Modern theories of panpsychism have their roots in the mythology and spiritualism of the pre-classical world. For the Greeks, this worldview was embodied in the writings of Homer and Hesiod. Their work, combined with elements of Egyptian theology and Eastern philosophy, formed a potent context for the emergence of distinctively Western approaches to mind and reality. These precursors all contained aspects of animistic thinking, and thus Greek philosophy emerged from within a panpsychist milieu. We are not surprised, then, to find relatively blunt statements of panpsychism in the earliest Greek philosophers, and more subtle and sophisticated approaches in the later thinkers. Panpsychism remained strong into the Hellenistic era, and even found its way, indirectly, into early Christian theology.
The pre-Socratic era covered a range of roughly 200 years, from the emergence of Thales’ philosophy circa 600 BC to the death of Democritus in 370 BC. There were a dozen or so major Greek philosophers in this time frame, and at least twice as many lesser ones; collectively they established basic framework of philosophical thinking that would be fleshed out by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The panpsychist milieu into which these individuals were born shows itself in their clear and unambiguous statements. Some form of panpsychism seems to have been taken for granted by nearly all major pre-Socratics. Hence they provide not arguments for it but rather their own interpretations of it, using their uniquely personal terminology and concepts.
The very first philosophers were the Milesians: Thales (625–545 BC), Anaximander (610–540 BC), and Anaximenes (585–525 BC). They concerned themselves not with mythology and theology but rather with fundamental metaphysical questions: What are things ultimately made of? Where did things come from? What are the guiding principles of the cosmos? How can we account for such things as life, motion, and the psyche? Before these men, such questions were evidently never addressed in a systematic way.
At its most fundamental level, the world of the Milesians was composed of things that move. Hence among their most basic questions were “What is the essence of a thing?” and “What causes motion?” They seemed to have developed an intuitive view that the apparent plurality of things belied an underlying commonality or unity. This was a rational conclusion, given the fact that we live in a unitary cosmos and that things seem to be connected and even convertible into other things—as when wood burns and becomes fire, or when soil transforms into plant life, or when animals ingest and incorporate various foods and drinks. Also undeniable was the fact that certain things had the power of self-motion: humans, animals, some plants, stars, the moon, and various other astronomical objects. Finally, the cosmos seemed, upon reflection, to be much less arbitrary than portrayed by Homer and Hesiod. Events occurred not by divine mandate, but rather in a systematic and orderly manner. There were patterns of action in the universe, and these patterns indicated a kind of logic to things—to use their word, a logos. The flow of events in the world, furthermore, seemed to work in a specific direction, toward some undefined goal (telos). The apparently vast, diverse, and chaotic cosmos, then, was in reality a single moving substance in a diversity of forms, self-driven in some sense, guided by a higher logos, and moving toward a given end.
The Milesian worldview, therefore, possessed three fundamental qualities: (1) It reflected a rational order, governed by a logos, and thus formed a coherent and comprehensible system. (2) It was evolutionary, in the sense that things moved through the world and developed or changed over time, toward a telos or end. (3) It was inherently animated.1 The rationality of their metaphysics was manifest as a materialist monism—they each sought to reduce the plurality of things to a single underlying substance or entity. This entity had certain definite characteristics, foremost of which was its capability of producing the movement, life, and soul that were apparent in the everyday world. If everything is ultimately one, and if that one yields spontaneity and life, then a reasonable conclusion is that everything possesses these qualities to some degree. For the Milesians, this was the most compelling and intuitive option. If one were to disagree, one would assume the burden of proof to show, at least, (a) why some things have life and other do not and (b) how such a phenomenon as life might plausibly emerge over the course of time from a lifeless substrate. Apparently no one in ancient Greece argued for such a position. For the Milesians, matter (hyle) possessed life (zoe) as an essential quality. Something like hylozoism was simply accepted as a brute condition of reality. As Guthrie (1962–1981, volume 1: 145) explains, “the union of matter and spirit in a material substance … is [for the Milesians] an assumption that raises no doubts and calls for no argument or defense.”
Consider Thales, who was widely known for his panpsychist views. That he was also the first true Western philosopher demonstrates something of the significance of panpsychism in the early Greek worldview. Thales was famous for predicting a solar eclipse in 585 and for his theory that water was the cosmic arche, the fundamental principle underlying all material things. But of the few remaining fragments by him, two demonstrate his commitment to panpsychism. Both are found in Aristotle’s De anima. First, we have the passage on the lodestone (magnet):
Thales, according to what is related of him, seems to have regarded the soul as something endowed with the power of motion, if indeed he said that the lodestone has a soul because it moves iron. (405a19)
Here we have two distinct ideas: that the soul (psyche) is defined as that which moves or produces motion, and that the lodestone itself has a soul because it can attract iron. Consider first the concept of psyche. In addition to its common interpretation as soul, it has other important meanings and associations, including spirit, life, breath, and mind. The psyche was connected with the life energy of living things, with the divine animating spirit that produced motion in physical objects, and with the activity of the mind. At this early stage in philosophy there was not yet the distinction between having a soul, being alive, and possessing a mind; all these were treated more or less as equivalent.2 To the pre-Socratics, psyche was as much mind-like as it was soul-like. In the first book of De anima Aristotle takes pains to note that most everyone before him, including Plato, did not clearly distinguish between soul and mind (nous). For example, we find the following passage on the views of Democritus: “Soul and mind are, he says, one and the same thing.” (405a10) And Anaxagoras “[only] seems to distinguish between soul and mind, but in practice he treats them as a single substance” (405a13). Psyche, then, is the energy that animates and produces movement in all things, including the movement of thoughts and ideas.
Humans and animals clearly possess psyche, and in a monist universe anything else that demonstrates the qualities of life—that is, to be self-moving or to cause motion—possesses it too. The lodestone clearly shows the power to move small bits of iron, a fact that must have been rather miraculous to the ancients. And yet the lodestone is obviously in many ways a rock like any other. That some rocks exhibit greater powers of psyche than others is comparable to the notion that humans are just animals of a certain type, and that they exhibit distinctive noetic powers. Apparently Thales concluded from this that all things possessed psyche, to a greater or lesser degree. We see this clearly in the second major fragment:
Certain thinkers say that soul is intermingled in the whole universe, and it is perhaps for that reason that Thales came to the opinion that all things are full of gods. (De anima, 411a7)
Aristotle, presumably following Thales, uses the word theon, which is translated as “gods.” The power of psyche was seen as a god-like, divine power, or perhaps as the power of the gods themselves. But why say “full of gods” (panta plere theon) and not “full of soul’? We can only speculate. Perhaps it was a nod to the mythological language of Homer. Or perhaps it was a strictly linguistic issue; perhaps it was awkward and inappropriate to claim that things were full of soul. In any case, souls are divine, the gods themselves are spirits and souls, and thus, for Thales, the two concepts are deeply interconnected.
Or perhaps Thales was being more exact than we give him credit for. It would seem that an essential quality of a god is that it is a single being, a unitary presence, with a singular sense of identity and personality. Psyche, on the other hand, seems like a relatively amorphous, diffused power—especially conceived as a power to move something, rather than a power to think. It may be that Thales was pointing to singular sense of identity in all things, a mental being and personality, which could simultaneously act, perceive, and move.
If we attempt to construct a rational argument for panpsychism from these two fragments, it would go something like this: Material objects—humans, animals, wind, sea, magnets, heavenly bodies—have the power of motion; they move either themselves or surrounding things. The material object we know most intimately—our own body—possesses an energy, called psyche, that accounts for our power. Under the assumption that the world is rational and that humans are not ontologically unique, a reasonable conclusion is that all things with a motive power also possess psyche. And in light of the fact that we live in a connected, unitary cosmos, it is difficult to explain why only certain material objects are ensouled and not others. Therefore, a reasonable conclusion is that all things possess psyche, to a greater or lesser degree. I will call this the Indwelling Powers argument for panpsychism. It is the first of several that we find throughout history.
Like Thales, Anaximenes argued for a monist worldview, but with an underlying principle of air (pneuma). The word pneuma has an interesting array of meanings, some of which are strikingly similar to those of psyche. Besides “air,” pneuma can also mean “breath,” “soul,” “spirit,” or “mind.” Whereas the primary meaning of psyche is “mind” or “soul,” the primary meaning of pneuma seems to be “breath,” as in “breath of life.” For Anaximenes, the breath of life was the living, animating principle of all things. This again was a logical conclusion. In every animal, breath equals life: no air, no life; no life, no breath. And air seems to be everywhere, as does motion, and so it is not unreasonable to argue that pneuma is the underlying principle or arche of the cosmos.
Anaximenes, though, seems to offer a different kind of argument for panpsychism than Thales. He saw in air a principle of continuity throughout all things. If this substance can be argued to account for our soul/mind, and given that air is omnipresent, then a similar manifestation is likely to be present everywhere. I will call this the Argument by Continuity. Panpsychism is a natural and logical position to hold in a monistic worldview. In fact, to be a monist and dispute the Continuity argument demands either an explanation of the unique emergence of mind—no small matter—or a denial of mind altogether. That the Continuity argument differs from the Indwelling Powers argument of Thales is clear: Thales makes no connection between panpsychism and his arche of water, nor does water account for the existence of soul. Anaximenes, by contrast, fundamentally links his arche of air to mind/psyche. Both arguments, however, appeal to an analogy with basic human experiences of our own minds and selves.3
As it happens, Anaximenes also makes a kind of appeal to the concept of indwelling power. Air, in the form of soul, has a cohesive power in the world. It holds things together, animates them, and maintains their existence as discrete objects enduring over time. “As our soul … being air, holds us together and controls us, so does [breath] and air enclose the whole world.”4 But this is supplemental to, and independent of, his primary argument from continuity.
The concept of pneuma, inaugurated by Anaximenes, was seminal. It was taken up by Aristotle in his own quasi-panpsychist theory, and later, to a greater degree, by the Stoics. They gave it a precise elemental structure, and assigned it a specific animating role in the universe. Later still, it seems to have been the inspiration for the Holy Spirit of the Bible; as I will explain, in the original Greek of the New Testament, the term for “spirit” was pneuma.
Chronologically, the next major philosopher after the Milesians was the enigmatic Pythagoras (570–495 BC), who exerted much influence within Greek society generally. Unfortunately, little is known of him with certainty. He apparently lectured on mathematics, ethics, health, and metaphysics. Yet, like Socrates, he wrote nothing. His closest followers formed a secretive cult, and thus we have few direct accounts of him. Most of what is known is indirect and anecdotal. Circa 50 BC, Cicero recounted that Pythagoras “held that mind was present and active throughout the whole universe, and that our minds were a part of it” (On the Nature of the Gods, I, 26–28). This “divine mind” or “pure spirit” was seen as “infused and imprisoned in the world.” We also know that Pythagoras associated numbers with the cosmic arche. This is significant because, as Aetius informs us, Pythagoras “takes number as an equivalent for intelligence” (Placita iv.2).5 Other reports attribute to Pythagoras the view that everything is intelligent, but this is difficult to confirm with much certainty. It seems clear that he held to a mystic, pan-spiritual view of the universe, and thus that he probably endorsed some variation of a panpsychist philosophy.
Parmenides (545–460 BC) developed ingenious arguments for the view that only Being is possible and therefore that only Being exists. This entails that Becoming, conceived as a change from non-being to being (or vice versa), doesn’t exist—because non-being is not possible. The existence of change in the world is an illusion, he said; therefore motion, and even time itself, are also illusory. This was a radical view, as it directly contracted the centrality of the concept of motion within natural philosophy.
