Vehicles of the Soul from Plato to Philoponus

Abstract

This chapter traces the prehistory of the subtle body, developing out of late antique Neoplatonic conceptions of the ochema-pneuma, “vehicles of the soul,” which bear souls from one incarnation to the next. It goes through the entire history of late antique Neoplatonism surveying how major thinkers engaged with and formulated ideas about these soul-bearing vehicles, from the mystical existentialism of Porphyry and Iamblichus (third century) to the detailed and philosophically sophisticated descriptions of Damascius and John Philoponus (sixth century). It ends with the ascendance of Christianity for which this notion was no longer useful, jettisoning the subtle body and sending the idea into a thousand-year slumber.