead' humans can neither be confirmed with metaphysical/mathematical nor with moral certainty It is clear that in our moral life we do not need an absolute mathematical or metaphysical evidence and certitude in order to act. It is enough that we are 'morally The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 387 certain' about morally relevant facts (such as the life or death of someone) or about the moral permissibility of our act. This so-called 'moral certainty' can be purely subjective: our own 'feeling certain' - for good or bad reasons - that we are allowed to commit an act or that the objective morally relevant factors are such and such. This subjective moral certainty can at the most - when it is the fruit of a sincere search for the truth - provide a purely subjective moral justification for an act. Of course, someone may be morally certain in this sense that 'brain death' is actual death and that organ-explantations from 'brain-dead' persons are permitted. The existence of such subjective moral certainty does nothing but justify or excuse an act subjectively. It can exist even with respect to obviously immoral acts. 'Moral certainty' can also refer to an objectively well-founded conviction which provides an objective moral justification for a certain action even if the conviction is false. If this moral certainty does not exist, then an action (such as harvesting organs from 'brain-dead' persons or shooting at a moving object which might be a man) may be morally wrong even if the conviction itself is correct. This objective 'moral certainty', in contradistinction to the purely subjective and ill-founded one - is required for the objective moral justification of an action (e.g., through the ethicist). Therefore, even if a brain-dead 'living corpse' were in fact nothing but an organ-bank, this hypothesis would be probable at best, and thus oblige us to treat this alleged 'organ-bank' as possibly a living person, as Jonas points out. Recognizing the distinction between mathematical-metaphysical certainty and moral certainty, we must say: We do not possess any moral certainty, not even a moral probability, that brain death is actually death. As a matter of fact, both theoretical philosophical arguments discussed before and practical difficulties of diagnosis of 'brain death' prove that no well-founded moral certainty about the actual death of 'brain-dead' individuals is available. Also, uncertain philosophical opinions about the only relevant meaning of brain death - namely: actual death of a human being in virtue of irreversible breakdown of brain-function - can never provide a moral justification for actions which constitute manslaughter if the victim of such actions is still alive. In addition, different kinds of action demand different degrees of moral certainty. Even a low moral probability of success can suffice to justify an action which might save a life. To commit an action which risks killing a person, however, takes the highest The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 388 degree of moral certainty. And such a certainty is not only completely absent in the case of brain death but all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Therefore one has enough objective moral evidence and certainty to the contrary to say: even if the defenders of the brain death definitions were theoretically right, they would be morally wrong. We must also remind ourselves of an empirical proof of the uncertainty of our knowledge concerning the time of death. Think of the 'life after life' experiences of people who were declared clinically dead and still had all sorts of experiences associated with their body. xxx Could not brain-dead persons be in a similar state prior to the occurrence of actual death? Could one not infer from these empirical evidences that we do not possess moral certainty that 'brain-dead' patients are actually dead? H. Broch's novel Die Schlafwandler provides good examples for the case at issue here. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 389 9. The Moment of Death - 'Calculable Problem' or Mystery? A Metaphysical and Epistemological Argument Brain death fulfills a set of biological and medical criteria which, as soon as they are established, lead the medical doctor to the assumption of death. They also permit the consecutive performance of all kinds of operations, explantations, etc. Such actions presuppose that the exact moment of death can be firmly established and 'calculated', that it can be known with certainty at which exact point in time death occurs, and this prior to the setting in of the phenomena of natural death. For only if one identifies correctly and with certainty the time during which the person, who lives biologically, is dead as a person, may one assume that one does not risk killing a living person by explantation of his organs. The exact moment of death is incalculable and cannot be known with any certitude, however, as long as the human body lives - even if one assumes that death can occur prior to the end of the biological life of the organism. The nature and exact moment of death in a patient whose cerebral functions have irreversibly ceased lie in principle beyond scientific medical criteria. This human ignorance constitutes another reason to reject the definition of brain death. The actions of organ-harvesting, however, are based on the assumption that the exact moment of death or at least the certain event of death of man can be determined by the medical profession prior to the natural phenomenon of death with all its obvious features. Death in this classical sense does not just involve irreversible cardio-pulmonary arrest but is accompanied by many other well-nigh indubitable signs: from the cessation of all vital functions to the frigor (coldness) of death to the rigor mortis of the corpse to the actual decomposition of the body. Even when faced with the 'whole-body death', one should wait for some time after actual death sets in before one dissects a corpse. To declare death when the first undoubted marks of death set in, is not presumptious. Yet to act or to dissect a corpse on the first declaration of death is presumptuous. It is much more pretentious, however, to determine the occurrence of death by means of a mere set of scientific facts and theories about the portion of bodytissue which contains the person, while the body as a whole still lives. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 390 Since human death, by its own objective essence, is constituted by the soul leaving the body, since it consists in the mystery of the end of that union of life, soul, and body which constitutes personal human life, it becomes quite impossible and ludicrous to identify, in terms of various brain death criteria of external and philosophically irrelevant nature, an exact moment of death in a human being who is biologically alive. In the past, even after a person was declared clinically dead, it was customary not to bury him nor to dissect him immediately, for the reason that - in view of the mystery concerning the exact moment of death - there is a certain risk of taking apparent death for real death. There was likewise the custom of the Catholic Church to allow the last rites, which are permitted for living persons only (i.e., for the dying), for some minutes after the first signs of 'clinical death'. This was done undoubtedly for the reason that it is not immediately clear whether the mystery of death itself takes place in the very second in which the symptoms of clinical death occur. In the light of such reverence in the face of death and in the light of such traditions which confess man's not knowing the exact moment of death, the situation in which a transplantation team jumps on the biologically live 'warm corpse' which is declared 'brain-dead', ought to strike any civilized man as an incredible barbarism and presumption. What would be presumptuous even in the face of natural death - to dissect the corpse in the very moment in which one notes the occurrence of physical death, without knowing that the objective (metaphysical) death happens in exactly the same moment - becomes much more presumptuous in the case of heart-transplantation after the diagnosis of brain death. 10. Conclusion: Against Brain Death - Abandoning the Redefinition of Death Thus we are led to the conclusion that this new definition of death ought to be rejected by any legal and medical code and that its introduction by many states lacks sufficient philosophical basis. In the light of philosophical considerations about life and death, on the contrary, the criterion of brain death must be dismissed as an aberrant new definition of death. I realize that this contradicts Engelhardt's opinions about a public The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 391 ethics for moral strangers "(individuals who do not participate in a common moral vision)" (Engelhardt, 1989) when they meet in a pluralistic, non-coercive society. Engelhardt would say that the preceding reflections propose outdated 'modern' public ethical standards, i.e. standards which seek to recover universal values, rights, or ontological truths by means of human reason. The hopeless postmodern relativism and pluralism of the present society, however, render this dream of modernity obsolete and we should develop postmodern standards in a pluralist society, which ("since we cannot derive moral authority from God or reason") "can only be derived from the agreement of the individuals who join in a moral undertaking" (Engelhardt, 1989, p. 33). This position is neither logically consistent nor plausible. It is inconsistent because it is obvious that Engelhardt accepts quite a few principles as rational and reasonable with which not everyone agrees: namely all those principles which he defends as ground-rules of an ethics in a pluralist society and which happen to coincide with the most liberal standards of a non-coercive, libertarian American society. It contains such values as 'non-coerciveness', 'mutual respect', liberty as absence of attempts to impose private morals on public society, justification of abortion, infanticide, etc. Each of these elements contains a great number of further presuppositions of ethics, epistemology, ontology, and legal philosophy. On each of these many individuals do disagree even though a majority of Americans today might agree to them. Either Engelhardt has to abandon these principles as rational or he has nothing left as content of a 'postmodern ethics'. The position is also implausible in that it forgets that man has always lived in a pluralist society. Relativists and disagreement existed since millenia. Why should the power of human reason be trusted less today than before? There is no evidence to support such a thesis, except perhaps Engelhardt's own despair of objective rational knowledge, and his skepticism which happens to be contradictory and to presuppose - as does any conceivable skeptical doubt - quite a few evident truths and alleged evident truths. Hence I strongly advocate a return to the metaphysical notion of death as expression of an important objective side of the essence of death. This notion of death has to guide our action, in that any reasonable doubt as to its occurrence must forbid operations which might bring it about. On the other hand, as to the medical concept of death or of its basic signs, I defend the notion that death has occurred when 'a complete The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 392 and irreversible cessation of all central vital signs (including cardiorespiratory activity and total brain infarction)' have taken place. I argue not in favor of conceivably limited and outdated notions of clinical death (from which awakening is possible) but defend just the datum of death which begins with irreversible cardiac-pulmonary arrest and is often designated as 'clinical death'. This notion of an 'irreversible clinical death' corresponds to the classical medical criteria of death which prior to 1968 were universally accepted. Every layperson knows the main signs and consequences of this death. We can no longer simply share the simplicity with which the classic German jurist Friedrich Carl von Savigny wrote in 1840: "Death, as the end of the natural capacity of being the subject of rights, is such a simple natural event that, like birth, it does not require an exact determination of its elements." Nonetheless, we argue for a critical return to the datum of this 'simple natural event' of death, of which Savigny spoke, and against the sophistry of dissolving the unity of personal and biological human life and the 'simple' notion of death or of reducing it to partial aspects. The question 'what is death?' is, moreover, not a matter of 'normative convention' but of finding what it truly is. As A.M. Capron says: "Calling a person dead does not make him dead". (American Medical News April 17, 1987, p. 1). I can certainly not arbitrarily decree that the 'loss of consciousness and spontaneous breathing', etc. is death. I must receive and discover the nature of man and of his biological and personal life and being. Only from this perspective of the truth about man and human life can I determine the objective nature of death and the criteria by means of which death can be ascertained. 10.1. Biological Human Life as the Only Acceptable Criterion for Personal Human Life and the Practical Consequences of Accepting it as Standard of Death The only acceptable medical criterion for personal human life, we conclude, is biological human life - i.e. life of a human organism, as it exists from conception on. Accordingly, the only acceptable criteria for death are the irreversible end of the biological vital functions of the 'organism as a whole' and the phenomena following thereupon. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 393 If biological human life is accepted as the only viable criterion of personal human life, such an acceptance has of course tremendous consequences for medicine and for the political and legal order: 1. While it allows reference to 'brain death' (total brain-infarction) as a reason for stopping extraordinary means of life-support, it forbids the use of the criterion of brain death for the justification of organ donation and transplantation. 2. With the necessary restrictions (incalculability of the moment of 'objective death', etc.) and additions (e.g., taking into consideration the distinction between 'live cell-cultures' and live human organism, and the possibilities of modern resuscitation techniques), the customary criterion of irreversible clinical death or of the 'natural event of death' of the organism as a whole, should be reintroduced as the medical and legal criterion chosen for the determination of death. What are the reasons for this proposal? A. In the first place, all the other definitions and criteria of man's death are arbitrary, disputable, and ambiguous, while the end of biological human life is a nonarbitrary, non-disputable, and unambiguous criterion of human death which has the consensus of every group in our pluralist society. It is highly arbitrary to identify the end of human life with the destruction of the neocortex, with the irreversible nonfunction of the brainstem, of the midbrain, of the whole brain, while other vital organs are still alive._ The natural death of the organism as a whole, however, is a clearly and unambiguously marked end of human life. Everyone will agree that after the end of the biological life of the human organism as a whole there is no human life present in the body. Thus it fits excellently as a standard in the kind of pluralist society and argument which Engelhardt wants to introduce in what he likes to call the postmodern age. A complete consensus is possible with regard to the thesis that no human life is present before the beginning or after the end of the biological life of the human organism. No similar consensus can be achieved with respect to any other limit. Therefore, this most natural, unambiguous definition and criterion of human death - which has full consensus in the sense described - is preferable to any other criterion or definition of death. B. Secondly, any other criterion is unsafe, because as long as the human organism lives personal human life at least could in principle, and does with great probability, The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 394 exist. Since there are many reasons for, and at any rate no clear reasons against, the assumption that human life and personal human life begin together and that the human person (soul) is present in man from conception until death, one might at least possibly kill a human person when one kills a biologically living human being, even in the earliest stages of embryonic development and in the latest phases of human life. Whereas irreversible collapse of brain-activity is in most cases a perfectly sound reason to disconnect patients from artificial lungs (ventilators) or other life-saving machines, heart pumps or extraordinary means of lifesupport, the irreversible cessation of central cerebral activity, or even the irreversible dysfunction of the whole brain, is no valid reason that would allow us to kill a biologically living human being. For this biologically living man could at least be a human person and not just a 'living corpse'. It is, therefore, at least quite possible that in so doing one kills a living person. Hence it is at least 'unsafe' to take the organs from a 'brain-dead' but otherwise biologically living being.xxxi The main point to be made here is that the mere probability of a human person being present and the absence of moral certainty of his death suffice to make it morally and legally wrong to kill him. As mentioned before, there are many laws which forbid absolutely the killing of a being of which we have good reasons to assume that it is a human being and where we have at least no moral certainty in excluding that he might be a living human being. All these laws show that the mere probability and plausibility of there being a human person present is sufficient to forbid absolutely morally and legally to kill such a being. We propose to apply the principle underlying these laws to the issue of brain-dead persons who are biologically alive. C. Thirdly, the criterion of biological human life as indicator of personal human life is the best founded criterion for the presence of personal human life - in view of the unity of body and soul and of the human being as a whole, as well as in view of the other reasons which we have discussed amply. xxxii In order to see clearly the wrongness of the brain death definitions of actual human death, one has first to cease regarding this matter as an issue to be resolved by medical scientists primarily. It is decisive that it be recognized that the key issue at stake in the brain death discussion is purely philosophical, not medical. Persons who agree The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 395 on all medical facts and evidences disagree on this issue for purely philosophical or religious reasons. Given the immense practical pressure (from the established centers of organtransplant medicine) on each institution regarding this matter, and given the duty towards the truth, we must certainly refuse to adapt to prevailing modern opinion on death simply because it prevails. Each one of us must resist the temptation to adjust his position on any issue in accordance with social expectations and desires of hospitals. Rather, we have the task to speak out on the truth in season and out of season, while undertaking every effort to make the truth understood and accepted by men. In the light of the preceding reflections, I can only recommend that anyone explicitly reject the identification of death with brain death - for good reasons, both theoretical and practical-tutioristic in nature. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 396 References for this chapter: Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death: 1968, 'Report of the Ad hoc committee of Harvard Medical School to examine the definition of brain death', in Journal of the American Medical Association, 209, pp. 337-43. H.K. Beecher: 1976, 'Diagnosis of brain death', The Lancet, Nov. 13, pp. 1068-1071. Beecher, H.K.: 1969, 'Diagnosis of brain death', New Engl. J. med., 281, p. 1070. Beller, F. and J. Reeve: 1989, 'Brain life and brain death - the anencephalic as an explanatory example. A contribution to transplantation', The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 14, pp. 5-23. Browne A.: 1983, 'Whole-brain death reconsidered', Journal of medical Ethics, 9, pp. 28-37. Byrne, E.: 1984, 1986, 'The medical determination of brain death', in J.N. Santamaria et al. (ed.), Proceedings of the 1984 Conference on Bioethics, Melbourne, pp. 47-54. Byrne, P. E., et al, : 1982/83, 'Brain Death', Gonzaga Law Review, 18,3, pp. 429516. Capron A.M.: 1987, 'Anencephalic donors:separate the dead from the dying', Hastings Center Report 17 (1), pp. 5-9. Cefalo, R.C. and H. T. Engelhardt, Jr., : 1989, 'The use of fetal and anencephalic tissue for transplantation', The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 14, pp. 25-43. Chagas, C., ed., see 'Working Group' Cramond, T.; 1988, 'Making resuscitation decisions', Proceedings of the 1987 Conference on Bioethics, Melbourne. Crosby, J.F.: 1986, 'Are some human beings not Persons?', Anthropos 2, pp. 215-232. Engelhardt, H.T., Jr.: 1986, The Foundation of Bioethics, Oxford University Press, New York/Oxford. Engelhardt, H.T., Jr.: 1977, 'Ontology and Ontogeny', The Monist, 60, pp. 16-28. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 397 Engelhardt, H.T., Jr.: 1989, 'Pluralism and the Good', Hastings Center Report, September/ October 1989, pp. 33-34. Field DR, et al, : 1988, 'Maternal brain death during pregnancy: medical and ethical issues', JAMA, 260, pp. 816-822. Hildebrand, D.v.: 1960, What is Philosophy?, Milwaukee: Bruce. Hildebrand, D.v., 19892, Ueber den Tod. Nachgelassene Schrift, EOS Verlag, Erzabtei St. Ottilien. Hölscher, L.: 1986, The Reality of the Mind: St. Augustine's philosophical Arguments for the human soul as a spiritual substance, Routledge & Kegan Paul Press, London/Boston. Holzgreve, W. et al.: 1987, 'Kidney Transplantation from anencephalic Donors', The New England Journal of Medicine, 316, pp. 1069-1070. Ingvar, D.H.: 1986, 'The Concept of Death: comments on an official Inquiry in Sweden', in Working Group on: The artificial Prolongation of Life and the Determination of the exact Moment of Death (abbr. WGAP), pp. 65-74. Jonas, H.: 1985, 'Gehirntod und menschliche Organbank: Zur pragmatischen Umdefinierung des Todes' (abbr. 'Gehirntod'), in Jonas, H.:Technik, Medizin und Ethik. Zur Praxis des Prinzips Verantwortung, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., pp. 219-241. Jonas, H.: 1981, Macht oder Ohnmacht der Subjektivität? Das Leib-SeeleProblem im Vorfeld des Prinzips Verantwortung. