Every student at the University of Dallas, whether victim or victor of Phil and Eth, ought to remember the “noble lie” or myth of the metals in book III of Plato’s “Republic.” Each person has a metal in their soul–bronze, iron, silver or gold.
Each metal is indicative of a different kind of soul with a different set of innate strengths and weaknesses.
Bronze souls are appetitive, driven by animalistic desires and most inclined to be farmers or craftspeople. Silver souls are spirited, suited to be guardians of the city. Gold souls are rational and fit to rule.
Aristotle conceived of the soul as entelecheia–the first principle of an actualization of a living body. St. Thomas Aquinas’s conception of the human person built upon this joint Platonic and Aristotelian foundation and sought, with Augustine, a kind of middle path between these two philosophies on the matter of the soul.
For Aquinas, the human person was a composite of soul and body, a corporeal substance linked to a spiritual substance.
Philosophical reflection on the nature of and connection between the soul and body is limited not only to the noble lie of Plato, but is also reflective of real truths about the human person. As Thales of Miletus famously said, “Mens sana in corpore sano”–a healthy mind in a healthy body.
It’s easy to fail to recognize the extent of reciprocality that exists between the mind and the body, but the connection cannot be denied. As the states of America’s physical and mental health both deteriorate, a sort of deflationary spiral is apparent.
Obesity costs the US Healthcare system approximately $173 million per year and 68% of active duty service members are overweight or have obesity. 64% of college dropouts cite a mental health-related reason for leaving college, and among adults aged 18 or older in 2022, 23.1% (or 59.3 million people) suffered from a mental illness in the past year.
The effect of mental fatigue on physical performance in whole-body endurance tasks has been documented as early as Angelo Mosso’s studies in 1891. Princess Amadala and 6,837 patients in the United States in the year 2008 suffered from Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, colloquially known as broken heart syndrome, in which emotional distress has direct physical manifestations through the onset of acute transient left ventricular systolic dysfunction.
Man’s social nature and complex intellectual development so far exceeds the simple mandates of Darwin’s evolutionary incentives of the production of offspring and the continued survival of the individual
It’s a connection that has sought emphasis in various campaigns throughout the US’s storied and complex history with American fitness.
JFK noted the dangers of declining mental and physical fitness in the aftermath of the Korean War through his famous “Soft American” speech in which he called for a White House Committee on Health and Fitness, the development of a physical fitness program for the nations public schools, and the institution of an annual National Youth Fitness Congress to be attended by the governors of each state.
The inheritance of early efforts like JFK’s persisted into the 20th and early 21st century through the Presidential Fitness Test, the MSFT (Multi-stage fitness test) the PACER test, and the
In the field of psychoimmunology, mechanisms through which stressful emotions alter white blood cell function and immune response to cancer cells and viral infected cells has been documented since the early 2000s. The placebo effect has been found to involve a complex neuro-biological reaction releasing endorphins and dopamine.
Even when patients know they’re taking a placebo, the act of taking a pill itself makes the placebo 50% as effective as a migraine medication in treating pain after a migraine attack.
The complex interactions between psyche and soma, mind and body, are reciprocal.