Soul

The soul , according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the ethereal substance — spirit — particular to a unique living being. Such traditions often consider the soul both immortal and innately aware of its immortal nature, as well as the true basis for sentience in each living being.

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 happens to the soul after death. Many within these religions and philosophies see the soul as immaterial, while others consider it possibly material.

Note: This article uses the word "soul" in the common form, and deals largely with varied concepts from which the concept originates, and to which it relates. The use of the word soul often does not explicitly correspond to usage associated with any particular view or belief, including usage in Western and Eastern religious texts, and in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, or Plotinus.

Etymologies

The current English word "soul" may have originated from Old English sawol , documented in 970 AD, which has possible etymological links with a Germanic root from which we also get the word "sea". The old German word is called 'se(u)la', what means: belonging to the sea (ancient Germanic conceptions involved the souls of the unborn and of the dead "living" being part of a medium, similar to water), or perhaps, "living water".
Ancient Greeks sometimes referred to the soul as psyche (as in modern English psychology ). Aristotle's works in Latin translation, used the word anima (as in animated ), which also means "breath". In the New Testament, the original word may sometimes better translate as "life", as in :

"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26)

If you exchange the word "soul" for "life" in the sentence above, the statement may seem less profound. Also, Jesus said, "He who saves his life will lose it", which means that a faithful believer must be ready to sacrifice his life in order to preserve his soul.
The Latin root of the related word spirit , like anima , also expresses the idea of "breath".

The various origins and usages demonstrate not only that what people call "soul" today has varied in meaning during history, but that the word and concept themselves have changed in their implications.

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 soul makes living things alive.

Socrates and Plato

Plato, drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, considers the soul as the essence of a person, as that which decides how we act. He considered this essence as an incorporeal occupant of our being. The Platonic soul comprises three parts:

the reason (mind or logos)
the appetite (body or passion)
Spirit (emotion or pathos).

Each of these has a function in a balanced and peaceful soul.

The reason 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 appetite drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs. Yet when the passion controls us, master passion drives us to hedonism in all forms. This is the basal and most feral state.

The spirit comprises our emotional motive, that which drives us to acts of bravery and glory. If left unchecked, it will lead to hubris -- the most fatal of all flaws in the Greek view.
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 activity of the body, it cannot be immortal (when a knife is destroyed, the cutting stops). More precisely, the soul is the "first activity" of a living 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 Nicomachean Ethics provides a good place to start to gain more understanding of his views.

Aristotle's view appears to have some similarity to the Buddhist 'no soul' view (see below). For both, there is certainly no 'separable immortal essence'. It may simply become a matter of definition, as most Buddhists would agree, surely, that one can use a knife for cutting. They might, perhaps, stress the impermanence of the knife's cutting ability.

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