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. Jonas H.: 1974, Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. Jonas, H.: 1974, 'Against the Stream: Comments on the Definition and Redefinition of Death', in Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., pp. 132-140. Jonas, H.: 1985, Technik, Medizin und Ethik, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. Lamb, D.: 1985, Death, Brain Death and Ethics, Croom Helm, London & Sydney. Laufs A.: 19843, Arztrecht, Beck, München. Laufs, A.; 1985, 'Juristische Probleme des Hirntodes', in Der Nervenarzt (1985) 56, pp. 399-403. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 398 Laun A.: 1978, 'Teleologische Normenbegründung in der moraltheologischen Diskussion. Ein kritischer Bericht', Theologisch-praktische Quartalschrift, 126. Jg. H2, pp. 167 ff. Laun, H.: 1983, How I met God: An unusual Conversion, trans. D. Smith, Franciscan Herald, Chicago. Löw, R.: 1985, Leben aus dem Labor: Gentechnologie und Verantwortung - Biologie und Moral, C. Bertelsmann, München. Nolan-Haley, J.M. et al.: 1987, 'On rationalizing Death', The Human Life Review XIII, 2, pp. 100-110. Pallis, C.: 1983, 'Whole brain death reconsidered - physiological facts and philosophy', Journal of Medical Ethics 9, pp. 32-37. Parise JE, et al: 1982, 'Brain death with prolonged somatic survival', N Engl J Med 306, pp. 14-16. Pia, H.W.: 1985, 'Primary and secondary hypothalamus and brainstem lesions, Advances in Neurosurgery 13, Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 217-253; Pia, H.W.: 1986, 'Cerebral Death', Working Group on: The artificial Prolongation of Life and the Determination of the exact Moment of Death (abbr. WGAP), ed. C. Chagas, Vat. City, pp. 1-11. The President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research: 1981, Defining Death. A Report on the Medical, Legal and Ethical Issues in the Determination of Death. Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 'The Artificial Prolongation of Life, Origins, 25. Reinach, J.:1989, Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Ausgabe mit Kommentar, Bd. I: Die Werke, Teil I: Kritische Neuausgabe (1905-1914), Teil II: Nachgelassene Texte (1906-1917); Bd. II: Kommentar und Textkritik, hrsg.v. Barry Smith und Karl Schuhmann, München und Wien: Philosophia Verlag Report of the Swedish Committee on Defining Death: 1984, The Concept of Death. Summary, The Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, Stockholm. Rowland TW, et al.: 1983, 'Brain death in the pediatric intensive care unit: a clinical definition', Am J Dis Child, 137, pp. 547-550. Sass, H.-M.,: 1989, 'Brain life and brain death: a proposal for a normative agreement', The Journal for Medicine and Philosophy, 14, 45-59. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 399 Seifert, J., 1987, (2) 'Abortion and Euthanasia as Legal and as Moral Issues: Some Reflections on the Relationship between Morality, Church and State', in Bioethics Update, Proceedings of 1987 Annual Conference on Bioethics, ed. N. Tonti-Filippini, St. Vincents Bioethics Centre, Melbourne, pp. 162-212. Seifert, J.: 1985 (1), 'Absolute moral Obligations towards finite Goods, as Foundation of Intrinsically right and wrong Actions', Anthropos I, 1, May 1988, pp. 57-94. J. Seifert: 1987, Back to Things in Themselves. A.Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism, Routledge, London. Seifert, J., 19762, Erkenntnis objektiver Wahrheit. Die Transzendenz des Menschen in der Erkenntnis, A. Pustet, Salzburg. Seifert, J.: 1989 (1), Essere e Persona. Verso una Fondazione fenomenologica di una Metafisica classica e personalistica, Vita e Pensiero, Milan. Seifert, J.: 1985 (2), 'Gott und die Sittlichkeit innerweltlichen Handelns', Forum katholische Theologie, 1. Jg., Heft 1/1985. Seifert, J.: 1988, 'Hirntod: Ein Beitrag zur Kritik der philosophischen Korrumpierung der medizinischen Technik', in Ethik und Technik, M&T edition, Zürich. Seifert J.: 1973, Leib und Seele. Ein Beitrag zur philosophischen Anthropologie, Universitätsverlag A. Pustet, Salzburg. Seifert, J.: 19892 (2), Das Leib-Seele-Problem und die gegenwärtige philosophische Diskussion: Eine systematisch-kritische Analyse, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt. Shewmon, D.A.: 1985, 'The Metaphysics of Brain Death, Persistent Vegetative State, and Dementia', The Thomist 49, 1, (Jan. 1985), pp. 24-80. Shewmon, D.A.: 1987, 'Ethics and Brain Death: A Response', The New Scholasticism 61, pp. 321-344. Skegg, P.D.G.: 1984, Law Ethics and Medicine: Studies in Medical Law, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Spaemann, R.: 1981, 'Über die Unmöglichkeit einer rein teleologischen Begründung der Ethik', Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 88. Jg., I. Halbband, pp. 70-89. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 400 Stanton J.R.; 1985, 'The new Untermenschen', The Human Life Review XI, 4, pp. 77-85. Statement issued by the Honorary Secretary of the Conference of Medical Royal Colleges and their Faculties in the United Kingdom on October 11, 1976: Nov. 1976, 'Diagnosis of brain death', British Medical Journal, 13, pp. 1186-1189. Styczen, T.; 1981, 'Zur Unabhängigkeit der Ethik', in K. Wojtyla et al., Der Streit um den Menschen, Butson u. Becker, Kevelaer. WGAP (abbr.): 1986, Chagas C. (ed.), Working Group on: The artificial Prolongation of Life and the Determination of the exact Moment of Death, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vatican City. Weissman D.: 1965, Dispositional Properties, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville. White, R.J. et al.: 1971, 'Cephalic Exchange Transplantation in the Monkey', Surgery, 70, pp. 135-139. White, R.J. et al.: 1963, 'Isolation of the Monkey Brain: In vitro Preparation and Maintenance', Science, 141, pp. 1060-1061; White, R.J. et al, 1964: 'Preservation of Viability in the Isolated Monkey Brain Utilizing a Mechanical Extracorporeal Circulation', Nature, 202, pp. 1082-1083. White, R.J. et al.: 1972, 'The Scientific Limitation of Brain Death', Hospital Progress , pp. 48-51. Wikler D. et al.: 1989, 'Editorial', Journal of the American Medical Association Vol 261, No. 15, p. 2246. Youngner et al.: 1989, ''brain Death' and Organ Retrieval. A Cross-sectional Survey of Knowledge and Concepts among Health Professionals', JAMA, pp. 22052210. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 401 CHAPTER IX DEATH AND IMMORTALITY The Reality of the Soul as Condition of Immortality A complete treatment of the body-soul problem within contemporary philosophic discussion certainly requires us to enter into the question in which, in a certain sense, the body-soul problem culminates: the question about death and the possibility of an after-life or even of the immortality of the soul; and, bound up therewith, the problems of the origin (eternal pre-existence or creation) and the goal of the individual human person. It is immediately clear that the answers to the questions treated in the present volume are of the greatest consequence for answering the question of immortality. Indeed, this most existential philosophic question about „our everything or our nothing“ (Pascal) can be meaningfully posed and answered philosophically only after having treated the general body-soul problem as such. We thus hope, already through the given critical analysis of the results of contemporary philosophic inquiry into the body-soul problem, to have at least indirectly contributed also to the solution of the question of immortality. In contradistinction to Plato, however, who seems to have thought that proofs of the spiritual substantiality and indivisible simplicity of the human soul as such also prove the soul’s indestructibility and immortality, I shall attempt to show in the following that such proofs do not suffice to demonstrate the immortality of the human soul, and especially not immortality in any meaningful sense. The fact that the proofs for a spiritual soul as such are not sufficient to solve the question of immortality, however, does not mean that a proof for a spiritual substantial existence of the soul distinct from the body would not be of decisive importance for any philosophical argument for the immortality of the human soul. On the contrary, the existence and substantiality of the human soul is an objectively necessary condition of immortality. This claim is being made here in spite of the fact that many philosophers have asserted immortality without holding that man has a soul. But this does not prove that The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 402 the existence of the soul is not objectively presupposed for personal immortality. For the alternative ways in which philosophers have sought to explain immortality, i.e., without presupposing the substantiality of the soul, prove metaphysically unfounded if we keep in mind the results already obtained in our preceding investigations. How is it even possible to hold personal immortality without holding as well that there is a soul? 1) There is first the way in which David Hume and various process philosophers have suggested an immortality of conscious processes after death without any substantial ground of them. But if it is recognized, what our analyses in the present volume have shown, that conscious acts and processes such as volition, cognition, joy, etc. necessarily call for a subject in which they inhere and that they themselves cannot exist at all „in and for themselves“ like substances, then it is clear that a position which asserts immortal conscious processes without a soul is metaphysically untenable. Thus the results gained in the present volume forbid adoption of a position which assumes „immortal conscious processes without a soul.“ 2) Other thinkers - for instance, the so-called „whole death“ theologians and philosophers - have suggested that as Christians we believe that the bodily resurrection of and in Christ is the sole hope man has for a life after death, and that therefore any purely philosophical defense of immortality of the human soul is a paganism and antichristian autonomism which must be abandoned. Besides such purely theological motives, many philosophical views play an even more important important role in the formation of this view, as the present author showed 1978. 175 For the protestant theology of the Reformers, who held the same views on grace and salvation as the whole-death theologians of our century, had originally taught the immortality of the soul. The modern whole-death theology therefore does not have primarily theological reasons but has its roots in a materialist and evolutionist conception of man - coupled with theological reasons. In uniting these two (objectively contradictory) notions, it holds both materialism - perhaps in the form of epiphenomenalism - and an immortal life on the basis of the resurrection of a body which the sole origin of mental life. Thus a total annihilation of man in death and his re-creation through the resurrection of his body "Das Unsterblichkeitsproblem aus der Sicht der philosophischen Ethik und Anthropologie", Franziskanische Studien, H 3 (1978). 175 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 403 would be another attempted explanation of immortality without assuming either substance-less processes or a soul distinct from the body. But such a view can be proven untenable in the first place for the reason that, by positing the nothingness of man between his original existence and „his newly resurrected person,“ this theory undermines the true personal identity between the historical and the resurrected and re-recreated person. A newly created person could not conceivably be „the same identical person“ who was annihilated before. While the grounds for holding this opinion are purely religious, this position has philosophical sides which contradict reason and the most evident truths accessible to reason. And because of these philosophical evidences that the identity of a person throughout time demands uninterrupted existence we reject the idea that even God could first annihilate a person and then create the very same person a second time. But let us even suspend belief in this essential necessity and assume that divine omnipotence can make possible what presents itself to us as entirely and absolutely impossible: that the same person who had first existed and was then annihilated is now being recreated. To assume this, however, still does not suffice to explain the immortality of the person without soul. For an even deeper, second reason for the untenability of this theory is the fact that without a spiritual soul the freedom of will and intellectual cognition are also impossible as we demonstrated earlier. Without those specifically spiritual faculties of the human person, however, immortality makes no more sense than the immortality of a mouse or cat, as we shall see. In any case, the specifically human dimensions of immortality or eternal life are rendered impossible if there is no knowledge and no freedom which depend on the existence of a soul. But let us now turn from the link of the problem of the relation between body and soul more directly to the question of the immortality of the soul. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 404 The Question of a „Huge“ or „Tiny“ Immortality of the Human Soul - A most Important Question about Our „To be or Not to Be“ or an Absurd Question of a „Being-toward-Death“? 176 But Ivan, is there, then, some immortality? Any one, though only a tiny, a really tiny one?“ „ No, there is not even a tiny immortality.“ „Altogether none?“ „Altogether none.“ „That is to say, an absolute nonentity, or still something? Maybe, nevertheless, there is something else there? That would at least not be nothing!“ „ Absolutely nothing.“ „Alyoshka, is there any immortality?“ „ Yes, there is immortality.“ „God and immortality?“ „ Yes, God and immortality.“ It is this question of an immortal life after death raised by Ivan’s and Alyosha’s father in Dostoyevski’s The Brothers Karamasov which is the topic of this chapter. Immortality can be understood in many ways: what Father Karamasov calls a „tiny immortality“ could be interpreted as the immortality on earth of life as such, in the sense that there will always be living organisms on this planet; or the „tiny immortality“ could be understood as the immortality of the historical past which eternally will contain The following text was originally given as the annual Cardinal Newman Lecture at Saint Thomas More College, Fort Worth, Texas on November 12, 1994. Therefore the text of this chapter does not correspond to the text of the matching chapter in the second edition of the German original. It does not correspond exactly to the general theme of this book in going back to the classical arguments for immortality in Plato and discussing them critically. Nevertheless, also this chapter corresponds to the general theme of this book in starting out the discussion of immortality with a very modern conversation found in Dostoyevski, and placing it consistently in a personalistic metaphysical context as it has become possible only through the philosophy and metaphysics of the person developed in our century. I shall also consider some o f the contributions the most original philosophers of immortality in our century have made: Gabriel Marcel and Dietrich von Hildebrand. In fact, also both our way of interpreting Plato’s positive contributions and our manner of criticizing some aspects of his philosophy have become possible only through the personalist metaphysics developed in our century by some realist phenomenologists. See Essere e persona. Verso una fondazione fenomenologica di una metafisica classica e personalistica . (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1989). 176 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 405 everything that has ever happened. It is this immortality of the livery of the past which contains the entire harvest of every action which we committed and all the meanings we ever realized, which Viktor Frankl deems to be sufficient for us to be assured of the realization of meaning in our lives. Yet such an eternal past appears too inactual and too close to nothingness to me to even deserve the title „immortality“; it seems to be an immortality „too tiny“ to satisfy man’s quest for an immortal existence. The „tiny immortality“ mentioned by Father Karamasov is understood by some as the immortality of fame and as the remembrance which future generations will keep forever of great artists or thinkers and of their works. Others believe that they will be immortal only in their descendants or that they will enter after death into some vaguely conceived universal spirit, giving up their individual identity. Aristotle might have conceived immortality in this way and Averroës definitely has. Still other philosophers and not few religions are defending such a non-individual immortality, along the lines of Hegel’s or Averroës’ philosophy. Also this would be a „tiny immortality“ in father Karamasov’s terms. I shall not attempt to give here a critical evaluation of all these meanings of immortality. Immortality in its most significant and in a „huge“ sense that contrasts with the „tiny“ one, however, can only be personal individual immortality, the immortal life of my or of your personal and unique, irreplaceable self. Only this immortality is the immortality of life and not of a life-less past; only it is immortality in actuality and not in the bloodless „no more“ of that which passed away forever, however right Frankl is in recognizing that there is an eternally undestructible meaning of each person’s past life. But this thin immortality of the past lacks the concrete real existence and actuality of the present. It is the immortality of the dead, not of the living. By immortality in the proper sense then we mean real actual unending existence. Immortality in the authentic sense which allows father Karamasov to measure „tiny immortality“ against it, however, does not only refer to pure unending existence but to life and to conscious life, and in its deeper sense even to rational conscious life. 177 Immortality in this sense means the never-ending conscious life of an individual being of rational nature, the immortal life of a person who knows and experiences from within 177 This is neither meant in the sense of denying nor in that of asserting the immortality of animals or of other forms of life. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 406 his or her own unique individual existence - whether this be a divine, an angelic, or a human person. Immortality can thus not only refer to man and constitute the negation or the superation of his mortality; it can also refer to any finite purely spiritual person and to God. But then immortality means something different and far more perfect: to God we attribute substantial immortality, that is, immortality through his very own necessary and eternal being, as well as eternity in the sense of an unfailing full present in an eternal Now that comprises all the duration of times past and future but none of their transitoriness and none of their passing away; none of their nothingness, of their not-yet being in the future, and their no-longer-being in the past. Immortal life in this sense of divine eternity is a uniquely divine perfection: the perfect actuality of all being and of all life, the interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio (the total simultaneous and perfect possession of interminable life), as Boethius defines divine eternity. Of particular interest for us in this chapter, however, is our human immortality: not some vague general idea of the perpetual continuation of an anonymous world-spirit or of an anonymously conceived ‘humanity’ as such, not what father Karamasov calls a „tiny immortality“ but the real immortality of the single human person in his or her absolute unsubstitutability and incommunicability, the immortality of this or that unique human person or soul. We also mean the immortality of the other person, of the beloved „Thou“ as well as of the community among persons. Are we immortal? Do we live eternally or will in a few years, or days, or even hours, an eternal nothingness swallow up our brief existence? Will we possess an eternal life after death or fall into the abyss of perennial nothingness? We indicated before that immortality in the sense which is significant for us includes not only unending existence but also unending life and conscious life of the individual person. Immortality - when conceived of as eternal life which we hope to possess - means still infinitely more, however, than mere unending conscious life; it refers to a positive content of this life. In fact, such a positive content of immortal conscious life is much more important than just eternal conscious existence as such, which might be blissful as well as wretched. According to Kierkegaard’s profound insights also the despairing man must be immortal in order for despair the full sense to be possible. Kierkegaard writes: The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 407 If there were nothing eternal in man, he could not despair at all.“178 In despair, however, immortality stands before us as something dreadful. And Kierkegaard continues his grandiose but dreadful analysis: But despair is precisely a burning of the self, but an impotent selfconsumption which is unable to accomplish what it intends. Rather, what it itself intends is to destroy itself which it is unable to do; and this powerlessness is a new form of self-consumption in which again despair is unable to accomplish what it intends: to devour itself; this is a potentialization or the law of higher potency. This is the flame or the cold fire in despair, its gnawing movement which is directed more and more within: deeper and deeper in powerless self-consumption. Far from it that it would be a consolation for the desperate person that his utter misery cannot annihilate him; on the contrary: this precisely is the torment and this is what keeps the gnawing alive and the life in the gnawing; for this is precisely what he did not despair of but is despairing about: that he cannot consume his being, cannot annihilate the self, cannot get rid of the self, cannot turn himself into nothingness. This is the formula for the higher potency of despair, the rising of the fever in this sickness of the self...for through despair something is set afire that cannot burn nor be destroyed by burning: the self. 179 If thus even despair presupposes immortality, it is clear that immortality as object of hope requires not only unending being and consciousness but unending happiness. An immortality deprived of happiness, or afflicted with unending sufferings and pangs of conscience, is the object of dread and despair, as Kierkegaard analyzes them so profoundly in his Sickness unto Death. Only in the eternity of hell utter despair in the Kierkegaardian sense is possible. This is evident even for those who think for different reasons that despair in this radical sense does not exist (as Hans Küng claims in his book See Soeren Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode, übers. und komm. v. L. Richter (Frankfurt a.M., 21986), I,A,c., S. 2021 (here and in the following quotes: my own translation from the German). 179 See Soeren Kierkegaard, Krankheit zum Tode, ibid., pp. 18-19 (my transl.). 