created 2025-06-09, & modified, =this.modified
rel: Heart and Brain
The ancient Greek word for “breath” and in religious context for “spirit.” In classical philosophy it is distinguishable from psyche which originally meant “breath of life” but is regularly translated as “spirit” or most often “soul.”
Presocratics
“Air in motion, breath, wind” is the equivalent of “air” from which all else originated.
“just as our soul (psyche), being air (aer), holds us together, so do breath (pneuma) and air (aer) encompass the whole world.”
For Aristotle, connate pneuma is the warm mobile air that is in sperm and responsible for transmitting the capacity for locomotion and certain sensation in offspring. These movements derive from the soul of the parents, and are embodied by the pneuma.
Movement of Animals explains the activity of desire (orexis) as an expansion and contraction of pneuma. The innate spirit (symphuton pneuma) is the power of the soul (psychiken) to be mobile (kinetikon) and exercise strength.
Since it is impossible to make any movement, or do any action without strength, and the holding of the breath produces strength
In the corpse, arteries are empty; hence, in the light of these preconceptions they were declared to be vessels for conveying pneuma to the different parts of the body.