Soul

Soul brought to heaven by two angels. Representation of the Christian tradition.

The term soul or anima (from the Latin anima) refers to an immaterial entity that, according to the affirmations and beliefs of different traditions and philosophical and religious perspectives, possess living beings. The description of its properties and characteristics varies according to each of these traditions and perspectives.

Etymologically, the word anima was used in Latin to designate the principle by which animated beings are self-moving, that is, they are endowed with their own movement and therefore have life. In that original sense, both plants and animals in general, the Sun, the Moon, the known planets, the wind, fire, water would be endowed with a soul (animism) in different proportions, so some would be mortal (would lose their life little by little) and others would not. Advances in physiology, neuroscience, and neurology have allowed us to recognize that animated beings obey the same type of physical principles as inanimate objects, while at the same time they can carry out different activities, such as nutrition, growth, and reproduction.

Concept through History

The term soul can be applied, according to the oldest interpretations, to living beings in general (plants and animals) as their constitutive principle. According to some interpretations, such as Aristotle's, the soul would incorporate the vital principle or internal essence of each of these living beings, thanks to which they have a certain identity, not explicable from the material reality of their parts.^{[citation required]}

The term is also used in a more particular sense if it refers to human beings; in this second case, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, the soul would be the spiritual component of human beings.^{[citation required]}

In the course of history, the concept of the soul has gone through various attempts at explanation: from the dualism of philosophical idealism and gnosis to the existentialist interpretation of a whole with two specific aspects: the material and the immaterial.

For the Christian religion, man consists of three parts that are: body (the physical), soul (what is related to the emotional) and spirit (what is related to the spiritual). According to Christian tradition, the soul is one of the aspects of the human being that unifies him as an individual and "launches" to activities that go beyond the material. Thanks to the soul, the human being has instincts, feelings, emotions, thoughts and free decisions, and can return to himself (self-awareness).

Although not very common, the term "soul" It can also be used referring to any human being as a whole, ignoring the religious or philosophical meaning, as in the expressions "there is not a soul" or "city of 40,000 souls".

The soul in Western philosophy

Greek Philosophy

Plato considered the soul as the most important dimension of the human being. He sometimes speaks of her as if she were imprisoned in a body, although such an idea is borrowed from Orphism.

According to Timaeus, the soul was composed of the identical and the diverse, substance that the demiurge used to create the cosmic soul and the other stars; In addition, the lower gods created two mortal souls: the passionate, which resides in the thorax, and the appetitive, which resides in the abdomen. Above both would be the rational soul, which would find its place in the head. Something similar is narrated in Phaedrus, where the myth of the winged horses is exposed: the charioteer is the rational soul, the white horse represents the passionate part and the black the part of the appetites (always rebellious). The charioteer's task is to keep the black horse at the same gallop as the white one. In the Phaedo, the soul is seen as a substance that seeks to break away from the limits and conflicts that arise from its union with the body, and that will be able to live fully after the moment of death; This dialogue offers various arguments that seek to prove the immortality of the soul.

Aristotle defined the psyche as "specific form of a natural body that potentially has life" (De Anima, 412a, 20). He also understands it as "the essence of such a body type"; (412b, 10-12). The form or essence is what makes an entity what it is. By this we understand that the soul is what defines a natural body. For example, if the ear were an animal, its soul would be hearing and its matter would be the organ of hearing itself. An ear that did not have the function of hearing would be an ear only for speech. In this case, the soul shapes matter into an organized natural body.

This is how a substantial unit (composed of matter and form) is formed. Soul and body are not separable in the living being.

The soul is also defined by the Stagirite as "the first entelechy of a natural body that potentially has life" (412a, 26). With this it indicates that the soul is entelechy or first act of the living body and soul and body are united simultaneously. But since the soul is the act, it can be said that it has priority over the body. It is first not in time, but in importance. It is the first action from which the faculties and powers of the living being arise.

Aristotle points out, finally, that there could be operations of the soul that did not depend on any body.

The dualistic vision that emerges from Platonism distorts reality and the consequences lead to a contempt for physical realities, the human body and sexuality, among other things. The soul is imagined as something independent, part of the divine and of the good, like a white sheet stuck in a poor material envelope from which it is urgent to free itself. However, Aristotelian monism allows us to understand the human being as a unit made up of body and soul, giving the body its fair value by not understanding it as the prison of the soul (as Plato did), but as an essential part of what man is.

