Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

32
Carl Huffman
be established in it; this harmony arises upon birth, when the infant
takes its first breath. When this balance of physical parts perishes, the
body does lose its soul, it is no longer ensouled, but this need not
mean that the principle of the soul, the archÞ, which Philolaus locates
in the heart, perishes. Thus, there is an ambiguity in Philolaus’ usage.
The psychÞ located in the heart, which we might follow Sedley in calling
the control center of the psychÞ, embodies the personality and temperament
of the individual and migrates from body to body, just like the psychÞ
described in Herodotus. Philolaus, however, was sensitive to the sort
of complaint that Aristotle would later raise about the Pythagorean stories
of transmigration, according to which any soul could end up in any
body (de An. 407b21–23). A transmigrating psychÞ cannot come to be in
just any body but only in a body with a heart. Moreover, the body does
not come to be ensouled just by having a psychÞ enter into its heart but
rather the body is ensouled when the proper harmony of its material
parts is established under the direction of the psychÞ in the heart. We
might suppose that the initial breath of the newborn is a mechanical
process in which the hot draws in the surrounding cool breath. With
that initial breath, however, it also draws in the control-center psychÞ,
the transmigrating soul, which resides in the heart and which will control
the balance between hot and cold that makes the body ensouled. It
is an interesting consequence of this view that Philolaus would not have
regarded the embryo as having a soul, and there is a testimonium suggesting
that Empedocles too did not believe the embryo to be an animal,
since it did not breathe in the womb. 32
Fragment 13 suggested that the psychÞ was the faculty governing
emotions and desires which was paired with the faculty of perception
in the heart. Philolaus’ embryology has shown us that this faculty is
also associated with breathing and is the command center which governs
the harmony of physical components which constitutes a living animal.
This combination makes a great deal of sense. The harmony of physical
elements in the body as a whole established by the psychÞ in the heart is
what allows the animal to perceive and to respond to the perceptions
with emotions and desires, which in turn lead to physical motion.
The psychÞ is thus the cause of breathing, as its etymology suggests,
but also of certain animal motions instigated by desires. It is not needed
32 See Aëtius 5.15.3 (Dox. Gr. 425a23 – b4), which is not in DK. Sorabji (1993,
100) rightly points out that Diels’ deletion of l^ is not justified. Inwood
(2001, 190, n. 55) also accepts the text with l^.