Abstract
This essay investigates Kepler’s concept of harmony of the spheres with regard to the relation of body and soul as well as with regard to resurrection. In Kepler, it is not the case that body and soul are separated in a way that they needed mediation. Nevertheless, there are similarities to theories of the spiritual body: the concept of harmony of the spheres, Kepler develops in Harmonices Mundi, finds its counterpart in the description of the soul’s harmony. The soul’s activity plays a crucial role in finding harmony in the imperfect material world. Kepler asks how the soul, though it is the spot of the intangible, picks up entities through sensory organs that are connected with matter. In this context, the essay focusses particularly on mathematical and geometrical terms that Kepler understands as a link between the objects of senses and the harmony detached from these objects. Kepler intensively discusses Plato’s and Proclus’ teachings of the soul. For him, this also involves improvement of the heathen teaching of the soul and a compromise with Christian concepts, whereupon he reads Plato’s Timaios as a comment on the First Book of Moses. The discussion of Kepler’s theses shows which philosophical conditions and constellations the concept of ochema requires in order to play a prominent role as space or respectively place of metaphysical transactions. In this regard, the discussion also highlights the constellations in which the concept of ochema has to be modified due to systematically motivated restrictions and transformations.