Also, since thinking was acknowledged by Parmenides to be an undeniable aspect of reality, it followed that thought, or mind, must be an essential aspect of Being. The otherwise homogeneous and unchanging Being has this unique, positive property, which apparently has a special ontological standing—perhaps due to its self-evident and undeniable nature. Parmenides concludes, then, not merely that Being “has” thought, but that Being is thought. There are two central fragments that explicitly make this claim, and both are subject to an unusually wide range of interpretations and translations. The first is fragment 3, transliterated from the Greek as To gar auto noein estin te kai einai. Among many translations, one finds the following:
For it is the same thing to think and to be. (Freeman 1948: 42)
What is … is identical with the thought that recognizes it. (Lloyd 1959: 327)
For the same things can be thought of and can be. (Barnes 1987: 132)
Thinking and being are the same. (Reeve and Miller 2006: 13)
Parmenides is making an identity between thought and being, but it is a difficult matter to understand in what sense the two things are “the same.” There are at least two interpretations. First is a sort of metaphysical idealism: that all being is of the nature of a thought, or a mental activity. In this sense it provides an interesting anticipation of the much later work of Berkeley. But there is a second, panpsychist interpretation: that all things can be said to think. But even this is problematic because, for Parmenides, it is not clear that there truly are distinct things in the world; rather, there seems to be only the one monistic Being. If all things, as a whole, think, then such a view would constitute a kind of pan-noetic ontology—something like a panentheism or world-soul, but without personality, just pure thought. This is arguably not panpsychism, which, as defined in chapter 1, requires things individually to possess mind. Parmenides’ intentions on this point are vague.
Support for the second interpretation comes from Coxon (1986: 181), who remarks, regarding this fragment, that “the neoplatonic belief that Parmenides identified Being with Mind was well-founded.” Additional supporting evidence comes from Xenophanes’ assessment of God as a kind of cosmic mind; “[this] may also be regarded as suggesting that Parmenides envisaged Being as Intelligence.” Xenophanes, incidentally, was a “panzoist,” according to Cleve (1969: 21).
Long also argues for a strong “identity” reading of this fragment, one in which “being itself is or has a mind” (1996: 133). The non-identity reading, advanced by some, is untenable because it virtually eliminates mind from the cosmos. Confirming the near-universal stance on panpsychism at the time, Long adds that “no Greek philosopher prior to and immediately posterior to Parmenides treated reality as lifeless and mindless” (140).
The second fragment continues the same line of thinking, though with equally ambiguous results: Tauton d’ esti noein te kai ounechen esti noema (fragment 8, line 34). Here we find no direct mention of einai (“being”), but rather a focus on noein (“thinking”) and noema (“thought” or “consciousness”). The identification is made between thinking and the object of thought:
Therefore thinking, and that by reason of which thought exists, are one and the same thing. (Smith 1934: 16–17)
To think is the same as the thought that It Is. (Freeman 1948: 44)
Thinking and the object of thought are the same. (Cleve 1969: 537)
The same thing are thinking and a thought that it is. (Barnes 1987: 135)
Thinking and the thought that it is are the same. (Reeve and Miller 2006: 14)
Long says that this fragment, because it equates the object of thought (i.e., being) with thinking, “does give explicit testimony for the mind/being identity reading” (1996: 136).
Cleve is sensitive to the panpsychist implications in these two fragments. He observes that being, though technically unextended and incorporeal, is yet permeated by thought: “being itself … is inextensive incorporeal thinking that is present whole and undivided in each and every part of seeming space” (1969: 536). He adds that “the only being is consciousness, noema, that, however, must not be split into act of thinking and content of thinking” (537). Thus it seems clear that thought permeates Being, and that anything that exists must also be said to be identical with thought. Since the metaphysical status of distinct things is unclear, we cannot determine the degree to which Parmenides’ stance is true panpsychism. Yet in view of the “hylozoist” milieu into which he was born, it seems to be the most likely interpretation.
Parmenides’ notion that thought is identical to being anticipates the discussion in Sophist in which Plato puts forth a similar view: that the Form of Being possesses the qualities of “understanding, intelligence, life, and soul” (249a). As we know, Plato held Parmenides in high regard, and thus it isn’t surprising to find him incorporating elements of his predecessor’s ontology.
In opposition to Parmenides’ static world of pure Being, Heraclitus (505–450 BC) conceived a worldview in which change and motion were the essential reality. In a fitting manner, fire became his arche. To the ancient Greeks, fire was a form of pure energy, and it is interesting that Heraclitus developed a distinctively energeticist worldview some 2,300 years before it became fashionable in physics.
Fire, like the pneuma of Anaximenes, was associated with life-energy and hence spirit and soul. Significantly, Heraclitus referred to this fire not merely as pyr but as pyr aeizoon—ever-living fire. Consequently, this spiritual life-energy was seen as responsible for creating and sustaining everything. Diogenes Laertius reports in his Lives of the Philosophers that Heraclitus held to the view that “all things are full of souls and spirits” (IX: 5–12). Again, ensoulment is universal and associated with motion and change.
More specifically, the pyr aeizoon possesses a kind of intelligence or cognitive ability. In the only directly relevant fragment, Heraclitus says that “thinking is common to all” (fragment 113; Barnes 1987: 109). He evidently followed the logic of his predecessors in believing that, in a monist cosmos, intelligent spirit or life must exist in all things, if they exist anywhere. This is clearly Long’s interpretation: “Heraclitus takes thinking … to be implicit in the things that are (the processes of nature)” (1996: 131). In sum, we have here a combination of the Indwelling Powers argument—in the energy of the pyr aeizoon—and the Continuity argument, in which pyr constitutes all things.
Heraclitus and Parmenides lived at about the same time, and their two opposing philosophies must have created something of a crisis in Greek intellectual circles. Each seemed independently plausible, yet they were profoundly incompatible. In response, Empedocles and Anaxagoras each sought, in different ways, to resolve this conflict. They concluded that the problem lay in the assumption of monism. Thus, each articulated a pluralist worldview with more than one fundamental substance. For Empedocles, it was the four elements, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. For Anaxagoras, it was an infinity of substances. But both men were united in their panpsychist outlooks. As Long states, “Anaxagoras most forcefully and Empedocles more obliquely treat intelligent life as basic to reality” (131).
Anaxagoras, however, was evidently not content with postulating infinitely many substances of the world, and so he concluded that a single overarching principle was needed to provide unity to the whole system. This principle was nous, or mind. This introduction of the term nous into philosophy is evidence of a deepening distinction among the various meanings associated with psyche and pneuma. Nous is more related to the concept of mind in the sense of the human mind or reason, while remaining distinct from logos, which is also sometimes translated as “reason.” Nous represents, furthermore, a kind of unity of thought—a unified entity, a mind, that is the subject of thinking.
Mind, for Anaxagoras, is ubiquitous, omnipresent, and even god-like:
Mind is something infinite and self-controlling … . For it is the finest of all things and the purest, and it possesses all knowledge about everything, and it has the greatest strength. … And mind arranged everything—what was to be, and what was, and what now is, and what will be … . (in Barnes 1987: 227–228)
The action of mind is analogous to a rotation or a turning: “And mind controlled the whole revolution, so that it revolved in the first place.” Thus we see that mind causes motion, as it had for the earlier thinkers. But this motion is of a specific kind, namely circular. It furthermore is a creative force, bringing concrete things into existence.
Anaxagoras determined that mind, as a universal quality, existed in varying degrees: “All mind, both great and small, is alike.” Here we see a form of pluralism that is tempered by a fundamental unity of the nature of the diverse minds. Mind is present in greater and lesser forms, yet they all share some common basis in nous. The lesser minds are not ontologically different than the greater. It is a question of degree.
Finally we have one further relevant citation, from Aristotle. In Metaphysics we find the following view attributed to Anaxagoras: “just as in animals, so in nature, mind is present and responsible for the world” (984b15). The mind that is ubiquitous is not just some amorphous, abstract mind; it is essentially like that of animals, i.e., an animated soul or spirit. Mind is present both in the whole of the cosmos and in the specific objects. This implies a multi-level system of mind, occurring distinctly in different levels of structured matter.
Cleve (1969) addresses this issue of individual minds in detail. Whereas some commentators see Anaxagoras’ nous as existing only in a cosmic sense, Cleve sees it surrounding and penetrating all matter. On his view, the plural elements (moiras) never exist without some conjoining nous: “Anaxagoras, too, is a panzoist, i.e. one to whom body and consciousness are still a unity … . The notion of a ‘matter without consciousness’ … [does] not exist for [him].” (321) He adds that “every molecule is surrounded by Nous on all sides” (207). As to the question of distinct individual minds, he suggests that “a piece of Nous [could] be in a molecule—in the same sense as a fellow locked in a prison ‘is in’” (269). In this interpretation, then, Nous surrounds all matter, and individual nous resides in at least some molecular elements. This is clearly a panpsychist metaphysic.
The pluralism of Empedocles (495–435 BC) was more modest. He argued that a small set of elements sufficed to explain the material nature of the world. Probably borrowing from his predecessors, he took water, air, and fire, added a fourth element, earth, and composed a four-part elemental scheme that held for nearly 2,000 years. As for Anaxagoras, Empedocles believed that the elements required an overarching principle of organization. In his case it was not nous but rather a system of dual forces, designated Philotes (“Love”) and Neikos (“Strife”). Love was the power of attraction and cohesion, and Strife it’s opposite, namely, of repulsion and separation. It was clear to Empedocles that both were needed; if there were only attraction in the universe, all matter would be drawn together into a formless mass, something like a black hole. And if there were only repulsion, the four elements would be driven apart, never to unite into structured objects. He reasoned that there must be a balance of the two, in a kind of harmonic tension.
From the perspective of modern physics, Empedocles’ view is astonishingly accurate. His system was composed of matter and force or energy, just as we believe today. Love has an obvious counterpart in gravity, and physics has its own repulsive forces, namely, similar magnetic poles and similar electric charges (Coulomb’s Law). Even more surprising, physicists have recently discovered a cosmic repulsive force generated by a mysterious substance called “dark energy.” This substance has only one salient feature: a kind of anti-gravity force that serves to accelerate the expansion of the universe. It seems that Empedocles was more correct than he could have known.
Yet he was clearly no mechanistic materialist. Perhaps more than any other pre-Socratic, he made panpsychism central to his worldview.6 Guthrie states that “it was in fact fundamental to Empedocles’ whole system that there is no distinction between animate and inanimate, and everything has some degree of awareness and power of discrimination” (1962–1981, volume 2: 233). The mere fact that Empedocles chose Love and Strife as his two central forces is clearly suggestive of his belief that animate powers were at work in the cosmos.
Explicit evidence of his panpsychism is found primarily in three fragments. In fragment 103 we read “tede men oun ioteti tyches pephroneken apanta”—“Thus by the will of chance, all things think.” (Barnes 1987: 178) This is an advance in philosophical reasoning. Earlier philosophers’ references to gods, souls, or spirit are absent, to be replaced by autonomous cosmic powers of attraction and repulsion, as we would have it today. The ability of all things to think is granted by tyches, interpreted either as the god Tyche or, more likely, as simply the process of chance or luck. Empedocles is saying, in effect, “By good fortune, all things are able to think.”
The second important passage comes from Aristotle: “Empedocles [says that the soul] is composed of all the elements and that each of them actually is a soul.” (De anima 404b11) The two relevant ideas here are (1) that souls (psychein) are material and composite, and (2) that each element, in itself, is ensouled. Clearly, if each element is a soul, and if these elements constitute the whole world, then all things are souls or soul-like. Empedocles thus seems view psyche in terms of mental activity and thinking rather than as a power of motion. Movement comes from the two central forces which, although animate, are apparently not psychein.
Third, we have a striking fragment recorded in Hippolytus’ Refutation of All Heresies (ca. 210 AD):
If thou shouldst plant these things in thy firm understanding and contemplate them with good will and unclouded attention, they will stand by thee for ever every one, and thou shalt gain many other things from them; … for know that all things have wisdom and a portion of thought. (fragment 110; Guthrie, volume 2: 230)
The final key phrase—panta gar isthi phronesin echein kai nomatos aisan—is, as usual, subject to varying translations. Barnes, for example, renders it as “for know that they all have thought and a share of mind” (163). Cleve offers this: “Do not forget, all things have mind and a share in cognition.” (369) By contrast, Freeman translates phronesin as “intelligence” (1948: 64). In any case, we find here a poetic passage that is at once beautiful and insightful. Empedocles is indicating that a particular method of thinking, a way of approaching the world in a sympathetic fashion (“with good will”), will yield abundant fruit. He is clearly advocating a way of thinking about things with clarity and compassion, centered on the idea that, like ourselves, “all things have wisdom.” Panpsychism is seen as the path to truth and lasting insight.
