A.P. Sertillanges wrote a book called The Intellectual Life which is both an inspiration and a guide to those who are potential philosophers, that is, lovers of wisdom. He explains how study is a form of prayer, how all truth is connected, how you can make the most of a short amount of time. He also argues that to be an intellectual requires you to tend the body. I think he is right, and that intellectual virtues grow out of moral and physical virtues.
I am a strength and nutrition coach, which I think fits perfectly with my vocation as a philosopher and promoter of the Great Book. Physical culture and intellectual culture are the same thing.
You are not just a soul
Is the soul a ghost in the machine, a res cogitans that only happens to be connected with the res extensa of the physical world? Are we just souls with bodies, or are we embodied souls? It is a distinction with a difference: in the first case, the mind and body are only accidentally connected. The body is a hindrance, to be ignored or even modified as one likes, without any consequences to the mind. In the second case, the soul arises out of the body, the two are intimately connected, and to neglect the body is to neglect the soul.
Aristotle writes that the soul is the “first actuality of a body capable of having life.” Actuality is energeia, and it’s hard to explain what it is without getting into circles. If the eye were the body, sight would be the soul. Sight is not itself a physical thing, but is the activity or proper operation of the eye. The eye is the noun, the sight is the verb. The soul is the verb, and the body is the noun.
Aquinas says that it is ridiculous to say the soul alone understands. The soul/body understands. It is the whole person, body and soul, who engages in intellectual activity.
Take care of body, take care of the soul
The doctrine of the composite nature of man forbids us to dissociate spiritual functions from even those corporal functions that are apparently least connected with pure thought.
If the soul is the form of the body, you had better take care of the body in order to tend your soul. Sertillanges says “A disease of the stomach changes a man’s character, his character changes his thoughts.” How well can you think while feeling nauseous? One of Shakespeare’s characters remarks that never was philosopher born who could endure the toothache. Ebenezer Scrooge accuses Marley of being a bit of undigested mustard. They aren’t wrong!
Sertillanges declares that “Sound hygiene is, for you (the intellectual), an intellectual virtue.” Get to the gym! It’s not just exercise–diet is important as well. If you are eating such rich food that your digestion is disturbed, so also will your thinking be disturbed.
Supporting evidence
Father Sertillanges was writing in 1920. What does he know? It turns out that he knew a lot. I will give a few examples. This being Substack and not an academic article, I’m going to trust you, dear reader, to chase down the references.
There is certainly a gut-brain axis. Disturbances in the gut biome have a profound effect on behavior. Healthy rats can be made to act like depressed rats by fecal transplants from the less fortunate rodents. Obese humans have a less diverse and qualitatively different gut biome from healthy-weight people, and fecal transplants, as strange as it sounds, have been therapeutic.
Toxoplasma gondii, a cat parasite, promotes its life-cycle by changing the behavior of its hosts. The rats who have it start taking risks and consequently get eaten more by cats, thus spreading the parasite. Humans who get this have similar problems with riskier behavior and aggression. They can’t think as well because of the parasite.
Hormonal birth control also affects the minds of those who use it, changing their mating preferences and biasing them towards less-masculine men, so much so that stopping the pill damages the relationship.
These are just a few examples. If the rational soul can be affected so much by physical changes in the health of the body, and rationality is thought to be good and virtuous, then tending your physical health becomes good and virtuous.
What to do
Get to the gym. Eat healthier. Avoid processed foods. Get some sunshine. Do whatever it takes to sleep better. Moderate your drinking! Take a walk after your meals. Perhaps hire a coach? You can find me at Barbell Logic.
The interconnectedness of the body and soul makes complete sense. To think the body is just added to who we really are and not part of who we are seems arbitrary and gnostic.
However, in the analogy of the soul is to the body what sight is to the eye, one wonders how sight can exist apart from the eye… Is the soul merely an emergent phenomenon of the body? I would tend to think it is more of a vivification of the body. That wouldn’t seem to change their connectedness and the importance of caring for both through both.