What is a Soul?
by Rabbi Mendy Hecht addthis_pub = ‘rabbisimcha’; –> function gomprint(Hierarchy, ixObject){ var vwidth = 680; var vheight = 520; var url = ‘/en/article_print.html?h=’ + Hierarchy + ‘&o=’ + ixObject; window.open(url,’print’,’toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,menubar=no,status=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=no,width=’+vwidth+’,height=’+vheight+’,top=’+((window.screen.height/2)-(vheight/2))+’,left=’+((window.screen.width/2)-(vwidth/2))); } Library » Philosophy » Soul | Subscribe | What is RSS? PRINT EMAIL COMMENT A. The soul is to the body what the astronaut is to the spacesuit—it functions like a battery, giving the body life and animation. Take the astronaut out of the suit, and the suit’s basically useless. Take the soul out of the body, and the body basically collapses. (Which is what death is—separation of body and soul.) B. A soul is Divine energy. It is existence beyond matter. It is that part of you that exists beyond matter, beyond your body and your five senses. It cannot be
Stephen Clark provides this short catalogue of possibilities (there may well be more). 1. soul = life: creatures without souls are simply objects or automata, incapable of feeding, excreting, moving, reproducing etc 2. soul = sentience: creatures that don’t have souls are insentient – there is nothing it is like to be them (Malebranche on animals) 3. soul = rationality: creatures without souls can form no concepts, have no sense of themselves, don’t communicate about their place in the world, and so on (Aquinas on animals – though he didn’t say they didn’t have souls, he does think of them in a way that others might encapsulate as ‘not having souls’) 4. soul = conscience: creatures without souls have no empathy or no sense of right and wrong (Buffy’s vampires?) 5. soul = artistic or spiritual or sophisticated sense: creatures without souls don’t appreciate the fine arts or ritual or decent cooking or sentimental music or .. 6. soul = immortal life: creatures without souls don’t survive
