On the Soul’s Hierarchization: From Aristotle via Heidegger to Phenomenology of Life

Based on Aristotelianism, philosophies in Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and traditional phenomenology, Martin Heidegger and late Max Scheler, shared a conceptual understanding of the soul. The plant’s soul – a worldly stage of the individualization of universal creativity - unfolds via the animal towards the human and beyond. The Phenomenology of Life philosophy (Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka) enmeshed the ontopoiesis of the vegetative beingness into the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive, thereby overcoming the discommunicative hierarchization of the soul. An eco-cosmological following of „the plant’s“ ontopoiesis will have to base its understanding not only on the communicative creativity of „the plant“ but on its inseparable interwovenness into the web of life, thereby also taking into consideration newest botanical studies which brought to light insights into so far unknown „intelligence“ of plants.

Keywords:

Aristoteles , Philosophy in Islam , Vegetative Soul , Heidegger , Phenomenology of Life , Symbiotic Communities , Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka