There’s a lot of (mostly very obscure) talk about “the soul” here and elsewhere. (Is it supposed to be different from you, your “mind,” your “ego” etc.? Is it some combo of [some of] them, or what?) A friend recently passed along the following quote from psychologist James Hillman that I thought was nice–and maybe demystifying–at least a little bit.
By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment — and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.
It is as if consciousness rests upon a self-sustaining and imagining substrate — an inner place or deeper person or ongoing presence — that is simply there even when all our subjectivity, ego, and consciousness go into eclipse. Soul appears as a factor independent of the events in which we are immersed. Though I cannot identify soul with anything else, I also can never grasp it apart from other things, perhaps because it is like a reflection in a flowing mirror, or like the moon which mediates only borrowed light. But just this peculiar and paradoxical intervening variable gives one the sense of having or being soul. However intangible and indefinable it is, soul carries highest importance in hierarchies of human values, frequently being identified with the principle of life and even of divinity.
In another attempt upon the idea of soul I suggest that the word refers to that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern. These four qualifications I had already put forth some years ago. I had begun to use the term freely, usually interchangeably with psyche (from Greek) and anima (from Latin). Now I am adding three necessary modifications. First, soul refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second, the significance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death. And third, by soul I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, fantasy — that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical.”
James Hillman — Re-Visioning Psychology
Admins: The Hillman quote (everything after the “more”) is supposed to be in blockquotes. Dunno why that didn’t work….
Thanks.
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7)
The body was prepared, but the body by itself is not alive. “Man became a living soul” – from this it’s usually concluded that we *are* the soul, and the body is what we *have*.
Different systems use the term differently, depending on the depth and nature of the distinctions they make. The distinctions are psychological and metaphysical.
In some systems, both body and soul are needed to make up what we call “me”, “oneself”, “ego”. That’s the Aristotelian view. In other systems, only the soul is the self whereas the body is ultimately inessential appendix on it, except that people tend to have a false sense of identity – they prefer the body to the soul. That which has the preference and false identification is the mind, not the soul.
The soul is metaphysically simple. The mind is infinitely subdivisible composite. The soul just is and our job is to discover it and adjust our mind to its reality, whereas the mind has all sorts of ideas, preferences, thoughts and desires, both wrong and right. The duty of man is to set the mind straight, in alignment with the soul.
Erik,
Hah, not a Christian. Does the expression ‘my foot!’ mean anything to you?
I’m sorry to say that I didn’t find that demystifying in the least. It seems almost intentionally obscure. I am particularly confused by “the significance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death”, in which this special relation is nowhere described.
Could you elaborate?
How does one adjust one’s mind?
So the soul is always right, where does this source of wisdom and perfection come from?
Yes, that line struck me too. I think, though, that he just means to say that when we’re having DeLillo ‘White Noise’ terrors, we call the experiencer a soul. That’s basically it, I think, but, as I don’t know Hillman, I’m really just speculating. Maybe RB knows his work?
Erik, on your view does the soul have ideas? Does it think? Is it conscious at all? If so, what is it conscious of?
No. What does it mean?
Meanwhile, I see you have no respect for the Bible, the simplest among scriptures. That’s why I won’t quote anything else. It would be too hard for you.
When you have a desire for e.g. chocolate, but you refuse it because you know it’s not proper nourishment, and you keep up the attitude, this is a small adjustment. Long-run character improvement, self-made, is a more significant adjustment. When you do it, you will get a concrete feel of that which is subjected to the adjustment.
The mind thinks and is conscious of some stuff and unconscious of other stuff. The soul, instead of being conscious of this or that, is that which makes the mind conscious and the body alive.
If you prefer the homunculus view of the soul, I think you already got it.
As I recall, when my mother said “My Foot !”, she was warning me about the concrete adjustment that I was about to be subjected to.
Personally, I am partial to the Bender quote from Futurama: “My Shiny Metal Ass !”
Not just the simplest, but the gosh darn BEST, right??
Good idea. Not just too hard, but too ridiculous. (Save it for prayer meetings with your Christian brethren.)
So it’s not itself conscious? Doesn’t “see” or “realize” anything? More like the circulation of the blood or something like that?
In general this did not clarify anything for me. It seems to try to explain mysteries with other mysteries. It seems a pretty bauble of writing, but as empty as a glass-bulb ornament.
sean s.
What did not clarify anything for you? My remark? (If so, it just says we call the thinker “a soul” when it’s worrying about death.)
No mystery.
Sorry; I meant the OP by James Hillman.
sean s.
Simplest because it’s the most accessible in the West and to the Westerners. But to my taste it’s fairly flawed. For example:
– Linear sense of time
– Incomplete narrative/canon (references in the beginning of Jude specifically)
– Apparently no consistent theology (for example, let’s grant that Trinity can be derived from NT, but it in no way is applicable to OT)
– Emphasis on command and revelation can be both a good or a bad thing, but it’s definitely un-philosophical, even anti-philosophical, anti everybody whose quest for truth is more like a discipline instead of a rapture into baptism of spirit.
I prefer almost anything else over it. But here it’s the only viable scripture to quote.
Something like that. The soul is not a thing, but a principle. Like gravity is not a thing and space is not a thing. And mathematical point is not a thing.