178 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 408 Ewiges Leben?,180 and Friedrich Heer in his Abschied von Himmeln und Höllen), or for those who think at least (as Hans-Urs von Balthasar) that hell could be empty or even is probably empty. Most dramatic, and for us most significant, then, is the question of the individual human person’s immortality and of an immortal life filled with bliss and not with horror. But also this is not enough. In order for this happiness not to be irrational and unfounded - eternal happiness requires thirdly eternal reasons to be happy. 181 And these can only be given if not only our private objective good is secured but if the ultimate metaphysical nature of things is good. For, as the conversation of Ivan Karamasov with his brother Alyosha beautifully shows (and in this the atheist Ivan is completely right), we should not be happy, we should return our entrance ticket to heaven, if our private happiness were not justified, if not justice but injustice, not the intrinsically good, but the intrinsically evil and merciless will of an eternal tyrant were to triumph. Eternal happiness, or better still, the contemplation of eternal reasons to be eternally happy, eternal participation in the triumph of good and justice, eternal love these are the things we mean by immortal life as the object of hope and as the opposite of an eternal death in the sense of an eternal desperation. But also these three aspects of what the „huge immortality“ means which is our question here, the conscious rational existence, the positive happy content, and its reason and foundation in the truth and in the triumph of the good, do not suffice but we have to add another element that constitutes the authentic meaning of immortality: When - in the face of his obvious mortality and death - we attribute immortality to man, we certainly do not mean an immortality of the present human life. We mean even more than that the human soul will not follow the composite human being on the road to death but will live after death. Rather, we mean a fulfillment of transcendent proportions of which the present type of conscious existence is only a weak foreshadowing. And we will see the purely philosophical reasons to affirm such an immortal life of the soul. 182 Hans Küng, Ewiges Leben? (München: R.Piper & Co. Verlag/Zürich: Buchclub ex Libris, 1982/1984). This deep philosophical insight underlies Viktor Frankl’s assertion that man does not so much seek to be happy as to have a good reason for being happy. 182 Of course, the Christian hopes for such an immortal life of the full resurrected human being - body and soul - in the likeness of Christ. Since philosophy cannot speak about bodily resurrection, however, we shall only briefly - for the sake of a clear distinction between a philosophical and a religious treatment of immortality - return towards the end of this chapter of the faith in resurrection and eternal life, delineating it from a philosophical treatment of immortality. But in any case, both 180 181 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 409 In the following, we shall treat the philosophical question of immortality: that is to say, we will attempt to see with our natural reason whether man, or more precisely, the human soul, must be immortal. Augustine says in his work Soliloquies that he seeks most of all an answer to the question „whether I am immortal“. 183 In a vein of thought complementary to that of Augustine, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal found it incomprehensible and most unnatural how little we occupy ourselves with this question whether we are immortal or not. He notes with a sense of horror that we do not make it the most important goal of our lives to know whether we are immortal and to do everything in our power to reach immortal bliss. Human beings, he says, think of all kinds of things past and future, they go out to hunt, they are playing and working, and are greatly preoccupied with tiny, insignificant things. Dwelling, as they do constantly, in diversions, fictions, or at least in things past and future, they neither think of the now and unique present in which alone we can act nor of eternity compared to which all temporal things and worries are like nothing. The terms within which Pascal puts the question of our immortal life as opposed to our extinction in death are: here we are dealing with our „everything“ or „our nothing.“ And he insists that men, driven by a mysterious blindness and madness, constantly are fleeing into all kinds of diversions and superficial interests in order not to face the ultimate question of whether they are immortal and of how they should live in the face of this truth. With respect to this positive immortality, and also with a view to the object of his fear of a real but dreadful immortality, Shakespeare’s Hamlet says: „To be or not to be; that is the question.“ He does not say that it is one question or a question, but the question. And yet, why do we ever pose such a question as that of our personal immortality given our strikingly obvious mortality which seems to be entirely natural for a being who came to exist in time? Christian faith and a philosophic understanding of immortal life have this in common: that it cannot be a mere continuation of our earthly existence. 183 Augustine, Soliloquia II, 1,1. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 410 One can understand why many Jews and members of other religions as well as atheists such as Ludwig Feuerbach believe this preoccupation with personal immortality to be an expression of a foolishness or of selfish exaggeration of our own importance. In fact, the claim of immortality appears to contradict the very essence of man. Does not even Aristotle write and Duns Scotus - from a philosophical point of view - quote him rather approvingly: „Whatever has a beginning has an end“? 184 From this point of view man has to be mortal and cannot be immortal. Consider what the 26 year old Feuerbach writes on this matter in his Thoughts on Death and Immortality published in 1830: But how can you now complain that you are mortal when you do not complain that you once were ... nothing at all? How can you be frightened of death since you have already undergone and passed through it, since you have already been what you will be once again? Look back at what you were before life and at what existed before your life; no longer will you tremble before that which you will become after your life. 185 Why should man, who takes it for granted that he began to exist in time, think that it be natural for him to gain immortal life? For man appears to be mortal and temporal through and through. In fact, the rhythm of „die and become“ which characterizes according to a beautiful poem of Goethe all living things, seems perfectly natural to the human person as a living organism. Awakening, climax, and cessation of vital strength and finally sleep characterize our daily life-rhythm; and similarly, birth, growth, youthful strength, middle age, old age and decay just appear to be the law of all living things. Man seems to be a „Sein zum Tode“, a being towards and for death, as Heidegger calls him. 186 Is it still meaningful to speak of immortality? And if so, with Aristotle, Physics III, Ch. 4, 203 b 9. See likewise Aristotle, De Caelo et mundo VII, xvi, 282 b 4, where, as Duns Scotus puts it, „Aristotle seems to consider it impossible that anything could have come into existence and still be eternal and imperishable.“ See also Allan Wolter (transl., ed.), Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings (Indianapolis/New York: BobbsMerrill, 1962), p. 156-157. 185 Ludwig , Thoughts on Death and Immortality. Along with an appendix of theological-satirical epigrams, edited by one of his friends, transl., with Introduction and Notes by James A. Massey (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1980), p. 118. Cf. also Ludwig Feuerbach’s work written 11 years later (1841), The Essence of Christianity, transl. from the German by George Eliot, introductory essay by Karl Barth, foreword by H. Richard Niebuhr (New York/Hagerstown/San Francisco/London: Harper & Row, 1957, pp. 170 ff. 186 Much earlier Max Scheler had already made an excellent analysis of this fundamental orientation of life on earth towards death. See Max Scheler, M. Scheler, „Tod und Fortleben“, Schriften aus dem Nachlaß I, 3rd ed. (1986). In fact, earlier philosophers, including Ludwig Feuerbach in his Thoughts on Death and Immortality, cit., pp. 17-21, have presented very 184 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 411 which justification? Will we be able to detect strong reasons which make it desirable and even necessary that man is immortal? Will we be able to offer rational proofs that our soul indeed must be immortal? The constant flux of human life, the transition from the „now“ into the „no more“ of the past and into the „not yet“ of his future existence, poses the problem of whether or not temporality belongs to the very essence of man.. But if temporality belongs to his nature, does not also death, as well as temporal beginning, inseparably belong to human existence? Is then man not merely a „being towards death“ (as Gabriel Marcel interprets what he regards as the only valid meaning of Heidegger’s Sein zum Tode), but also a „being for death,“ i.e. a being whose ultimate possibility reveals itself in anxiety (Angst), whose „object“ is nothing, annihilation? But why would such a Sein zum Tode in the sense of a being for death be meaningless and contain an intrinsic contradiction to the very meaning of human existence? Or is it rather the case that at the core of man’s metaphysical essence we find intimations of eternal being and an ordination towards it which prove inadequate any philosophical anthropology which locks man into the limits of temporality conceived without any relation to „eternal being“ and which throws man into the peculiar nothingness of an existence for which „the moment ist everything“ and hence „the moment is also nothing“ (Kierkegaard)? The answer to this question will constitute the most significant parts of what is to follow. But is it not faith alone that can guide us here when it comes to the question of immortality? Do we not leave here reason and philosophy and turn to a question which only religion can venture to answer. Many great thinkers, also Christian ones, such as Duns Scotus, thought this way. 187 And today the so-called „whole-death-theology“ which the Lutheran theologian P. Althaus and others have propounded makes a similar suggestion.188 Its adherents think that faith alone in the salvation through Christ’s death and resurrection can answer the question of immortality. similar analyses to those of Heidegger. On the organic rhythm of life compare also D. v. Hildebrand, "Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele", in: the same author., Die Menschheit am Scheideweg (1955). 187 See Allan Wolter, transl., Duns Scotus, op. cit. (taken from Duns Scotus’ Ordinatio=Oxford Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard), pp. 143-171. 188 Cf. P. Althaus, Die letzten Dinge. Lehrbuch der Eschatologie (1922; 10th ed.. Gütersloh 1970). See also on the notion of „Ganztod“ L. Feuerbach, op. cit., pp. 22: „Death is the total and complete dissolution of your entire being...all of you is dead.“ A detailed investigation of this problem I published in J. Seifert, "Das Unsterblichkeitsproblem aus der Sicht der philosophischen Ethik und Anthropologie", in Franziskanische Studien, 60 (1978), S. 289-310. See also J. Seifert, Das Leib-Seele Problem und die philosophische Diskussion der Gegenwart. Eine systematisch-kritische Analyse, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt, 1989). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 412 Faith certainly gives us an unambiguous answer to the question of our immortality. The overwhelming message of man’s immortal, of eternal life, seems indeed to be an exclusive promise of religion, most of all of our Christian faith. As such, it is expressed by Simon Peter when he summarizes the power and newness of Christ’s revelation about man, answering Jesus’ question, „Will you also go away?“, by the words: „Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life“ (John 6.68-69). But is there also an answer to the question about a life after death accessible to human understanding and reason? Are there not also reasons which appeal to the human intellect and which prompt us to hold that the human person (soul) is immortal? While I do not doubt the answer of our faith which promises eternal life to each one of us, and while I do not intend to deny in the least those most important aspects of the question of immortality which our human reason, left unto itself, cannot answer and which we shall discuss briefly at the end of this chapter, in this book I wish to speak as a philosopher and to ask the question of immortality from the point of view of our reason, seeking to detect also the rational answers man can find to this central human question as to whether he is immortal. I am convinced that there are such reasons. Let us then turn all our intellectual faculties to the question: are we immortal? Freud maintains that in his unconsciousness or subconsciousness every man is convinced of his or her own immortality. But the mere fact that all men are convinced in their unconsciousness of their immortality is of little value. The human race could be prone to a great illusion as Freud designates both religion and this belief in personal immortality. And even if men were to reach a universal consensus and every human being would consciously believe in his or her own immortality - which is of course not the case - such a universal consensus would not yet be truth but it could be a consent to what is false. Thus all that matters is whether it is true or not that man is immortal - in spite of his obvious mortality. The assertion that man is immortal stands, as it were, in a dialectical opposition to the mortality which belongs to man almost by definition. We know that we are mortal and are going to die, and we are not immortal. Thus how can there be philosophical arguments both for immortality and for the very meaning of the question whether we are immortal? The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 413 Philosophical Arguments for Immortality Philosophical arguments for immortality which appeal to our reason were developed throughout the history of philosophy, from Plato on down to the 20 th century.189 I shall try to summarize the most significant ones of these arguments, but not in a merely historical way but in an effort to philosophize about being itself and to see what is true in these arguments, trying to point out their weaknesses and their strengths. At the same time I shall consider some of the objections raised against the belief in immortality by Ludwig Feuerbach and many others:190 1. Ontological Arguments:191 a) Death and destruction, Plato tells us, are always a dissolution of a whole consisting of parts. Also man can only die because he is a whole being composed of two parts, body and soul. Body and soul can therefore be separated from each other and this is man’s death which signifies precisely the departure of the soul from the body. But the subject of thought and of will, the person’s Self, is utterly indivisible, uncomposed of parts. But how do we know that we have such a soul? Allow me the quote a few words from J. H. Newman’s sermon „The Immortality of the Soul“ in which he summarizes some classical arguments for the soul: To understand that we have souls, is to feel our separation from things visible, our independence of them, our distinct existence in ourselves, our For a recent analysis of these arguments cf. William J. Wainwright, Philosophy of Religion (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1988), pp. 104-111, where five of the arguments we are going to discuss are expounded and defended. 190 See Ludwig Feuerbach, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit (Nürnberg 1830), in Werke in sechs Bänden, ed. b E. Thies (Frankfurt 1975 ff.) I, pp. 77-349; the same author, Das Wesen des Christentums (Leipzig 1841), ed. by W. Schuffenhauer, Bd 1-2 (Berlin 1956). 191 We do not claim to present here all the ontological arguments for the existence of the soul which were presented by philosophers but only some of the most important ones among them. For example, Duns Scotus, transl. Wolter, ibid., pp. 154156, mentions a few other ontological, moral and epistemological arguments for the immortality of the soul. 189 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 414 individuality, our power of acting for ourselves this way or that way, our accountableness for what we do. 192 Newman mentions here several classical starting points of philosophical demonstrations of the soul: the distinct properties the conscious ‘I’ has in comparison with matter: freedom, responsibility, etc. He also mentions individuality - unique thisness - which refers as well to the indivisible unity of the Platonic arguments for the soul and for immortality. Precisely in this indivisible oneness the soul is distinct from matter which always consists of a multitude of parts outside other parts. We know at least two things with certainty about our soul: 1) First that it is not just a quality or property of another thing, a function of the brain, etc. For in the subject of cognition and of free responsible acts we encounter an ‘I’, a self which can never be the quality of another thing like colour or functions but which is the ultimate subject of consciousness, a being which stands in itself in existence, in other words that which Aristotle calls substance. 2) Secondly, we understand that the soul or the subject of any conscious activity is simple and cannot be composed of different non-identical parts. The great brain scientist and Nobel Laureate Sir John Eccles has shown that not only any material being but in particular our brain with its ten billion cells and billions times billions parts can never be that simple subject: this I whom we encounter in our experience. He has likewise shown that in the brain we do not even find one single center or operator to which all brain information would be referred. We find only an incredible multitude of distinct cells and functions. On the other hand, it is absolutely impossible to split my Self into two or more parts; the ego who loves or the thou who is loved is one single indivisible subject. Therefore the soul is necessarily distinct from the brain, distinct from any body. Now Plato argues from this very fact for immortality, saying: Since the human soul, the self or the I of the person, is a simple substance, which does not consist of parts, it cannot die but is indestructible, given that death and destruction are always a decomposition of a composite whole into its parts. This argument was expounded in John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Sermon 2, „The Immortality of the Soul“ (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 14-21; p. 16. 192 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 415 Plato’s Phaedo, and defended by many later philosophers, from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz and others. 193 To this argument one can object, however - along the lines of, for example, Duns Scotus or of the so-called „whole-death-theology“ (Ganztodtheologie)194 - that for a simple (uncomposed), but nevertheless contingent and created substance there could be another kind of death: not a separation of parts but a total destruction of existence, an extinction of being and a return to that nothingness from which each creature was created: ...not all destruction is the result of separating one thing from another. Take the being of an angel, and let it be assumed as some do that its existence is distinct from its essence. Such a being is not separable from itself and nevertheless it can be destroyed if its existence is succeeded by the opposite of existence. 195 And who could deny that this is true? If we are created by divine omnipotence from nothing, it would be thinkable that the same omnipotence annihilates us. If we do not exist by necessity but could also not exist and could never have existed, we could also be deprived of existence. Duns Scotus summarizes and modifies this (the ninth and last argument he considers in the Ordinatio) thus: Also, what is simple cannot be separated from itself. The soul is simple; therefore it cannot be separated from itself, nor can it, in consequence, be separated from its existence, for it does not have its existence in virtue of some form other than itself. It is otherwise with something composite which has existence in virtue of the form. This form can be separated from matter, thus destroying the existence of the composite. Duns Scotus, transl. Wolter, op. cit., p. 156. Another ontological argument which Scotus discusses (his arg. VI), based on Aristotle’s Metaphysics VI, 9 - 1039 b 29 - is very similar. It is based on the principle that only a thing that has matter can exist or not exist and what lacks matter cannot be non-existent. In virtue of its simplicity the intellective soul lacks matter and therefore cannot be non-existent because it is a simple form. Given the complication of the essence (form) - existence problem, I do not here discuss this argument but wish to indicate that I think that this argument is false. For it is in no way true that matter is the principle of individuation or the only principle of contingent existence. See Josef Seifert, Leib und Seele. Ein Beitrag zur philosophischen Anthropologie (Salzburg: A. Pustet, 1973); the same author, Das Leib-Seele Problem und die gegenwärtige philosophische Diskussion. Eine kritisch-systematische Analyse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2 1989); "Essence and Existence. A New Foundation of Classical Metaphysics on the Basis of 'Phenomenological Realism,' and a Critical Investigation of 'Existentialist Thomism'," Aletheia I (1977), pp. 17-157; I,2 (1977), pp. 371-459. 194 Hans Küng seeks to take a middle-position between the whole-death theology and the classical position. While he claims that man dies as a whole, body and soul, he still asserts that man is not annihilated totally in death. He does so in part by denying any temporal lapse between death and resurrection, partly by the idea th at purgatory occurs in the moment of death and not thereafter. In this way, Küng appears to present a rather unclear and contradictory vision of the afterlife. See Hans Küng, Ewiges Leben?, pp. 178 ff. 195 See Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings, transl. A. Wolter, cit., p. 163. 193 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 416 Besides this another objection can be raised against the argument for immortality from the simplicity of the soul: namely that it proves only what Father Karamasov calls a „tiny immortality.