Empedocles thus relies on two variations of earlier arguments for panpsychism. First he employs the Indwelling Powers argument by claiming that everything has the power of thought. Mind is clearly an inherent part of his cosmic system, and as such it constitutes a kind of metaphysical first principle. The elements think, period. Thinking is a brute characteristic of matter and a power intrinsic to material reality. Second, he uses the Continuity argument in a pluralistic fashion, appealing to an inherent soul-nature of the four elements that constitute all things.
Finally, consider the atomist theory of Leucippus and Democritus. On their view, all things in the world consist of imperceptibly small, indivisible atoms (a-tomos, “uncuttables”) that move through otherwise empty space and interact via mechanical means to create large-scale material objects. Democritus claimed that not all atoms are alike, but that there are many different sizes and shapes, and that these differences account for the different physical properties of things.
It is sometimes believed that there is no place for mind or soul in the atomist universe. And in fact these philosophers did take the first steps away from a hylozoist interpretation. Cleve takes note of this point:
For the very first time, we have here the notion of “matter without consciousness.” Democritus (or Leucippus) forms the notion of atomoi apatheis, of “unfeeling atoms,” being the first to drop [in part] the idea of panzoism. (1969: 421)
However, these philosophers did not eliminate soul from the cosmos. Even though most kinds of atoms were completely unfeeling, one type—namely, that of spherical shape—was unique in that it possessed psyche and sensitivity. Aristotle explains that “those [atoms] which are spherical [Democritus] calls fire and soul” (De anima 404a2). The implied connection between soul and fire was evidently quite common in ancient Greece; both were seen as the most rarefied of substances, and often soul was considered to be made from elemental fire. The Democritean psyche was thus atomistic and material, like all things.7
The crucial question is this: Which objects, in addition to humans, contain the spherical soul atoms? Aristotle continues:
Spherical atoms are identified with soul because atoms of that shape are most adapted to permeate everywhere, and to set all the other [atoms] moving by being themselves in movement. (404a5)
If soul atoms are everywhere—and not just everywhere in the human or animal body—the apparent conclusion is that all things have souls (argument by Continuity). Consistent with earlier theories of soul, there are clear implications here that soul-atoms are omnipresent and are the ultimate cause of motion. Perhaps they are not always everywhere, and perhaps they are not the only source of motion—this we cannot tell. Consequently, it is difficult to clearly determine the extent of panpsychism in atomism. But the concept of a soul-atom had a great deal of influence, both on ancient atomists, including Epicurus and Lucretius, and on panpsychist philosophers generally, even through the late 1800s. Circa 1870, William Clifford and others put forth panpsychist theories of “mind-stuff” that recall the ideas of Democritus.
It bears noting that the “hylozoism” of the pre-Socratics was of a subtle and implicit form. Apart from Heraclitus, who explicitly referred to life (zoe), the others spoke in terms of psyche, spirit, gods, and motion. These terms were broadly and implicitly associated with the phenomenon of life, and thus, in a loose sense, the pre-Socratics were hylozoists. ‘Hylopsychism’ would be a more appropriate term for their view, or perhaps even ‘hylotheism’. ‘Hylozoism’ carries a negative connotation in modern literature and is frequently used as a vague disparagement of aspects of Greek philosophy. But the term is misleading, and it is one more indication of the low regard—and poor understanding—of panpsychist philosophy. Surprisingly, the one ancient philosopher perhaps most deserving of the label ‘hylozoist’ is Plato, as I will now explain.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle collectively set philosophy forward on a new path of rationalism and logic. The consensus view that Plato was not a “primitive hylozoist” is typified by the following passage: “The hylozoism of the Milesians was no longer possible for Plato. Life (soul) and matter were not the same, and he sees soul as the self-moving principle which imparts its own motion to otherwise inert body, thus making it animate.” (Guthrie 1962–1981, volume 4: 420) But this statement is misleading, and the implication is arguably incorrect. There is very strong evidence that Plato was in fact a panpsychist or even hylozoist of sorts—or at least that this is the most rational interpretation of his metaphysical scheme.
Certainly Plato broke new ground, but in some ways there was less divergence than is generally acknowledged or understood. Given the panpsychist views of Plato’s esteemed predecessors, we should not be surprised to see elements of panpsychism in Plato himself. In fact he makes a number of statements that point toward such a view, even if he falls short of an outright endorsement. In the end, panpsychism seems to be the most plausible interpretation of his various beliefs.
First, though, I need to elaborate a bit on the status of the world-soul thesis. This concept, clearly and unambiguously held by Plato, is that the cosmos as a whole possesses a soul. This cosmic soul was constructed and set in place by the Demiurge, the creator god of the universe.8 It is clear that a world-soul thesis doesn’t entail hylozoism, panpsychism, or anything like this. Panpsychism demands that individual objects, in themselves, be ensouled; a cosmic soul has an uncertain relation to any lesser souls. But a world-soul hypothesis is obviously compatible with such views. Of course Plato, like all ancient philosophers, took it for granted that humans possessed souls, and therefore that at least one sort of lesser being was also ensouled. A cosmos with both human souls and a world-soul is immediately in a strange situation: Two highly disparate entities are ensouled. This would seem to be a dubious and arbitrary metaphysical scheme. One would expect that other entities, perhaps many such, would also be ensouled. And in fact this is what we find in Plato.
I also note that my analysis is centered on Plato’s late works as representative of his mature thinking. He seems to have modified his perspective on ensoulment somewhere between his middle and late periods. It is significant that he moved from an ambiguous stance to a more consistent and more universal view of ensoulment in his later years.
As an example of Plato’s middle-period views, consider Phaedrus. In this dialogue he makes a distinction between things animate and inanimate. He notes, for example, that “every bodily object that is moved from outside has no soul” (245e), and that “all soul looks after all that lacks a soul” (246b). There would thus seem to be two distinct categories of things—those ensouled, and those without.
And yet at the same time Plato seems sympathetic to the view that something soul-like is present in, or associated with, apparently inanimate things. Socrates lectures in an unusual setting—outside of town in the shade of a large plane tree—and this inspires him to reflect on nature. Near the end of the dialogue he makes the rather surprising claim that nature was the original source of philosophy, and that the rocks and trees might themselves “speak the truth”:
[T]he priests of the temple of Zeus at Dodona say that the first prophecies were the words of an oak. Everyone who lived at that time, not being as wise as you young ones are today, found it rewarding enough in their simplicity to listen to an oak or even a stone, so long as it was telling the truth … . (275b)
On the one hand this can be read as a breaking away from the “simplicity” of the earlier, hylozoistic view. And yet there is a gentle chiding of the purported wisdom of the young philosophers; one senses a certain sympathy with the ancient ways of knowing nature.
Plato’s more explicit references to panpsychism are found in his later writings. The four primary sources—Sophist, Philebus, Timaeus, and Laws—are generally regarded as among his last works. In these we find three distinct arguments pointing toward a panpsychic universe. The fact that these come in the later works implies that they represent Plato’s final thinking on the matter and thus have a relatively strong degree of significance in his overall system of metaphysics.
I emphasize that these are not explicit arguments. Plato doesn’t explicitly draw a panpsychist conclusion in any of these works. And yet his arguments are individually and collectively consistent with such a worldview. More than this, they logically entail panpsychism. Significantly, nowhere in his late works does Plato deny this implication, and he avoids making fundamental distinctions between obviously animate and obviously inanimate things.9 All this is indicative of, if not an outright endorsement, at least a strong sympathy with panpsychism.
For Plato, as for the pre-Socratics, the concept of soul was closely related to that of the mind. Psyche and nous are important concepts for him, and the difference in meaning between them is relatively small. Often they are used interchangeably, as if they were evident synonyms. A number of points support this view. Writing on Plato’s treatment in Phaedo—which is a primary text on the theory of the soul—Guthrie (1962–1981, volume 4: 421) states plainly that “in its pure state it [soul] was identical with nous.” Aristotle (De anima, 407a5) observes that “it is evident that Plato means the soul of the whole to be like the sort of soul which is called mind.” This is consistent with Aristotle’s overall discussion in book I of De anima, in which he argues that his predecessors have generally not distinguished between mind and soul. Plato himself, in Philebus, identifies soul as the necessary, though not sufficient, condition for mind: “no wisdom and reason without soul” (30d). In Timaeus we learn that “it is impossible for anything to come to possess intelligence apart from soul” (30b). All this is consistent with his famous tri-partition of the soul: rationality, spiritedness, and desire. The rational faculty is an intrinsic aspect of the soul, and thus we cannot speak of one without the other.
Now let us turn to the four primary texts. In Sophist, Plato investigates the nature and meaning of “being” in its entirety: “that which wholly is.” At the start of a somewhat complicated passage near the middle of the dialogue, the Visitor relates being to dynamis (“power” or “capacity”): “My notion would be, that anything which possesses any sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by another … has real existence; and I hold that the definition of being is simply power.” (247e)10 Some lines later, the Visitor elaborates that being is “an active or passive energy, arising out of a certain power” (248b). This identification of being with power, or a “potent capacity,” recalls the pyr aeizoon, the ever-living fire, of Heraclitus; both refer to the energy inherent in all extant things. The Visitor then contrasts being (essence) with becoming (generation). The initial thought is that being is something static and fixed, whereas becoming is motion and change. Ultimately (249d), however, it is decided that this is misleading, and that one must “include both the moveable and the immoveable in his definition of being.” The moveable aspect of being reflects both its ability to act upon other things and to be known—a process that demands some change in the thing known. Consequently, “being” here must include both the realm of the changeless Forms and the dynamic phenomenal world as well; it refers to the sum total of reality.
This power of being—the movability and capability for active, dynamic change—draws on Plato’s notion that such power of self-originating motion is indicative of the presence of psyche. This idea recurs later in Laws (below), where Plato equates life and soul/mind with self-motion. But the important conclusion is this: If being has the power of self-generating motion, then such complete or perfect being (to pantelos on) must have not only an inherent psyche but also life and mind:
O heavens, can we ever be made to believe that motion [kinesi] and life [zoe] and soul [psyche] and mind [phronesi] are not present with perfect being? Can we imagine that, being is devoid of life and mind, and exists in awful unmeaningness an everlasting fixture? —That would be a dreadful thing to admit. (249a)
Plato insists, very explicitly, that all three things—life, mind, and soul—inhere in being. As if to reinforce the point, he then immediately emphasizes the issue again. He considers three different possibilities, dismissing all of them as “irrational”: that “[being] has mind and not life,” that “both [mind and life] inhere in perfect being, but that it has no soul,” and that “being has mind and life and soul, but although endowed with soul remains absolutely unmoved.” Reality itself—“that which wholly is”—thus necessarily possesses life, mind, and soul. This constitutes a first argument for the concept of ubiquitous soul, arising from metaphysical first principles.
This conclusion is not without difficulties. If everything possesses life, mind, and soul, then it would seem that all things possess such abilities as the power of self-motion and the power of thought. Plato doesn’t openly acknowledge these aspects of being. Yet it is certainly possible to expand the concepts of self-motion and thought so that they might encompass all material things. As we know, many of Plato’s predecessors did precisely this. All things respond dynamically and change in the face of external stimuli. They perceive; they sense; they are aware of what is going on around them. Even the very process of becoming can itself be seen as a kind of self-motion. Thus the argument is stated, and the implicit conclusion remains. Since neither the panpsychist conclusion nor its denial is addressed, we are left with an open question, at least in this dialogue. But in the absence of a clear denial, and especially in light of the other passages below, the panpsychist conclusion seems the more compelling.
