Argument
Soul
Overview
immaterial aspect or essence of a living being or object
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Soul is discussed.
Moreover, according to an idea particularly peculiar to the totemic age, this latter soul may become embodied in other living beings, especially in animals, but also in plants, and even in inanimate objects. We will call this soul _psyche_, the breath or shadow soul.
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Possessing knowledge of eternal entities, she herself must be eternal. All that dissolves, existing only by its compositeness, can naturally dissolve in the same manner that it became composite. But the soul is a single, simple actualization, whose essence is life; not in this manner therefore can the soul perish. Neither could the soul perish by division into a number of parts; for, as we have shown, the soul is…
Plotinus, Plotinos
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
Obj. 4: Further, a substance is intellectual by the fact that it is immaterial. But the soul is immaterial through its essence. Therefore it seems that the soul must be intellectual through its essence. _On the contrary,_ The Philosopher assigns the intellectual faculty as a power of the soul (De Anima ii, 3).
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph
Dicaearchus, that it is the harmony of the four elements. Asclepiades the physician, that it is the concurrent exercitation of the senses. CHAPTER III. WHETHER THE SOUL BE A BODY, AND WHAT IS THE NATURE AND ESSENCE OF IT. All those named by me do affirm that the soul itself is incorporeal, and by its own nature is in a motion, and in its own self is an intelligent substance, and the living actuality of a natural…
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Let us proceed a little further, and we shall say that a live body is a natural compound body that discriminates the non-living through its soul, and not through its body; and that performs multifarious animal works through its soul, and not through its body; and is alive through its soul and not through its body; and its soul is within it. Now, what is within a thing, while this form of its continues, is its form…
Avicenna, A Compendium on the Soul
names the idea; states what it is; the book is about it; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Soul
- Paul Carus
- Giordano Bruno
- Ludwig Büchner
- Heraclitus
- Damascius
- Alexander of Aphrodisias
- Cleanthes
- Ammonius Saccas
- Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis
- Al-Farabi
- Leucippus
- Mortimer J. Adler
- Max Weber
- Pierre Gassendi
- Augustine of Hippo
- Alcmaeon of Croton
- Thomas Aquinas
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Pythagoras
- David Bentley Hart
- Plutarch
- Proclus
- René Descartes
- Richard Swinburne
Related ideas
- Ātman (Hinduism)
- Emotion
- God in Christianity
- Avicenna
- Gnosticism
- Princeton University Press
- Hebrew language
- Hinduism
- Philosophy
- Two truths doctrine
- University of Notre Dame
- Immanuel Kant
- Al-Ghazali
- Ibn Hazm
- Ancient Greek
- Avicennism
- Intuition
- Idealism
- Judaism
- Inuit
- Jainism
- Transcendence (philosophy)
- Karma
- Kabbalah
Place in the tradition
Part of Animism.