Before I start this question, I would like to point out that I am not going to get into any discussions with anyone about whether or not the soul exists. For this discussion, I am assuming such a thing does exist. If you do not agree with that premise, and cannot consider these thoughts without focusing on that, then this isn’t the right thread for you.
What is a soul? Religions and philosophers alike have theories about what a soul is. Is it something material, or immaterial? Eternal, or temporary? What defines a soul? Can a person be without a soul? Do animals have souls?
All these questions were posed to me during my last history class. We are discussing Roman history, though I cannot remember the exact reason we started talking about the soul. Some interesting ideas were suggested, and it made me think about what the soul was. How do I personally define it?
The Platonists saw the soul as the spark of the divine in each human. It had two parts: one from the cycle of the same, and one from the cycle of the other, which defines the change a person can experience through their life. The soul enters the body when the child is born. The soul is eternal, and after someone dies, their soul goes to the communion of the souls. There, they spend 33,000 years, thinking and considering the nature of the universe.
After that time, they get the choice of what kind of life they want to live on Earth next… one of appetite (epithymia), one of emotion or ambition (thymos), or one of intellect (nous). The theory was that you got happiness in each life, but were not complete until you could break the cycle and stay in the communion, just pondering the nature of the divine.
You’ll notice that this theory has a lot in common with other theories. The idea of reincarnation, which is present in Judaism and Hinduism. Eternal souls are common in many religions, the Abrahamaic religions most popularly.
But while those are nice ideas of what happens to the soul, it doesn’t really tell us what it is. One person in my class suggested that it was identical to character. It’s the way you act and the traits you exhibit in your life. Another suggested that it’s what defines ambition, the will to live, which brings us to the concept of the soul in Greek and Roman thought.
The soul was thought to be the defining characteristic between a live person, and a dead person. Where it was contained was debated, with some thinking that it was in the blood of the person, since blood stops flowing when you die. Others, and likely the majority, considered the soul to be in your last dying breath. The reason I say the majority probably felt this way is that the words used for soul in both Greek and Latin had to do with air, breath, or wind—psyche, animus, pneuma, and spiritus.
This brings up another point, though. Can you lose your soul? I mean, Faust sold his soul to the devil, there are people who say they don’t have a soul (I’m sure a few on this site will claim that), and some people who face incredible tragedy that say they lost their soul. According to Greek thought, you obviously couldn’t lose your soul; it was your very life force, and without it, you’d simply die.
After thinking about this somewhat extensively, I think the soul is an imprint of a human. The person’s thoughts, desires, dreams, personality, etc leave some imprint that collectively makes up the soul. As such, the soul cannot be material. You can't touch thoughts, desires, dreams, personality, etc, so you can't touch a soul.
Based on this, I'm not sure I'd say all animals have souls, but perhaps some do. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I'd like to believe my puppy can sense and feel emotions.
I believe in reincarnation to some degree, so each incarnation of the soul would possess the same basic characteristics. They are simply placed in different situations to call on some aspect that needs developing. Maybe, as the Platonists believe, our souls choose the situations. I don’t know. Either way, I do believe the soul is eternal.
I don’t think a person can lose their soul, persay, just lose direction in their path. I have a varying belief about when the soul is ‘with’ the person, but I certainly don’t believe it happens at conception. But maybe not quite when the baby is born, either. I don’t believe it is a material thing, as how can a material thing leave the body when it dies?
I still have a lot to think about, certainly, but as this blog has gone on fairly long now, I’ll give your eyes a break. What do YOU consider the soul to be?
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