Thomas Aquinas

With Thomas Aquinas, anthropological reflection (explanation of what the human being is) takes a more realistic turn. Drawing on Aristotle more than on Plato, Thomas Aquinas speaks of principles, and not of opposing realities. For Aristotle, all beings in the physical world have matter (which is pure indeterminacy) and a substantial form (which is the determining principle). These two realities are inseparable, so they have no independent existence. We would say that there are two "aspects" of the same reality. Thomas Aquinas describes the human being as material on the one hand (his body) and non-material on the other (his spiritual soul). The human being is immersed in the material and obeys his basic laws of space and time. At the same time, it shows that it is not material at all, being able to go beyond space and time with its reason: planning the future or arranging arrangements for an existing space in its daily life.^{[citation required]}

Example: I can prepare an agenda for tomorrow and conceptualize what the dining room of the house will be like without having to be present in that dining room.

Soul and body become co-principles in the explanation of how the human being is. The human being is fully corporeal but he has something of his own that allows him to go beyond the corporeal: his spiritual soul. However, it is the soul that has being in the first place, while the body exists as united to the soul.

Later Western Thought

Western thought relapsed into the dualism between body and soul:

• Descartes defines soul as a thinking thing opposed to "extreme" thing (res cogitans versus extensive).
• Baruch Spinoza speaks of the soul as attribute and mode of the divine substance.
• Leibniz the monad flame closed in itself.
• Theodor Lessing, as an infinite aspiration.
• Kant calls it impossibility to learn the absolute.
• Fichte, like knowing and action.
• Hegel says the soul is the self-development of the idea.
• Friedrich Schelling defines it as mystical power.
• Nietzsche, invention and imaginary entity of the common people, which helps to strengthen the beliefs of the existence of a god or, more specifically, of "God".
• Freud, as a difference between "me" and "super-me."
• Jaspers defines it as "existentiality."
• Ernst Bloch, as an original realization of the future.^{[chuckles]required]}

In the Judeo-Christian tradition

According to the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, the soul (Heb. נפש, néfesch; Gr. ψυχή, psykhḗ) is the main identifying quality of movement in matter living, making a non-moving (inert) self-moving, independent of the movement of others. According to biblical records, in Genesis it says:

20 God said, "Let the waters be filled with a multitude of living creatures, and let birds fly over the earth by the firmament of heaven."

21 God created the great sea monsters, the various kinds of living creatures that fill the waters slipping into them and all the species of animals with wings. And God saw that this was good. 22 And he blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply; fill the waters of the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth. 23 So there was one evening and one morning: this was the fifth day. 24 God said, "Let the earth produce all kinds of living creatures: cattle, reptiles and wild animals of all kinds." And so it happened. 25 God made the various kinds of animals of the field, the various kinds of cattle and all the reptiles of the earth, whatever their kind. And God saw that this was good. 26 God said, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; and let the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, the cattle, the beasts of the earth, and all the animals that creep on the ground be subject to him." 27 And God created man in his image; he created him in the image of God, and made them male and female.

28 And he blessed them, saying unto them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and sow it; overpower the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living that move on the earth.

Genesis 1:20-28

The term also appears in the anthropological vision of numerous cultural and religious groups. In the modern era, the term "soul" it is most often used in religious contexts.

The soul in Christian theology

Christian theology, mainly German Protestant theology, is inspired by Idealism (current based on ideas) and comes to conceive the soul as only "subjectivity". This same Idealism influences through Descartes the thought of some Catholic currents. Indeed, Descartes, by affirming "I think, therefore I am", encloses philosophical reflection in the world of ideas. He is considered the father of idealism .

The philosophers quoted in the previous paragraph are, for the most part, "idealist" philosophers.

Philosophical realism gave birth to both empiricism and Marxism as well as existentialist philosophy (existentialism) and Christian existentialism (Gabriel Marcel, Mounier's personalism).^{[citation needed]}

In the Bible

In the Bible, the word soul is given as a translation of the Hebrew word (ne'•phesch [נפׁש]) and the Greek word (psy•khe'). The use that the Bible gives to this word is impossible to draw rigid and fast lines in the use of this polyvalent word.