“ It neither proves the happiness of a life after death nor even the consciousness of our existence after death. This does not deny its value of proving that only an absolute annihilation and privation of the actuality of existing could end the soul’s existence - and not the normal forms of destruction which presuppose a composite whole. They cannot prove immortality at all because the assumption underlying Plato’s position on this matter is incorrect, this assumption being that the only possible form of destruction of a being (substance?) is through dissolution into its parts. In reality, other forms of annihilation besides destruction by dissolution into parts are possible and thinkable, such as complete annihilation of contingent simple beings, which only presupposes the possibility that existence be withdrawn from a being and ceases to actualize its essence from within. (Duns Scotus made this point forcefully.) The arguments for the existence of a simple spiritual soul cannot, furthermore - even if they could, as such, prove immortality - demonstrate any meaningful immortality because it would be possible that the human soul, upon destruction of the body in dath, would not be annihilated but fall into a sleep-like existence, a position held by many religious people. The soul could be dependent on the body for being conscious and thus be deprived forever of consciousness after death. Or, if one assumes a transmigration of souls from one body and life to the next, as the Platonic myth in the Phaedo suggests, then the same limitations which afflict man’s present life also characterize the next. Thus either a „dreamless sleep“ would await us after death (Socrates in the Apology speaks of this possibility) or the kind of consciousness which awaits man after death is not essentially different from the one he knows now. Speaking of the first alternative, an unconscious existence would, as we have seen, almost equal annihilation of the person because the very being of the person is so profoundly ordained towards awakening and conscious life that a perpetual unconscious existence (like that of the mummy which may remain after man’s death) would mean for man „sinking into nothing.“ (Cf. also Ingarden 1965, pp. 296ff.). Even if one could, however, not only prove that there is an immaterial spiritual soul and that it cannot be annihilated, but also that this soul is always conscious and will enter another body after death, as the belief of metapsychosis The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 417 suggests, this also would not prove the immortality of the soul in any meaningful sense of the term. Whether we think of Plato’s Phaedo and the reasons advanced there by Socrates for the thesis that the philosopher prepares himself to die, or whether we think of the reasons for immortality to be expounded below, a continued conscious existence on this earth, with the same type of life as we now possess, would not at all fulfill the notion of immortality which the philosophical proofs for it seek to establish. As we shall see immediately, man’s ordination towards a fundamentally more complete and integral existence and a fulfillment called for by man’s deepest acts, can precisely not be achieved by the kind of temporal existence we now experience. This is precisely the ground of philosophical proofs for immortality. However, how then could a mere endless prolongation of the same kind of existence we now possess, even if some progressive advancement towards higher stages is assumed, constitute this „immortality“? b) A further ontological argument put forward by Plato rests on a metaphysical similarity between the human soul and the eternal ideas (essential forms) of things. There are two spheres of being, Plato tells us: On the one hand, there is the sensible world of material things composed of parts. And they exist in time and are destructible in time. On the other hand there is an invisible and purely spiritual realm of the eternal forms which only the intellect can perceive, and this world which is not sensible and not material is not composed of parts and not temporal. It contains the intelligible forms such as „justice itself“, the „triangle as such,“ the eternal laws of number, of love, of beauty, etc. And these essential forms and paradigms of concrete things are timeless, uncomposed and therefore can never perish. Now the human soul which can know these eternal essences of things, is also invisible, is not composed of non-identical parts outside other parts and thus belongs to this world of the invisible and non-sensible inhabitants. Being similar to the nonmaterial forms and eternal ideas, the human soul must also be imperishable like them. As the eternal forms and essences (essential plans, eide) of things are not known through our senses of sight, or of hearing, or of touch, and as the soul is likewise not perceptible through the senses, so the soul resembles the eternal forms and must likewise be eternal. It cannot perish, just as the imperishable idea or the eternal form of the just in itself, of the wise in itself, and so on, can never perish. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 418 Against this impressive argument, however, we can object: Our soul, while it resembles the timeless essences of things in some respects (it is invisible and not composed of parts), is wholly dissimilar to them in other respects. Abstract ideas are essentially distinct from souls: they are not dynamic agents but static ideal archetypes; they are not living individual persons but life-less forms. Therefore their timelessness which they possess precisely at the price of lacking concrete life and real existence cannot simply be asserted of souls. Plato might retort to this objection, however, emphasizing that the human souls resemble the eternal forms just in those attributes which are decisive for the indestructibility: they are not material and they do not have parts extrinsic to other parts. And it is precisely this feature of material things and of man’s body-soul-union which accounts for the possibility of death and destruction. As the soul lacks this character, it cannot die. Yet this answer cannot fully convince us because it cannot overcome the objection that a unique individual soul is not similar but utterly dissimilar to an abstract idea, and that a static eternal essence of numbers, etc. is utterly distinct from a dynamic, living, and free person. We shall see, however, that this second ontological argument of Plato contains a very deep anthropological-metaphysical reason for immortality to which we shall return. c) A third metaphysical argument of Plato anticipates the ontological argument for the existence of God. Let me try to summarize this sublime but difficult argument for God’s existence. According to this famous argument developed by Anselm of Canterbury that „greater than which nothing can be conceived“ (the id quo maius nihil cogitari possit, which is the name of God) must necessarily live and exist because it would not be the infinitely great and good being if it did not exist in reality, independently of being an object of the human mind, and if God did not exist by necessity. For it is greater to exist necessarily than to exist contingently, and it is better to be also in reality than to have the poor being of a mere object of thought (being in the mind). Therefore God would not be God, God would not have his own absolute nature if He did not exist necessarily and really. For then He would not be „that greater than which nothing can be conceived“ (the id quo maius nihil cogitari possit) if He did not live and exist in Himself and necessarily. For life and existence belong to the very essence of God and God would not be Himself, he The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 419 would not have this unique divine essence if He did not exist by necessity but could also not exist.196 And this is impossible. Therefore Bonaventure summarizes Anselm’s proof saying: „Si Deus Deus est, Deus est“; „since God is God, God IS“. Now the third ontological argument Plato offers for the soul’s immortality is very similar to this argument. It says: „As each soul by its very nature as soul lives, and as there can be no ‘dead soul,’ so life is entirely inseparable from the soul. Just as evenness is inseparable from the number 2, and oddness inseparable from the number 3, so life is inseparable from the soul. And therefore - because of this essential link between life and soul which excludes the possibility of a dead soul - the soul must always live and possess immortality.“ Magnificent and beautiful as this argument for the immortality of the human soul is, it remains doubtful, whether it is valid and based on true premises. For we have to question first of all whether the inseparability between life and soul of which Plato speaks is absolute, as there is indeed an absolute inseparability of life and existence from God’s essence. Plato does not consider the possibility that the inseparability of existence and life from soul is only conditional: if there is a soul, and as long as it exists, it must live because while there can be a dead man, there can be no dead soul. This evident and intelligible fact which is grounded in the necessary essence of the soul, that there cannot be a dead soul and that the soul must live as long as it exists, indeed makes of the soul a true image, a true analogy to God who exists and lives by absolute necessity. But the essential bond between life and soul which excludes ‘dead souls’ is nevertheless not the same as the absolutely necessary life and existence of God. Only to God real existence and actuality of life belongs so inseparably that He is essentially and necessarily existing and living and immortal. On the other hand: it is not objectively necessary that the human soul exists. This is a most shocking metaphysical fact: it is altogether not necessary that I exist at all and thus it is also not absolutely necessary that my or your soul lives, since it is contingent and could not exist. Hence the human soul is created Cf. Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, Ch. 2-4; cf. also my defence of the ontological argument: Gott als Gottesbeweis. Eine phänomenologische Neubegründung des ontologischen Arguments (God as Proof of Himself: A New Phenomenological Foundation of the Ontological Argument), Heidelberg: University Press C. Winter, 1995. 196 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 420 (which Plato himself admits in the Timaios).197 But then Plato’s proof is invalid in this form. However, we might defend it in another form, saying: while indeed no animal or human soul, and not even an angel, does possess existence and life necessarily but is contingent, the human soul, once it exists, cannot die. For life belongs to it so essentially that once it is created, it cannot ever be deserted by life; it cannot first live and then die. Being truly analogous to the ultimate inseparability of life from the divine nature, of existence and essence in God, life is analogously inseparable from the human soul once it exists. Therefore it makes neither sense to speak of a dead soul nor to speak of the death of the soul. For once a soul exists, life dwells in it and can never leave it. In order for this argument to be convincing, however, many further things would have to be clarified. For example, it appears that this argument would also apply to animals, since there cannot be dead animal souls either. But are animal-souls immortal because one cannot assume a „dead animal soul“? Or do we not have to assume that the animal’s soul or the plant’s life-principle perishes in death? If we must accept the mortality of plant and animal life, then Plato’s argument could apply only to the personal spiritual soul of man and then we would have to show the essential difference between them. We would have to show that we encounter in the rational soul of man a deeper and more intrinsic possession of life in comparison with the less profound possession of life in the animal. And this might prove difficult to show. Or we would have to hold that all souls and all living beings are immortal. But this seems even more unlikely that all worms and trees are immortal. Thus this argument, which has the advantage that it intends to prove the living immortality or the immortality of the life of the soul and not mere existence, encounters numerous difficulties which cannot be solved here. I can only indicate that the anthropological arguments developed below also strengthen this argument. For they will show that indeed the human rational soul, that each person, once it exists, possesses life so essentially that not only a „dead soul“ but not even the „death of the soul“ make sense. In fact, in going to prove the immortality of the human soul, we shall prove - even if not directly as premise of the presently discussed argument but Cf. Giovanni Reale, Verso una nuova interpretazione die Platone, 11th ed. (Milano: Jaca Book, 1993); Giovanni Reale, Zu einer neuen Interpretation Platons. Eine Auslegung der Metaphysik der großen Dialoge im Lichte der "ungeschriebenen Lehren", übers. v. L. Hölscher, mit einer Einleitung von H. Krämer, hrsg. und mit einem Nachwort von J. Seifert (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1993), Ch. 15 ff., where Reale explains Plato’s teaching of divine creation. 197 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 421 as conclusion of the later arguments - that Plato is quite right in holding that the idea of a destruction and death of the soul is as impossible as that of an even number 3. For it is grounded in the essence of its personhood that the human soul possesses life in such an intimate and necessary way that, if it exists and once it exists, it is truly analogous to God’s absolute and essential possession of life in that life can never leave the soul again after it has received it. d) A fourth ontological argument already found in Plato and developed further by the great Franciscan masters, in particular by Peter Olivi, rests on the auto-movement and self-determination of life and above all on the rational free acts of a living person. This argument says: That which does not receive its movement and the source of its motion from the outside but possesses the source of its movement from within, the human soul, cannot be left by its movement and cannot lose the source of its life. While this argument is presented in Plato’s Phaedrus in a way that dissolves the absolute distinction between God and the soul and while this ontological argument for the life and immortal existence of the soul makes the soul as such ungenerated and the source of all movement in the universe, thus divinizing it, it has been presented later in another form which in no way is subject of this critique and in no way confuses the distinction between God and world. This form of the argument which was perhaps best expounded by the medieval Franciscan philosopher Peter Olivi could be even regarded as a separate fifth ontological argument; it says: e) It contradicts the nature a personal soul (that is the essence of a being which freely and personally determines himself to act and becomes good or evil according to his or her own choice) to be mortal. For death constitutes an ultimate victory of the forces of life-less nature against life. Death means that the life-less forces are more powerful than the living subject killed by them. And this superiority of power of the lifeless over life may be found in relation to plants and animals which are not free. It can even be found with respect to the human soul temporarily during this life. But in the last analysis, a human soul which is endowed with freedom and thus with a deeper source of self-motion cannot die. For it is impossible that the soul that is free and dominates in his freedom the lifeless forces of matter throughout his life, in the end (in The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 422 death) is dominated by them and surrendered to them. It is impossible that a free agent dies because what would kill him, the material universe, is not only infinitely inferior in dignity to the soul but is also freely dominated by the personal soul. It is impossible that in death the same material forces over which the free soul ruled during its life, and which were subject to it, now turn out to be stronger and become that which determines and dominates the soul and kills it. Time-limits do not permit me to discuss difficulties and further problems of this profound and original argument which I consider to be very valid when interpreted correctly. Similarly to the preceding argument, however, its ultimate defense appears to be derived from the conclusions of the anthropological arguments to be discussed below. f) A sixth ontological argument198 for the immortality of the soul which Plato propounds can be called a „dialectical argument.“199 As the warm emerges from the cold and conversely, so also the dead comes from the living, and the living must come again from the dead. There are three quite distinct reasons by which one can defend this argument and which one could also regard as three entirely distinct arguments: 1) On the one hand, one could hold that all opposites come from each other. This principle was absolutized by Hegel in his dialectical method and is more than questionable because it confuses the mere state from which becoming occurs (which is always some contradictory opposite: the non-being of that which comes to be or the being of that which passes away) with the cause of becoming. The fact that becoming occurs evidently as movement from non-being to being in no way implies that non-being is the cause of being - as this argument from the becoming of all things through their opposites suggests. And Plato himself certainly does not interpret it in this way, rather the Hegelian atheist Feuerbach does so in his Essence of Christianity.200 Here and at the beginning of this chapter we use ontological in a broad sense, referring to arguments that proceed from the fundamental nature of a being; above, we used the term in the narrower sense of the special Anselmian a nd Cartesian argument which proceeds from the divine essence to demonstrate directly His existence. 199 I do not follow here the sequence in which these arguments are developed in Plato’s Phaedo but follow on the one hand a logical dependence of some of these arguments on others, on the other hand present this argument of Plato later because it appears to me weaker than the preceding ones. 200 Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, transl. from the German by George Eliot, introductory essay by Karl Barth, foreword by H. Richard Niebuhr (New York/Hagerstown/San Francisco/London: Harper & Row, 1957, p. 43: Whence then came the world? Out of...its inherent necessity...The nothing, out of which the world came, is nothing without the world...nothing is the cause of the world; - but a nothing which abolishes itself... Cf. also ibid., pp. 101 ff., 297 ff. 198 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 423 2) The argument from the opposites in its more specific Platonic form - and this a second form in which it can be presented - maintains besides immortality also the prenatal existence of the soul. Thus it does precisely not imply the dialectics that the living comes from the dead. Rather it implies the thesis that life cannot come from the dead as such, from that which does not possess life, but can rather only spring from a living soul. In other words, where do the souls of the new-born babes come from? Since they cannot come from matter or from a splitting of parental souls, these souls must have already pre-existed and lived. But this is possible only if the souls of those who died live on and are reincarnated. The great merit of this argument consists in the fact that it clearly shows the difficulty of the question of the origin of the soul and that it insists on the eternal truth that a soul can never be caused by another human soul nor by the forces of the material or biological universe as such. Souls can only come from living persons. The weakness of the argument, however, lies in the fact that it neglects the possibility that souls be created by God from nothing, although Plato recognizes this possibility in his semicreationism in the Timaios and in his metaphysics of the demiurg which Giovanni Reale has recently splendidly reinstated as a central and non-mythological part of the Platonic metaphysics. 201 3) The argument from the opposites could also be conceived as an empirical one that insists on the fact that the human race did not die out yet. It would then point out that if all souls only went in one direction - and would only be dying - the human race would have to die out in one generation. Since it does not die out, however, and since souls can only come from an invisible world, our souls must have had life before and come from the dead and re-enter the body. They must be eternal. This version of the argument makes one additional problematic assumption, if it assumes reincarnation: namely that there cannot be enough souls to fill the need for new souls for many generations. This sixth to the ninth ontological arguments have especially one fundamental weakness; they do not consider even the possibility of the origin of the soul in some See Giovanni Reale, Verso una nuova interpretazione die Platone, 11th ed. (Milano: Jaca Book, 1993); Giovanni Reale, Zu einer neuen Interpretation Platons. Eine Auslegung der Metaphysik der großen Dialoge im Lichte der "ungeschriebenen Lehren", übers. v. L. Hölscher, mit einer Einleitung von H. Krämer, hrsg. und mit einem Nachwort von J. Seifert (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1993). 