A Philosophical and Spiritual Anthropology of Man
An Introductory Inquiry
What is it that makes up a man? That has been a question which has
long been addressed in philosophy. It has come up with several important responses which
compliment each other. For example, when Pico della Mirandola examined the question, his
reaction was to indicate the great nobility of man, how like unto a god he is, how great
is his destiny, how proud is his heritage. This shows one side of man, for it shows in
part the purpose for the creation of man; however, there is nonetheless another side of
man, that is, his composition. What are the parts of which one can assign to man, what is
his internal makeup? In this examination of man, I want to view man in relation to a two
issues: first, philosophically: in this pursuit, I will also address the understanding of
man which is found in more than just the modern western understanding of man. Since one of
the key philosophical beginnings of the anthropology of man lies with the Egyptians, I
will try to follow their model of man, and address their understanding of man in relation
to the modern understanding of man; I believe their insights in general tend to be true
and useful; because of the great wisdom they were given in this matter, I also believe
that their insight should help sponsor the format of my pursuit. It is also interesting to
note that these same insights on man that the Egyptians had helped to produce a religious
philosophy of the resurrection, a philosophy which has influenced the format of Christian
thought and apologetics on the final resurrection of mankind. Secondly, I will try to
follow through with a spiritual understanding of what is being said: that is, the
importance of a certain element in relation to the whole of man's spiritual or religious
side, and specifically, the Catholic understanding of man. This, however, is secondary in
this analysis of man, but what is found in here can be used as a start for an inquiry
which is primarily spiritual in concern.
On what constitutes a man, there are several ways one can answer this
question, and I will address a few of them. The first way is to look at man as
constituting three parts: a spirit, a soul, and a body. When one says that a man has this
composition, what is it that is meant? The spirit, or pneuma, is the intellectual
capability of man. It is here that his mind is at work, and gnostically grasps the ideas
or forms, and through this, increases his internal awareness of reality. The soul, or psuche,
is a man's life force; it is what animates him, it is lower than the intellect, because
the soul is able to be moved, and filled with passions which disturb him, but it is higher
than the body, because it is what animates the body itself. The body we are most familiar
with, because it is the means of which we experience the sensual world, and we are most
aware in our current society of this realm. It is composed of substances from the sensual
world, and regularly follows its laws, but because it participates in life through the
soul, it is able to have self-movement, and thus is not totally controlled by the laws of
the physical universe. Through the body, the soul is affected by the physical universe.
The soulcan be stained through the body by directing too much focus on the material world,
and not allowing the higher, spiritual side have its just control; however, the body
itself can be lifted up by the soul to fulfill a higher, greater, and nobler destiny. The
body does not have to control man; if man regains control over his body, he is able to use
his body to help others: both other men who have not perfected themselves and then the
world around oneself (both the material and living aspects of the world can be improved by
man; we should focus on helping keep the earth beautiful, for example, as well as being
loving stewards of all life). The body is the access the soul has to the physical world so
that a man can influence and be a co-creator with God in the physical world. It is here
that man can help establish order over chaos, and become a bridge of unity between the
spiritual world and the physical world.
Outside of the spirit, soul, body distinction which can be found in
man, there are still other distinctions in man which need to be addressed. Often, they are
themselves a distinction within one of these three elements, but sometimes, there are
other distinctions, which takes place hypostatically (personally) or essentially (via
man's nature), which must also be addressed. For some of the distinctions, I will try to
place where they fit on the scheme of man's existence: if it is something related to man's
essential ousia (nature or being) or if it is related to a hypostatical
relationship to a single man (person), and how it is related to a man's spirit, soul, and
body. (A man's soul and body are, because of the distinction they make with other men,
hypostatic or personal; the status of man's intellect is, on the other hand, a matter of
much debate).
