OVERVIEW

Siger de Brabant ascribed to the Averroestic notion of dualism, namely that a principle of existence can be proven philosophically and yet simultaneously be incorrect in the light of religious revelation. Most of the Latin Averroeists agreed religion and revelation provided the more important truths. While Siger believes that one does, in fact, have a differentiated soul that is reproduced through the procreation, he also believes that his philosophical explanation of the soul proves that the soul is instead an entity entirely outside of human physicality. He starts out the excerpt concerning the intellective soul with the fascinatingly self-defeating statement that the issue at hand “must be carefully considered…by seeking the mind of the philosophers in this matter rather than the truth since we are proceeding philosophically.” Most philosophers defend and explain their treatises with the goal of demonstrating their ultimate truth. Siger, however, defines truth as a more complex notion; just as an artist uses different mediums to express similar ideas, Siger views philosphy and religion as different means of expressing seperate truths.

Brabant, as I mentioned in the Biogrophy, was greatly influenced by Aristotle, who he refers to as "the" philosopher. Aristotle believed that the soul is a continuous entity. Because the soul is continuous, Brabant argues, the soul cannot be individuated among different people. He uses the characteristics of color to explain that something is white, for instance, because the essence of white is quantifiable and continuous. The soul, on the other hand, is entirely unquantifiable, and can therefore no be unique to any individual. Individual colors can be unique to an object because one can measure and define the parameters of that color. What is purple is not blue, but the soul is at once homogenous and inseperable from its indefinable substance.

Most importantly, the soul is an entirely non-physical entity, and therefore can have no tangible connection to that which is entirely physical. It exists outside of the mortal, degradable realm. While people can multiply, they simply recreate a similar form. Socrates, as Brabant points out, did not create many little Socrates (if he had children) but other beings similar in some way to him. Socrates is therefore similar to the soul in that he cannot be exactly reproduced.

Anticipating refutation, Brabant explores the issue of the individual human intellect. If the soul cannot have an individual states, why then can the individual intellect have such obviously varying characteristics? For instance, one man can know the first fifty digits of pi while another does not. Brabant explains this individuated characteristic by attributing one man's knowledge to an independent aspect of that particular physical being. The intellect, unlike the soul, is not eternal. Rather it has to do solely with the individual's intellectual capacity and access to knowledge.

Brabant ends the segment by pointing out his argument and Aristotle's as having "natural reason." Brabant does not claim that his argument concerning the soul is not true in the divine sense, but the only logical conclusion when one approaches the issue from a purely logical, philosphical approach. "I acknowledge that I myself have been in doubt for quite some time...In such doubt one must hold fast to the faith, which surpasses all human reasoning.

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Site Last Updated: 11/01/2005