In Philebus, Plato returns to the structure of his earlier Socratic dialogues. In the passages of interest—29a through 31b—Socrates and his two interlocutors are debating the relative standing of knowledge and pleasure as they relate to the good. In the process, they seek to place each of these two qualities into the proper metaphysical category.11 The relevant passage comes with their discussion of knowledge, which is also referred to as intelligence, wisdom, and reason; we can infer that these qualities are closely related to the concept of psyche in general.
Socrates asks whether the structure of the universe was created by chance or by “order of a wonderful intelligence.” The answer comes that “reason arranges it all” (28d). He then explains that our human bodies are composed of the four elements—fire, air, water, and earth—as are all things in the cosmos, as is the cosmos as a whole. Therefore we may speak of the ordered universe as a whole as constituting a “body.” Our human body possesses a soul (psyche); therefore the “body of the universe” must also possess a soul. In Socrates’ words, “the body of the universe which has the same properties as our [body], but more beautiful in all respects … possesses a soul” (30a). As an argument for the world-soul, the passage is clear enough. The cosmos is argued to possess a soul on the basis of its intelligent ordering of the elements, its regularity, and its beauty. But again, the concept of the world-soul, in itself, doesn’t qualify as panpsychism. It can be seen simply as a form of theism, or of panentheism. Neither of these implies panpsychism. Panpsychism requires that each individual thing, in itself, possess a soul- or mind-like quality.12 That the combination of all things collectively has a mind is a different proposition.
On the other hand, the concept of a universal mind or a world-soul is likely to be a part of any panpsychist cosmos. Virtually any system that sees mind in all individual things will see it in the whole. Panpsychism implies a world-soul, but not vice versa. Thus we need further elaboration from Plato to determine if his view is only that of a world-soul or whether it is something more, perhaps true panpsychism.
In fact, we find in this part of Philebus the second of three arguments for a panpsychist cosmos. This is a variation of the Continuity argument, and it is quite similar to that used by Empedocles. Plato relies heavily on analogy: A non-human object is argued to be similar in content to the human body, and thus is claimed to possess at least one essential characteristic of humans, namely a psyche. In simplified form, Plato’s Continuity argument is as follows:
Therefore,
Then, with the further implication that
one may conclude that
The weakest link in this argument is the third point: that somehow psyche is logically entailed by the fact that our human bodies consist of the four elements. Plato makes no argument here for that claim, but importantly, he does so later on in Laws; at 895c he refers to the elements “alone” and, given their capacity for self-generating motion, they must be counted alive. If the elements individually are alive, it is plausible to conclude that anything composed of them—i.e., everything—is likewise alive. But again, the argument is only implicit here.
Plato’s third argument, also put forth in Philebus, is a version of the well-known Argument by Design. This argument has of course been traditionally used by theologians and philosophers to argue for God’s existence on the basis of the vast and supreme ordering that we see in the world. Plato argues not for God, but for universal mind, the world-soul. In the process, he also makes the argument for panpsychism.
In Philebus one of the metaphysical categories under discussion is “cause,” meaning, ultimate cause—the cause of all things and events in the universe. Socrates notes that “this cause is recognized as all-encompassing wisdom” and, more important, that “cause [is] present in everything” (30b). At issue is the meaning of the latter phrase.
Elaborating on the first point, Socrates says that “cause” is that which “orders and coordinates the years, seasons, and months, and which has every right to the title of wisdom and reason [i.e. mind]” (30c). Two lines later we find Plato’s close correlation of mind and soul: “no wisdom and reason without a soul.” Then, from Socrates, “reason belongs to that kind which is the cause of everything” (30e). Thus mind, in the form of reason, wisdom, or intelligence, belongs to the metaphysical category of “cause of all things.” This cause—mind, and the underlying psyche—is “present in everything.” Clearly this can be read in two ways. It can mean that evidence of the world-soul is present in the overall ordering of the cosmos, or it can mean that wisdom and reason themselves, and the underlying psyche, somehow reside in things. Viewing this passage in isolation, one might presume the former. Viewing it in conjunction with the other late-dialogue passages, however, we can see reason to support the latter interpretation.
Granting these arguments in Sophist and Philebus, we are still left wanting evidence of explicit attribution of soul to things other than humans or the cosmos. Some such evidence is necessary to confirm the panpsychist conjecture. And in fact this evidence appears in the other two late works, Timaeus and Laws.
In Timaeus Plato offers more an exposition of rhetoric than a traditional philosophical dialogue. Socrates is again present, along with a number of other men, including the title character and Critias. The central character, Timaeus, gives an extended description of the creation of the world. He is seen as a philosopher of considerable importance; Socrates says that “he has, in my judgment, mastered the entire field of philosophy” (20a). Thus, nominally at least, Timaeus’ views are to be held in high regard. Also, the dialogue was considered to be the central Platonic text throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. There was significant interest in Plato’s view of creation and in his idea of the Demiurge, the god-like being who created the universe and used the Forms to give it order. Also of interest was Plato’s depiction of the universe as alive, intelligent, and ensouled.
After some introductory words, Timaeus explains why the Demiurge created the world: He wanted “everything to become as much like himself as possible” (29e)—that is, brought from “a state of disorder to one of order.”13 The intelligent, ensouled, and “ordered” Demiurge sought to reproduce himself in the cosmos. Timaeus tells us that the Demiurge “concluded that it is impossible for anything to come to possess intelligence apart from soul,” and that “guided by this reasoning, he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, and so he constructed the universe” (30b). Again we see the implied connection of body—meaning any physical object—with soul/mind. Timaeus sums up his point by saying that the “divine providence brought our world into being as a truly living thing, endowed with soul and intelligence” (30c).
Timaeus then informs us that “the universe resembles more closely than anything else that Living Thing of which all other living things are parts, both individually and by kinds” (30c). The emphasis here is on both the individual things and the whole, which are said to share qualities of life and intelligence. Soul seems to exist in layers—in the “parts,” in the “kinds” of parts, and in the cosmos as a whole. The Demiurge “made [the cosmos] a single visible living thing, which contains within itself all the living things whose nature it is to share its kind” (31a).
Continuing in his account of the creation, Timaeus describes the formation of the stars and others heavenly bodies. The stars are “divine living things” (40b). The Earth itself is a “god,” “foremost [in the universe], the one with greatest seniority” (40c). As the Demiurge was preparing to create the stars, “he turned again to the mixing bowl, … the one in which he had blended and mixed the soul of the universe.” He concocted another “soul mixture,” and then “divided the mixture into a number of souls, equal to the number of the stars and assigned each soul to a star” (41e). Here is clear evidence that Plato saw individual, nonhuman objects—apart from the cosmos—as endowed with psyche.14
Later in the dialogue (69c–70e), Plato elaborates on his tripartite theory of soul. He examines the three components: reason, spirit, and appetite or desire. These are discussed, significantly, in the context of zoa—animals, or living things. Zoa have, by definition, one or more of these soul-types. Humans have all three, each located in a different part of the body. Celestial objects such as the Earth and the stars have only the highest soul-type: reason.
Some lines later he addresses the potentially problematic issue of plants. Plants are clearly alive, and yet they are different than animals; they have very limited means of self-motion, they have no obvious sense organs, and they function in the world in a very different manner. But they do seek out water and sunlight, and grow in such as way as to fulfill their biological potential. Plants do not seem to reason or to possess any spiritedness per se, but they do evidently have wants and desires, at least. And they are sensitive to their environmental conditions, and thus would appear to have positive and negative sensations about the world—something like pleasure and pain. Plato thus has good reason for ascribing them soul:
We may call these plants “living things” on the ground that anything that partakes of life has an incontestable right to be called “a living thing.” And in fact, what we are talking about now partakes of the third type of soul. … This type is totally devoid of opinion, reasoning, or understanding, though it does share in sensation [aisthêsis], pleasant and painful, and desire. (77b)
Plants thus possess the appetitive soul, which apparently includes both the intentional characteristic of desire and the qualitative ability to sense pleasure and pain.
Left unstated, however, is the possible existence and nature of other soul-types, which may apply to lower-order objects such as rocks. Clearly it would not do to attribute appetite to a rock. And yet some rocks—lodestones, in particular—have an undeniable ability to move things. How does Plato assess the nature of the lodestone? Unfortunately he gives it only passing treatment in Timaeus, treating with disdain the idea that a lodestone exerts a true force of attraction (80c). But in the one substantial reference to the subject, in the early dialogue Ion, he likens the stone’s magnetic power to that of the gods (533d–536a). Poets act as conduits of a “divine power”; thus, they are like the lodestone, which, through a chain of iron rings, passes along its attractive force. One is left with the implication that the power of the lodestone is itself divine, driven by a god or spirit, and thus, in a way, a marker of ensoulment.
In any event, the stock of ensouled entities has grown: humans and other animals,15 individual elements, the cosmos, stars, the Earth, plants. Again, these are consistent with the arguments in Sophist and Philebus. Such arguments provide something of an ontological theory establishing why all things may be considered as ensouled. If one were to disagree with this conclusion, then one might reasonably expect to find something in Plato’s ontology that would explain why the above set of objects is unique, why they alone are ensouled, and everything else is not. Such an explanation is lacking in his later writings, and thus panpsychism is the more reasonable conclusion.
Plato’s longest and last work, Laws, is primarily known for its description of the structure of the ideal, constitutionally based state. In the process, the issue of punishment arises as an important concern. The theory of punishment depends on the existence of gods, and book X provides an extended argument proving their existence. The argument revolves around the concept of “self-generating motion,” which is seen as primordial and as “the source of all motions.” Any object exhibiting such motion has the further quality of being alive. The character Clinias offers this observation: “When an object moves itself, [we are] to say that it is ‘alive.’ [And furthermore] when we see that a thing has a soul, the situation is exactly the same. … We have to admit that it is alive.” (895c) Furthermore, we have the identification of self-movement with soul. The Athenian asks “What’s the definition of the thing we call soul?” and answers “Motion capable of moving itself.” (896a) Clinias reiterates the point: “The entity which we all call ‘soul’ is precisely that which is defined by the expression “self-generating motion.” Thus, we end up with a three-way identification between life, soul, and self-movement.
Plato then makes a series of statements arguing that soul is primordial in the cosmos, is older than matter, and in fact is the mover of matter: “Soul, being the source of motion, is the most ancient thing there is. … Soul is the master, and matter its natural subject.” (896b–c) Next comes a restatement of the position, brought out in Philebus, that soul is the cause of all things (896d) and “controls the heavens as well” (896e).
The Athenian then addresses whether there is only a single world-soul or multiple souls. The initial answer is clear enough (“more than one”), but he is not confident as to the exact number. Some lines later, he asks, “If, in principle, soul drives round the sun, moon, and the other heavenly bodies, does it not impel each individually? Of course.” (898d) The Athenian then supports this contention by referring to the sun:
Everyone can see [the sun’s] body, but no one can see its soul—not that you could see the soul of any other creature, living or dying. Nevertheless, there are good grounds for believing that we are in fact held in the embrace of some such thing though it is totally below the level of our bodily senses, and is perceptible by reason alone. (898d)
In this remarkable statement, Plato not only adds the sun to the list of ensouled objects—significant insofar as the sun wasn’t recognized as just another star—but also makes clear that the soul of a nonhuman object is not empirically knowable. Rather, it is to be grasped solely by means of the intellect.
Then we have a final passage, arguably definitive, that indicates Plato’s view of the possibility that all things, individually, possess psyche. After acknowledging once again that “soul manages the universe” (899a), he writes:
Now consider all the stars and the moon and the years and the months and all the seasons: what can we do except repeat the same story? A soul or souls … have been shown to be the cause of all these phenomena, and whether it is by their living presence in matter … or by some other means, we shall insist that these souls are gods. Can anybody admit all this and still put up with people who deny that “everything is full of gods”? (899b)
The last phrase, of course, is a nod to Thales and his famous declaration of panpsychism, examined earlier. Souls exist throughout the cosmos, driving and coordinating all movement and change. They are likely to be manifest as a “living presence in matter.” And they are knowable not empirically but through reason alone.
