Editing Simplicius of Cilicia (section)

=== Psychology ===
In Simplicius' or doctrine of the soul (psyche), he distinguished three types of souls:<ref>See Christian Vogel for this classification: ''Stoic Ethics and Platonic Education.'' Heidelberg 2013, pp. 107–111, 273 f.; Ilsetraut Hadot (ed.): ''Simplicius: Commentaire sur le Manuel d'Épictète.'' Leiden 1996, pp. 84–86, 91&nbsp;f.</ref>
* the "first" souls whose abodes are above the lunar sphere in the realm of imperishable bodies. They never descend to earth and know no evil. Since they follow their own nature unhindered, they are exclusively focused on the imperishable good. Therefore, they cannot make wrong decisions. There are no impulses in them that relate to material and transitory things.
* the souls that come from the world of the immortal, but descend to earth and inhabit human bodies there. They occupy an intermediate position between the divine world of pure being and the animal and vegetable world of pure becoming, and have access to both realms. Through their descent, they come into contact with the bad. Losing their exclusive focus on good, they must figure out what is good for them and make decisions prone to error. This can result in them receiving a disposition contrary to their good nature. However, they are able to turn to the good through spiritual effort and thus to realize what is natural for them. Ascending to their homeland beyond the lunar sphere, they are freed from all evils.
* the souls of animals and plants that only know their earthly habitat. In their activities they are always directed towards the physical to which they are related. Since animals lack reason, they are at the mercy of their unreasonable desires. But that's not bad for them, it's natural for them. They follow the urge to preserve life; so they too have something good as their goal. Their way of experiencing evil is graded: in lower animals it is a purely bodily experience, similar to plants; in some higher animals the experience of evils approaches that of man.

The interest that Simplicius brought to the theory of the soul and the question of what was bad was – as with all Neoplatonists – practical. He was concerned with the utilization of the knowledge gained from understanding the soul for application to an ethical lifestyle. According to Simplicius' understanding, man is never helplessly at the mercy of evil; he can always choose the good that corresponds to his natural disposition. Moreover, the area in which bad actually occurs is narrowly limited. Impairments affecting the body do not count as bad in the strict sense, and the presence or absence of material goods is immaterial. Processes of material decay are just as necessary as processes of emergence and make sense within the framework of the world order. The interplay of composition and dissolution of bodies is not in itself a bad thing; if you look at it from a higher perspective and see the whole, it becomes necessary. The only really bad things are bad mental attitudes, because what matters is the immortal soul, not the mortal body. Thus genuine evil does not exist in the nature surrounding man, nor in his circumstances, but only in his soul, and there it can be eliminated through knowledge and a philosophical way of life. In addition, physical imperfections are also limited to a relatively small part of the cosmos. They only occur in the earthly realm, for it is only there that the processes of arising, changing, and passing away take place that allow physical deficiencies to occur. According to the world view of the pagan philosophers of the time, Simplicius believed that becoming and passing away only take place in the "sublunar" space – below the moon. He regarded the entire sky above the lunar sphere as a perfect region, to which everything bad was alien.<ref>Christian Vogel: ''Stoic Ethics and Platonic Education.'' Heidelberg 2013, p. 177 f., 185–190 , 216 f., 272 f.; {{harvnb|Mueller|2011|pp= 2,7}}; Ilsetraut Hadot (ed.): ''Simplicius: Commentaire sur le Manuel d'Épictète.'' Leiden 1996, p. 91.</ref>