Information AboutSoul |
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The soul, according to many Religious and Philosophical traditions, is the Self-aware Essence unique to a particular living Being . In these traditions the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for Sapience . It is believed in many cultures and religions that the soul is the unification of one's sense of identity. Souls are usually (but not always as explained below) considered to be Immortal and to exist before their incarnation in flesh. The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an Afterlife , but opinions may vary wildly, even within a given religion, as to what may happen to the soul after the Death of the body. Many within these religions and philosophies see the soul as immaterial, while others consider it to possibly have a material component, and some have even tried to establish the Mass (or Weight ) of the soul. Skeptics of the soul cite phenomena such as Brain Lesion s (as in the case of Broca's Aphasia ) and Alzheimer's Disease as evidence that personality is material, and furthermore, exists in discrete components, contrary to the philosophy of an immortal, unified soul. ETYMOLOGY
The word is in any case clearly an adaptation by early missionaries to the Germanic peoples, in particular Ulfila , apostle to the Goths (4th century) of a native Germanic concept, coined as a translation of Greek '' Psychē '' "life, spirit, consciousness". The Greek word is derived from a verb "to cool, to blow" and hence refers to the vital breath, the animating principle in man and animals, as opposed to "body". It could refer to a ghost or spirit of the dead in Homer , and to a more philosophical notion of an immortal and immaterial essence left over at death since Pindar . Latin '''' figured as a translation of since Terence . It occurs juxtaposed to e.g. in : :— : Vulgate : '''' : KJV "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." In the Septuagint , translates Hebrew '' Nephesh '', meaning "life, vital breath", in English variously translated as "soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion"; e.g. in : :— : LXX : Vulgate '' : KJV "And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth." Paul Of Tarsus used and specifically to distinguish between the Jewish notions of ''nephesh'' and '' Ruah '' (also in LXX, e.g. = = '''' = "the Spirit of God"). PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS The Ancient Greeks used the same word for 'alive' as for 'ensouled'. So the earliest surviving Western Philosophical view might suggest that the terms soul and aliveness, were synonymous - perhaps not that having life, universally presupposed the possession of a soul as in Buddhism, but that full "aliveness" and the soul were conceptually linked. Francis M. Cornford quotes Pindar in saying that the soul sleeps whilst the limbs are active, but when man is sleeping, the soul is active and reveals in many a dream "an award of joy or sorrow drawing near".Francis M. Cornford, ''Greek Religious Thought'', p.64, referring to Pindar, Fragment 131. Erwin Rohde writes that the early pre- Pythagorean belief was that the soul had no life when it departed from the body, and retired into Hades with no hope of returning to a body.Erwin Rohde, ''Psyche'', 1928. Socrates and Plato Plato , drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates , considered the soul as the Essence of a person, being, that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence as an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. As bodies die the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies. The Platonic soul comprises three parts: # the Logos ( Mind , Nous , or Reason ) # the Thymos ( Emotion , or spiritedness) # the Eros (appetitive, or Desire ) Each of these has a function in a balanced and peaceful soul. The logos equates to the mind. It corresponds to the charioteer, directing the balanced horses of appetite and spirit. It allows for Logic to prevail, and for the optimisation of balance. The thymos comprises our emotional motive, that which drives us to acts of bravery and glory. If left unchecked, it leads to '' Hubris '' -- the most fatal of all flaws in the Greek view. The eros equates to the appetite that drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs. When the passion controls us, it drives us to Hedonism in all forms. In the Ancient Greek view, this is the basal and most feral state. Aristotle Aristotle , following Plato, defined the soul as the core essence of a being, but argued against its having a separate existence. For instance, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because 'cutting' is the essence of what it is to be a knife. Unlike Plato and the religious traditions, Aristotle did not consider the soul as some kind of separate, ghostly occupant of the body (just as we cannot separate the activity of cutting from the knife). As the soul, in Aristotle's view, is an ''actuality'' of a living body, it cannot be immortal (when a knife is destroyed, the cutting stops). More precisely, the soul is the "first actuality" of a naturally organized body. This is a state, or a potential for actual, or 'second', activity. "The axe has an edge for cutting" was, for Aristotle, analogous to "humans have bodies for rational activity," and the potential for rational activity thus constituted the essence of a human soul. Aristotle used his concept of the soul in many of his works; the '' De Anima '' (''On the Soul'') provides a good place to start to gain more understanding of his views. There is on-going debate about Aristotle's views regarding the immortality of the human soul; however, Aristotle makes it clear towards the end of his De Anima that he does believe that the intellect, which he considers to be a part of the soul, is eternal and separable from the body. Aristotle also believed that there were four parts, parts understood as powers, of the soul. The four sections are calculative part, the scientific part on the rational side used for making decisions and the desiderative part and the vegetative part on the irrational side responsible for identifying our needs.- Thomas Aquinas Following Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas understands the soul as the first principle, or act, of the body. However, his epistemological theory required that, since the intellectual soul is capable of knowing all material things, and since in order to know a material thing there must be no material thing within it, the soul was definitely not corporeal. Therefore, the soul had an operation separate from the body and therefore could subsist without the body. Furthermore, since the rational soul of human beings was subsistent and was not made up of matter and form, it could not be destroyed in any natural process. The full argument for the immortality of the soul and Thomas's elaboration of Aristotelian theory is found in Question 75 of the Summa Theologica . RELIGIOUS VIEWS Bahá'í beliefs The Bahá'í Faith affirm that "the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel. " {Link without Title} Concerning the soul or spirit of human beings and its relationship to the physical body, Bahá'u'lláh explained: "Know thou that the soul of man is exalted above, and is independent of all infirmities of body or mind. That a sick person showeth signs of weakness is due to the hindrances that interpose themselves between his soul and his body, for the soul itself remaineth unaffected by any bodily ailments. ... When it leaveth the body, however, it will evince such ascendancy, and reveal such influence as no force on earth can equal ... consider the sun which hath been obscured by the clouds. Observe how its splendor appeareth to have diminished, when in reality the source of that light hath remained unchanged. The soul of man should be likened unto this sun, and all things on earth should be regarded as his body. So long as no external impediment interveneth between them, the body will, in its entirety, continue to reflect the light of the soul, and to be sustained by its power. As soon as, however, a veil interposeth itself between them, the brightness of the light seemeth to lessen.... The soul of man is the sun by which his body is illumined, and from which it draweth its sustenance, and should be so regarded." {Link without Title} The soul not only continues to live after the physical death of the human body, but is, in fact, immortal. Bahá'u'lláh wrote: "Know thou of a truth that the soul, after its separation from the body, will continue to progress until it attaineth the presence of God, in a state and condition which neither the revolution of ages and centuries, nor the changes and chances of this world, can alter. It will endure as long as the Kingdom of God, His sovereignty, His dominion and power will endure." {Link without Title} |
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