One may object to the phrase “a soul or souls.” It is almost as if Plato is unsure or ambivalent about whether the world-soul acts alone in the cosmos or in conjunction with the manifold individual souls. Yet all other passages suggest multiple souls, acting independently of and contemporaneously with the world-soul. An alternate rendering of this phrase might be “a world-soul, and the multiplicity of other souls, have been shown to be the cause …”
The case for panpsychism in Plato is strong but indirect. The list of ensouled entities is impressively long and diverse. And there are others not mentioned above. For example, in Timaeus we read that our bones are ensouled: “next [the god] implanted in the marrow the various types of soul” (73c); “all those bones that had more soul than others” (74e). This is significant because it implies layers of soul within the human being—paralleling, perhaps, the structure of the cosmos.
Then in Republic we find an account of the polis that suggests that it too possesses a soul. The polis is shown to have a three-part structure, one that parallels the tripartition of the human soul. The structures are the same, and the moral virtues are the same in each. The polis is “courageous” (429b), “has good judgment and is really wise” (428d), is “just” (435a); generally, “everything else that has to do with virtue [is] the same in both” (441c). Indeed, the parts of the polis come from the people themselves; “where else would they come from?” (435e) Similar structure and similar effects imply a similar embodiment of soul, in human and polis alike.
One final piece of supporting evidence comes from Plotinus, circa 250 AD. In the only known explicit reference to panpsychism in Plato, Plotinus writes the following: “Plato says there is soul in everything of this [earthly] sphere” (Ennead VI, 7, 11). That Plotinus is referring not merely to Plato’s world-soul but to a soul or intelligence in all things individually is clear from the context.
Perhaps the final question to ask is this: What consistent metaphysics of the soul could include all the above-mentioned entities and yet not include everything? Can we imagine Plato constructing a vastly complex and seemingly arbitrary theory of the soul that includes humans, plants, stars, bones, elements, Being itself … and nothing else? Surely this is unlikely. No conceivable theory would pick out just those objects for ensoulment. The list is too broad and too diverse not to include every individual object in the cosmos. And this view finds independent support from the arguments listed above. Considering all the evidence, one has a hard time comprehending Guthrie’s bold claim that “hylozoism … was no longer possible for Plato.”
Thus Plato makes subtle use of three distinct arguments for panpsychism. They occur in four of his last major works, and therefore likely represent his mature thinking on the matter. This panpsychist vision is consistent across these works, each mutually supporting the other. And it is in line with the generally panpsychist milieu. By any reasonable assessment, Plato was a panpsychist.
There are several reasons why a panpsychist interpretation of Plato’s metaphysics is neither well known nor examined. First, some commentators simply assume that he is speaking poetically or metaphorically in these passages. This is difficult to prove either way, but in any case it is a problematic feature of much of his writing. To argue this way on the issue of panpsychism is a convenient and simplistic denial. By this tactic, we could dismiss much of substance in Plato’s philosophy. The panpsychist statements are too explicit and too wide ranging to all be argued away as metaphor.
Second, panpsychism seems to be refuted by passages in the early and middle works. Such passages, however, are rare and ambiguous. They do not rule out a broader panpsychist scheme, even if they emphasize the human soul. Nothing in the earlier writings explicitly denies panpsychism. It is more likely that Plato shifted his focus from the human soul to soul generally as he matured. And of course there is the possibility that he himself changed his opinion, from one of uncertainty or unconcern to something approaching a more affirmative stance.
Third, panpsychism doesn’t figure prominently in the overall corpus of Plato’s thinking—at least, not explicitly. This, however, is true not only of him but also of many other major panpsychists. And, of course, this is no basis for denying its existence. The relevant passages must be judged as a whole and in light of any potentially conflicting passages elsewhere. There appear to be no passages anywhere in his writings that explicitly deny the panpsychist conclusion. And there are no implications that would demand a larger role for it.
Fourth, on this issue Plato tends to make relatively flat statements of fact, without supplying much rationale. Elaborate and extended logical arguments are lacking. The arguments that do exist are indirect and implicit. This might suggest that the matter of panpsychism was more of an intuitive view for Plato, grounded perhaps in the so-called hylozoism of his predecessors. Or that argumentation was unnecessary on this point, perhaps because it could not lead to a decisive conclusion. Without detailed and intricate arguments, it is easy for present-day analytical commentators to overlook the matter entirely.
Fifth, for at least two centuries philosophy has been dominated by mechanist interpretations of nature, and writers have been reticent about acknowledging aspects of panpsychism in any major historical philosopher, let alone Plato. We see the same phenomenon with respect to Aristotle and several other prominent thinkers. This is especially true in the last hundred years or so, as hostility to panpsychism became mainstream within analytic philosophy.
This is not to say that no one has addressed the topic. One notable case in point is Ian Crombie. The chapter on Plato’s philosophy of mind in Crombie 1962 addresses his “animism.” The use of that term suggests a hostile treatment, and that is precisely what we find. Focusing on the later dialogues, Crombie writes:
For here we find Plato apparently maintaining, in all the dignity of metaphysical language, something almost indistinguishable from the animism of primitive savages. … So odd is it to find such a doctrine in such an author that one is forced to wonder whether, in ascribing souls to self-moving objects, Plato is really maintaining an animistic doctrine, or whether the better account may not be simply that he is evacuating the word ‘soul’ of all content except ‘self-activation.’ (325)
Concluding a lengthy analysis of the soul-theory in Phaedrus, Crombie writes: “The lesson then of the Phaedrus myth is that all apparent self-activation in physical things is to be ascribed to the presence in the living body of a genuinely self-activating thing, or in other words of a soul.” (328–329) Even if true, of course, this is something less than panpsychism; not every object in the universe is a self-mover. He then gives a brief and unfocused account of the souls of celestial objects, plants, animals, and parts of the human body.
Crombie’s rambling analysis concludes by asking “How are we to interpret the animism of the Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Laws?” (337) After stating that “this is not a simple question to answer,” he proceeds to consider both “figurative” and “literal” interpretations. On the former view, celestial souls are not really minds or spirits but rather a shorthand notation for the fact that “they conform to the requirements of [abstract and non-personal] reason.” ‘Soul’ merely reflects the evident fact that the cosmos is well ordered and follows consistent and rational patterns. Of the latter, literal view, “we need not waste many words.” Crombie does his best to defend the case for the figurative view but is forced to concede, in the end, that “this interpretation is really untenable” (339). In other words, we are stuck with the literal view: true animism or panpsychism. Precisely what this means, Crombie concludes, “is a question I should not like to answer” (341). Apparently he cannot bear to contemplate the possibility that Plato might actually have been a panpsychist.
There are many unanswered questions here. For example, what is the relationship between the myriad individual souls and the world-soul? Are the individual souls truly distinct entities, or are they merely aspects of the one Soul? If they are distinct, they must still stand in some relation to the larger world-soul, which would seem to have a special status among all the souls of the cosmos. One could speculate on answers to these questions, but there is little in Plato’s writings to justify any particular conclusion. He seems to have simply left such matters open. And in any event such questions are not unique to the panpsychist interpretation, nor do they undermine it in any way. Indeed, one might ask if it really matters whether there are many souls or only one Soul with many manifestations. I take it as self-evident that it does matter. It would seem that one’s self-conception, and one’s vision of the self in the world, must be vastly different in each case. It’s hard to imagine that Plato was unconcerned with this distinction. But it’s not hard to imagine him struggling with issues of personhood and the relationship between soul and Soul, ultimately reaching a consistent view of soul as pervading the universe.
Aristotle is perhaps the last ancient philosopher who would be expected to put forth panpsychist views. His notion of mankind as alone, among living beings, in possessing a rational, separable, and immortal soul is in line with the traditional Cartesian view. His emphasis on analytics, logic, and classification aligns him with present-day materialist science. And his denial of the Platonic Forms makes him more of a conventional realist. Thus, it is in his case that we find perhaps the most surprising evidence of panpsychist thinking. Much of the groundwork along this line was done by A. L. Peck and by John Rist. Rist’s insightful analysis in his 1989 book The Mind of Aristotle is a standout among recent writings on Aristotle’s conception of mind and soul.
By way of background, we know that Aristotle viewed the psyche or soul as “the form of living things.” Like Plato, he posited three degrees of soul: nutritive, sensitive, and rational. These incorporate five “psychic powers”: in ascending order, nutritive/generative, appetitive, sensory, locomotive, and rational. Each level encompasses and contains those below it.
Like Plato, Aristotle accepts that plants are ensouled. A typical statement is found in De anima: “It seems that the principle found in plants is also a kind of soul; for this is the only principle which is common to both animals and plants.” (411b27) Plants, as the lowest order of living things, possess only a nutritive capacity. All animals have, at least, nutritive and sensitive powers; higher animals have additional powers; and man alone possesses all five psychic powers.16
At issue, then, are the non-living things. According to Aristotle they have no soul—hence, technically, he is no panpsychist. But the question remains whether non-living things have something soul-like in them. From early on, Aristotle seems to have been open to such a view:
Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie. (History of Animals 588b4–6)
And again in the late work Parts of Animals:
For nature passes from lifeless objects to animals in such an unbroken sequence, interposing between them beings which live and yet are not animals, that scarcely any difference seems to exist between two neighboring groups owing to their close proximity. (PA 681a11–15)
Indeed, this continuity is an almost god-like quality of the world: “All things have by nature something divine in them.” (Nicomachean Ethics 1153b33) The lack of a firm ontological distinction between living and lifeless things suggests, or at least leaves open the possibility, that there may be some common soul-like quality shared among all things.
As a part of his broader inquiry into the natural world, Aristotle sought to explain the puzzling phenomenon of the generation of living, ensouled beings. As he saw it, there are two ways in which this can occur: sexual reproduction and spontaneous generation. The former is challenging enough to understand, and he spends considerable effort explaining the nature and action of male and female reproductive organs. On his final view, sexual reproduction occurs because the male supplies the (rational) soul in his semen, which shapes and forms the raw material—the “menstrual blood”—in the female’s uterus. Thus he offers something of a scientific account. Spontaneous generation, on the other hand, is very problematic. Plant and animal life appear out of inanimate matter. How is that possible?
First, we note that there is the clear presence of an evolutionary and teleological imperative in Aristotle’s thinking. That is uncontroversial. He envisions all of nature as continually striving toward a final goal or end (telos), namely “the good,” “the better,” or “the best”:
Nature creates nothing without a purpose, but always the best possible in each kind of living creature. (Progression of Animals 704b15)
There is something divine, good, and desirable … [that matter] desire[s] and yearn[s] for … . (Physics 192a18)
For in all things … nature always strives after the better. (On Generation and Corruption 336b28)
All existing things … seek [their] own special good … . (Eudemian Ethics 1218a30)
All the operations of nature … are for a final cause and for the sake of what is best in each case. (Generation of Animals 789b3)
By ‘better’ or ‘best’ Aristotle has in mind certain specific qualities; he comments that being is better than non-being, life better than non-life, and soul better than matter. Thus, as Rist points out (1989: 123), there is a meaningful sense in which “the whole of the cosmos is permeated by some kind of upward desire and aspiration”—upward in the sense of toward form, life, and soul.
Spontaneous generation is therefore explained in part by the upward striving of matter that Aristotle articulated throughout his writings. Given that striving or desire is typically seen as an intentional mental property, this in itself displays a tendency toward a kind of panpsychism. But Aristotle went further, describing the actual means by which such a tendency or striving became manifest as soul.
At the beginning of book 2 of Physics, he distinguishes things that come about “by nature” from those created “by cause”:
Of things that exist, some exist by nature, some from other causes. By nature the animals and their parts exist, and the plants and the simple bodies (earth, fire, air, water)—for we say that these and the like exist by nature.