201 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 424 living Creator and maker of the soul, although Plato himself recognized such a possibility in the Timaios. His argument from the origin of souls from their opposite, the dead, however, presupposes that only the pre-existing souls can provide the pool and reservoir from whence new souls enter life. But this does not take into account an eternal source of creation of new souls. Besides the problematic assertion of pre-existence and repeated rebirth of the soul - for which we have no cogent rational proof and which we reject fro religious reasons - Plato also makes the strange assumption of such a loose connection of body and soul that my soul can be reborn in many distinct bodies, even in animal bodies. This overlooks that there is such a profound unity of this body, of this your face and of this your unique soul, that such wanderings and meanderings of souls appear highly implausible. Above all, however, Plato’s assumption of rebirth of souls is unnecessary to solve his problem from whence souls enter into the world, if there is a personal divine creator of souls. The most significant metaphysical truth, however, that is contained in this Platonic argument is that no innerwordly biological or mental cause can create or explain souls. h) A ninth ontological argument presented by Plato, however, has its root in a metaphysics and theory of knowledge. Plato claims that our obviously existing knowledge of timeless, eternal truths such as of the Pythagorean theorem, and that any knowledge of necessary timeless forms, is inexplicable through the experience of a world of changing things. For in this our world of change our cognition could never encounter such eternal reasons and immutable truths and forms as we know them with certitude. Hence the soul must have existed already before birth and must have contemplated the eternal forms. For otherwise the miracle could not be explained how our intellect - surrounded by beings all of which come to be and pass away - possesses a knowledge of lasting, timeless, eternal truths. Therefore, in order to explain such a knowledge, reason must have existed before birth. And from this it becomes at least plausible that it will also live after death. This argument insists on the truth that the objects of our indubitable knowledge regarding intrinsically and absolutely necessary truths and essential states of affairs is not part of this sensible and empirical world. Moreover, the infallible certainty of our The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 425 knowledge of these necessary truths cannot be explained by their radical dependence on sense perception and by a process of abstraction of universal forms from them. Against this argument I would object, however, from the point of view of phenomenological realism which defends a theory of objective a priori knowledge based on the essence of things themselves: Our experience is the starting point for all knowledge and it contains a dimension of con-tution (as Bonaventure expresses himself). We become acquainted in our experience also with the immutable forms and essences of things which transcend in their purity, perfection, and infinity all essences as they are contained in things. But we get acquainted with them in a such-beingexperience of a peculiar kind. 202 i) A tenth and „negative ontological argument“ for the immortality of the soul was formulated in Plato’s Politeia, X: Each thing is destroyed through the most hostile evil which is as it were the proper evil of this thing and opposed to its proper good. No evil, however, is more hostile to the soul and more directly opposed to its innermost nature than injustice, moral evil as such. Injustice and every kind of immorality (sin) is a far greater evil for man than even death, as Socrates explains in the Apology and in the Gorgias. There he points out that only injustice makes the soul aisxron (ugly and ignominious), not sickness or death. He also explains that the voice of conscience (and the religious voice of the daimonion) warns him only when he is about to evil, never when he is about to risk death. But this terrible and divine voice of conscience would have to warn us against death, if death were as great an evil for the soul as injustice. Therefore, if even this greatest evil that is most opposed to the soul, injustice, which is a worse evil for man than disease and even death, cannot kill the soul, then nothing can kill it. Similarly, Kierkegaard says: Socrates proved the immortality of the soul from the fact that the disease of the soul (the sin) does not consume and destroy it in the manner in which See Dietrich von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy?, 3rd edn, with a New Introductory Essay by Josef Seifert (London: Routledge, 1991), ch. 4. Josef Seifert, Back to Things in Themselves. A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism (London: Routledge, 1987); the same author, "Essence and Existence. A New Foundation of Classical Metaphysics on the Basis of 'Phenomenological Realism,' and a Critical Investigation of 'Existentialist Thomism'," Aletheia I (1977), pp. 17-157; I,2 (1977), pp. 371-459, ch. 1; see also Kateryna Fedoryka, “Certitude and the Contuition: St. Bonaventure’s Contribution to the Theory of Knowledge”, Aletheia VI (Theory of Knowledge and Ethics) (1993-1994), S. 163-197; see as well Kateryna Fedoryka’s Mastersthesis on the Concept of Contuition and Experience in Bonaventura (Internationale Akademie für Philosophie im Fürstentum Liechtenstein, 1993). 202 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 426 the disease of the body consumes the body. So one can prove also the eternal in a person from the fact that despair cannot devour his self, that even precisely this is the torment of the contradiction in despair. If there was nothing eternal in a person, then he could altogether not despair.203 This last argument leads us already to a second and most important group of arguments for immortality, however, namely to the 2. Anthropological, metaphysical and moral arguments for Immortality from the Meaning of Personal Existence Other arguments for immortality could be called „anthropological“ or „personalistic.“ I take them to be the most profound and complete ones. Of the various possible arguments for the immortality, precisely those seem to carry most weight which are not based on extremely abstract ontological considerations which could just as well be exemplified in sub-atomic particles of matter or in points (such as indivisibility) but on the essence of man’s being-a-person and on the nature of those intellectual, free and spiritual acts which constitute the very meaning of his existence and „vocation as man.“ These personalistic arguments for immortality certainly deserve neither the low opinion of Duns Scotus that they are of lesser value than the preceding ones nor their designation by him as a posteriori arguments. Rather, they rest on the specifically personal nature of the human being and proceed from the entirely objective and necessary essence of persons (they are based on an objective a priori founded on necessary essences of things themselves). They are also not less ontological than the preceding arguments. They differ from them rather by finding their exclusive point of departure in that which more fully and more truly is than all other things: namely in the person. In contradistinction to the more abstract ontological arguments, these arguments proceed from personal consciousness and thus reach the higher level of reality, personal being in contradistinction to all non-personal beings. The first premise of each of those arguments clarifies the essence of man-person and shows that neither his knowledge, nor his happiness and „quest for subsistential 203 See Soeren Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, the above quotes from the German edition. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 427 plenitude“ (Basave), nor his thirst for unending blissful existence, nor his moral responsibility, faithfulness or love, nor his relationship to the absolute Being would make sense if man’s existence were wholly contained within time and destroyed in death. Given that here alone, namely when we deal with persons in contradistinction to all other beings, immortality makes real sense, these arguments are no doubt the deepest and most convincing ones. There are three main reasons why these personalist arguments which move exclusively at the level of a metaphysics of personal being are superior to the more general ontological arguments: 1. In the first place, it is hardly meaningful to say that any simple (indivisible) being as such is immortal, for in this case also mathematical points or atoms (in the philosophical sense of undivided and indivisible material units) would have to called immortal. Even if one understood that immortality can only be attributed to real beings (and hence not to points), it would certainly not have any significance to attribute immortality to indivisible material units nor would it be even make sense to claim the „immortality“ (rather than mere indestructibility) of matter. It would not have real significance whether all smallest material units are imperishable; for whether the indivisible material units in the stones on a road will exist eternally or will be annihilated does not have great significance. Moreover, it would make no sense to claim of nonliving things immortality. Even if one recognized life as a condition of immortality, however, and then claimed that the simplest units of life or the life-principles as such are immortal because they are indivisible, this would not really be demonstrable as we have shown above. Nor would such a proof for the immortality of the smallest entelechial principles (plant- of animal souls) carry much weight; whether the simplest living principles in the grass that grows in my backyard or a pig’s soul are immortal or not would hardly deserve the interest of the philosopher. For while one might be inclined to wish that one’s dog live eternally, it does not seem that are profound and essential metaphysical reasons why animals should live eternally. Only free and rational beings capable of contemplation of truth, of justice and injustice, of love and hate, constitute being and realize meaning and value in the higher sense which calls for immortality. Therefore any argument that moves on the level of general ontological categories (such as indivisibility) which could in principle also apply The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 428 to atoms in the philosophical sense of indivisible simplest parts or energy quants of matter, or to other non-personal beings, does not reach the level on which we can speak meaningfully of immortality. Such abstract starting points as those taken from uncomposed being (as we find it also in atoms in the philosophical sense of this term), or from self-motion which we find also in vegetative life, etc., will therefore be essentially inferior to those arguments for immortality which take their starting point from the specific features of personal being. 2. An even more important advantage of the personalist arguments for immortality is this: All of the personalist arguments for immortality lead not merely to the conclusion of some ontological indestructibility of the being of souls and to the continuation of life, but also to the recognition of the conscious immortal life of the soul. And as we have seen, only a conscious immortality is real immortality and deserves the name of immortal or eternal life. Furthermore, when we speak here of life, we do not mean life in general, as in the above argument from the impossibility of dead souls, and not even only of some level of animal consiousness but we mean specifically personal, spiritual life which is both found in the starting point and in the conclusion of these personalist arguments for immortality. This clear reference to the specifically rational and personal level of life touches an extremely important general foundational ground of these arguments: We have to realize that the rhythm of life which we have discussed in the first part of this chapter and which moves living beings upward on a curve of vitality to a climax and then downward to a weakening and finds its natural end in death, is only one side of human life which ties man to the rest of organic living beings and to animals. But there is also an entirely different rhythm of life which characterizes neither plants nor animals but only man as a spiritual person and which we shall come upon as the foundation of all the personalist arguments for the immortality of the human soul. 204 3. The most important one of all the big advantages of the following personalist arguments for immortality, however, is a further fact: Some of these arguments lead to the recognition of a positive content and high value of the life after the death, which is D. v. Hildebrand, "Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele", in: the same author., Die Menschheit am Scheideweg (1955); and in: Dietrich von Hildebrand, Idolkult und Gotteskult. Gesammelte Werke Band VII. Regensburg: Josef Habbel. 1974. 204 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 429 even linked to the ultimate meaning of the world’s very existence. The purely ontological arguments for the immortality of the soul completely neglect this dimension of the value of personal immortal life. But without this dimension of a triumpf of the good and happiness immortality would be meaningless or would even be the cause of despair, as we have seen above with Kierkegaard. The personalist arguments then, at least those which are based on positive features and values of persons, have the following formal logical structure (wherein the variable X refers always to a fundamentally personal reality or act): 1. X (the quest for knowledge, moral goodness, etc.) possesses ultimate metaphysical meaning and is not absurd only if the human soul is immortal and attains a conscious (and blissful) immortal life:205 only in an immortal existence the meaning of rational personal existence can be fulfilled. 2. X possesses ultimate metaphysical meaning and is not absurd. (This presupposes ultimately the dominion of meaning and of the good, and therefore ultimately the existence of God, a truth expressed beautifully in the words of Stefan Trofimovich in Dostoyevski’s The Possessed: „If God exists, I am immortal“). 3. (Conclusion) Therefore the human soul is immortal and is destined for a conscious (and blissful) immortal life. If the truth of the two premises of these arguments can be clarified and firmly established, these arguments are absolutely sound and cogent because their logical form is undoubtedly valid. Therefore their soundness depends on the truth of their premises. Personalistic arguments have been presented in many different forms: a) A first type of personalist argument proceeds from cognition and plays a central role in Plato’s Phaedo and in other dialogues. Let us discuss this argument first in its strictly Platonic form and then in a broader sense: between the human soul and the eternal ideas there exists an akinness and ordination such that the soul finds its nourishment of the mind only in the food for understanding, in the contemplation of the intelligibility of being and of truth, towards which the intellect is ordained by its very nature. Moreover, the true mental nourishment of the soul lies only in the knowledge and contemplation of eternal truths, that is in the cognition of the eternally and timelessly valid and intelligible natures and truths. In virtue of this metaphysical affinity which 205 This applies only to some arguments. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 430 orders the person towards the eternal contemplation of truth, the person has the true home of his intellect only in the contemplation of eternal truth and therefore must be immortal in order for the deepest quest and nourishment of his mind to find fulfillment. Moreover, this metaphysical ordination of the person to know involves also an ever growing striving for knowledge. In other words, the thirst for knowledge is directed to the whole of truth and thus can never be fulfilled in time. This is so not only because the mind will at no point in finite time know all he desires to know but man’s mind aims at a spiritual wedding with the being and truth he knows; it aims at a cognitive union with the truth which is directed towards a lasting possession of knowledge. This contemplative theme of knowledge even more than its notional theme demand lasting mental union with the known truth and being. For these two reasons - the incompleteness of all knowledge acquired in time, and the aiming at a lasting possession of eternal truth - the desire to know necessarily entails the desire for immortality. For only in an immortal life the quest for knowledge can be fulfilled. The philosopher therefore, according to the beginning section of Plato’s Phaedo, stands before the following alternative: either his life lacks ultimate fulfillment and meaning, in fact, either his life is afflicted with an absurd contradiction of meaning - or there is an eternal life of cognition in which the goal of all cognitive quest is accomplished. For this fulfilment of the quest for knowledge to become real, man must be immortal. Thus in deeming it meaningful to pursue the investigation of truth, man presupposes deep down that he is immortal. And given the meaning of the quest for truth, man must indeed actually be immortal. Thus far the Platonic argument. I would extend this argument so as to encompass all knowledge, not only the knowledge of „eternal truth“ in the sense of the timeless and immutably necessary essential forms and states of affairs. For not only the truth about immutable timeless facts, that is the truth about timeless objects, but also the truth about contingent and changing facts, for example historical truth, is - as truth - eternal. Any truth about the past is timeless. Thus the quest for any truth involves the aiming at something eternal. In fact, I would insist that in a certain way the knowledge of individual real being, even when this real entity is not at the same time necessary (as in the case of God who The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 431 is both real and necessary) but contingent in its existence, ranks higher than the knowledge of abstract, static, and life-less forms. Also the knowledge of other persons and particularly of their free acts (which are therefore - at least in the case of free choice - not simply necessary but in another sense ‘contingent’ on the free agent’s decision) does not rank lower than the knowledge of universal necessities. All knowledge of truth and all quest for knowledge aims then at a lasting possession and completeness of knowledge and contemplation of the truth which can only be fulfilled in an immortal life. Now it remains to clarify what this „aiming at“ means. The frustration of the goals which flow from the essence and dignity of persons, of knowledge, of the moral order, etc. would call into question the whole world-order; their remaining eternally unfulfilled would constitute a metaphysical objection to the value of the world as a whole. Atheists see this when they raise the problem of pain and the problem of evil. A charge against the Creator could be derived from a violation of the high personal order of values on which the personalistic arguments for immortality are founded. Therefore, only on this level cogent demonstrations for immortality are possible. This is evident as soon as one recognizes the link between the issues here discussed and the whole order or absurd state of being as such. It is not mere factual or relatively trivial desires (such as the spider’s ‘desire’ to catch and devour its victim) let alone evil inclinations (such as man’s prideful ambitions or sadist tendencies) with which we are dealing here, not even only with high goods the destruction of which constitutes human tragedies as they happen frequently and - if God’s existence is accepted - are obviously permitted by God. Rather, the meaning which is the ground of these personalistic arguments for immortality is far deeper still. If there is no afterlife at all, the ultimate order, good, and meaning of being as such are called into question and the foundations of the spiritual world are shaken. So much on the first premise of this argument. But also the second premise proves true here. There is an ultimate meaning in our quest for truth. And it is not only the existence of God which proves this. Rather, the inner value of the quest for truth proves its own meaning and proves immortality. For besides the first premise, namely that the fulfilment of meaning of man’s cognitive life demands immortality, also the second premise can be brought to evidence: namely that no ultimate absurd contradictions to the ontological meaning of things can exist. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 432 In the case of knowledge of truth, and particularly of philosophy, one could show that the inner rhythm of each true proposition, that, moreover, the quest for completeness and wholeness of knowledge, as Plato shows magnificently in the Phaedo (61d ff.), is inseparable from a yearning for contemplation and for an everlasting possession of truth, i.e., a contemplation which is in principle unattainable in this earthly life. Thus the philosopher is faced with only two possibilities: either the deepest fulfillment of his philosophic life, which, however, shows itself to be the most meaningful life, is unattainable altogether; or there is an immortal life after death in which alone the philosophical eros can be fulfilled. Now it is decisive to see that the foundation of the second premise of this argument (that the meaning of personal existence must be fulfilled) is much stronger than the principle Duns Scotus discusses: that no natural desire of any species can remain unfulfilled in all members of this species. This Aristotelian principle (and the similar one that „nature never acts in vain“), as long as it prescinds from high-ranking metaphysical values, is not well grounded and even less evident. Why should there not be some species of plants or animals whose natural inclinations are never fulfilled because they only serve as food for some other breed of animals? In its abstractness, this principle cannot convince us. In addition, we do not want to know only whether some members of the species man are immortal but whether each and every human being is. When we are dealing with the high value of personal being, we encounter an incomparably higher and better founded principle of the claim that the essential ordination of the person to immortal life must be fulfilled than the rather vague principle formulated by Aristotle. b) A similar argument is based by Augustine on the striving for happiness: 206 Each person desires happiness. A happy person, however, will never agree freely and voluntarily that he be deprived of the happiness he experiences. But if his happiness is taken away from him against his will, then he is certainly unhappy for this very reason: 206 Augustine, De Trinitate, XIII, (Migne, P.L., XLII, 1022): And if life quits him by his dying, how can a blessed life remain in him? And when it quits him, without doubt it either quits him unwillingly, or willingly or neither. If unwillingly, how is the life blessed wh ich is so within his will as not to be within his power? And whereas no one is blessed who wills something that he does not have, how much less is he blessed who is quitted against his will, not by honour, not by possessions, not by any other thing, but by the blessed life itself, since he will have no life at all...But neither is that a blessed life which is such as to be unworthy of his love whom it makes blessed? Cf. also the comments of Duns Scotus in Allan Wolter (transl., ed.), Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings (Indianapolis/New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), pp. 143-44, 165 ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 433 for happiness contains as an element that what I want to happen to me happens to me and not what I abhor or dislike. Therefore happiness demands immortality, as also Friedrich Nietzsche clearly recognized when he wrote: „Woe speaks ‘pass away’; all delight, however, wants eternity, wants deep, deep eternity.“ And again, since the desire for happiness is deeply inscribed in human nature, and is linked to the ultimate essence of man, this desire is not some meaningless drive but an expression of the ontological essence and truth of the person. Therefore it prophesizes in an ontologically wellfounded way that man indeed will be immortal. c) Gabriel Marcel develops a further personalist argument of special depth which proceeds from the nature of love. Love intends the good and happiness of the beloved person, and thus it realizes the same truth about happiness and immortality which Augustine states with respect to our own person, for the other person, for the beloved thou. At the same time love desires union, a union which can only be fulfilled in a community and communion of persons who love each other; for there is no true union among persons except through love. And this union and communion intended by love both as source of my own and of the other person’s happiness is necessarily intended as an unending community that can only be fulfilled in an eternal community. Thus Marcel can say:207 „To love someone is to tell him: thou wilt not die.