Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.9

M. I will comply with your wishes, and explain as well as I can what you require; but not with any idea that, like the Pythian Apollo, what I say must needs be certain and indisputable, but as a mere man, endeavoring to arrive at probabilities by conjecture, for I have no ground to proceed further on than probability. 

 

Those men may call their statements indisputable who assert that what they say can be perceived by the senses, and who proclaim themselves philosophers by profession.

 

A. Do as you please: We are ready to hear you.

 

M. The first thing, then, is to inquire what death, which seems to be so well understood, really is; for some imagine death to be the departure of the soul from the body; others think that there is no such departure, but that soul and body perish together, and that the soul is extinguished with the body.

 

Of those who think that the soul does depart from the body, some believe in its immediate dissolution; others fancy that it continues to exist for a time; and others believe that it lasts forever. 

 

There is great dispute even what the soul is, where it is, and whence it is derived: with some, the heart itself (cor) seems to be the soul, hence the expressions, excordes, vecordes, concordes; and that prudent Nasica, who was twice consul, was called Corculus, i.e., wise-heart; and Aelius Sextus is described as egregie cordatus homo, catus Aelius Sextus—that great wise-hearted man, sage Aelius. 

 

Empedocles imagines the blood, which is suffused over the heart, to be the soul; to others, a certain part of the brain seems to be the throne of the soul; others neither allow the heart itself, nor any portion of the brain, to be the soul, but think either that the heart is the seat and abode of the soul, or else that the brain is so. 

 

Some would have the soul, or spirit, to be the anima, as our schools generally agree; and indeed the name signifies as much, for we use the expressions animam agere, to live; animam efflare, to expire; animosi, men of spirit; bene animati, men of right feeling; exanimi sententia, according to our real opinion; and the very word animus is derived from anima. Again, the soul seems to Zeno the Stoic to be fire.

 

Our day and age likes to present itself as being so tolerant and open-minded, and yet I still notice how incredibly narrow our attentions can be. Experts and laymen alike will launch into dogmatic worldviews, quickly brushing aside any other options, and the conclusions are often oddly divorced from any arguments. 

 

If you think I am exaggerating, try making a Democrat and a Republican explore what they might share in common, or see what happens when you put academic followers of analytic and continental philosophy in the same room. 

 

It might be wise to look at the many possible answers before committing to that one final answer, and better yet, to understand the question before even speculating on an answer. I am grateful that Cicero does so here. 

 

Most people I know have very firm opinions on what happens to us after death, for example, and they are usually quite resistant to changing their minds. Do they offer any reasons? 

 

“Well, that’s just what I believe.” 

 

What is freely asserted is freely denied. To speak of any future state is pointless without first understanding what it means to die, and to speak of dying is pointless without first understanding what it means to live. 

 

As much as we might have a craving for novelty, there is nothing new under the sun, and there are very few philosophical positions, for instance, that cannot first be found among the Ancient Greeks. So it is too with accounts of life and death. 

 

When examining the “soul” we might be entering murky waters, since the term has so many different connotations, both literal and figurative, but, if you can pardon my Peripatetic roots, I always begin with the sense of the first principle of life, or that which makes something alive, the differentiation between the animate and the inanimate. 

 

Cicero here offers a helpful summary of some of the alternative points of view. We can speak of death as the separation of the soul from the body (the very removal of life), and yet that need not assure the soul’s survival, since it may well perish along with the body, or itself later be subject to corruption. 

 

The head can, after all, be severed from the body, and neither will live on its own. 

 

Where might we be able to place the soul, or is it not even subject to a particular “location” in the usual sense? 

 

The heart seems a promising candidate, at both the level of biology, where its beating and the consequent flow of blood are signs of life, and at the level of poetry, where it is portrayed as representing our passions. 

 

A case can also be made for the head, again at both the level of biology, where the brain controls the whole nervous system, and at the level of poetry, where it is described as the focus of sensation, imagination, memory, and thought. 

 

The Latin anima, similar to the Greek psyche, opens up a whole other avenue. It has its literal root in the sense of “air” or “breath”, and by extension comes to stand for life, spirit, or soul. 

 

Indeed, we might say that someone is “dead” if his heart has stopped, or if he is no longer capable of any conscious response, or if he has ceased breathing. Where these are finally gone, it would also appear that life is gone. 

 

The Stoic association of fire with life and the soul may sound a bit stranger to our modern ears, and yet it points to a further, perhaps more subtle, meaning. 

 

Just as fire is a principle of vigorous activity and frenetic motion, and also has a transformative quality, it can be seen as standing for vitality. We still employ it when we refer to a temperament as “fiery”, or to a person taken up with an idea or feeling as being “on fire.” 

 

These “old” ways of describing life are hardly primitive or outdated, and we are well advised to cast our nets wide with this matter, as with any matter. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and there is more than one way to express a truth. 

Written in 2/1996