• La Rua, which is 'vient', 'spirit' in Hebrew, in relation to anthropology is the 'halito [of life]', breath of divinity itself: when the Lord inspired upon man his breath of life (Genesis 2:7), this became a living being. The man lives while the Lord does not withdraw his Rua (Job 27:3). The term strongly marks the relationship between creature and creator, the absolute dependence of it upon Him. La Ruaj receives other senses in the Bible according to contexts.
• La néfesch (in the word) means "garganta", "fauces" (2 Samuel 16:14), "the one who breathes" (Job 41:13, 20, 21). Néfesch comes from a root that means 'breathing', and in a literal sense it could be translated as 'a respirator'. Exactly the same Hebrew expression used for animal creation, namely, néfesch jaiyáh ('living soul') applies to Adam when it is said that after God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed in his nostrils of life, "man came to be (Ge 2:7). In the instructions God gave to man after creating it, he used the term again néfesch to refer to animal creation: “All which moves upon the earth in that there is life as a soul [literally, in that there is a living soul (néfesch)]” (Genesis 1:30). Sometimes the word né•fesch is used to express desire of the individual, who fills him and then pushes him to achieve his goal. Proverbs 13:2 says about those who treacherously deal with ‘their most soul is violence’, that is, they are accommodating supporters of violence, and actually become the personified violence – so it has to do with it too interaction between mind and active personality of an individual, namely, "life" (1 Samuel 26:21). In addition, the record of Genesis 9:4 says that Blood is Souland in Leviticus 17:11 says in the blood. the soul, because every living cell that makes up the blood is empowered to move in itself, distinguishing animal beings from vegetables, that have no blood or cells related to it; the blood, whose movement cellular allows the circumvolution of breathing, shows its distinctive feature of Animal Life. The word néfesch (municipal munition) appears a total of 754 times in the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis to Malachi) and its Greek equivalent psykh. (/25070/χς) 105 times in the Greek Scriptures (Matthew to Revelation) and is never associated with the immortality given by some religious, philosophical or other currents. But very notably, there are hundreds of biblical texts that associate it with death; in fact, there are 13 texts that are mentioned as "dead nephesch" (Dead soul). And they don't have to see psykh) and the word in Latin Awesome. (words that relate to the Spanish term "animal", making logical the expression "animal rational" for the human being) with the word spirit (gr. pneuma). So the soul is defined by the inseparable interaction of three movements in the living matter that integrate it: The Mind/Corazón (principle psychological conscious-conscious self [pneumatic movement]), Blood (main of the animal or carnal body [lymphotic movement]) and Life (main of the activity-hybit [dynamic movement]). Without these three, the soul is dead. From this interpretation the importance of value both the human soul and the soul of a beast. Strengthening ethical valuation from the most delicate part of the soul (mind/heart) to the most resistant part of it (life).

• The base ('carne') is a concept that does not oppose Rua ('soplo'), but they juxtapone. An acceptable translation would be 'my person', which can be touched, experienced. When Paul says "Your bodies are the temple of the Spirit (in gr. pneuma)" (1 Cor 6,19) or "You are the temple" (1 Cor, 3-17), highlights the experimental aspect of the concept.

The Catholic Magisterium

The dogmatic definitions of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church deal mainly with the relationship between soul and body. The main ones are the following:

• Man has only one soul.
• The soul (anima intellectiva) exists in every man as individually distinct and is immortal in this individual diversity.
• The soul (anima intellectiva) is corporis form by itself.
• From Pope John XXII: The soul can have the full vision of God, only after death.
• The soul is created and immediately infused by God at the time of conception.
• The soul does not belong to the divine substance.
• The soul does not carry a pre-corporal existence.
• The soul has no material origin.
• She is the vital principle of man.
• It's superior to the body.
• Your spirituality can be demonstrated.

The Second Vatican Council overcomes the soul-body scheme and speaks of a person. & # 34; Man is one in body and soul and within him transcends the totality of things... & # 34;

Pope John Paul II in a Sunday address, published in L'Osservatore Romano (01/14/1990), said that "animals possess a breath of life received from God& #34;, quoting Psalms 103 and 104, being recognized, therefore, the "sensitive soul" (Greek pneuma 'breath', 'air'), without forgetting that the word "animal" comes from the Latin anima ('soul').

Iconography

The primitive Christians represented in their monuments the human soul free from the fetters of the flesh and heading towards the heavenly homeland through the following symbolic figures:

• A horse running like to get the prize in the circus games.
• A ship throwing sails into a lighthouse or reaching the port.
• A lamb or sheep alone or restored to the flock by the Good Shepherd.
• A dove sometimes flying, sometimes next to an empty glass image of the body abandoned by the spirit and sometimes in a flowery garden representing Paradise.
• A woman coming out of an inanimate body.

The soul in other cultures

In other Asian, African and American cultures we find a concept of Soul analogically similar to the concept developed by the religions of the Judeo-Christian group (including Islam) and European philosophy.

The soul, from the Vedic or Vedic point of view, is related to the concept of Being (Atman of Hindu culture), in which the Atman by nature is eternal (without birth or death or without beginning or end) of substance different from that of the physical body and that contains one's own consciousness. From this point of view, material science or the one that studies physical or material phenomena is limited because it cannot study spiritual phenomena since its nature is different from the physical one.