All the things mentioned plainly differ from things which are not constituted by nature [e.g. artifacts]. For each of them [i.e. the natural things] has within itself a principle of motion and of stationariness … . (192b9–15)
Animals, plants, and even the four elements are here seen as possessing an inherent “principle of motion” that is related to the essential nature of all natural objects. Aristotle then begins the final book of Physics with a question regarding this universal motion: Has such motion always existed in the cosmos, or was there a time when all was still? After some brief consideration of the alternatives, he concludes that absence of motion is impossible. Thus he provides an affirmative answer to the question “Is [motion] in fact an immortal never-failing property of things that are, a sort of life as it were to all naturally constituted things?” (250b12) This “sort of life” that all things have is consistent with the view of universal striving that we see in the earlier portions of the same work, and in the related passages quoted above.
The “sort of life” in matter was no idle concept; it was directly connected to the process of spontaneous generation. Aristotle put it as follows in one of the last-written books of Metaphysics: “Those natural objects which are produced … spontaneously, are those whose matter can also initiate for itself that motion which [in sexual reproduction] the seed initiates.” (1034b5) The life in matter initiates the generative process, thus bringing biological life, and soul, into being.
Remaining to be explained are (1) the exact nature of this life or striving that all natural things possess and (2) precisely how this life or striving activates a process such as spontaneous generation. Clearly this life-property is not equivalent to psyche, as Aristotle consistently confines soul, in its three forms, to plants, animals, and humans. Rist argues that in the early Aristotle this quality is as much mind-like as soul-like. As evidence he cites a passage from Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods: “In one place [Aristotle] attributes divinity to mind only; in another he says that the universe itself is God.” (book I, 30–33) The reference is to Aristotle’s lost early work On Philosophy. Rist reads into this a three-way identification among the cosmos, mind, and God—the concept of the world-mind.
The identification of these three entities is supported by the ideas that all things have “a sort of life” and that “matter desires form.” It is also supported, indirectly, by passages in the roughly concurrent work De caelo, at the beginning of which Aristotle reiterates that the four elements, or simple bodies, “possess a principle of movement in their own nature” (268b28). That is, the natural movement of fire and air is upward, whereas that of earth and water is downward. The heavens, however, contain the “primary body,” or ether, which is fundamentally different from the four elements and whose natural movement is circular. Ether moves endlessly in a circle, accounting for the perceived circular motion of the stars and planets. Importantly, the ether exhibits self-movement, and thus is ensouled: “If it moves itself, it must be animate.” (275b25) The self-moving ether is both “immortal” and “divine” (284a4). It contains all limited, finite, earthly motions within it. It is, in essence, the medium and the means by which all other movement occurs in the universe.
Book II of De caelo opens with a discussion of symmetry in the heavens, and again repeats the conclusion: “we have already determined … that the heaven is animate and possesses a principle of movement” (285a28). The self-moving ether drives the motion of the celestial bodies, thus endowing them with a kind of life: “We think of the stars as mere bodies, and as units with a serial order indeed but entirely inanimate; but we should rather conceive them as enjoying life and action.” (292a19–21) Hence, “we must, then, think of the action of the stars as similar to that of animals and plants” (292a32). The motions of all things, from stars to elements, exhibit a degree of rationality, and rationality is a hallmark of mind. Mind is in all things to the extent that its action is manifest in them via a cosmic source of rational movement.
Aristotle evidently came to see the world-mind as insufficient, and so, shortly thereafter, he introduced the concept of the Unmoved Mover, which stood alone and apart from the natural world and, on Rist’s view, operated in conjunction with the world-mind (1989: 129). Mind was immanent, and the Mover was transcendent. Aristotle also began to more clearly distinguish things with souls from those without. Plants, animals, and the ether fell into the former category; all other things, including the four elements, were relegated to inanimate status.
Yet even after the introduction of the Unmoved Mover and the separation between the animate and inanimate, Aristotle still had to account for both spontaneous generation and the natural tendency (dynamis) of the elements to move toward their natural resting places—fire upward, earth downward, and so on. Furthermore, there was the open status of the fifth element, the ether. Rist argues that Aristotle ultimately attached the notion of mind to the Unmoved Mover, removing it from immanence in the cosmos. But some agent of the Mover would have to remain in the natural world.
Aristotle then supplemented the notion of the ether with a new concept: that of the pneuma. Perhaps borrowing from Anaximenes, he installed the pneuma in a preeminent role in nature. It appears prominently in the last three of his biological works (Parts of Animals, Motion of Animals, and Generation of Animals). And it neatly ties together the issues of psyche, generation, and celestial and earthly motion—and panpsychism.
Just as the ether is the heavenly bearer of mind and motion generated by the Prime Mover, the pneuma is the earthly bearer; it is the “vehicle of Soul” and its “immediate instrument” (Peck 1943: lix), the “bearer of soul” (Rist 1989: 131). Pneuma is not mind; that was reserved for the transcendent Mover. Nor is it soul, as soul resides only in those animate beings. It is, rather, “soul-like.” As Aristotle writes in one of his last works, Generation of Animals, it is the “faculty of all kinds of soul,” the “vital heat” (thermoteta psychiken), the “principle of soul” (736b29ff). As such, pneuma shares much in common with ether; they are, as he says, “analogous.” Both are intermediaries to the Prime Mover, and both convey its rationality and soul. Neither is explicitly mind or soul; each is only the carrier of such. Furthermore, both share a vital power or a generative capacity. Both bring soul to natural objects, and thus in a sense account for the life in them. This brings us back us to the problem of spontaneous generation versus sexual reproduction. In sexual reproduction it is the soul-heat of the pneuma in the semen that conveys life to the embryo. In the case of spontaneous reproduction—which works best in decomposing matter sitting out in the hot sun—it is the heat of the solar ether, manifest on Earth as the pneuma, that conveys life. Regarding this vital heat, Aristotle writes:
This is not fire nor any such force, but it is the pneuma included in the semen and the foam-like, and the natural principle in the pneuma, being analogous to the element of the stars [i.e. ether]. (GA 736b35)
The soul-like pneuma is ubiquitous in the natural world, penetrating and informing all things. Not only does it bring soul to the embryo and to the spontaneously generated creatures; it also accounts for the general property of matter, its desire for form and for the good. Aristotle is explicit and unambiguous that all things are inspirited by the pneuma:
Animals and plants come into being in earth and in liquid because there is water in earth, and pneuma in water, and in all pneuma is vital heat, so that in a sense all things are full of soul. (762a18–20; emphasis added)
The final striking phrase of this passage from Generation of Animals is unique in Aristotle’s corpus. The text is emphatic: hoste tropon tina panta psyches einai plere. Echoing panpsychist thinking from Thales to Plato, Aristotle apparently came to the conclusion that something soul-like, of varying degrees, inhered in all objects of the natural world. Peck (1943: 585) referred to this passage as Aristotle’s “startling admission,” arguing that such a conclusion is justified in part by the fact that animated beings arise out of nature (phusis), and that “as we know, phusis never acts idly but always with a telos [end] in view.” “Regarded in this way,” Peck continues, “‘matter’ … might be looked upon as considerably more than mere lifeless, inert material; and in Generation of Animals Aristotle does in fact ascribe even the possession of psyche to it.” Peck seems taken aback by this “startling admission,” and appears unwilling or unable to place it in the larger context of Aristotle’s conception of life and mind. It is in the latter step—the elaboration of the larger role of pneuma in Aristotle’s theory of mind—that Rist makes a significant contribution.
Pneuma is thus the universal link among all things, and it provides a common ontological dimension. It makes the distinction between animate and inanimate relatively superficial. Through the pneuma, Aristotle avoids an unacceptable and unexplainable dualism between things that are ensouled and those that are utterly soulless. Granted, he still has the problem of explaining just how pneuma becomes manifest as full-blown soul in certain objects, such as plants, animals, and humans. But this is more a difference of degree than of kind, and thus it is less difficult metaphysically. It is unfortunate that, as far as we know, Aristotle never addressed it fully.
As might be expected, panpsychist readings of Aristotle are as rare as of Plato. Thomas Aquinas cited this possibility in his Summa (part 1a, question 18; see discussion below). Apart from Peck and Rist, very few recent writers have commented on it. De Quincey (2002: 118–119) suggests that it is inherent in Aristotle’s theory of hylomorphism. Several years earlier, Charles Hartshorne argued obliquely for a similar view:
Aristotle’s statements that the soul … is all things, that all things are moved by God as the lover by what he loves (implying that all things love, and thus are sentient … ), that a soul is the form of any organized, self-moving body (implying that if … nature consists entirely of more or less organized, self-moving bodies … then nature consists entirely of besouled constituents). (1950: 443)
Hartshorne was on the right track, but the details are sorely lacking. Apart from these few cases, recent literature on Aristotle is utterly vacant on this matter. Gill and Lennox (1994), for example, include eight chapters on Aristotle’s theory of self-motion, and yet the pneuma concept appears not once. Freudenthal (1995) has an extensive discussion of vital heat and the pneuma but completely overlooks the panpsychist implication. As to why recent scholars fail to address the pneuma theory, a knowledgeable colleague remarked that “they simply don’t know what to do with it.”
As elaborated above, we can see a clear picture of a quasi-panpsychist cosmos in Aristotle—a cosmos in which everything has either soul or, at least, a soul-like presence, the pneuma, which confers an evolutionary, life-like impulse upon all things.
Epicurus was the founder of one of the three great Hellenistic philosophical systems—Stoicism and Skepticism being the others. Epicurean physical theory relied heavily on the atomism of Democritus and followed his central thesis of material reality as composed of atoms moving through the void. On this view, atoms possess only the primary qualities of size, shape, and mass or inertia; they interact and combine to form the large-scale objects of the world around us. It was a thoroughly materialistic and modern approach to physical theory.
As a theory, atomism had a unique problem: how to account for the soul in a materialistic and atomistic universe. As we saw, Democritus’ solution was to posit a special class of atoms—small, round, smooth—that were the bearers of soul. Light, fluid, and self-moving, the soul-atoms penetrated everywhere and set the other atoms into motion. Because they were omnipresent, the action of the psyche was presumably also found everywhere.
The atomists also believed that atoms had a natural “downward” motion through the void, something like that of falling raindrops. For Democritus and Leucippus, the motion of these atoms, soul-atoms included, was of a deterministic nature: “Nothing happens in vain, but everything for a reason and by necessity.” (in Barnes 1987: 243) Aristotle confirms this view: “Democritus, however, neglecting the final cause, reduces to necessity all the operations of nature.” (GA 789b3) If everything, including the action of the soul, occurs deterministically, then there is no room for anything like free will in a Democritean universe.
That was problematic for Epicurus, whose ethical system required free will. He therefore kept the Democritean atoms but discarded the determinism. He argued instead that the motion of atoms resulted from three sources: weight, mechanical collisions, and a new third factor that he called “swerve”—in Greek, parenklisis, meaning a deflection or turning aside. In effect, the atoms occasionally “chose” to deflect from their normal downward flow. This was effectively seen as a small amount of free will exhibited by the atoms. The swerve was a crucial process in nature because it caused collisions and combinations with other atoms, leading to a cascading of action that resulted in the formation of large objects. Without swerve, atoms would fall smoothly through the void, unfettered by atomic collisions and interactions, and thus no complex structures would ever develop. And it also provided the root source of human will.