“ 208 If however love aims at union and at an indestructible faithful community, at the happiness the Thou and is fulfilled therefore only, if there is immortality, 209 then the question poses itself, whether what is noblest and most sacred in human life, love and faithfulness, lies and can promise by its very essence something which does not exist in reality. According to Marcel, to accept the materialistic identification of the beloved person who dies with the corpse would be a treason of the beloved person. 210 Therefore hope for immortality and even a certain victorious affirmation of immortality is built into the essential ontological structure of love itself. The prophetic voice of love, its internal truth does not admit believing the treason to accept as illusion what the ontological mystery of being and of love proclaims: „thou wilt not die“. If the existence of God as ultimate warrant of the Cf. on Gabriel Marcel’s philosophy as such and especially on his philosophy of the homo viator and of hope Roger Troisfontaines, S.J., De l'Existence à l'Etre. La Philosophie de Gabriel Marcel (Paris, Namur 1953). 208. Quote taken from Roger Troisfontaines, S.J., De l'Existence à l'Etre. La Philosophie de Gabriel Marcel (Paris, Namur 1953), p. 141. He also says: "Le mystère de la mort n'est pas séparable du mystère de l'amour". 209 "L'amour exige une survie réelle d'autrui; il la découvre dans l'acte de transcendence". 210 "accepter l'identification matérialiste ce serait trahir". Troisfontaines, ibid., 144. 207 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 434 truth of the voice of being and of all true goods is recognized, this argument wins cogency. Otherwise it is limited to a well-founded hope by virtue of the prophetic voice of love and meaning but such a hope - in an atheistic universe - would lack its ultimate foundation and justification. For only if an infinite good exists and is endowed with the power to rule the universe, it can be asserted apodictically that the deepest metaphysical good cannot promise illusions or lie. It is important here to understand the difference between countless unfulfilled desires and dashed hopes - in spite of which the world as whole can be meaningful - and those metaphysical requirements of meaning without fulfilment of which the world as whole would be fraught with absurdity. And therefore in love immortality is asserted not as an arbitrary whim or wish but as an outgrowth of the inner truth and nature of love. We are reminded here of the beautiful text of Tristan’s words and of the even more beautiful music in the second act of Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde: „Aye, our love! Tristan’s love? Thine and mine, Isolde’s love? How could death alloy it, weaken or destroy it? Came he to me, this mighty Death, threatening to end forever my breath which I would gladly for love relinquish if e’en his stroke descended, would Love itself - then be ended? Died I for that - which I fain would die for, how could that love with me be ended? The Pow’r immortal within me perish? If love can never die in Tristan, how then can Tristan die in loving?“ Also in fidelity and love, as Gabriel Marcel especially argued, we find a desire for, and reality of, communion among persons which would be rendered meaningless altogether if death were annihilation. Any attitude towards the deceased person which does not take him seriously as living and being (nourishing, e.g. ,only sentimental memories of the deceased, etc.) constitutes a betrayal of what is most precious and valuable in human existence, a betrayal of faithfulness. Thus the ontological foundation of faithfulness is given, its meaning is fulfilled, only if man is immortal. In Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (Act II) and in many other works of art and philosophy this essential link between love and immortality is unfolded. In an article (1978) I attempted to show, following Plato and Kant on some points, that moral responsibility, reward and punishment, conscience, moral goodness itself, do contain an equally essential directedness of human personal spiritual existence towards an after-life and, indeed, towards immortality. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 435 d) Anselm of Canterbury (Aosta)211 developed a similar argument as Gabriel Marcel but grounded it entirely on the love of God. It is the supreme duty of the person, he says, to love the infinite good above everything else. Any rational being is able to know that there exist goods and that there is a hierarchy of them, and that the highest good, God, ought to be loved most. Any being who is capable to love God freely, however, has to be immortal. For the fulfilment of this supreme call and duty to love God above everything else deserves praise and reward and does not merit punishment. The only reward, however, which is for the soul who loves God a reward at all rather than being the worst of punishments, is the eternal vision and the loving union with the supreme Good, with God. And this is only possible if the person exists and does not cease to do so. God’s infinite goodness and also his justice demand therefore that he does not destroy the rational person who loves Him; and it forbids that he responds to his or her love which is the supreme moral virtue by no other reward besides that of an indestructible union with Him. For any other reward would be painful for the person who loves God. Even if God offered an immortal existence filled with countless pleasures and sources of joy and even human love, such a world without vision and union with Himself would be a punishment and a most painful separation from his beloved for the person who loves God. Moreover, as long as the person loves God, he could never cease to exist and to love freely and also his destruction would be a horrible punishment because it would separate the soul from the object of his love. Moreover, it takes eternity to live and fulfil the desire of love for perfect union. Therefore the love of God requires immortality and contradicts death profoundly, and a person who loves God cannot be mortal but must be immortal if the good and just are preserved. Are then only good persons immortal who love God?, Anselm asks. And he answers: No, for even if the person perverts his highest vocation and duty and rejects freely the supreme Good, he both retains the same human nature which involves immortality and he deserves eternal punishment. It would therefore be unjust to annihilate the evil person - for also the infinitely many possible persons who will never exist and who never sinned are in that state of non-being. Therefore non-being as such 211 Anselm of Canterbury (of Aosta, which refers to the birthplace of Anselm in Northern Italy), Monologion, 68 ff. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 436 cannot be a proper punishment for the worst guilt which man incurs when he rejects God. The argument for immortality from the love of God is also formulated by Stefan Trofimowitsch in Dostoyevski’s The Possessed: I must be immortal already for the reason that God will do no injustice and that once in my heart fires of love to him erupted, he will not extinguish them. And what is more precious than love? Love ranks higher than even existence, love is the crown of existence, and how is it possible then that existence is not subjected love? ... If God exists, I am immortal! e) Another argument is the following one: Justice, which can never be realized on earth perfectly, demands for its fulfilment reward or punishment after this life, and - in view of the depth of moral goodness and evil - demands even not only temporal but eternal consequences. But justice and morality cannot be illusions. The majesty and value of the moral order, and especially the voice of conscience, as Cardinal Newman adds, prove the absolute reality of morality, whose ontological condition must exist and whose meaning must be fulfilled. Kant speaks in this context of a „postulate of pure practical reason“ which demands immortality and God as necessarily called for by morality. But such a postulate of pure practical reason has a merely subjective character. If Kant would have acknowledged the objective nature of the justice in itself and our ability to understand it, he would not have asserted a mere subjective demand of immortality but would have seen the ultimate metaphysical value of this argument. For then this call for immortality as the condition of the fulfilment of morality is not only a subjective postulate but a metaphysical requirement for the completion and fulfilment of meaning. This argument rests on the evidence that justice of reward and punishment forbids that a Hitler and a Saint equally are reduced to corpses and will never have to be drawn to the responsibility for their actions which they possess. If both die like rats or mice, the metaphysical order of justice remains eternally unfulfilled. For justice cannot be fulfilled without immortality. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 437 The second premise of this argument asserts that indeed justice must be fulfilled. Cardinal Newman gave to this argument a special turn by relating it entirely to the voice of conscience. 212 Thus he writes: If there is any truth brought home to us by conscience, it is this, that we are personally responsible for what we do, that we have no means of shifting our responsibility, and that dereliction of duty involves punishment... 213 Now Newman relates the evidence that justice must be fulfilled - the second premise of this argument - to the evidence that God exists who guarantees that metaphysical requirements of meaning such as the fulfilment of justice are in fact fulfilled. And he attributes to conscience not only the teaching of the evidence that there is punishment for evil but also the evidence that God is and what His attributes are. Thus he tries to establish both premises of the personalist arguments at one through the voice of moral conscience: Conscience, too, teaches us, not only that God is, but what He is; it provides for the mind a real image of Him ...; it gives us a rule of right and wrong, as being His rule, and a code of moral duties... Now Conscience suggests to us many things about that Master, whom by means of it we perceive, but its most prominent teaching, and its cardinal and distinguishing truth, is that he is our judge. In consequence, the special Attribute under which it brings Him before us, to which it subordinates all other Attributes, is that of Justice - retributive justice. 214 But since there is an evident metaphysical necessity that justice must be fulfilled, persons are immortal. John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics Inc., 1973), pp. 389 ff., particularly pp. 390, 394, 407. 213 Newman, ibid., p. 394. Cf.also his „The Immortality of the Soul“, cit., p. 17 ff., where on p. 19 Newman uses the expression „to realize our own individual accountableness and immortality“ as if in conscience both were given at once. 214 Newman, ibid., pp. 390-391. 212 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 438 f) A sixth personalist argument for immortality based on morality is this one: The moral life aims at a progress in moral perfection and even at the complete adequation of the will to the moral law and to all morally relevant values and goods. Such a complete conformity of the will with the good is holiness, as Kant notes. No finite earthly progress in our moral life can however fulfil this essential tendency of the moral life to a transcendent perfection which is constantly threatened by our sins. Moreover, holiness as the complete conformity of our free will to all goods and as the perfect love of the Good is both essentially called for by the moral sphere which contradicts any satisfaction with our imperfect moral state and is never fulfilled in this life but can be fulfilled only in eternal life. Kant speaks in this context of the demand for an endless moral progress which takes an immortal life. And once holiness exists and is realized, it calls most of all through its value for immortality. Therefore the metaphysically grounded meaning of the moral life demands immortality. If thus meaning triumphs in reality (if God exists), the person is immortal. The arguments for immortality based on the meaning of personal existence have the huge advantage over all the purely ontological ones that they conclude to a conscious and - if the moral conditions man is called to realize are fulfilled - to a blissful content of the moral life. Yet precisely at this point also their limits reveal themselves. III. Immortality and Faith Thus at the end of a brief discussion of the great number of impressive ontological and even far more impressive personalist philosophical arguments for immortality we return to the question of faith in immortality and in resurrection inasmuch as the message of redemption and of Easter goes beyond everything philosophy can say about immortality. The structure of the philosophical proofs of immortality is entirely different in at least five regards from the belief of the Christian in eternal life. This does not preclude that the entire Catholic Church, Luther and Calvin as well as other reformers were convinced of the validity of philosophical arguments for immortality although R. Bultmann and many „whole-death-theologians“ such as P. Althaus contested and rejected these philosophical arguments. What then are the differences of the Christian faith in eternal life and philosophical arguments: The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 439 1. The Christian does not believe by virtue of abstract arguments, but he founds his belief in eternal life on a miraculous historic event, which the first Christians saw and witnessed and which those of us who did not see it, believe on the strength of its inner truth and of their testimony: on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, without whose reality, as the Apostle Paul writes, our belief would be empty. 2. The Christian belief in the eternal life does not rest on rational proofs, but on an act of free and at the same time given personal belief in the person of Christ or in the word of God spoken through prophets. Faith comes from hearing, is based on an act of loving trust and is confirmed by miracles which corroborate the inner testimony for the truth given by Christ: „If you do not believe me because of my words, believe at least in view of my deeds.“ 3. The act of faith is directed not only at immortality but at eternal salvation which is a freely given grace of God and thus necessarily exceeds all purely philosophical hope and cannot be proven by philosophy. Salvation and eternal life are a free gift of God, and thus are philosophically indemonstrable. Moreover, salvation is the fruit of Christ’s passion and death on the cross and of the love of God, who has loved the world so much that he sent his only-begotten Son into the world and delivered him to the death on the cross, in order to save the world. It is evident that such a faith in salvation cannot be replaced by philosophical arguments and that its object - salvation - as it is a free gift of God, exceeds everything philosophy can demonstrate. We need to add that in the light of the faith in salvation we note the following great limit of philosophical proofs for immortality: while they can argue for what follows from the nature of love or justice, they cannot exclude the possibility that in consequence of sin mankind has lost access to those goods for which he is made by nature. Thus philosophy cannot exclude that only through a free redemptive act those goods and that immortal positive life at which the deepest philosophical arguments aim cannot be attained by man in his present state. And it is this overwhelming message which the pascal mystery reveals to us. 4. The Christian believes, that his faith and belief in eternal life is not simply produced by his freedom or merits but that this faith itself which is necessary for salvation is a gift of divine grace (even if the Catholic faith insists on the necessity of our free co-operation with divine grace). Only the mercy of God, who has to draw and The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 440 to pull us, so that we arrive at the act of faith, is the origin of this faith, not rational demonstrations. 5. The Christian believes, even he accepts that there is a living soul separated from the body after death (the anima separata), not only in the bare immortality of the soul but also in the bodily resurrection. This does not exclude the immortality of the separated soul, even though in the opinion of P. Althaus and of the Ganztodtheologie in the Protestant and Catholic communities of the 20ieth century man do not agree with the classical doctrine that the soul lives prior to bodily resurrection, but play off belief in the resurrection against immortality. They mean that the Christian must assume the total destruction of the person in the death and his completely new creation upon resurrection. Yet such a new creation of the same identical person (and his being judged for the sins of a previously destroyed person) is in itself impossible and would render any immortality which requires the full identity of the earthly and resurrected person impossible. The belief in the bodily resurrection is thus no contrast, but rather the fulfilment of the philosophical arguments of immortality. These can be viewed as a-“propaedeutic to salvation,“ as the Mexican philosopher Agustin Basave interprets them in his Metaphysics of Death.215 Let me conclude this chapter fittingly with a quotation of Newman from his sermon on „The Immortality of the Soul.“ Towards the end of this sermon Newman says something which both refers to the philosophical and to the religious dimensions of the question of immortality, speaking of the manifold difficulties and obstacles on the way towards man’s realizing theoretically that he has soul and even more to his realizing in his actions what this means. May these words of Newman placed at the end of this chapter be understood as a confession both of the limits of our knowledge and of the lofty ideal towards which we should strive in our actions in the face of the truth that we are immortal: „No one entirely realizes what is meant by his having a soul; even the best of men is but in a state of progress towards the simple truth.“ 216 But if this can be firmly established, and if it can be shown that an existential and metaphysical contradiction to the whole meaning of human existence would lie in death A. Basave, metafísica de la muerte (1973). John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Sermon 2, „The Immortality of the Soul“ (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 14-21, p. 20. 215 216 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 441 as absolute destruction of the human person or in death as unending unconscious „sleep,“ then only one of two alternatives remains: either human existence as such, nay, the world as a whole is meaningful - and then man(‘s soul) must be immortal - or man and being itself are flawed by metaphysical contradiction which touches the very core of being man, and therefore also of being itself. Finally, the indicated arguments for immortality which are based on the essential meaning of human life require a second fundamental premise: namely, that our existence is indeed meaningful and that being cannot be absurd, as metaphysical pessimists and nihilists thought. But how can this be shown? Yet, if it cannot be firmly established, none of the preceding points can lead up to a „proof“ of immortality, nor even amount to an intimation justifying belief in it. In order to establish this crucially important premiss, with Gabriel and others one could point to the trustworthiness of human existence and of being itself. One could meditate, for example, on the prophetic character of human love and of the „word“ it speaks to the beloved: „thou shalt not die“ (as Marcel formulates it). This „prophetic“ or ontologically true voice of human being and of the most authentic expressions of human existence could be described as a character which resists any attempt at interpreting human being and human love as „a bunch of lies“ and as intrinsically deceiving. It is, as it were, incompatible with the nature of that which is most meaningful and beautiful to be simultaneiously that which completely misleads man. To put these thoughts into a more traditional language, one could formulate it thus: there is an inner truth of love and of many other dimensions of man’s spiritual life which forbid us to interpret these classical and noble manifestations of man’s nature, these acts which fulfill an objective due-relation and are adequate to the reality and dignity of the person, as giving rise to mere wishful thinking. Rather, the promise and „prophecy“ which originate in these acts give rise to an ontologically grounded hope which contains within itself the promise that it will not deceive us. Of course, this presupposes that the meaning of these rational, volitional and affective dimensions of human nature and of his spiritual acts in which he conforms to being in its value, do not exhaust their meaning in the temporality which seems inseparable from their present givenness. However, why would these acts, such as faithfulness and love or the philosophical search for knowledge, not make perfect The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 442 sense as merely temporal historical phenomena? Well, simply because human life is not solely subject to the life-rhythm of the biological-psychological sphere, the rhythm of a constant „stirb und werde“ („ Die and become“ - Goethe). Rather, man’s rational and spiritual acts reveal a completely different, specifically personal liferhythm which moves perennially to something everlasting, immutable, eternal, transtemporal in its significance and meaning, and yet not to a sphere of timeless abstractions but towards a participation in a Being which simply is and fills all duration with its presence and splendor. If this eternity-aspiration of human existence and the inner truth of being can be demonstrated, then the proofs for immortality, and for a good and meaningful immortality, are well-established with regard to both their fundamental premisses. But precisely here again arises the question as to the foundation and wellgroundedness of this claim to „ontological truth.