Soul, Spirit, Mind
and Intellect:
عقل و روح و نفس
A intertextual trajectory from Biblical times
and Hellenistic
antiquity to the Islamic and Babi-Baha'i positions.
"The soul
is the cause or source of the living body. The terms cause and
source have many senses. But the soul is the cause of its body alike
in all three senses which we explicitly recognize. It is (a) the
source or origin of movement, it is (b) the end, it is (c) the
essence of the whole living body" (Aristotle, De Anima).
"O
Kumayl [spirits] (anfus) are four [1] the augmentative
vegetative [plant spirit] (al-namiyya al-nabatiyya) [2] the sensate
animal [spirit] (al-hissiyya al-hayawaniyya) [3] the sacred
rational (al-natiqa al-qudsiyya) [human spirit] and [4] the
universal Divine [Spirit] (al-kulliyya al-ilahiyya)" (Attributed to
Imam `Ali (d. 40/661) as cited Majlisi, Bihar al-anwar vol.
58: 85)
"Know thou
that the soul of man is exalted above, and is independent of all
infirmities of body or mind... The soul of man is the sun by which
his body is illumined, and from which it draweth its sustenance, and
should be so regarded" (Baha'u'llah, GWB: LXXX).
:...
spirit is universally divided into five categories: [1] the
vegetable spirit, [2] the animal spirit, [3] the human spirit, [4]
the spirit of faith, and [5] the Holy Spirit.... The human spirit
which distinguishes man from the animal is the rational soul, and
these two names—the human spirit and the rational soul—designate one
thing... But the mind is the power of the human spirit. Spirit is
the lamp; mind is the light which shines from the lamp...
(`Abdu'l-Baha' SAQ. LV).
What,
if anything, constitutes the
human "soul" is by no means universally agreed upon today. Some
materialistic and other philosophers and scientists deem it illegitimate to
ask such questions. Many deny it as a supra-bodily spiritual or metaphysical phenomenon. What is the `essence' of
the human being, however, has for several thousand years been a
subject of deep and constant religious and philosophical debate. For many centuries varieties of
resolutions to this and related questions have occupied some of the greatest
religious and scientific minds. For many today, when the quest for the
nature and purpose of human life and the possibility of human immortality remain
fundamental, such questions are of paramount importance. This paper
will be a meditation upon select past ideas about the human
mind-soul-intellect-spirit-essence along with a summary presentation of
aspects of the
Baha'i position and its Graeco-Islamic background.
It will be
demonstrated in this paper that the roots of much religious thought on the
question of the "soul" can be
found in select Biblical texts and in numerous Graeco-Islamic philosophical
treatises. The massively
influential Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) authored a
well-known and foundational Greek treatise Περὶ
Ψυχῆς (= Peri Psyches,
Latin = De Anima), "On the Soul" in which he
gave an elaborate description of the functions of the life force or "soul". Many Jewish
(e.g. Moses Maimonides),
Christian (e.g. Tertullian of Carthage and Thomas Aquinas) and Muslim thinkers
(see below) have been influenced by versions or
translations of the De Anima and related works of Aristotle and other Hellenistic
thinkers of antiquity.
Along with a large quantity of Greek philosophical writings, the De Anima
of Aristotle was several times paraphrased and translated into Arabic. In
`Abbasid times, the Christian Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 260/873) accomplished
this as did Muslims and others associated with the circle of his erudite
contemporary Ya`qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (d. c. 260/873). Matters were again
taken up and developed by Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (d.339/950) and by Abu
`Ali al-Husayn ibn `Abd-Allah ibn Sina better known in the west as Avicenna
(d. 428/1037), an important philosopher, physician and mathematician
whose massive, multi-volume Kitab al-shifa' (Book of the Cure) includes a
Kitab al-nafs or `Treatise on the Soul'. Therein Islamic and
Neoplatonic thought are integrated and developed. Among many others
who contributed to the evolution of ideas about the soul was Fakhr
al-Din al-Razi (d. 606/1209), who penned an important treatise
entitled Kitab al-nafs wa'l-ruh wa sharh quwahuma (`The Book of the Soul and
the Spirit and an exposition of their Faculties') and Ibn Rushd or Averroes
(d.595/1198), who wrote several important Arabic commentaries upon
Aristotle's De anima. These Islamic philosophers respected and
utilized but went way beyond Aristotle's foundational speculations in
setting down their sophisticated ideas about the human
soul-spirit-mind-intellect. Their thoughts contributed to the Baha'i
spiritual psychology mentioned in various scriptural writings or alwah
("Tablets") of Baha'u'llah and found, for example, in chapters of `Abdu'l-Baha's
Mufavaddat ("Some Answered Questions").
In the Arabic
and Persian languages a spectrum of terms has often been used interchangeably to pinpoint and define
aspects of the human soul-spirit-mind-essence, etc; including, for example, روح
= rūḥ ("soul"-"spirit") ,
عقل =
`aql (intellect) and
نفس nafs
("soul"). The last of these terms has a
very rich Abrahamic (Semitic) religious semantic history being linked with the biblical Hebrew term
נֶ֥פֶשׁ
= nephesh "soul". When, according to Genesis 2:7, God created and breathed
into the human being (Adam) he became a
נֶ֥פֶשׁ חַיָּֽה
nephesh hayya
or "living soul". The Arabic-Persian word
نفس nafs,
when linked with other words, has a very wide range of senses ranging from
the lower, possibly satanic human "self" to that Logos-like Divine Reality
which is sometimes designated the nafs kulliyya or
"Universal Soul".
In his commentary
on the hadith "He who hath known his nafs ("Self") hath known his Lord“ (man
arafa nafsahu fa-qad ‘arafa rabbahu”) and elsewhere, the great Shi`i
philosopher theologian and mystic, Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa'i (d.1246 /1826) makes wide ranging and
detailed comments upon the meaning of the word nafs ("soul", etc), as does his successor Sayyid Kazim
Rashti (d.1259/1843) in a number of his books and treatises.
Despite the massive legacy of the past 2,500 years of thought about the
human `soul' many still wonder whether and in what
senses, if at all, one can legitimately speak of an individualized human
"soul" (nafs), "spirit" (ruh), "mind" or "intellect" (aql). Baha'i
sacred writ has a good deal to say about these matters, making it perfectly
clear, for example, that every individual, no matter of what religious or
non-religious background, has had, from the moment of conception, an
individualized eternal reality designated as the "soul". Exactly what this
"soul" is remains something deeply mysterious though deeply real by virtue
of its potentialities and spiritual-intellectual capacities. For Baha'is the
human "mind" with its spiritually related intellectual powers expresses
aspects of the many perfections of the multi-faceted human soul. In this
paper such questions will be considered and tentative conclusions drawn.
