Greek · Greek philosophy
psychē
ψυχή
Heard as psoo-KHAY
- Period
- archaic to late antique
- Semantic range
- Life, soul, the animating principle, later the seat of thought and desire.
- What it can mean
- From breath of life to Plato's tripartite soul to Aristotle's form of a living body.
- What it should not be equated with
- Not already 'mind' in the modern sense. Not consciousness.
- Primary or early source
- Homer; Plato; Aristotle, De Anima.
- Scholarly source
- Standard histories of ancient psychology.
- Relation to other terms
- An older European partition of living inner life, prior to the English split.