AP/RLST 4827 3.00
Ancient Concepts of the Soul
This course explores concepts of soul from early Greek Civilization to the early Christian era. It examines a cluster of related concepts — soul, spirit, shade, consciousness, will, and mind – that express the self or “inner person.” Entailed are soul as a thing separate from body; sensation and perception; relation of soul to body; conflict within the soul; and the soul’s eternity. The notion of the survival of the self in some form preceded any attempt to define the soul and its functions. The idea of self derives from the fact of sensation and consciousness in all human beings. The term psyche, “soul,” appears in Greek thought to express the inner person, the principle of life and movement, as well as the mind and its functions. Many early thinkers believed the soul to be a separate thing from the body and even capable of pre-existing the body and surviving its death. The notion of “innate ideas” was invoked to demonstrate that memory pre-existed an individual’s present life. Conflicting theories of the after-life of the soul spanned a number of possibilities: total annihilation along with the body, transmigration of the soul to other bodies, or assignment to a place of eternal punishment or reward. Much speculation was devoted to how the soul was connected to the body, and opinions were divided as to whether the soul was corporeal or a kind of spiritual substance, i.e. without body. Western Christian thinkers challenged a number of early theories regarding the soul, substituting the notion of learning through recollection with divine illumination, and insisting on the goodness of the unity of body and soul—as opposed to the common notion that the body is the prison house of the soul, from which the good soul should desire to escape. Christians envisioned a body united (or reunited) with the soul in the afterlife. While some thinkers believed that the soul survived as only a part of cosmic consciousness, the vast majority affirmed the survival of an individual conscious self, whether as detached soul or as integrated body and soul.
RELIGIOUS TRADITION(S) COVERED: Multiple
Course Category: Self, Society and Other