“ What if the world were absurd and the play-thing of an arbitrary will which takes pleasure in tearing down the meaning it has been building up? Why could there not be an evil world-will à la Schopenhauer? In answer to this question, there does not seem to be any way around the challenge to address the central metaphysical issue about being in the absolute sense, about the origin and end of all things. For only if it can be proven that Being and Power and Reality and Goodness are necessarily one and that this one supreme and powerful Good is the source of everything, only then can it be shown demonstrably that the inner truth of the voice of being and of the deepest human experiences „speaks true,“ is really truthful, because it proceeds from the truthful one. And certainly, if a metaphysical demonstration of God’s existence can be achieved, then immortality will not only be established as object of an existential belief which is inseparable from human existence, or as a deeply meaningful assumption, but as a strictly necessary truth which follows, on the one hand, from the essential relatedness of man’s spiritual being to immortal-eternal life, and, on the other hand, from the absolute impossibility that the infinite Good which governs the world would originate absurd metaphysical contradictions and lies. But here we enter the territory of a new work and hence must conclude, leaving the further unfolding of these immense issues to some future endeavor of the reader of writer of the present book. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 443 Conclusion: The complete treatment of the body-soul problem within contemporary philosophic discussion was required to enter into the question complex in which, in a certain sense, the body-soul problem culminates: the question about the after-life and immortality and, bound up therewith, the problems of the origin and goal of the individual human person. TABLE OF CONTENTS On this book I. The Body-Soul Problem Against the Background of General Epistemological and Metaphysical Problems II. Essential Difference or Identity of Physical and Psychical Evidences A.First Determination of the Essential Distinction Between Physical and Psychic Evidence Data (Material and Psychic [seelischen] Realities) B. First Group of Objections: Positions Which Deny Any Evidence (Givenness) of an Essential Distinction Between Physical and the Psychic Being 1. Crass Materialism and "Metaphysical Behaviorism" 2. Denial of the Evidentiality of Physic Realities (Phenomenalism) The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 444 C. Second Group of Objections: A Slightly More Radical Attack on Some Essential Distinctions Between Physical (Material) and Psychic (Mental) Realities 1. Denial of Some of the Essential Features of Corporeal (material Evidences (........) a) Quasi-Phenomenological Objections Against the Spatial Extensity of Physical (Material) Realities b) Transcendental Idealistic and Transcendental Phenomenological Objections Against the Spatial Extensity of Matter c) Objections Against the Extendedness of Matter Based Upon Philosophy of Nature and Modern Physics 2. Objections Against the Thesis That No Essential Feature of Matter Is Found in Psychical Realities a) Non-Phenomenological and Anti-Phenomenological Objections b) Phenomenological, "Common-Sense Philosophy" and Related Objections 3. Objections Against Some Positive Features of Psychic Being a) Phenomenological (Psychological) Objections on the Basis of the Unconscious b) Objections Against Any Evidentiality of the Self c) Objections Against the Evidentiality of Psychic Being and Its Bearer as Actually "In Itself" 4. Objections Against the Position That Material Realities Lack the Positive Features of Psychic Realities The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 445 D. Third Group of Objections Based on the Claim to an Ultimate Identity Underlying the Essential Distinction Between Psychic (Mental) and Physical Phenomena Admitted in Naive Experience 1. The "Vulgar Materialism" of the Australian Physicalists and the Cybernetic Materialists 2. Refined Forms of (Australian) Physicalism and the Mind-Brain Identity Theory. E. Fourth Group of Objections: Epiphenomenalism and Related Positions (Dialectical Materialism) III. Body and Soul: Identity of Real and Substantial Difference A.Essence and Evidentiality of Substance As Such B. Proofs for, and Objections Against the Spiritual Substantiality of the Soul and its Distinction from the Body 1. A Negative Proof for the Fact That the Conscious Life of Man Cannot Inhere in a Material Substance 2. Proofs for a Mental, Simple Substance (Soul) as Subject of Psychic (Spiritual, Non-Substantial) Actualities a) Proof Which Rests upon the Universal Essence of Conscious Human Life b) Proof which Proceeds from the Specific Character of Certain Conscious Mental Acts The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 446 3. Proofs for the Spiritual Substantiality of the Soul Which Rest Upon Direct Evidentiality and Analysis of the Soul as Spiritual Substance a) A Proof for the Spiritual Soul from the Direct Self-Evidentiality of the Substantial Subject of Consciousness b) Proofs for the Substantial Distinctness of the Soul from the Body on the Basis of the Subject of Consciousness Possessing the Features of Substance in a Degree of Perfection Principle Higher that Is Possible or Thinkable Within a Material Substance C. Monistic and "Dualistic" Objections Against the (Spiritual) Substantiality of the Soul and/or Against the Substantiality of the Body. Further Major Positions on the Problem of the Substantiality of the Soul in Contemporary Philosophy 1. Denial of the Substantiality of the Soul on the Basis of a Denial of Substance As Such (Dualistic and Monistic Variations of This Position) 2. Rejection of the Substantiality of the Soul by Transcendental Philosophy and by Forms Inspired by Transcendental Philosophy 3. Denial of the Applicability of the Concept of Substance to the Soul (Person) 4. Allegedly Absurd Consequences of the Proofs for the Soul as Substance 5. Various Forms of Monism as "Single-Substance Doctrines" The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 447 6. Rejection of the Substantiality of the Body and Interpretation of the Soul as (Substantial) "Form" of the Body 7. Objections Against the Dualistic Two-Substance Doctrine on the Basis of the Insolubility of the Narrower Sense of the Body-Soul Problem Under Dualistic Presuppositions IV. The Body-Soul Problem in the Narrower Sense: The Unity of Man and the Relation Between Body and Consciousness (Soul) A.Relations and Distinctions Between Philosophical Positions on the Essence of Body and Soul and Relation B. Equivocation of the Expression "Dualism" As a Major Obstacle to Scientific Progress in the Philosophical Discussion of Body and Soul C. Attempts to Reduce Unity to Identity D.The Aporetic Aspects of the Body-Soul Relation E. Rationally Given and Not-Given, Directly Given and Indirectly Inferred Body-Soul Relations F. The Multi-Levelled Character and the Three Basic Directions of BodySoul Relations 1. Dynamic Relations of Body [Leib (Körper)] to Soul The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 448 2. "Static" Relations Between Body and Soul 3. Dynamic Relations of Soul to Body G.Application of the Results of the Systematic Analysis of Body-Soul Relations to the Critical Discussion of Contemporary Views V. The Unity of Man and the Distinctness of Body and Soul in the Anima Forma Corporis Doctrine (in Its Traditional Form and in its New Formulation in Contemporary Philosophy) Conclusion Bibliography Index of Authors Index of Subject Matter by 1 Josef Seifert, 1 Internationale Akademie für Philosophie im Fürstentum Liechtenstein 1 Partly translated from the German original (Das Leib-Seele-Problem in der gegenwärtigen philosophischen Diskussion. Eine kritische Analyse. (The Body/Mind Problem in Contemporary Philosophical Discussion. A Critical The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 449 Analysis) (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1979) by Professor Robert Wood, 1 entirely reworked, revised and augmented with respect to the original German text by the author 1 PREFAAHÍ VA LA DIRECCIÓN DE GABRIELA ECHEVERRÍA, EDITORA GENERAL DE LAS EDICIONES DE LA UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA: [email protected] FEHLER! TEXTMARKE NICHT DEFINIERT. INTRODUCTION 7 CHAPTER ONE 9 THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND METAPHYSICAL BACKGROUND OF THE BODY-SOUL PROBLEM CHAPTER TWO 9 13 THE MENTAL AND THE PHYSICAL: ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE OR IDENTITY 1. 13 First Delineation of the Essential Difference Between Physical and Psychic Data (Material and Psychic Realities) 13 1.1. Essentially Distinct Properties of the Physical in the Human Body and the Mental 1.2. 13 The Essential Difference between Physical (Brain-) and Mental Operations and Actions 22 2. Philosophical Interpretation of the difference between genetic and brain transmission of information and human information transmission as mental event: code as information, man as determined and completely contained 28 A. What is information in the brain and in the interpersonal relationships of human minds (persons)? a) information in exclusively personal sense 29 29 b) Objective information, not as act but as objective thought, judgment, proposition 30 c) Information as language in the sense of physical formations but at the same time as expressing meaning: D) Genetic technology: 31 39 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 450 E) Gene Therapy 40 2) The Special Character and Causal Effectiveness of the ‚Language of the Genome‘ Within the Living Organism 41 3) The Genome and the Contingent Nature (Essence) of Organisms – The Foundations of the Fundamental Value of the Human Genome and of an Ethics of Interfering with It 43 4) Genomes can only Refer to ‚Contingent‘ Essences Which are Not Necessary in Their Essential Structure 44 5) Human Genome and Personal Dignity 46 1.3. Conclusion 50 2. First Group of Objections: Positions Which Deny Any Evidence of an Essential Distinction Between Physical and Psychic Phenomena 51 A. Radical Materialism and „Metaphysical Behaviorism“ 51 B. Denial of the givenness of Physical Realities (Phenomenalism) 60 C. Second Group of Objections: A Less Radical Attack on Some Essential Distinctions Between Physical (Material) and Psychic (Mental) Realities 60 1. Rejection of Some of the Above-Stated Essential Features of Corporeal (Material) Data a) Quasi-Phenomenological Objections Against the Spatial Extendedness of Physical Realities b) 62 Objections Against the Extendedness of Matter Based upon Philosophical Theories of Nature and Modern Physics 2. 61 Transcendental Idealist and Transcendental Phenomenological Objections Against Spatial Extendedness of Matter c) 60 63 Objections Against the Thesis that No Essential Feature of Matter 70 Is Found in Psychic Realities 70 Psychic Phenomena 80 E. Fourth Group of Objections: Epiphenomenalism and Related Positions 94 (Dialectical Materialism) 94 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 451 CHAPTER THREE 99 CRITIQUE OF EPIPHENOMENALISM BY HANS JONAS 99 3.1. The First Argument from the causal Closedness of the Material Universe and Its Critique 102 3.2. The second Argument in Support of the Causal Nullity of Consciousness and the Critique of the Three Riddles It Poses 104 3.2.1. The first ontological riddle: creation of soul from and through nothing 106 3.2.2. The second ontological ‘riddle’ 106 3.2.3. A Threefold Metaphysical Riddle 107 3.2.3.1. Illusion of power – to be explained through impotence? 107 3.2.3.2. Subject-less Illusion? Consciousness itself as Illusion 108 by whom? to whom? 108 3.2.3.3. Consciousness – Illusion without any Meaning or Purpose? 108 3.2.4. The logical riddle: Appearance which appears to itself 109 3.3. Self-contradictory Notion of ‘Nature’ 109 3.4. Reductio ad Absurdum (from Absurd Consequences of Epiphenomenalism) 110 3.4.1. Metaphysical Absurdity of the Illusory Consciousness and of the Being that Produces It 3.4.2. Absurdity through the Theory’s Self-annihilation 110 111 3.5. Critique of epiphenomenalist Materialism on the Basis of the Superfluity of the epiphenomenalist Thesis 3.5.1. The artificial Character of the Problem 112 112 3.5.2. Jonas’ Theory to Explain Causal Effects of Psychic Action as Compatible with a ‘Constant Energy Level’ of the Material Universe CHAPTER FOUR 113 121 BODY AND SOUL: IDENTITY OR REAL AND SUBSTANTIAL DIFFERENCE? 121 A. The Nature and Givenness of Substance in General 122 B. Proofs for, and Objections Against, the Spiritual Substantiality of the Soul 128 Inhering in a Material Substance: 129 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 452 a) Life Proof Based upon the Universal Essence of Conscious Human 134 b) Proofs Based upon the Specific Character of Certain Conscious, Spiritual Acts 135 c) The Structure of the Discussed Arguments and the Irreducibility of the Mentally Simple Subject to Either One of two Kinds of Material-Spatial Simplicity 146 3. Proofs for the Spiritual Substantiality of the Soul Which Rest Upon Direct Evidence and Analysis of the Soul as a Mental Substance a) 148 A Proof for the Spiritual Soul from the Direct Self-Givenness of the Substantial Subject of Consciousness 148 The Direct Givenness of the Substance Underlying Consciousness 148 Knowledge of the Spirituality and Immateriality of the Conscious Subject 150 An Augustinian Epistemological Argument from the Indubitable and Inner Evidence of the Subject of Consciousness with Which no Material Object Can ever be Given to us 151 b) Proofs for the Substantial Distinctness of the Soul From the Body on the Basis of the Fact that the Subject of Consciousness Possesses the Features of Substance in an in-Principle Higher Degree of Perfection Than is Possible or Thinkable Within a Material Substance 154 The higher mode of realization of the single essential features of substance in the subject of consciousness 154 The substantial subject of consciousness possesses the various features of substance in greater mutual unity than matter: 164 Essential features which only the spiritual substance (soul) possesses, and which ground a more perfect mode of being a substance 165 C. Monistic and „Dualistic“ Objections Against the Spiritual Substantiality of the Soul and/or Against the Substantiality of the Body. Further Major Positions on the Problem of the Substantiality of the Soul in Contemporary Philosophy 1. 166 Denial of the Substantiality of the Soul on the Basis of a Denial of Substance as Such (Dualistic and Monistic Conceptions of this Position) 166 2. Rejection of the Substantiality of the Soul by Transcendental Philosophy or by Philosophical Views Inspired by Transcendental Philosophy 167 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 453 3. Denial of the Applicability of the concept of Substance to the Soul (Person) 4. 169 Allegedly Absurd Consequences of the Proofs for the Soul as Substance 170 5. Various Forms of Monism as „Single-Substance Doctrines“ 6. Rejection of the Substantiality of the Body and Interpretation of the Soul as (Substantial) „Form“ of the Body 7. 170 172 Objections Against the Dualistic Two-Substance Doctrine on the Basis of the Insolubility of the Body-Soul Problem (in the Narrower Sense) Under Dualistic Presuppositions V. MODERN BRAIN SCIENCE AND THE REALITY OF THE MIND: 172 174 RESULTS OF MODERN BRAIN RESEARCH AS CONFIRMATION OF PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF A SUBSTANTIAL SOUL 174 A. What is Phenomenology? 175 B. Elements of Phenomenological Realism in Eccles 180 C. Brain-physiological Corroborations of Philosophical Discoveries of the Personal Self 187 1. Empirical Evidences (lacking unity, absence of a clear delineation of the liaison-brain, etc.) for the unexplorability of the conscious Self through natural science: 187 The Irreducibility of Consciousness, of the Simple I (Soul) of Man, and of Personal Uniqueness to Brain Events and to the Object of Natural Science 187 2. Empirical Evidences Against Epiphenomenalism and For the Autonomous Entity, Being and Freedom of the „Mental Self“ 192 3. Argument for the Autonomous Being of the Soul and the Nondetermination of All Conscious Experiences Through Material Processes from Knowledge and from the Essence of Reason (WORLD 3) 197 4. An Argument for the Spirituality of the Subject from the Knowledge of Mathematical Infinity or rather from the Direct Relationship Between WORLD 2 and WORLD 3 (4) 5. An Argument from Attentiveness 199 201 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 454 6. Arguments for the Mental Autonomy of the Self from the Change of Time and Dating Back of Sense Perception Not Explained by Materialism 202 VI. THE BODY-SOUL PROBLEM IN THE NARROWER SENSE: THE UNITY OF MAN AND THE RELATION BETWEEN BODY AND CONSCIOUSNESS (SOUL) 205 A. Relations and Distinctions Between Philosophical Positions on the Essence and the Relation of Body and Soul B. 205 The Equivocation of the Expression „Dualism“ as Major Obstacle to Progress in the Philosophic Discussion of Body and Soul 211 C. Attempts to Reduce All Unity to Identity 215 D. The Aporetic Aspect of the Body-Soul Relation 216 E. Rationally Given and Not Given, Directly Given and Indirectly Inferred Body-Soul Relations F. 218 The Multi-leveled Character and the Three Basic Directions of Body- Soul Relations 222 1. Dynamic Relations from the Lived Body (and/or Material Body) to the Soul 222 2. „Static Relations“ Between Body and Soul 227 3. Dynamic Relations from the Soul to the Body 229 G. Application of the Results of the Systematic Analysis of Body-Soul Relations to the Critical Discussion of Contemporary Views 239 H. The Relationship Body/Mind – Brain/Soul According to the Interactionism defended by Eccles 241 I. Critical Reflections on Eccles’ and Popper’s Philosophical Interpretations of the Body/Mind-Brain/Soul Problem 244 II. THE HUMAN BODY AS A GIFT OF LOVE AND THE GIFT-CHARACTER OF NEW LIFE AS BACKGROUND FOR UNDERSTANDING HUMAN SEXUALITY 254 1. The Beloved Person as a Gift 254 1.1. The beloved person as a gift in himself 254 1.2. The beloved person as a gift for himself 258 how good for you that you are! 258 1.3. The beloved person as a gift for others 259 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 455 how good for me that you are 259 2. Love itself as a Gift 260 2.1. The Gift of Being Affirmed as a Whole Person in Being Loved 261 2.2. The Gift of the Benevolent Intention Contained in Love 262 2.3. Love as a Gift because of the Desire for Union Contained in It 262 2.4. To Love as Gift 263 3. The Unique Gift of Spousal Love 264 3.1. The Gift of Being Loved and of Loving with Spousal Love 264 3.2. The Gift of Spousal Love as Self-Donation of the Person and the Sexual Gift of Man and Woman 265 4. The Gift of Love and the Gift of New Life 267 4.1. The Gift of the Life of a New Child in Itself 267 4.2. The Gift of New Life For the Child 268 4.3. The Gift of the New Child for Those Who Love Him 269 4.4. The Gift of New Life as a Gift of, and From, Spousal Love: 269 As „a Gift from a Gift“ (Donum de Dono) 269 5. The New Human Life as a Gift of God 271 B. Marriage and consent 273 C. Marriage and Spousal Love 274 II. The Reasons for the Immorality of Contraception 277 A. The Value and the Sacredness of the Natural connection between the Spousal Act and Procreation as the First Reason for the Immorality of Artificial Birth control 277 a) Three General Sources of the Obligations that Forbid contraception 283 1. The morally relevant value 283 2. The metaphysical situation and limitation of man 284 3. Freely contracted obligations as a source of moral obligation. 286 B. The Value and the Specific „Sacredness“ of the Connection between Human Actions and Divine Creation of Procreation: The Second Specific Reason for the Immorality of Contraception 288 C. The superabundant Finality between Spousal Love and Procreation 290 III. Responses to Some Objections 291 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 456 A. Why is „Natural“ Regulation of Conception Legitimate? 292 B. Why is the „Active“ Separation of the Marital Act and Procreation Sinfull, Since such a Separation Often Occurs „Naturally? „ 293 C. Why Should the Mere Factual and Biological constitution of Man be Morally Binding on Us? 294 IV. The Regulation of Conception in the Light of the Absolute Primacy of the Moral Sphere. The Sufferings and Problems Arising from Moral Obligations. 295 1. HOMOSEXUALITÄT UND MENSCHENWÜRDIGE SEXUALITÄT: 304 INWIEWEIT SOLL SICH DER MODERNE NICHT-KONFESSIONELLE STAAT NACH EINER INHALTLICHEN PHILOSOPHIE DER SEXUALITÄT RICHTEN? 304 1.1. Die hauptsächlichen Sinnzusammenhänge menschlicher Sexualität und die Unzulässigkeit ihrer Reduktion auf die Achtung vor der Personwürde 306 1.1.1. Sexualität und dauernde Bejahung der Personwürde des Partners als Momente heterosexueller und homosexueller Beziehungen 306 1.1.2. Zweiter Teil des anthropologisch-ethischen Exkurses: 309 Der unitive Sinn des Geschlechtsaktes und seine Verletzung durch homosexuelle Handlungen Sexualität, Ehe und Zweigeschlechtlichkeit 309 309 1.1.3. Dritter Teil des anthropologisch-ethischen Exkurses über menschliche Sexualität: 311 Verbindung zwischen unitivem und prokreativem Sinn menschlicher Sexualität 311 1.2. Die radikale Forderung der Gleichstellung der Homosexualität mit der Ehe und die Verwerfung der Idee eines für die Ethik und - indirekt - auch für den Staat maßgebenden ‘Naturrechts’, das die erörterten Güterbereiche als rechtlich relevant anerkennen dürfte 313 2. GIBT ES EIN UNIVERSALES MENSCHENRECHT AUF FREIE GESTALTUNG DES SEXUALLEBENS UND DESHALB AUF HOMOSEXUELLE The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 457 BEZIEHUNGEN ODER NUR EIN MENSCHENRECHT AUF DIE PRIVATHEIT DER SEXUELLEN SPHÄRE? 315 3. GIBT ES EIN MENSCHENRECHT AUF UNIVERSALE ANERKENNUNG ALLER ZWISCHENMENSCHLICHEN UND FREIEN SEXUALBEZIEHUNGEN UND DESHALB AUF RECHTLICHE GLEICHSTELLUNG DER HOMOSEXUALITÄT MIT DER EHE 316 4. ABSCHAFFUNG JEGLICHER STAATLICHER ‘DISKRIMINIERUNG’ GEGEN HOMOSEXUELLE 317 5. ZUR FORDERUNG NACH ENTPOENALISIERUNG DER HOMOSEXUALITÄT 319 6. DIE BEFREIUNG DER GESELLSCHAFT UND DES STAATES VON ALLEN DIE PERSONWÜRDE VERLETZENDEN GESETZEN UND EINSTELLUNGEN GEGENÜBER HOMOSEXUELLEN 7. SCHLUSSBEMERKUNGEN 319 321 VII. THE UNITY OF MAN AND THE DISTINCTNESS OF BODY AND SOUL IN THE ANIMA-FORMA-CORPORIS DOCTRINE (IN ITS TRADITIONAL FORM AND IN ITS NEW FORMULATION IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY) 324 Appendix (German Text on Definitions of Man) 344 VIII. DEATH AND BRAIN DEATH: 352 A CRITIQUE OF REDEFINITIONS OF MAN'S DEATH IN TERMS OF 'BRAIN DEATH' 352 1. What is 'Brain Death'? Arguments against Killing People on the Basis of Scientific, Linguistic and philosophical Confusions 354 2. Critique of the Shift from the Question 'What is Death?' to a Pragmatist Definition of Death 3. Human Life, Human Minds, and Human Persons: 362 365 3.1. The Dependence of Concepts of Death on a Philosophy of Human Life, Human Personhood, and Human Mind 365 3.2. The Burden of Proof lies with the Majority of Those who Deny the Reality of the Mind and Defend Brain Death 366 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 458 3.3. Proofs for the Reality of the Mind (Soul) as Ultimate Subject of Personhood 367 3.4. The irreversible cessation of cortical activity is neither a morally certain proof of the destruction of mental faculties nor of the death of their subject 367 3.3. Critique of a materialist anthropology as the most frequent foundation of the 'actualistic' brain death definition 368 4. The Definition of Death as Brain Death falsifies the real Nature of Human Life and Death 369 4.1. On the Difference and Relationship between Metaphysical and Medical Conceptions and 'Signs' of Death 370 4.2. Difficulties in defining 'integrated wholeness' of life and in locating the (necessary and irreplaceable) 'mind-incarnating tissue' or the 'mind-incarnating functions' in the body. Impossibility of identifying the brain or cortical functions with that 'core of the body' on which the presence of the human person's life depends 372 4.3. Gradual de-soulment and humanoid animals? - If not materialism, an unacceptable neo-Cartesian dualism between biological and personal human life is contained in brain death definitions 374 5. Critique of the Postulation of A Necessary Bond Between 'life of the organism as a whole' and functioning of the brain(stem) 376 5.1. Critique of the 'Partializing Concept of Human Life': 376 Towards a Holistic Understanding of Human Life 376 5.1.1. Is the brain-dead man no live human being? 