I think what he’s getting at (though y’all are right, not particularly clearly) is that we call experiencers “souls” when they are (a) having an aesthetic response; (b) have feelings of love; (c) have intimations of mortality (or immortality); (d) have “religious experiences”; (e) etc. So so-called “satori” or “sadhana” experiences would be had by “souls.”
His point seems to me to be that souls shouldn’t be thought of as “substances” or “entities” separate from minds or persons, etc.
But, again, it would be nice to hear from someone who’s actually read him!
Thanks. As you can tell from the comment immediately above, I find that approach congenial.
So … a “soul” is just a person having some particular experiences?
sean s.
“The” soul:
T
I think so. It’s a mind when we do math, it’s a guy when we’re horny, it’s a soul when we’re having a “dark night.”
I meant to add in my response to Erik that I’d think “person” would be less mysterious than “soul” if we want to take the difference between a conscious being and a zombie-body. But I guess it doesn’t do any harm to use “soul” as something like “what differentiates people from zombies.” Sort of like life + consciousness.
And when an animal experiences these things, are they “souls”?
sean s.
I’d say so, myself. Descartes demurred, though–no doubt basing his theory on the stupidity of my cat.
I’m good with animals having “souls”; even cats. They experience things too. Descartes’ opinions are/were his own.
sean s.
I think the difference between humans and all other animals is so vast, that it becomes almost impossible to ascribe it to simple biological needs of the organism.
As humans we require rule-books, and nations and jobs, and judgements, and jealousies and mental health professionals. We could never return to the life of an animal, where the only thing you require is to eat and one day have sex. Soul and consciousness is bound into every thing we do- unlike any other living thing.
Our lives can never be compared to what other animals do. We are the most intelligent whilst at the same time the most feeble and least well adapted to the places we live. Without a society we are hopelessly lost-worst than the most feeble deer fawn in the wild. If your drop a one year old off in some woods somewhere, it can’t live past a few hours. A two year old maybe four days. A five year old not much more than a week. We are good at almost nothing, other than contemplating our own existence.
Your opinion; but you’ve never met my cats. If we have souls, they definitely do.
sean s.
I don’t know what it is but I hear you can get chicken soup for it.
Perhaps “soul” was meant in the sense of: “I must have gotten there early, there wasn’t a soul in sight”. That would simplify the discussion.
In case anybody is interested, the quote is from BLUE FIRE: Selected Writings by James Hillman
For much of the history of mankind many of those things existed, did souls only appear when humans learned to read and write?
Is the soul immortal? And are there a finite number of them or is a new one created with every birth?
I hope these are for Erik!
You think animals are not conscious? You have no way of knowing that.
White christian supremacist bigotry: “Those people.”
I like Hillman’s explication of “soul”. I think it’s a fine bit of phenomenology (or phenomenological anthropology).
In more “mainstream” philosophy it has nice resonance with what Kant called apperception, what Husserl called intentionality, Dasein for Heidegger, Spirit (Geist) for Hegel, and what Dewey calls (variously) “life”, “experience”, and “culture”.
But unlike philosophy, “soul” also captures what you got to have (or this, for TSZ’s younger set).
Whoever is willing to answer.
According to WLC and his version of the Kalam, actual infinities are impossible, and timeless beings can’t “begin to exist”.
So if the soul is timeless, you’re uncreated.
phoodoo,
My dog is smarter than you, and his name is Jesus. Take that!
So that’s why you are afraid of him? Or is it because he is smart?
Afraid of him? noway! Jesus loves me!
BTW, his name wasn’t my idea and it has zero to do with your christian zombie.
FWIW I take the soul to be pretty much the equivalent of Plato’s forms. walto’s soul is what is left of him if we were to destroy his body. I don’t think souls have independent existence any more than I think an ideal triangle has independent existence.
Souls like ideal triangles exist in minds.
peace
Ideal triangles don’t exist in minds, so if souls are “like that” there are no souls.
Are these parameters which reside in the soul universal?
That doesn’t make any sense. If the soul is what is left after the body is destroyed, then it must exist.
No idea what you are asking here, but I may have an answer anyway.
The same way as the body has its limits vis-a-vis the universe, the individual soul has its limits vis-a-vis the universal soul. Both are made of the same substance and so subject to the same laws, but additionally the individual is subject to the universal.
Rudolf Steiner explains that there are three aspects of the soul. The sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul. The sentient soul is involved in allowing us to have mental representations of that which we experience through our senses. The consciousness soul is that by which we allow eternal truths to work in us. There is an evolutionary development of these states of soul from the sentient soul and the transitory through to the consciousness soul and the eternal.
Here he speaks of ancient initiations before the coming of Christ.
This initiation was a personal, private matter open only to the select few. The coming of Christ was an acting out of this initiation for all to see. After the Christ event this experience was made available to the whole of humankind. Humans consist of body, soul and spirit. The human soul is the mediator and transforming principle between body and spirit. But this tranformation can only be furthered by our own individual, conscious effort. The human soul can give birth to the divine, but as we all know childbirth is painful and this process is no exception.
Of course its up to whoever reads the foregoing to decide for themselves the truth in it.
Good guess. One more question, what substance is that?
Spirit.
I’m ok with “spirit” in a roughly Hegelian sense (“Geist“), but I’m not too sure if I’m ok with the idea that spirit is a substance. Is spirit a substance in the Aristotelian sense of ‘substance’?
If you’re alluding to something like the Hindu teaching that Atman is Brahman, I’d be a bit hesitant to use the overly Aristotelian term “substance” in expressing that.