Spirit

SPIRIT. - Corresponds to the Greek πνεῦμα and νοῦς, and to the Latin spiritus and mens. Etymologically it means "breath," "vital breath" (the expressions "vital s." and "animal s." used by Bacon and Descartes [v.] refer to this) and thus presents a derivation analogous to that of soul (v.). Used as a synonym of soul, it means the vital principle in general; but often it is identified with the rational soul (e.g., in Scholasticism, in Descartes, in Leibniz [*Monad.*, 82-83]) or even with thought (v.), and then it is opposed to the sensible. In a derived sense one speaks of the s. of a doctrine, of a book, etc., to indicate the central idea or the animating principle, which is often opposed to the "letter."

In Plato and Aristotle the s. begins to acquire the sense of an immaterial, unextended, incorruptible, immortal essence, although uncertainties and obscurities persist even in Aristotle himself, for whom the πνεῦμα is still conceived materialistically (something intermediate between the body, σῶμα, and the soul, ψυχή). For the Stoics the πνεῦμα is subtle matter; in man it is a spark of the divine πνεῦμα or creative reason (λόγος σπερματικός: Stobaeus, Ed., I, 374), which is the active principle, the living universe; however, Seneca (Epist., 65, 22) opposes s. to flesh, and Marcus Aurelius identifies the pneuma or spiritual breath with the incorporeal soul (Ric., II, 2). Neopythagoreans and Neoplatonists distinguish clearly (and this helps to clarify the concept of s.) between body, soul (ψυχή) and s. (νοῦς), which Plotinus (v.) defines as the unity having multiplicity within itself (Enn., V, 9, 6). Thus the s. comes to indicate the creative principle.

Apart from the theological meaning it has in the New Testament (especially in St. Paul), Christian philosophy inherits (and enriches its meaning) the concept of πνεῦμα as an immaterial vivifying soul distinct from the ψυχή (Irenaeus, Hef., V, 12, 2). Origen (v.), who likewise distinguishes between ψυχή and πνεῦμα, makes the latter the principle of the judgment of good and evil, of true and false (De princ., III, 1-5); and St. Augustine (v.), who distinguishes between ratio and intelligentia (inherent in the mens), identifies the spiritus with the faculty of forming, combining and dissociating the similitudines corporales (De Gen. ad litt., XIX, ch. 23, n. 49), the fruit of the soul's activity. On the other hand, when he uses it in the biblical sense (De anima et eius origine, II, ch. 2, n. 2) he does not distinguish it from the mens. To Christian philosophy are due the clarification and deepening of the distinction between s. and body and the new and more complex meaning of the concept of s. (v. SPIRITUALISATO).

In modern philosophy, on the one hand Descartes makes spiritual substance (res cogitans) the opposite of res extensa (Principia, I) and Spinoza makes it one of the attributes of the divine Substance, constitutive of its essence, insofar as God is res cogitans and res extensa (Eth., part 2, De mente, propositions I-II); and, on the other hand, empiricism (v.) identifies the s. with the totality of representations and consequently denies that it is substance (Hume, Treatise of human nature, part 4, sections 5 and 6). On the basis of the Kantian concept (v. KANT) of the transcendental I, whose a priori forms are modes of functioning, transcendental idealism gives the concept of s. a gnoseological-metaphysical scope, opposing it to matter (antithesis between the unity of thought and empirical multiplicity) and to nature (antithesis between the creative I and created things, between the I that is freedom and necessity). The S., understood as I-hood (Fichte) or as absolute thought (Hegel), an impersonal active principle, is the creator of total reality. Only to it belongs immortality and not to empirical I's. With Gentile (v.) Hegel's pure Thought becomes Thought in act, the dialectic of thinker and thought. And thus the concept of spiritual substance is destroyed and the s. is conformed to nature. The term esprit still has a meaning of its own in Pascal (v.) of a multiplicity of perspectives of knowledge (gnoseological pluralism) or of special aptitudes: esprit de géométrie, esprit de finesse, etc. (Pensées, ed. Brunschvicg, 1-4).

Michele Federico Sciacca