Pneuma

Pneuma (πνεῦμα) is an ancient Greek word for "breath", and in a religious context for "spirit" or "soul".^[1]^[2] It has various technical meanings for medical writers and philosophers of classical antiquity, particularly in regard to physiology, and is also used in Greek translations of ruach רוח in the Hebrew Bible, and in the Greek New Testament.

In classical philosophy, it is distinguishable from psyche (ψυχή), which originally meant "breath of life", but is regularly translated as "spirit" or most often "soul".^[3]

Classical antiquity

Presocratics

Pneuma, "air in motion, breath, wind", is equivalent in the material monism of Anaximenes to aer (ἀήρ, "air") as the element from which all else originated. This usage is the earliest extant occurrence of the term in philosophy.^[4] A quotation from Anaximenes observes that "just as our soul (psyche), being air (aer), holds us together, so do breath (pneuma) and air (aer) encompass the whole world." In this early usage, aer and pneuma are synonymous.^[5]

Ancient Greek medical theory

In ancient Greek medicine, pneuma is the form of circulating air necessary for the systemic functioning of vital organs. It is the material that sustains consciousness in a body. According to Diocles and Praxagoras, the psychic pneuma mediates between the heart, regarded as the seat of Mind in some physiological theories of ancient medicine, and the brain.^[6]

The disciples of Hippocrates explained the maintenance of vital heat to be the function of the breath within the organism. Around 300 BC, Praxagoras discovered the distinction between the arteries and the veins, although close studies of vascular anatomy had been ongoing since at least Diogenes of Apollonia. In the corpse arteries are empty; hence, in the light of these preconceptions they were declared to be vessels for conveying pneuma to the different parts of the body. A generation afterwards, Erasistratus made this the basis of a new theory of diseases and their treatment. The pneuma, inhaled from the outside air, rushes through the arteries till it reaches the various centres, especially the brain and the heart, and there causes thought and organic movement.^[7]

Aristotle

The "connate pneuma" (symphuton pneuma) of Aristotle is the warm mobile "air" that plays many roles in Aristotle's biological texts. It is in sperm and is responsible for transmitting the capacity for locomotion and certain sensations to the offspring. These movements derive from the soul of the parent and are embodied by the pneuma as a material substance in semen.

Pneuma is necessary for life, and as in medical theory is involved with preserving the "vital heat," but some commentators think the Aristotelian pneuma is less precisely and thoroughly defined than that of the Stoics.^[3]

Movement of Animals explains the activity of desire (orexis) as an expansion and contraction of pneuma. The innate spirit (symphuton pneuma) is the power of the soul (psychiken) to be mobile (kinetikon) and exercise strength.

All animals "possess an inborn spirit (pneuma sumphuton) and exercise their strength in virtue of it." (703a10). This inborn spirit is used to explain desire (orexis), which is classified as the "central origin (to meson), which moves by being itself moved." (703a56). Aristotle furthers this idea of being a "middle cause" by furnishing the metaphor of the movement of the elbow, as it relates to the immobility of the shoulder (703a13). The inborn pneuma is, likewise, tethered to the soul, or as he says here, tēn arche tēn psuchikēn, "the origin of the soul," the soul as the center of causality. This "spirit" is not the soul itself but a limb of the soul that helps it move.

The inborn spirit causes movement in the body by expanding and contracting. Each of these implies not only a movement but also a change in the degree of power and strength of the animal. "when it contracts it is without force, and one and the same cause gives it force and enables it to thrust." (703a23).

He also explained this in On Sleeping and Waking "In another place it has been laid down that sense-perception originates in the same part of an animal's body as movement does...In sanguineous animals this is the region about the heart; for all sanguineous animals possess a heart, and both movement and the dominant sense-perception originate there. As for movement, it is clear that breathing and in general the process of cooling takes its rise here, and that nature has supplied both breathing and the power of cooling by moisture with a view to the conservation of the heat in that part. We will discuss this later on. In bloodless animals and insects and creatures which do not respire, the naturally inherent breath is seen expanding and contraction in the part which corresponds to the heart in other animals." 456a1–13.

"Since it is impossible to make any movement, or do any action without strength, and the holding of the breath produces strength" 456a17.

Pneuma also played an important role in respiration. Respiration is the process by which breathing helps to cool and moderate the inner vital heat (thermotēta psychikēs) held in the heart.

"We have said before that life and the possession of heat depend upon some degree of heat; for digestion, by which animals assimilate their food, cannot take place apart from the soul and heat; for all food is rendered digestible by fire." 474a25–27.

