Blog Marcos L. Mucheroni Filosofia, Noosfera e cibercultura

In philosophy, there is no way of referring to Being without addressing being and essence, which philosophers have said in different ways during the process of civilization and the construction of knowledge.

For the Greeks, starting with Socrates, being (seen as what constitutes being human) resides in the soul or reason, which is not separate, and conscience is the source of both intellect and morality, and man is capable of transcending the material world and seeking truth and virtue. For him, the soul is essence and is not separate from the body (being or form), it is an obstacle to virtue.

Plato elaborates that “being” is that which exists, while “essence” (form) is the fundamental and immutable nature that defines that being, while Aristotle’s essence of a being is its fundamental nature, what defines it and makes it what it is, it is the form that unites with matter to form a substance, which is the individual being.

So Socrates’ transcendence disappears, Plato then elaborates the High Good as the essence of what is good, just and true, while Aristotle defines it as the pursuit of happiness, the highest good that human beings seek, he also creates the idea of the immovable motor, the first cause of everything that exists and of the universe, Plato defends the immortality of the soul, while Aristotle is stuck with the idea of human finitude where everything is mortal.

The Neoplatonist Plotinus (204-270 AD), saw the soul as a bridge between the intelligible world (the One and the Intellect) and the sensible world, it is the image of the Intellect and of the vital force that drives life and motive, in his book Ennead VI:

“And what are we? Are we that, or are we that which is associated and exists in time? In fact, before birth, we were there [in the intelligible], being other men and, some, also gods: pure souls and intellects united to the totality of essence, parts of the intelligible, without separation, without division, but being of the whole (and even now we are not separate). But now, another man has approached that man, wanting to be. And finding us, since we were not separated from the whole, he clothed himself with us and added to himself that man, which each of us was then” (Plotinus, VI, 4, 14, 16-25).

Plotinus sees the Soul in various “stages”, it is what connects Spirit and Body, the higher nature and its materiality), it is a creature of God, created in his image and likeness, composed of body and immortal soul, Augustine of Hippo reworks this as the Being is a creature of God, created in his image and likeness, composed of body and immortal soul, thus seeing it outside its bodily finitude.

In Saint Augustine’s view, the body has a dual nature, the first physical and material, like his body in which he lived, and the second refers to the church as a metaphor for the body of Christ.

I think of this metaphor in the sense of a worldview, as the 20th century theologian Teilhard de Chardin also saw it this way: the whole universe is Christ’s body, that is, not the itinerant church, but the eternal and living one in the immensity of the universe, so his body is eternal, and this is the greatest meaning of the resurrection, Jesus had a temporal experience, an ex-sistence, but he is eternal.