The first I would like to mention are two forms of will which we as men
experience: one is natural, and one is personal in relation, or can be seen as the
personal mode of using the natural will. Our natural will, which is instilled into us by
our creation, instills us to do what is good and gives us the ability to do it without the
need for deliberation; it is also the kind of will which directs man to do things in
relation to his being which are equated with being man: both physically as well as
spiritually. Contrary to those who think that man innately wills evil, this will innately
wills what is good; for what is by nature established has been established by God, and
what God establishes is good in its establishment, the natural will in man is good. It
directs him to nourish his body with food, and to nourish his soul with spiritual food; it
directs him to fear, for preservation of life, but also directs him to the help and love
of his fellow man, because of the oneness we share with each other. Since this form of
will is natural, that is, within the very essence of man, Christ himself, being both God
and man and sharing whatever is had according to nature, himself had a natural will. We
can see that this must be so, because Christ willed to eat, to drink, to sleep, and
performed other activities which are natural to mankind. And the two natural wills in
Christ, however, will not contradict each other in Christ's personal action, since the
natural human will, wills naturally to do what is good, and what is good is not contrary
to God's will. However, there is also another kind of will, called in the texts of the
Church Fathers, the gnomic will. This will is related to the personal life of a
man; it is what normally directs the activities of a human person. It is gnomic because
the will requires deliberation: and an imperfect deliberation on the part of a person, can
lead to error and wrongdoing. Ideally, the gnomic will should be united with man's
natural tendencies, and should bring the person to do what is good; however, because it
puts itself over the natural will, redirects man's attention away from his higher
(natural) tendencies, and focuses on his own private (personal) actions, it often used
improperly. The process of deliberation, which is focused on a person's private life, thus
needs to be re-oriented to his natural life: in the restoration and deification of man,
this will indeed be one of the results, one of the ends of the Christian life-- but while
we are focused here, growing in strength and grace, we are still often diverted from what
is higher, and follow instead what is baser; the ascetic principle, which does not require
one to be a monk to follow, provides the key to which a man can, through grace, develop
his personal will so that it will become more and more integrated with his natural will,
and should slowly decease, even as the natural will and inclinations should increase. The
seat of the personal, gnomic will lies in a man's soul; the soul partakes of a
man's intellect partially, and directs the man in relation to that partial knowledge. The
soul thus, when deluded, gains passions or inclinations which are wrong, and often through
much repetition, acts upon these inclinations as if they were natural. This is why there
is often a confusion between what is natural to man and man's inclination, which are not
always natural; it lies within the soul to create the impression of something which when
observed appears natural.
With an understanding of the will, there must also be an understanding
of that there is something which allows the willed action to be performed. This is
traditionally called man's energy, and it is said that man's will is energized by this
energy to give him the ability to perform actions. Since the will can be performed
naturally or through a personal mode of willing, man's energy can be used naturally, or
could be used personally. Christ, not having a human person, and never having a gnomic will,
would not have used man's energy gnomically, but he would have used the natural
energy in man as it is used for natural actions. The use of energy is thus linked with
man's use of the will, and is what allows for an effect to be had by the use of the will.
There has been consistently an understanding of man's energy in the philosophy of man so
that, for example, to the Egyptians, it was called sekhem, which referred to a
man's mastery over nature or his vital force; to the Chinese, the idea of man's energy his
related to their research Chi.
Another aspect of what a man is composed of is what the Egyptians call
the ka, but what has been called in the West as the astral body. It is something
which is in-between the existence of the soul and the body, which helps join the soul to
the body. Father Marsilio Ficino in his Commentary on Plato's Symposium states
that, "For the order of nature requires that the perfectly pure soul is not able to
descend into this most impure body until it receives a certain mediating and pure
cover.This covering [the astral body], since it is coarser than the soul, but purer and
finer than the body, is regarded by the Platonists as the most appropriate link between
the soul and its earthly body." (Ficino, Commentary on Plato's Symposium of Love,.
trans. Sears Jayne, VI:4, Spring Publications: 1985). The Egyptians understood the ka as
being man's abstract individuality and personality, something which was independent and
could move about by itself; it was often called a man's "double", because of its
ability to move from the body allowed those who see it, to recognize it as being the
person whose ka they had seen. The Egyptians understood that because this
"double" is connected to the physical realm, it was in need of nourishment in
order to keep its survival intact. We can see that there is a relation to the Egyptian
understanding to the Christian understanding, because we recognize the need for the soul
itself to be nourished by Christ through the Eucharist, and if the soul is needing
nourishment, than that which unites the soul with the body would also fall into the same
category.
The body itself possess several features. To the Egyptians, the central
and most important part of the body was the heart. The Egyptians understood it to be the
seat of both the emotions and intellect, and left it in a person's body, hoping it would
be preserved by the charms placed on the body to preserve it. Though we now do not view
the heart as central as the Egyptians in the relation to man's intellectual nature, it is
still within our tradition to see the heart as being related, somehow, to man's emotive
being. There is probably some truth which man has intuitively discovered about this, which
we do not fully know in modern science; the brain is now seen to be the center which
regulates both, but I think there might be some relation to the heart to a man's soul, by
which the brain is affected through the relation to the heart, when dealing with emotional
responses. This justifies man's intuitive understanding of the heart, which the Egyptians
(but also, several other cultures) have established, while keeping in mind current
progress of science which recognizes the brain and how chemicals relate in the brain
affect the immediate emotional response. The heart, though, pumping the blood through the
body and too the brain, I would suspect, might be the means of the heart's interaction
with the brain, as a means of transference of the soul's passions.
