A Study of the Concept of “Psyche” from the Hebrew Old Testament to Socratic Philosophers
Subject Areas : Geneology of philosophical schools and Ideas
1 - Assistant Professor, Department of Science and Technology, Amir Kabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: Psyche, Old Testament, Homer, physiology, Pythagoreans,
Abstract :
Psyche or the soul was one of the important philosophical topics for Greek philosophers, especially Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and it is with them that the problem of the soul gradually developed its philosophical structure and formulation. However, philosophical ideas do not emerge in a vacuum, and these philosophers’ understanding of the concept of “psyche” or the “soul” was greatly influenced by the thoughts of their predecessors and ancient Greek philosophers. Before being tackled by Socrates, the concept of psyche experienced a historical evolution in Greece in the works of poets such as Homer, among the religious ideas of the Old Testament, and in theories of physiologists. Later Greek philosophers encountered it with the support of an abundance of ideas and the related developments. The present study aims to analyze the conceptual evolution of “psyche” in this historical period by examining multiple positions reflected in different sources from passages in the Old Testament, Homer’s interpretations, and then the different views of physiologists and pre-Socratic philosophers and to explain the formation process of this idea. In doing so, the author is compelled to examine a family of concepts related to the idea of the soul, particularly concepts such as nous in order to provide a coherent understanding of development of this idea.