A History of Mediaeval Jewish PhilosophyHusik, Isaac
ReligionJewish
A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy
Husik, Isaac
Philosophy, Jewish; Philosophy, Medieval
Anger is the motion of the spirit within the body toward the outside,
together with the blood and the humors. This is found in animals also.
Fear is the entrance of the soul within, leaving the surface of the
body, and causing the extremities to become cold. Shame is a motion
inward, and forthwith again outward. Sorrow is caused in the same way as
fear, except that fear is sudden, while sorrow is gradual. This is why
fear sometimes kills when the body is weak. Joy is motion outward. Joy
may kill too, when it is very great, and the person is weak and without
control. Joy is of the nature of pleasure, except that pleasure is
gradual, while joy is sudden.
Pain is that feeling we have when we are taken out of our natural state
and put into an unnatural. Pleasure is felt when we are restored to the
natural. Take, for example, the heat of the sun. When a person is
exposed to it, the sun takes him out of his natural state. Heat is then
painful, and pleasure is produced by the thing which restores him to his
natural state; in this case a cold spring and a drink of cold water.
Similarly a person walking in the snow and cold air feels pain by reason
of the cold taking him out of his natural state. Heat then gives him
pleasure by restoring him. The same thing applies to hunger and thirst,
sleeping and waking, and other things which give us pleasure and pain.
Without pain there is no pleasure, and the pleasure varies in accordance
with the antecedent pain.
Life is the effect of the animal soul. The disappearance of the effect
does not necessarily involve the disappearance of the cause, as the
disappearance of the smoke does not require the cessation of the fire.
Death means simply the separation of the soul, not the destruction
thereof. It does not follow because the human soul remains after the
death of the body, that the soul of the ox and the ass continues
likewise, for the two souls are different. Animals were created for the
sake of man, whereas man exists for his own sake. Moreover, man's life
is ultimately derived from his rational soul. For if the animal soul of
man were the ultimate source of life, the rational soul too would be
dependent for its life upon the former, and hence would be inferior to
it, which is absurd. It remains then that the _rational soul gives
existence to the animal soul in man_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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