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[ 72 ] the rise and fall of soul and self
In Plato’s view, the soul at death always leaves forever the specific body with
which it had been associated, and when sufficiently purified it eventually leaves
body itself forever. In Augustine’s view, the dogma of bodily resurrection
requires a more intimate relationship between soul and body. Even so, he denied
that sensation is an activity of the total psycho-physical organism, insisting
instead that in sensation the soul uses the body as its instrument.
Within the realm of spirituality and mentality, Augustine had a penchant for
oppositions, which he characterized as inner and outer. The inner is our souls,
including reason and will, the outer what we have in common with animals,
including our senses and memory images of outer things. This penchant for
opposition between the inner and outer reached its most extreme expression in
his discussion of memory: “What a great faculty memory is, how awesome a
mystery! It is the mind, and this is nothing other than my very self.”
27
If we take
Augustine literally here, he would hold a position not very different from that
attributed to Locke, that personal identity extends only as far as memory. This
position would imply that one’s identity does not extend to portions of what oth-
ers might regard as one’s own life, such as one’s early infancy or to periods of
forgetfulness. However, elsewhere and more generally, he held that there is
more to self or person than mind or memory.
Augustine justified his view that the human soul is immaterial and immortal
by appealing both to Christian Scripture and human psychology. Since Scripture
teaches that humans are made in the image of God, whom he took to be immate-
rial, it follows, he thought, that humans too must be immaterial, at least in part.
And since certain objects of intellectual comprehension, as in geometry, are not
limited spatially, the soul that contemplates them cannot
be limited spatially. Also,
our being able to feel when any part of our body is hurt indicates that the soul per-
meates the body, which it could not do if it was material; nor could acts of willing
and thinking be performed by body. However, Augustine rejected the Platonic
view that the soul is immutable and imprisoned in the body. In his own view, the
soul can be changed either by itself or by the body, and it is not imprisoned.
Augustine credits Ephesians 5:29—“No one hates his own flesh”—with helping
him to realize the body’s value. Rather than the body being a mere tool, or even
worse, a prison, Augustine claimed that it should be regarded as a “temple.” He also
rejected the Platonic view that the soul yearns to be free of the body. While
acknowledging that the soul rules over the body, and hence that the body is
subordinate, he claimed that after death, when the soul is separated from the body,
the soul yearns to be reunited.
Augustine held that the human soul is created by God, but he had no fixed
view about when or how. He toyed with a view, favored by Plato and Origen,
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