Connected to a man's body are his senses. They relay information from
the outside, physical world to the person who is using them. They help provide him with
the keys to observe his surroundings and to gather useful information for daily life.
Because they are related to the body, the senses only give little insight, and if one
limits his knowledge to what he receives from the senses, his knowledge will not be able
to advance far in life. They are a tool to be used by the body, but are not to be abused
and become the dominate portion of a man's life. If one focuses on sensual input, the
senses can be used to corrupt the person's soul, causing him to form passions which will
misdirect his life. One who limits the senses, and allows them for their proper use and no
further, will have no harm from having the senses (for they are indeed useful and
important for the body). However, because man has through time become less acquainted with
the spiritual realm, the senses have become more and more dominating in life, and have
slowly dragged mankind closer and closer to the activities of other animals. This is a sad
end for man, and unless mankind in general begins to change the direction of his
attention, it will slowly eat away at all men, and will destroy any form of civilization
as we know it: man, instead of being made for the better, could possibly start devolving
into a baser kind of life.
Something which is connected to each individual, which is related to
his body, is the image which he possesses; the body is the image of the soul, it is the
visible representation of the person's inner nature. As an image is something which is
connected to the person, there is in some respects, a relation of the person to his image,
that when you have the person's image in front of you, you have a connection to the person
himself. Since the body itself is the soul's "perfect" image, images of the body
participate less in the individual's existence, but nonetheless share with the person, so
that if you venerate an image of a Saint, you are giving reverence to the Saint himself
because you are giving reverence to something which is a part of the Saint (his image).
The Egyptians, being the possessors of an understanding of the resurrection, also were
also possessors of an understanding of a man's image. One can find the prototypes of
Christian Iconographic art in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs, an indication of the
Egyptian understanding of the sanctity of a man's total nature, including his image.
In relation to a man, there is also something which is related to his
person as a whole, which has a significance which in the modern world is usually ignored
but in ancient societies was consider highly important and significant to a person: his
name. To the Egyptians, they understood the name as a special importance in the life of a
person: as long as one's name or ren was somehow preserved, be it in the memory of
his ancestors or written down so that it would not disappear, it would preserve the
person's existence and would prevent the person from obliteration. A man's name is his
essence, his internal makeup; though perhaps, we might not know our true name as God knows
it, nonetheless the name given by other men also have a relation to our existence and our
life. A man's name gives him an identity, one which is special to him and is understood as
signifying something about the man's personality, character, and the mode of his
existence. Thus even in Scripture, all the indication of a man's name: the change of a
man's name (Abram to Abraham), or the preservation of a man's name in the "Book of
Life" are indications of the significance of a man's name in his relationship with
God; it is that eternal personal identification which God has eternally known which
represents that person's particular logos of being; it is the most particular
aspect of nature which helps transform a nature into a particular representation of
nature, that is, a hypostasis or person. Thus a man's name is in that sense his most
prime, individual nature, one which separates or differentiates him from someone else: it
has existence, it has value, it is what makes an individual individual, but it is also, in
that respect though real, also less real because it is less universal.
Man, as we can see, possesses several layers to his existence. Each
have their value to the life of an individual, and must be addressed properly in his life,
for there to be a proper balance in his existence. A proper balance will not allow that
which is lowly, for example, the bodily nature, to have undue influence over that which is
greater, that is the immaterial side of man. Yes, man should be influenced by his body,
for that is why we have it: but it should be used properly for its purpose. What purpose
does man have for possessing a bodily nature? He is to be a mediator, an organizer, for
the material world, and for lower forms of life. He is to help bring order out of the
chaos which could unfold out of the material world; he is to bring God's glory to all its
inhabitants, however insignificant they might seem to man. This purpose may not be
something that man possesses alone; he might have fellow workers for that task, for
indeed, it is not right for man to be alone-- but even if man is not alone in this
pursuit, he is nonetheless a special worker in this labor, for through man the cosmos has
received the Incarnation of God; it is thus, through man, that not only is the universe to
be put into order, but that the universe will be raised into something greater: it will
be, like man, deified, and like man receive a share in the divine glory of the Trinity. We
are thus, in a sense, still seeing the process of creation, of which man has become an
instrument of God in the universe, the end of which we have not yet seen, but we can get a
glimpse through our mind. As J. R. R. Tolkien stated it, man is a sub-creator, of which it
is both our right and our duty as men to follow through with God's will, and thus, we must
look forward of putting ourselves, men, on the right track of virtue so that we can
finally, again, continue in our task of creation.