Aristotle explains that if there is an excess of heat created in the heart the animal will "burn out" by excessively consuming the power sustaining its life (474b10–24). Its heat must be kindled (474b13) and in order to preserve (sōtērias) life, a cooling must take place (katapsyxis) (474b23).

Stoic pneuma

In Stoic philosophy, pneuma is the concept of the "breath of life," a mixture of the elements air (in motion) and fire (as warmth).^[8] For the Stoics, pneuma is the active, generative principle that organizes both the individual and the cosmos.^[9] In its highest form, pneuma constitutes the human soul (psychê), which is a fragment of the pneuma that is the soul of God (Zeus). As a force that structures matter, it exists even in inanimate objects.^[10] In the foreword to his 1964 translation of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Maxwell Staniforth writes:

Cleanthes, wishing to give more explicit meaning to Zeno's 'creative fire', had been the first to hit upon the term pneuma, or 'spirit', to describe it. Like fire, this intelligent 'spirit' was imagined as a tenuous substance akin to a current of air or breath, but essentially possessing the quality of warmth; it was immanent in the universe as God, and in man as the soul and life-giving principle.^[11]

Christianity

Pneuma is a common word for "spirit" in the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. At John 3:5, for example, pneuma is the Greek word translated into English as "spirit": "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit (pneuma), he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." In some translations such as the King James version, however, pneuma is then translated as "wind" in verse eight, followed by the rendering "Spirit": "The wind (pneuma) bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit (pneuma)."

Philo, a 1st-century Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, commented on the use of Πνοή, rather than πνευμα, in the Septuagint translation of Genesis 2:7. Philo explains that, in his view, pneuma is for the light breathing of human men while the stronger pnoē was used for the divine Spirit.^[12]

References

^ Entry πνεῦμα, in Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon, online version.
^ See pp.190, 195, 205 of François, Alexandre (2008), "Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages", in Vanhove, Martine (ed.), From Polysemy to Semantic change: Towards a Typology of Lexical Semantic Associations, Studies in Language Companion Series, vol. 106, Amsterdam, New York: Benjamins, pp. 163–215.
^ ^a ^b Furley, D.J. (1999). From Aristotle to Augustine. History of Philosophy. Routledge. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-415-06002-8. LCCN 98008543.
^ Silvia Benso, "The Breathing of the Air: Presocratic Echoes in Levinas," in Levinas and the Ancients (Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 13.
^ Benso, "The Breathing of the Air," p. 14.
^ Philip J. van der Eijk, "The Heart, the Brain, the Blood and the pneuma: Hippocrates, Diocles and Aristotle on the Location of Cognitive Processes," in Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 131–132 et passim. ISBN 0-521-81800-1
^ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Hicks, Robert Drew (1911). "Stoics". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 942–951.
^ "Stoicism," Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Taylor & Francis, 1998), p. 145.
^ David Sedley, "Stoic Physics and Metaphysics," The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, p. 388.
^ John Sellars, Stoicism (University of California Press, 2006), pp. 98–104.
^ Marcus Aurelius (1964). Meditations. London: Penguin Books. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-140-44140-6.
^ Bromiley, Geoffrey William; Kittel, Gerhard (1967). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8028-2247-5.

External links

The dictionary definition of pneuma at Wiktionary
about Soma and Pneuma

[1] Entry πνεῦμα, in Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon, online version.

[2] See pp.190, 195, 205 of François, Alexandre (2008), "Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages", in Vanhove, Martine (ed.), From Polysemy to Semantic change: Towards a Typology of Lexical Semantic Associations, Studies in Language Companion Series, vol. 106, Amsterdam, New York: Benjamins, pp. 163–215.

[Furley1999-3] Furley, D.J. (1999). From Aristotle to Augustine. History of Philosophy. Routledge. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-415-06002-8. LCCN 98008543.

[4] Silvia Benso, "The Breathing of the Air: Presocratic Echoes in Levinas," in Levinas and the Ancients (Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 13.

[5] Benso, "The Breathing of the Air," p. 14.

[6] Philip J. van der Eijk, "The Heart, the Brain, the Blood and the pneuma: Hippocrates, Diocles and Aristotle on the Location of Cognitive Processes," in Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 131–132 et passim. ISBN 0-521-81800-1

[7] One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Hicks, Robert Drew (1911). "Stoics". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 942–951.

[8] "Stoicism," Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Taylor & Francis, 1998), p. 145.

[9] David Sedley, "Stoic Physics and Metaphysics," The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, p. 388.

[10] John Sellars, Stoicism (University of California Press, 2006), pp. 98–104.

[11] Marcus Aurelius (1964). Meditations. London: Penguin Books. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-140-44140-6.

[12] Bromiley, Geoffrey William; Kittel, Gerhard (1967). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8028-2247-5.

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