Soul in Ancient Egypt

The human being, according to the ancient Egyptians, has seven degrees in his personality:

• "Ren", i.e. "the name", being able to remain existing according to the care of a proper embalming.
• "Sejem" is energy, power, the light of the deceased.
• "Aj", is the unification of "Ka" and "Ba", in view of a return to existence.
• "Ba," which makes an individual being what it is; it also applies to inanimate things. It's the closest concept to Western Alma.
• "Ka," the life force. Sustained for food offerings to the deceased.
• "Sheut" is the shadow of the person, represented by a completely black human figure.
• "Seju" designates the physical remains of the person.
• "Jat" is the fleshly part of the person.

Buddhist beliefs

One of the three marks of existence, Anātman is the "Insubstantiality of things". Nowhere in the scriptures is there any talk of an intrinsic essence of being or something within to connect with. It is normal to confuse "Ultimate Reality" of the mind which is the "Buddha Nature" indestructible like a diamond (Vajra Sattva); however, at a philosophical level that indestructible nature is the emptiness of things and is completely different from the concept of Atman, soul, Being, etc. Those concepts are considered to arise from the ego and confusion of the mind.

Buddhism teaches that all things are changeable in a constant state of flux. Everything is fleeting and there is no such thing as perennial. That is valid for the entire cosmos and therefore for humanity itself. There is no "I" permanent. Anātman essentially expresses the Buddhist idea of that continuous change.

The mistake of believing in an "I" permanent is the source of human conflicts and worldly desires. Attachment to the defects of cyclic existence, samsara, causes rebirth.

When speaking of rebirth, in Buddhism it is the ego and manifestation of the confused mind, of the stream of consciousness. The concept of reincarnation is also used, although it is not as correct as the previous one; however, there is no exact translation for the concept so far.

Buddhism considers that there are three levels in the consciousness of the person: the very subtle consciousness, which does not disintegrate in the incarnation-death, the subtle consciousness, which disappears with death and is either a sleeping-consciousness or non-consciousness, and gross consciousness.

Hindu beliefs

Religions that talk about the soul such as the Hindu, which arose from the Vedas, which are sacred texts for the Hindus, where they talk about life that there is a transmigration of the "soul" (which is not synonymous with the Atman itself); that is called the wheel of samsara. Death is when the "soul" he passes from one body to another according to his actions or how he leads his life; Changes were given to this process of the soul and it became known as dharma, which is the result of a good life or doing good, and karma is everything that you have to live necessarily to learn from life so that in another life you can become better. person.

Meditation also helps to purify the soul and as one of the ways to achieve Samadhi and reach Moksha (spiritual liberation) and thus free oneself from Maya (the illusion of reality). Another way to reach this state is by having a life of holiness and/or good conduct following the Dharma, for example, not committing impure acts that can affect the soul and learning to control vices and bad influences.

Iconology

The butterfly was among the ancients the emblem or image of the soul. Ancient artists represented Plato with butterfly wings on his head, because he was the first Greek philosopher to deal with the immortality of the soul. An ancient fragment from Stosch's cabinet depicts the meditation of a philosopher with a butterfly placed on a skull in front of which the philosopher is reflecting.

The purification of the soul by fire is expressed in a small sepulchral urn in the city of Mattei, through Love that holds a butterfly in its hand to which it brings a burning torch. A butterfly flying over the mouth of a comic mask seems to indicate that the wearer is alive or animated. Cupid is sometimes seen taking a butterfly by the wings that it is shredding, a symbol of the torments that love makes the hearts it dominates suffer.

In popular culture

Cinema and television

• The title of the Mexican-American film 21 grams, premiered in 2003, written by Guillermo Arriaga Jordan and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, was inspired by a work done by Dr. Duncan McDougall, who at the beginning of the 20th century carried out a series of experiments to prove the weight loss allegedly caused by "the departure of the soul of the body, upon death". McDougall weighed dying patients and dogs that he himself poisoned in his attempts to prove that the soul is tangible, material and, therefore, measurable. These experiments can hardly be considered scientific, perhaps anecdotal, and even though all the results obtained in their experiments did not approach 21 grams, for popular opinion this figure became synonymous with the measure of the mass of the soul.
• In the television series The SimpsonsAt the end of the chapter "Bart sells her soul", Lisa Simpson reflects on the soul: "The soul goes beyond the religion you profess, it is formed by all the good that is in you ".^{[chuckles]required]}