377 5.1.2. The arguments from the distinction between 'live human being' (man) and 'live human person' 378 5.2. Critique of the biophilosophical argument for brainstem death from the cessation of consciousness 380 6. Objections against Brain Death from certain theoretical and practical Consequences of Brain Death Definitions 380 7. Linguistic, phenomenological, and logical Arguments against the Introduction of 'Brain death' 8. Defense of a Modest 'Tutiorism' 382 383 The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 459 8.1. Doubts Concerning Verifiability and Actual Correct Diagnoses of 'Brain Death' 8.2. Four Roots of False Diagnoses of 'Brain Death' 384 384 8.3. The death of 'brain-dead' humans can neither be confirmed with metaphysical/mathematical nor with moral certainty 386 9. The Moment of Death - 'Calculable Problem' or Mystery? 389 A Metaphysical and Epistemological Argument 389 10. Conclusion: Against Brain Death - Abandoning the Redefinition of Death 390 10.1. Biological Human Life as the Only Acceptable Criterion for Personal Human Life and the Practical Consequences of Accepting it as Standard of Death 392 CHAPTER IX 401 DEATH AND IMMORTALITY 401 The Reality of the Soul as Condition of Immortality 401 The Question of a „Huge“ or „Tiny“ Immortality of the Human Soul - A most Important Question about Our „To be or Not to Be“ or an Absurd Question of a „Being-toward-Death“? 404 Philosophical Arguments for Immortality 413 1. Ontological Arguments: 413 2. Anthropological, metaphysical and moral arguments for Immortality from the Meaning of Personal Existence III. Immortality and Faith 426 438 i See on this Adolf Reinach: 1989; Dietrich von Hildebrand , 1976; Josef Seifert: 1976 2, 1973, 1987. ii One may think here of Kierkegaard's investigations in Sicknesss unto Death, of Heidegger's analyses of 'Angst' and of works like Dietrich von Hildebrand: 1989 2 . iii See Josef Seifert, 2 1889; 1988, 1987 (2), pp. 162-212. Other eminent thinkers both in medicine and philosophy (P.A. Byrnes, S. O'Reilly, P.M. Quai, C.P. Harrison, N. Fost, B.S. Currie, A.J. Weisbard, S.J. Youngner, and others), have reached similar conclusions or at least have recognized the same problems. Most powerful are the objections of Hans Jonas who has the distinction of having raised them in the 'first minute' (1968) when the Harvard proposal was published. iv On the notion of 'neocortical' and 'cortical death' see, for example, Hans W. Pia, 1985, pp. 217-253. The same author, 1986, pp. 1-11, esp. p. 3. See also C. Pallis, 1983, 32-37, esp. 34. This 'vegetative state' can last for years. D. Alan Shewmon, M.D. (1985, pp. 24-80, esp. p. 78) has argued against the 'President's Commission' that persistent vegetative state should be considered as 'actual death.' Having abondoned this position in 1989 in various conferences, he argued at that time against regarding the withholding of nutrition or fluids from a neocortically dead person as tantamount to euthanasia and murder "even when spontaneous breathing is present and no extraordinary means of life-support are needed"(p. 79). The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 460 On the wider class of 'Untermenschen' who are subsumed under the category of 'braindeath,' see also J.M. Nolan -Haley et al., 1987, pp. 100-110. See also J.R. Stanton, 1985, pp. 77-85. In Nolan, p. 108, we find an impressive description of the agonizing death caused by withholding intravenous feeding to terminally ill, senile, and patients in a 'vegetative state.' v See also the contributions of K.-A. Hossmann, R.J. White, D.H. Ingvar, E.J. Zerbini, and C. Manni in WGAP. vi See E. Byrne, 1984, 1986, pp. 52-53: "...In occasional patients however, especially those with massive posterior fossa haemorrhage, brainstem death may occur before or without hemisphere death. (Emphasis mine, J.S.)" If the hemispheres are functioning, we must assume consciousness in a patient, even if he is prevented from communicating it or expressing it because the contact between cortex and the rest of the body is impaired. See also D. Alan Shewmon, M.D., 1985, pp. 49 ff.: "In man unilateral lesions of the brainstem reticular system do not impair consciousness ... Of special interest is the fact that, in animals, if multiple smaller lesions are made gradually over a number of days, essentially the entire brainstem reticular system can be destroyed without interfering with the animal's consciousness ... There is ... at least one report in the medical literature of three (human) patients whose consciousness could be sustained by electrical stimulation...If something so gross as a wire electrode in the thalamus is capable of making up for the lack of brainstem input to the cerebral hemispheres, it is reasonable to conclude that the hemispheres alone contain the structures which are both necessary and sufficient for human consciousness." (Ibid., p. 50). D.A. Shewmon, who gives many references to the relevant experimental evidence and literature ( ibid., pp. 49 ff), suggests that the entire brainstem could be removed and still the state of consciousness would remain fully intact . By means of electrodes the patient could even communicate his consciousness ( ibid., p. 51). vii See Ingvar, 1986, pp. 65-74. See likewise P.D.G. Skegg, 1984, pp. 183-227, esp. 180 ff., 202 ff. viii Robert C. Cefalo and H. Tristram Engelhardt (1989), H.-M. Sass, F.K. Beller and J. Reeve (1989), and R. M. Zaner (1989) argue in favor of anencephals as organ donors. ix See J.A.M. med.ass.: 1968, 205, 337. x See H.K. Beecher, 1969, 281, 1070. See also H.K. Beecher: 1976, pp. 1068 -1071. xi See on this Skegg, 1984, p. 202: "Of those who do provide reasons Fehler! Verweisquelle konnte nicht gefunden werden. some mention only the practical advantages of the new approach. Others concentrate on the fact that once brain death has occurred the patient's condition is hopeless, and that heartbeat will cease within a short time in any event...The fact that a patient's condition is hopeless, and that conventional death will occur within a short time in any event, is not a sufficient reason for regarding the patient as already dead - although much of the debate in the United Kingdom...appeared to proceed on the assumption that it was." (ibid., p. 202). xii See P.A. Byrne, et al.: 1982/83, p. 437: "It is generally acknowledged that the call for 'new definitions of death' has arisen in order to clear away the legal obstacles to transplanting vital organs or to excising them for purposes of research immediately upon the occurrence of death." The authors quote a long list of publications which evidence this pragmatic origin of the 'br ain death' definitions. xiii The medical profession has come to consider, in hopeless cases, also intravenous feeding as an 'extraordinary means' of prolongation of life; this seems to be entirely unacceptable because there is nothing more ordinary than nourishment and the withholding of it for a certain period of time is itself the cause of any patient's death. xiv See the excellent critique of this point in the article of Jonas, 1985, pp. 219-241, esp. p. 225. See an earlier English version of this paper, 1974. See also H.T. Engelhardt, Jr., 1986, p. 208 f. xv See Jonas, 1974, pp. 129-131: "My other emphatic verdict concerns the question of the redefinition of death - that is, acknowledging 'irreversible coma as a new definition for death.' I wish not to be misunderstood. As long as it is merely a question of when it is permitted to cease the artificial prolongation of certain functions (like heartbeat) traditionally regarded as signs of life, I do not see anything ominous in the notion of 'brain death.' Indeed, a new definition of death is not even necessary to legitimize the same result if one adopts the position of the Roman Catholic Church, which here at least is eminently reasonable - namely that 'when deep unconsciousness is judged to be permanent, extraordinary means to maintain life are not obligatory. They can be terminated and the patient allowed to die.' ... All we need to know is that coma is irreversible. For the second purpose we must know the borderline with absolute certainty; and to use any definition short of the maximal for perpetrating on a possibly penultimate state what only the ultimate state can permit is to arrogate a knowledge which, I think, we cannot possible have. Since we do not know the exact borderline between life and death, nothing less than the maximal definition of death will do - brain death plus heart death plus any other indication that may be pertinent - before final violence is allowed to be done. ... When only permanent coma can be gained with the aritifical The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 461 sustaining of functions, by all means turn off the respirator, the stimulator, any sustaining artifice, and let the patient die; but let him die all the way. Do not, instead, arrest the process and start using him as a mine while, with your own help and cunning, he is still kept this side of what may in truth be the final line. Who is to say that a shock, a final trauma, is not administered to a sensitivity diffusely situated elsewhere than in the brain and still vulnerable to suffering, a sensitivity that we courselves have been keeping alive. No fiat of defi nition can settle this question. But I wish to emphasize that the question of possible suffering (easily brushed aside by a sufficient show of reassuring expert consensus) is merely a subsidiary and not the real point of my argument; this, to reiterate, turns on the indeterminacy of the boundaries between life and death, not between sensitivity and insensitivity, and bids us to lean towards a maximal rather than a minimal determination of death in an area of basic uncertainty." xvi See H. Jonas, 1974, p. 133: "My original comments of 1968 on the then newly proposed 'redefinition of death' ... were marginal to the discussion of 'experimentation on human subjects,' which has to do with the living and not the dead. They have since, however, drawn fire from within the medical profession, and precisely in connection with the second of the reasons given by the Harvard Committee why a new definition is wanted, namely, the transplant interest, which my kind critics felt threatened by my layman's qualms and lack of understanding. Can I take this as corroborating my initial suspicion that this interest, in spite of its notably muted expression in the Committee Report, was and is the major motivation behind the definitional effort? I am confirmed in this suspicion when I hear Dr. Henry K. Beecher, author of the Committee's Report (and its Chairman), ask elsewhere: 'Can society afford to discard the tissues and organs of the hopelessly unconscious patient when they could be used to restore the otherwise hopelessly ill, but still salvageable individual?' ... pure as this interest, viz., to save other lives, is in itself, its intrusion into the theoretical attempt to define death makes the attempt impure, and the Harvard Committee should never have allowed itself to adulterate the purity of its scientific case by baiting it whith the prospect of this extraneous - though extremely appealing - gain." xvii See Josef Seifert, 1989 (1), ch. ix; Ludger Hölscher, 1986; see also J. Seifert, 1989 2 (2); and J. Seifert, 1973. xviii See H. Jonas, 1974, pp. 134-135. xix See H. Jonas, 1974, p. 139: "Now nobody will deny that the cerebral aspect is decisive for the human quality of the life of the organism that is man's. The position I advanced acknowledges just this by recommending that with the irrecoverable total loss of brain function one should not hold up the naturally ensuing death of the rest of the organism. But it is no less an exaggeration of the cerebral aspect as it was of the conscious soul, to deny the extracerebral body its essential share in the identity of the person. The body is as uniquely the body of this brain and no other, as the brain is uniquely the brain of this body and no other. What is under the brain's central control, the bodily total, is as individual, as much 'myself,' as singular to my identity (fingerprints!), as non-interchangeable, as the controlling (and reciprocally controlled) brain itself. My identity is the identity of the whole organism, even if the higher functions of personhood are seated in the brain. How else could a man love a woman and not merely her brains? How else could we lose ourselves in the aspect of a face? Be touched by the delicacy of a frame? It's this person's, and no one else's. Therefore, the body of the comatose, so long as - even with the help of art - it still breathes, pulses, and functions otherwise, must still be considered a residual continuance of the subject that loved and was loved, and as such is still entitled to some of the sacrosanctity accorded to such a subject by the laws of God and men. That sacrosanctity decrees that it must not be used as a mere means." xx See H. Jonas, 1974, p. 139: "I see lurking behind the proposed definition of death, apart from its obvous pragmatic motivation, a curious revenant of the old soul-body dualism. Its new apparition is the dualism of brain and body. In a certain analogy to the former it holds that the true human person rests in (or is represented by) the brain, of which the rest of the body is a mere subservient tool. Thus, when the brain dies, it is as when the soul departed: what is left are 'mortal remains.'" The confidence with which Shewmon (1985, p. 61) asserts that brain dead persons, humans in the persistent vegetative state or in dementia, have no soul, is surprising. How does the author know this? Does he perceive the soul leaving the body? This is more 'Cartesian' than Descartes and hardly the Thomistic 'hyle-morphism' which the author asserts. On entirely different meanings of the term 'dualism' see Seifert, 1973; 21989, 2. xxi See H. Jonas, 1974, pp. 134-135. xxii See H. Jonas, 1974, p. 139: The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 462 "Now nobody will deny that the cerebral aspect is decisive for the human quality of the life of the organism that is man's. The position I advanced acknowledges just this by recommending that with the irrecoverable total loss of brain function one should not hold up the naturally ensuing death of the rest of the organism. But it is no less an exaggeration of the cerebral aspect as it was of the conscious soul, to deny the extracerebral body its essential share in the identity of the person. The body is as uniquely the body of this brain and no other, as the brain is uniquely the brain of this body and no other. What is under the brain's central control, the bodily total, is as individual, as much 'myself,' as singular to my identity (fingerpr ints!), as non-interchangeable, as the controlling (and reciprocally controlled) brain itself. My identity is the identity of the whole organism, even if the higher functions of personhood are seated in the brain. How else could a man love a woman and not merely her brains? How else could we lose ourselves in the aspect of a face? Be touched by the delicacy of a frame? It's this person's, and no one else's. Therefore, the body of the comatose, so long as - even with the help of art - it still breathes, pulses, and functions otherwise, must still be considered a residual continuance of the subject that loved and was loved, and as such is still entitled to some of the sacrosanctity accorded to such a subject by the laws of God and men. That sacrosanctity decrees that it must not be used as a mere means." xxiii The claim that brain dead persons can be kept alive maximally for a few days is hardly defensible in the light of the facts. See the case of a pregnant woman with total brain infarction whose circulation was maintained for nine weeks in order to secure viability of her fetus described in Field DR, et al: "Maternal brain death during pregnancy: medical and ethical issues." JAMA 1988; 260:816-822. See also the description of another case of a brain dead person who was kept alive for 68 days in Parise JE, et al, 1982; 306:14-16. See likewise the case of somatic survival for 201 days of a whole-brain dead child described in Rowland TW, et al, 1983. The child showed no cortical or brain stem functions during the entire 201 days. xxiv See Robert J. White et al, 1971, 1972, 1963, 1964. xxv Recent research, conducted at John Hopkins Medical School under the direction of Solomon Snyder, led to the result that, for the first time in human history, human brain cells could be grown in culture, and new biochemical and physiolo gical studies can now be conducted which may eventually lead to effective treatments for illnesses or even to the replacement or regeneration of parts of the human brain. These brain cells, which began to divide and grow, after having been treated by hormones, were taken from an 18 months old girl who underwent surgery after having suffered from seizures in 1986. See Science, May 4, 1990. xxvi See H. Jonas, 1974, pp. 136-138: "But, it might be asked, is not a definition of death made into law the simpler and more precise way than a definition of medical ethics (which is difficult to legislate) for sanctioning the same practical conclusion, while avoiding the twilight of value judgment and possible legal ambiguity? It would be, if it really sanctioned the same conclusion, and no more. But it sanctions indefinitely more: it opens the gate to a whole range of other possible conclusions, the extent of which cannot even be foreseen, but some of which are disquietingly close at hand. The point is, if the comatose patient is by definition dead, he is a patient no more but a corpse, with which can be done whatever law or custom or the deceased's will or next of kin permit and sundry interests urge doing with a corpse. This includes - why not? - the protracting of the inbetween state, for which we must find a new name ('simulated life'?) since that of 'life' has been preempted by the new definition of death, and extracting from it all the profit we can. There are many. So far the 'redefiners' speak of no more than keeping the respirator going until the transplant organ is to be removed, then turning it off, then beginning to cut into the 'cadaver,' this being the end of it - which sounds innocent enough. But why must it be the end? Why turn the respirator off? Once we are assured that we are dealing with a cadaver, there are no logical reasons against (and strong pragmatic reasons for) going on with the artificial 'animation' and keeping the 'deceased's' body on call, as a bank for life-fresh organs, possibly also as a plant for manufacturing hormones or other biochemical compounds in demand. I have no doubts that methods exist or can be perfected which allow the natural powers for the healing of surgical wounds by new tissue growth to stay 'alive' in such a body. Tempting also is the idea of a selfreplenishing blood bank. And that is not all. Let us not forget research. Why shouldn't the most wonderful surgical and grafting experiments be conducted on the complaisant subject-nonsubject, with no limits set on daring? Why not immunological explorations, infection with diseases old and new, trying out of drugs? We have the active cooperation of a functional organism declared to be dead: we have, that is, the advantages of the living donor without the disadvantages imposed by his rights and interests (for a corpse has none). What a boon for medical instruction, for anatomical and physiological demonstration and practicing on so much better material than the inert cadavers otherwise serving in the dissection room! What a chance for the apprentice to learn in vivo, as it were, how to amputate a leg, without his mistakes mattering! And so on, into the wide open field. After all, what is advocated is 'the full utilization of modern means to maximize the value o f cadaver organs.' Well, this is it. Come, come, the members of the profession will say, nobody is thinking of this kind of thing. Perhaps not; but I have just shown that one can think of them. And the point is that the proposed definition of death has removed any reasons not to think of them and, once thought of, not to do them when found desirable (and the next of kin are agreeable). We must remember that what the Harvard group offered was not a definition of irreversible coma as a rationale for breaking off sustaining action, but a definition of death by the criterion of irreversible coma as a rationale for conceptually transposing the patient's body to the class of dead things, regardless of whether sustaining action is kept up or broken off." xxvii See Adolf Laufs, 1985, p. 400. The Body-Soul Problem Essential Distinctions 463 xxviii See Hiersche, 1984, pp. 45 ff. See also Field DR, et al, Parise JE, et al, 1982. See likewise Rowland TW, et al, 1983. xxix See Nikoletopoulos, 1984. xxx See the completely reliable report on such experiences by an author whom I know very well: Hellmut Laun, 1983. xxxi This same argument from the uncertainty is defended in President R. Reagan's book against abortion and by H. Jonas, 1974, p. 138: "Now my point is a very simple one. It is this. We do not know with certainty the borderline between life and death, and a definition cannot substitute for knowledge. Moreover, we have sufficient grounds for suspecting that the artificially supported conditio n of the comatose patient may still be one of life, however reduced - i.e., for doubting that, even with the brain function gone, he is completely dead. In this state of marginal ignorance and doubt the only course to take is to lean over backward toward the side of possible life. It follows that interventions as I described should be regarded on a par with vivisection and on no account be performed on a human body in that equivocal or threshold condition. And the definition that allows them, by stamping as unequivocal what at best is equivocal, must be rejected. But mere rejection in discourse is not enough. Given the pressure of the - very real and very worthy - medical interests, it can be predicted that the permission it implies in theory will be irresistible in practice, once the definition is installed in official authority. Its becoming so installed must therefore be resisted at all cost." xxxii See J. Seifert, 1973.