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VII - Metaphysik K2, early 1790s (selections) (Ak. 28: 753–775)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2013

Karl Ameriks
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Steve Naragon
Affiliation:
Manchester College, Indiana
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Summary

Rational psychology

<Psychologia rationalis>

teaches the nature of the human soul. Soul is the subject of sensation. In German it always indicates something inner, as e.g., the soul of a feather, a canon, i.e., the line drawn through the center of the mouth to the center of the ground. Mind <psyche> means butterfly <papillori>. Thus in this naming of the soul there lies an analogy with a butterfly, which is hidden preformed in the caterpillar, which is nothing more than its husk. This teaches that in this world dying is nothing more than regeneration. Soul <anima> is the animating principle in an animal. Matter cannot live for itself. This is a proposition against hylozoism. If one assumes that matter as matter thinks, lives, i.e., acts according to representations, then this is above all contrary to physics; that parts of matter are not moved by others, but rather can move themselves, contradicts the principle of inertia. Pythagoras says something mystical: the soul is a number moving itself <numerus se ipsum movens>. Soul <anima> is the sensible, mind <animus> the intellectual faculty of the soul. Mind <mens, nous> is this in any event. – Soul and spirit are to be sure two distinct relations but only two faculties of one and the same subject.

A living being has only one soul, this is a principle in psychology. The consciousness of the unity of my soul follows already from the conscious-ness of my subject.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

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