Very few of Epicurus’ original writings have survived, so we rely primarily on later doxographers—primarily Cicero, Lucretius, and Diogenes Laertius. Lucretius’ De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), written around 50 BC, contains the best sympathetic account of the atomic swerve. The basic statement of the view is found near the beginning of book II:
Though atoms fall straight downward through the void by their own weight, yet at uncertain times and at uncertain points, they swerve a bit. … And if they did not swerve … no clashes would occur, no blows befall the atoms; nature would never have made a thing. (II: 215–225)
The willful swerving of the atoms is the basis for our own free will: Out of the swerve “rises … that will torn free from fate, through which we follow wherever pleasure leads, and likewise swerve aside at times and places” (II: 255–260). Human free will cannot arise ex nihilo (“since nothing, we see, could be produced from nothing”; 287) and hence must be present in the atoms themselves. “Thus to the atoms we must allow … one more cause of movement [namely, that of free will]—the one whence comes this power we own.” (284–286)
Cicero, in On Fate, adds a similar but more critical account:
Epicurus thinks that the necessity of fate can be avoided by the swerve of an atom … . [He] introduced this line of reasoning because he was afraid that if an atom always moved by its natural and necessary heaviness, we would have no freedom, since our mind would be moved in such a way that it would be compelled by the motion of atoms. (in Inwood and Gerson 1997: 47–48)17
Thus the swerve serves two important purposes: It accounts for the complex physical structure of objects and, independently, it provides the basis for human freedom of will. Epicurus used the swerve to simultaneously solve two potentially serious problems for his atomic worldview.
The second purpose, in fact, also provides a new approach in arguing for panpsychism. Epicurus’ argument can be reconstructed as follows: Humans clearly exhibit will. Will is a fundamental quality of existence and cannot plausibly emerge from non-will. Therefore will is present in the elemental particles of the cosmos, and hence, potentially, in all things. This is an Argument by Non-Emergence. If certain psychic qualities are not emergent, then they are necessarily present in at least some of the ultimate or most fundamental particles.18 This particular argument has proved to be one of the more enduring and more important arguments for panpsychism, and it is still employed today. I examine this argument in detail in the chapters to follow.
Given that atoms have a will, this does not imply, according to Lucretius—and presumably Epicurus—that they possess sensitivity or other mental powers. Lucretius allows for certain qualities to emerge from nothing, including life and sentience. The ability to sense is evidently viewed as an emergent phenomenon, unlike the power of will. Thus, atoms are said to possess will but not sentience: “Now all that we know [of] is composed of insensate atoms … in every case.” (864–846) And it is permissible to “rightly conclude that sense comes from non-sense” (930). The atomic swerve has no connection to human sensate qualities such as joy, happiness, or pain; atoms “must not, then, be endowed with sense” (972). This is a plausible claim. A non-emergentist need not hold that nothing emerges; that would be a ludicrous and indefensible position. Even today, the physical realm is held to consist of certain fundamental, non-emergent entities which then combine into more complex structures. The same could well be true for the mental realm.
In concluding this section, I must mention recent scientific developments that seem, surprisingly, to confirm the existence of an atomic will. The mathematicians John Conway and Simon Kochen argue in two papers (2006, 2009) that “if indeed we humans have free will, then elementary particles already have their own small share of this valuable commodity.” Sounding rather like modern-day Epicureans, they explain: “Our [Free Will Theorem] asserts that if experimenters have a certain freedom, then particles have exactly the same kind of freedom. Indeed, it is natural to suppose that this latter freedom is the ultimate explanation of our own.” (2009: 230) The technical details of their theorem are beyond the scope of this book, but Conway and Kochen note that the phrase “the particles make a free decision” is more accurately stated as “the Universe makes this free decision in the neighborhood of the particles” (2006: 1456). Quantum theory decisively refutes a deterministic universe, they say. The strangeness of quantum experiments can best be explained by atomic choices that we cannot predict.19 Once again, ancient metaphysical ideas find confirmation in modern science.
By attributing will to atoms, Epicurus made explicit the implicit panpsychism of Democritus. Neither Cicero nor Lucretius expanded on the panpsychic implications, nor did they discuss freedom of will in ordinary inanimate objects—which seems to be a logical consequence.
Zeno of Citium, a contemporary of Epicurus, founded his own school of philosophy in Athens around 325 BC. Because Zeno spent much time in the stoa (covered portico) of the agora, his school came to be known as Stoicism. Zeno, along with successors Cleanthes and Chrysippus, pieced together the various lines of Stoic thought and constructed a comprehensive philosophical system. Stoic philosophy was highly influential in the ancient world, even more so than the views of Plato and Aristotle. It vied with and largely surpassed Skepticism and Epicureanism for influence, and it maintained a dominant position for nearly 500 years. Panaetius and Posidonius carried on the tradition through the pre-Christian era, and the Roman Stoics—Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—continued it until nearly 200 AD.
Stoicism can be divided into the three traditional parts of philosophy: physics, logic, and ethics. These were not three isolated branches of thought; they all addressed the presence of reason in the cosmos. As Tony Long says (1974: 119), “the subject matter of logic, physics, and ethics is one thing, the rational universe.” Reason (logos) is embodied alike in mankind and in the cosmos. “Cosmic events and human actions are … not happenings of two quite different orders; in the last analysis they are both alike consequences of one thing—logos.” (108) Thus, according to the Stoics, one cannot learn about mankind without learning about the rational cosmos, nor can one learn about the cosmos without gaining an understanding of humanity.
The Stoic universe consisted of two central principles: the Active and the Passive. The Passive is “primary matter,” the unformed substance of the world, constituted by the four Empedoclean elements of fire, air, water, and earth. These elements are not equally passive, however. Fire and air are relatively active, earth and water relatively passive.
The Active is rather more complex, and it has a number of interpretations. In general it gives form and order to all physical objects. Owing to this capacity, it is equated with the logos of the universe, the rational principle governing all things. The logos, in turn, is seen as the supreme organizing power and thus is equated with god: “the Active is the rational principle [logos] in [the universe], i.e. god.”20 Because it was the highest of cosmic divine powers, it sometimes took the name Zeus. And because of its ability to control the destiny of all things, it functioned as a kind of providence or fate. Thus we read that “God and mind and fate and Zeus are one thing, but called by many different names.”21
Also central to Stoicism, and intimately related to the Active principle, was the concept of pneuma. As a material compound, pneuma had to have an elemental structure; its active, energetic, and refined nature led to the conclusion that it was a joint composition of fire and air. The importance of these two elements was seen in our own human bodies, wherein warmth and breath were the two primary indicators of life. These two elements, when conjoined as pneuma, served as the omnipresent life energy of the universe. Citing the Stoic Posidonius, Sandbach (1975: 130) writes that “a ‘life-force’ could be recognized everywhere.”
Furthermore, since all things have form, and this form is given to inert matter by the Active, and the Active is effective through the pneuma, it is clear that pneuma is present in all things. There are, of course, strong affinities here to Aristotle’s theory. Aristotle died just as Zeno was reaching maturity, and his views would certainly have circulated among Zeno and his followers in Athens. By all appearances, Zeno adopted Aristotle’s late development of the pneuma and elevated it to a central cosmic force.
Pneuma is—like fire—active, energetic, and inherently in motion. It is a fire that gives form and order; it constructs and builds, rather than destroys. In the words of Zeno, pneuma is a pyr technikon—a “creative fire”—that creates and animates the natural world. We find a number of interesting discussions of the pyr technikon in the literature. Sandbach (1975: 73) calls it “the god that makes the world” and “fire that is an artificer.” Seneca, in the Epistles, refers to it as “creative reason” (Long 1974: 165). Inwood and Gerson (1997: 138) translate the phrase as “craftsmanlike fire.” Then there is this famous and beautiful passage in Diogenes Laertius: “Nature is an artistic fire going on its way to create.”22 In On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero cites the same passage, informing us that this, in fact, was Zeno’s definition of nature.23
This creation of the world is clearly intelligent and mindful, and it demonstrates the god, or logos, in nature. Thus we see a linkage of several terms—Active, logos, god, mind, pneuma, fire, pyr technikon—which together paint a picture of the cosmos as, in the words of Diogenes Laertius, “an animal, rational and alive and intelligent” (Inwood and Gerson 1997: 135)—as well as divine. Sambursky sums up this idea nicely:
Pneuma became a concept synonymous with God, and either notion was defined by the other. … Natural force (i.e. pneuma) was seen as endowed with divine reason, and pneuma was given epithets like “sensible” or “intellectual,” thus alluding to its god-like nature. … [Conversely] God was identified with the all-pervading pneuma, being totally mixed with shapeless matter, and divine reason was defined as corporeal pneuma. (1959: 36)
In addition to its cosmic role, pneuma has a number of important physical functions, each of which supports one aspect of Stoic panpsychism. First, pneuma acts as the cohesive force of the universe. Cicero tells us that “there is, therefore, a nature [physis, i.e. pneuma] which holds the entire cosmos together and preserves it.”24 This recalls Anaximenes’ view, cited earlier, that “our souls … being air, hold us together.” Importantly, pneuma acts not only on the cosmos but also on individual objects. Referring to its cohesive force, Long (1974: 156) writes: “This function of pneuma in the macrocosm is equally at work in every individual body.” The cohesive force exists in three distinct degrees of intensity, or tension (tonos). At the lowest level—that which holds all objects together, including inorganic objects such as stones and tables—it is called hexis, meaning a condition, state, or tenor. At a higher level, that of living organisms, it is called physis (nature). At the highest level, that of animals and humans, it is psyche. All are pneuma, though existing in varying degrees of tonos. Pseudo-Galen explains it as follows:
There are two forms of the inborn pneuma, that of nature [physis] and that of soul [psyche]; and some [the Stoics] add a third, that of hexis. The pneuma which holds things is what makes stones cohere, while that of nature is what nourishes animals and plants, and that of the soul is that which, in animate objects, makes animals capable of sense-perception and of every kind of movement. (in Inwood and Gerson 1997: 171)
Clearly, soul is not attributed to all things, only to animals. Unlike the pre-Socratics, the Stoics had differentiated soul from mind, equating mind and reason with the pneuma, which was in all things. Thus we do not find statements like “soul moved all things”; rather, we see an intelligent universal force that accounts for all motion. Consequently, the Stoics were panpsychists, but of a different type than Plato and the earlier philosophers. And their identification of pneuma with the rational mind was a step Aristotle was unwilling to take.
In a related role, pneuma not only holds things together; it also makes them one. It accounts for the unity of being. The unity of a thing is described as that which rules over the object and determines its character. This ruling unity, another important concept in Stoic philosophy, is given a special name: hegemonikon, from hege (“lead”) and monos (“alone,” “single”), often translated as “the leading part of the soul.” The hegemonikon, like the pneuma, is present at all levels of existence. Cleanthes argued that the sun was the hegemonikon of the cosmos. Cicero explained the concept as follows:
There is … a nature [i.e. pneuma] which holds the entire cosmos together and preserves it. … For every [natural object] … is joined and connected with something else, [and] must have in itself some “leading part,” like the mind in man and in a brute beast something analogous to mind which is the source of its desires for things; in trees and plants which grow in the earth the leading part is thought to reside in their roots. By “leading part” I mean that which the Greeks call hegemonikon; in each type of thing there cannot and should not be anything more excellent than this.25
Something mind-like was thus seen as the unifying force in all objects: “The vital function of the hegemonikon [is] as the central seat of consciousness.” (Sambursky 1959: 22) It was therefore central to the mind-body relationship.
It is important to clarify the Stoics’ view of the mind-body relationship. In one sense they were mind-matter dualists. Pneuma and the four elements were matter; mind was something else, something immaterial. Mind was the Active, the form, that impressed itself upon matter and created individual objects. Long (1996: 228) describes it well: “All things in the Stoic universe are combinations of god and matter, stones no less than humans … . The entire universe is a combination of god and matter, and what applies to the whole applies to any one of its identifiable parts.” Their dualism is thus perhaps best seen as a kind of dual-aspect monism: There is only body, and it expresses itself both as matter, on the passive side, and mind, on the active side.
