A Brief History of the Soul(in 20 minutes or less)

By Paul GavrilyukUniversity of St Thomas

Antonio Canova, Psyche Revived by Eros (1777). Paris, Louvre.

French: Elephants and Love-Making

German: A Brief Introduction to Elephantology

U.S.: All You Need to Know about Elephants

Plato’s warning:

To tell what the soul really is would be a matter for utterly

superhuman and long discourse.

Phaedrus 246a.

1. What is the soul?

John William Waterhouse, Pandora (1896)

2. Who has souls?

3. How is the soul related to the body?

4. What happens to our souls when we die?

More specifically:

How was/ is the soul imagined?

What are the soul’s properties?

What are the soul’s ‘parts’/ powers/

capacities/ faculties?

Do animals or plants have souls?

Are souls material or immaterial?

Are souls mortal or immortal?

How do we know we have souls?

Do we need arguments to prove we have

souls? John William Waterhouse, Pandora (1896)

A word of a future philosopher…

“The soul is something that lives inside you. When you die, it leaves your body, like

a ghost.”--Peter Gavrilyuk.

Soul is like a shade in the underworld:

Paul Gustave Dore, Apocalyptic Procession.

Soul is like…

A Harmony of a Lyre

A bird

The soul is like…

• “a pair of winged horses and a charioteer.”– Plato, Phaedrus 246a.

Eos flying over the sea in a chariot. 430-420 BC. Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany

The Three Parts of the Soul

• Reason (dianoia)• Spirit (thymos)• Appetite (epithymia)– Plato, Respublica, IV.

‘Soul’ according to Google Images: a KIA model

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Materialist Accounts of the Soul

Most Pre-Socratics: Soul is bodily, composed of rare or fine matter (like breath or smoke)

Epicureans: Soul is a group of atoms

Stoics: Soul is a spirit (pneuma) made of fire and air

Some modern scientists: Brain generates consciousness

Bust of Epicurus. 3rd c CE. Capitoline Museum, Rome.

Immortality

• Before Plato the belief in the soul’s immortality was weak and confused

• Some believed the soul was material and survived after death

• Others believed the soul was dispersed after death

• Still others believed in the preexistence and transmigration of the souls

Plato: soul-body dualism

• Phaedo: offers arguments for the immortality of the soul

• The soul is immaterial, partless and self-moving• The soul has intermediate status between

perceptible and intelligible beings• Some of the soul’s functions require the body,

others don’t• The soul is able to apprehend the divine Forms

Aristotle’s Psychology

• The soul is the form of the body

• Most of the soul’s functions require bodily organs

• Degrees of the soul:– Plants: nutritive soul – Animals: sensitive soul– Humans: rational soul

Rudiments of the OT anthropology

• Humans are made in God’s image and likeness• Living being = dust of the earth + divine breath

(neshama)• Heart (lev) as the center of will, desire,

emotions, thoughts and contact with God• The possibility of bodily resurrection was

debated at the time of Jesus

Translating “heart” in the OT:

• Deut. 6:5: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart (levav) and with all your soul (nephesh), and with all your strength.”

• Mk 12: 30: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart (kardia), and with all your soul (psyche) and with all your mind (dianoia), and with all your strength.” Cf.: Mt 22:37, Lk 10: 27.

The Apostle Paul’s Anthropological Assumptions

• Twofold division: the battle of the flesh (sarx) against the spirit (pneuma). (E.g. Gal. 5: 17).

• Threefold division: “May your whole spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche) and body (soma) be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thess 5: 23).

• The body is not the “tomb of the soul”, but “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6: 19).

Christ’s Descent into Hades. Church of the Savior in Chora, Constantinople, Turkey.

The Church Fathers• Soul is created, not divine• Image of God associated with mind, soul,

heart, moral judgment, and free will• Soul is capable of the contact with God• The soul is immortal by grace• The soul is reintegrated with the body at

the general resurrection• Soul/ body union is correlated with the

union of the divine and human natures of Christ in the incarnation

• Augustine: the powers of the soul are correlated with the persons of the Trinity

The Definition of the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD):

• “We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body […]” Christ holding Mary’s

soul after her death. Icon of Dormission. 15th c.(?).

Select Modern Accounts

• Descartes: shift from soul to mind (mens, res cogitans)• Hume: mind is a “bundle of perceptions” (no enduring

self)• Idealists: shift from “rational substance” to

consciousness• Freud: exploration of the unconscious self• Materialists: the immaterial soul is a fiction• Neuroscientists: consciousness is emergent property of

the brain

Conclusions

• No consensus on the soul-body problem among the philosophers: materialist and dualist options are perpetually contested

• Pre-modern Christian theologians as a rule set the materialist option aside

• Contemporary debates have important scientific, ethical, and political repercussions