On the True Philosopher and the True Philosophy: Essays on Swedenborg by Stephen McNeilly

Author:Stephen McNeilly [McNeilly, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Collections, Essays, Philosophy, History & Surveys, Modern, PHI013000 Philosophy / Metaphysics
ISBN: 9780854481347
Google: aRh1P-H8Q7sC
Amazon: 0854481346
Publisher: Swedenborg Society
Published: 2002-12-14T23:00:00+00:00

Swedenborg and the Comparative Philosophy of the Soul

Michael Costello

Though physicalism is the current dominant doctrine, many philosophers and scientists still hold that in personal experience, (i.e. in the accounts that other humans give of themselves and through animal behaviour), there are features which cannot be explained by the laws of physics. A current and commonly used all-inclusive term for such features is mind. Earlier philosophies used the term soul (anima, psyche).

One problem with any account of Swedenborg’s view on the soul is that it is closely bound up with his difficult notion of degrees. Such are the cross connections between them that it is hard to expound them separately or to know where to begin. Here I have opted to emphasise certain leading aspects of the soul with no more than unavoidable allusions to the theory of degrees, whose very definition is uncertain.1 One possible approach to degrees is through the distinction by Plato2 and Aristotle3 of reason and the senses, as higher and lower parts of the soul which fit into a scheme, which is, or may be similar to that of biological levels of organisation, such as we find applied to psychology by modern authors like N Tinbergen (The Study of Instinct) and Arthur Koestler (Act of Creation).4 Few western authors have remained untouched by the Platonic/Aristotelian distinction of sense and reason. But Swedenborg adds a third ‘internal’ level of function on top of these which is unknown to western thought but familiar to Indian and Chinese thought and which he describes in Arcana Caelestia5 and Rational Psychology as above ordinary consciousness. Somewhat confusingly he uses the term soul only for this highest level in Rational Psychology. Rather than adding a level, Swedenborg’s near contemporaries often subtracted a level, collapsing reason and sense into one, reducing thought to associations in the imagination.6 This notion is still current.7

I have singled out four important aspects of the soul: sensation; consciousness; the self; and multiple souls. My reason for selecting the first two is that they are the grounds most commonly used by modern authors for distinguishing between soul and body (rather than life or reason).8 The reason for discussing the self is that it bridges the ages of discussion about the soul from the most ancient and mythological to modern times—no mean virtue in a context where it is difficult to be sure that authors from different times (or even the same time), though they use the same terms, mean the same thing. I close on the concept of multiple souls because although somewhat lacking in European thought as it was rejected by Thomas Aquinas and Descartes, and hard to reconcile with the concept of soul as self, it is prominent in non-European cultures and is in some way related to the doctrine of degrees.

These four topics stand in different relation to Swedenborg’s ideas. As for sense-data and consciousness, the ideas of Swedenborg’s contemporaries were somewhat misty compared with later times. Neither of these notions were at the forefront of

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