The Stoic fragments help to elaborate this view. Diogenes Laertius informs us that “mind penetrates every part of [the cosmos] just as soul does us. But it penetrates some things more than others.”26 This is an interesting observation, as it indicates that mind exists in different degrees, depending on the nature of the thing penetrated. Regarding the things in themselves, Cicero explicitly states that “the parts of the cosmos … contain the power of sense-perception and reason” (146)—a clear statement of pluralistic panpsychism. And Cicero reiterates the view, which began with Plato, that the stars individually have souls:
Now that we have seen that the cosmos is divine, we should assign the same sort of divinity to the stars. … They too are also said quite correctly to be animals and to perceive and to have intelligence. [And furthermore], the sun too should be [considered] alive. (148–149)
As to the Stoic rationale, Cicero informs us that the “orderliness and regularity of the heavenly bodies is the clearest indication of their powers of sense perception and intelligence,” for “nothing can move rationally and with measure except by the use of intelligence.” The Stoics thus had hard empirical evidence to support their claim.
Collectively, then, the Stoics employed several extant arguments for panpsychism. The psychic pneuma provides a cohesive force that acts as the seat of consciousness (Indwelling Powers). Pneuma exists in all things, human or otherwise (Continuity). It is the embodiment of the Active principle, and it accounts for such physical qualities as unity of form and orderliness of motion (Design). The Stoics were thus thoroughly panpsychist in their outlook on the world, and they developed a theory of the cosmos that was perfectly compatible with that outlook.
As has already been mentioned, Stoicism held a dominant position in both Greek and Roman society for centuries. The late period of Roman Stoicism peaked with the work of Seneca (1–65 AD) and Epictetus (55–135 AD) and reached a pinnacle of sorts with emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD). Unfortunately, that occurred just as Stoicism’s influence began to wane, and so the vision of a true Stoic society went largely unfulfilled. Upon the death of Marcus Aurelius, the Empire began to fall into decline, and Stoicism yielded to a resurgent interest in the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies, especially in the form of Neo-Platonism. Ultimately those philosophies would be displaced by the emerging monotheistic religious worldviews, Christianity most of all.
Throughout the entire pre-Christian era, people acknowledged the presence of spirit and mind in nature. But this began to change with the Judeo-Christian worldview. Christianity took spirit out of nature and placed it largely, and ambiguously, within the monotheistic figure of God. But when it did so, it carried along much of the terminological baggage that was associated with the idea of spirit. It is therefore interesting and relevant to briefly examine the concept of spirit in the Biblical tradition, particularly as it pertains to the panpsychist ideas of the Greek philosophers.
A central precept of Christianity is the Trinity: the Father (God), the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit.27 It is striking that in both the original Greek of the New Testament and the original Greek translation (from Hebrew) of the Old Testament28 the word for Spirit is pneuma. Virtually every reference to spirit or Spirit is either pneuma or some close variant, such as pneumatos or pneumati. Spiritual things are pneumatika; the spiritual man is a pneumatikos. This suggests a connection to Stoic and Aristotelian philosophy, and also to panpsychism. If there were such a connection, one would expect to find not just the occurrence of the word itself, but also that its usage would be consistent with Stoic principles. For example, one might expect to find such things as (1) the word ‘pneuma’ in reference to both air and fire, (2) pneuma as God, (3) pneuma as a creative force in the cosmos (recall pyr technikon), (4) pneuma as intelligence or mind, (5) pneuma as life-giving, and (6) pneuma as omnipresent and as filling or penetrating things.
In fact, there are references to all these Stoic concepts in the Bible.29 In particular, these are characteristics of the Holy Spirit itself.
Thus there appears to be good justification for claiming Stoic influence in the Bible, at least within the figure of the Holy Spirit, which has always had an odd and troubling status within a monotheistic system. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that this influence is widely ignored by Christian theologians.
Furthermore, the Bible acknowledges the existence of numerous other spiritual beings in the world: Satan, the angels, and others, not to mention the many distinct human souls. At the beginning of 1 John 4 we find the following: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit (pneumati), but test the spirits (pneumata) to see whether they are from God.” The spirits that fail the test are naturally those “of the Antichrist,” and they must be defeated. So the Bible does convey a world of numerous spirits even as it puts forth a single God. But the spirits are otherworldly, and they are not connected with physical things—except, of course, human beings. Any conception of individual and independent spirits “in things,” not to mention in all things, is decidedly anti-Christian.30 Predictably, theologians typically dismiss all references to panpsychism as heathen or pagan primitivism.
One last point on the connections to Stoicism: It is not only pneuma that carries over into the Bible. There are also references to logos that resonate with Stoic principles. Recall that logos refers to reason or intelligence. In the Greek of the New Testament, we also find the word ‘logos’, and it is translated as “Word,” as in “the Word of God.” At the start of John 1, we learn that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This phrase, which is problematic from a traditional Christian standpoint, makes perfect sense as a carryover from a Stoic system in which logos (“Word”) is God. In his study of Stoic philosophy, Sandbach (1975: 72) states unequivocally that “God is logos.” Other connections between God and logos occur at John 1:14, 2 Timothy 4:2, 1 John 1:1, and Revelation 19:13. Again we seem to have an important biblical concept that was borrowed from the panpsychist Stoics.
Early Christian theology merged with Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic ideas to create a number of new perspectives on philosophy, most notable of which was Neo-Platonism. The third-century-AD founder of this school, Plotinus, combined notions of an ideal Realm of Forms with a monotheistic system in which the One was the divine and mystical source of all existence. The One exhibits a logos or reason-principle as it creates and sustains the natural world.
Plotinus’ major work, the Enneads, contains a number of scattered and cryptic references to a panpsychic cosmos. The most relevant of these, as was mentioned earlier, is Ennead VI, 7, in which we find Plotinus’ enigmatic discussion on life and soul as existing in all things, both in the physical world and in the “higher realm” of Platonic Forms. Furthermore, he explicitly cites Plato as holding the same view:
[I]n the plant the Reason-Principle … is a certain form of life, a definite soul. … The growing and shaping of stones, the internal molding of mountains as they rise, reveal the working of an ensouled Reason-Principle fashioning them from within. … The earth There [in the Platonic realm] is much more primally alive, … it is a reasoned Earth-Livingness. … Fire, similarly, with other such things, must be a Reason-Principle established in Matter. … That transcendent fire, being more truly fire, will be more veritably alive; the fire absolute possesses life. And the same principles apply to the other elements, water and air. … It is with this in mind that Plato says there is soul in everything of this [earthly] sphere. … It is of necessity that life be all-embracing, covering all the realms, and that nothing fail of life.
In itself, the fact that “Plato says there is soul in everything of this sphere” could simply be a reference to the world-soul. Yet it is clear from the context that Plotinus sees everything individually as alive—the Earth, fire, water, air, and the other elements. And he clearly attributes the same view to Plato. Plotinus’ reference is thus a further confirmation that Plato himself adopted a subtle form of panpsychism, a fact that evidently had some effect on the Neo-Platonist worldview.
Apart from the indirect biblical references to pneuma and logos, Christianity had little use for panpsychism. In fact, as has already been mentioned, it was positively opposed. The Bible attributes soul to man and to nothing else in nature. Only man is in God’s image, and only man was given dominion over the soulless Earth. Humanity is unique, different, and better than everything else in the world. And yet Christian thinkers valued the insights of the Greeks, and in their attempts to incorporate Greek ideas they inadvertently picked up hints of panpsychist metaphysics.
A case in point is Augustine. In The City of God (ca. 410 AD), he appropriated and further developed Aristotle’s ideas on matter. Recall that Aristotle held that each of the elements endeavors to move to its natural place: fire and air upward, earth and water down. In Physics, for example, he writes that it is “the property of fire to be carried upwards” (193a1). And in De caelo we read “For if the natural motion is upward, it will be fire or air, and if downward, water or earth.” (269a16) Augustine accepted this view, believing that all natural objects sought their appropriate station in this world in order to preserve and protect themselves:
[E]ven the lifeless bodies, which want not only sensation but seminal life, yet either seek the upper air or sink deep, or are balanced in an intermediate position, so that they may protect their existence in that situation where they can exist in most accordance with their nature. (book XI, chapter 27)
This wanting or desiring that is present in all natural things is a manifestation of love:
If we were stones, or waves, or wind, or flame, or anything of that kind, we should want, indeed, both sensation and life, yet should possess a kind of attraction towards our own proper position and natural order. For the specific gravity of bodies is, as it were, their love, whether they are carried downwards by their weight, or upwards by their levity. (book XI, chapter 28)
Augustine evidently believed that God’s love was somehow impressed into all things made by him, such that they themselves were also able to love.31 Again, though, the panpsychist implications seem to have been lost on Augustine and his followers.
At least one Christian thinker, however, openly embraced the implications: Francis of Assisi. Francis (1181–1226) saw the presence of God in all parts of nature, and thus he viewed all things as enspirited beings. He is famous for his love of animals, but he also held insects, plants, and even rocks in highest regard. One of his earliest disciples, Thomas of Celano, wrote of Francis:
When he found many flowers growing together … he would speak to them and encourage them, as though they could understand, to praise the Lord. It was the same with the fields of corn and the vineyards, the stones in the earth and in the woods, all the beauteous meadows, the tinkling brooks, the sprouting gardens, earth, fire, air and wind. … He was wont to call all created things his brothers and sisters. (in Armstrong 1973: 9)
Armstrong further refers to Saint Bonaventure’s accounts in The Mirror of Perfection as evidence of Francis’ “being caught up in ecstatic contemplation of inanimate as well as animate things of God’s creation” and “thus [treating] even inanimate things as, to all intents and purposes, children of God” (10). Others came to the same conclusion. In his quest for a Christian solution to the environmental crisis, the historian Lynn White Jr. (1967: 1207) observes that “[Francis’] view of nature and of man rested on a unique sort of panpsychism of all things animate and inanimate.” White cites as evidence Francis’ “Canticle of the Sun,” an ode to the Sun, the Moon, Wind, Air, Water, and Fire in which each of them is treated as an animate “Brother” or “Sister” and the planet is called “Mother Earth.” Nature, Francis seems to say, is like us: ensouled, God-created, and capable of worshipping the divine.
Francis was apparently the first religious figure to explicitly employ a belief in the Christian God on behalf of a form of panpsychism. This strongly anticipated the work of Tommaso Campanella, who argued from a similar basis for his panpsychic beliefs.32 But Francis did not lay down a systematic philosophy of spirit in nature, and so it is more correct to attribute such a theological argument for panpsychism to Campanella.
By the thirteenth century, Christian theology dominated Western philosophical views. Francis’ beliefs notwithstanding, panpsychist or pantheist ideas were largely pushed from the mainstream. If the matter was given any consideration at all, it was rather abruptly dismissed.
Aquinas did precisely that. His Summa Theologiae (circa 1260) contains just a single brief discussion of the question “What things have life?” (question 18, part Ia) Summarizing the hylozoist position—and appropriately citing Aristotle—he presents three distinct arguments:
For Aristotle says that motion is a kind of life possessed by all things that exist in nature. But all natural objects participate in motion. Therefore all natural objects participate in life.
Further, plants are said to live because [they undergo] growth and decrease. But local movement [i.e., locomotion, or physical displacement] is more perfect than that. … Since, then, all natural bodies have in themselves a principle of local movement, it would seem that all natural bodies have life.
Further, among natural bodies the elements are the less perfect; but life is attributed to them: e.g., we speak of “living water.” Therefore a fortiori other natural bodies have life.
“On the other hand,” Aquinas then cites Pseudo-Dionysius as saying that “plants live with life’s last echo,” interpreting this to mean that nothing lower than plants is alive. He completes his discussion by defining life much as Plato defined soul: as self-generating motion. Animals and plants have this power and thus are alive. Inanimate natural bodies, such as flowing waters and moving stars, have only the “appearance of self-movement.” They are in fact moved by something else—“the cause which produces them”—not “from themselves.” Hence, we call inanimate moving objects “living” only “by a metaphor,” or “by analogy.” This is clearly approaching a modern definition of life. And Aquinas is committed to the Christian view of the soul, something only humans possess. God, furthermore, is not a world-soul but a supernatural deity. Thus he sees no reason to accept any view approximating panpsychism. This, then, is the standard Christian position, essentially unchanged for the subsequent 800 years.