Great IdeasGod and the soul

The soul

What a soul is, and whether anything of us lasts beyond death.

The question

What is a soul? Is it something separate from the body, and does anything of us last after death?

The authors disagree, and many families hold beliefs of their own. Each stop gives the author's own view.

The stops on a time line 7 stops, from 380 BC to 1890. Each number is a stop below, placed at its year.
  1. 1 Plato 380 BC
  2. 2 Aristotle 350 BC
  3. 3 Lucretius 55 BC
  4. 4 Plotinus AD 260
  5. 5 Thomas Aquinas 1268
  6. 6 René Descartes 1641
  7. 7 William James 1890
  • The soul lives on after death
  • The soul ends with the body

Uncolored stops take a different or more cautious line.

How the books answer

Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.

  1. c. 380s BC

    Plato, Phaedo

    The soul lives on after death

    On his last day, Socrates gives his friends arguments that the soul is immortal: it is like the unchanging truths it knows, and it gives life to the body as fire gives heat. His friends raise objections, and he answers them calmly. Then he drinks the poison without fear.

    “Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites?”

    Plato, Phaedo 70e. Translated by Benjamin Jowett (The Dialogues of Plato, 3rd edition, vol. II, Clarendon Press, 1892). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Plato: Phaedo

  2. c. 350–322 BC

    Aristotle, On the Soul, and the short works on sense, memory, sleep and dreams

    Aristotle defines the soul as the life of a natural body: what an eye's seeing is to the eye. Plants, animals and people all have souls, with different powers. Whether any part of the soul, such as the intellect, can exist apart from the body, he leaves unclear, and readers still argue about it.

    “For if the eye were an animal, vision would be its soul, i.e. vision is the notional essence of the eye.”

    Aristotle, On the Soul II.1, 412b. Translated by William Alexander Hammond (Aristotle's Psychology, Swan Sonnenschein, 1902). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Aristotle: On the Soul

  3. c. 55 BC

    Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (in the set: The Way Things Are)

    The soul ends with the body

    Lucretius argues that the soul is made of very fine atoms spread through the body. It grows and weakens with the body, and scatters at death. That, he says, is why death is nothing to fear.

    Go to the rung: Lucretius: On the Nature of Things

  4. c. AD 253–270 (edited by Porphyry)

    Plotinus, The Six Enneads

    The soul lives on after death

    Plotinus teaches that the soul comes from a higher world and is not truly at home in the body. By turning inward, it can rise toward Mind and the One. His student wrote that he seemed ashamed to be in a body.

    “Is it not enough to carry about this image in which nature has enclosed us?”

    Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, chapter 1 (Plotinus, refusing to sit for a portrait). Translated by Stephen MacKenna (Philip Lee Warner, publisher to the Medici Society, London, 1917). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Plotinus: The Enneads

  5. 1265–1274 (unfinished)

    Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part

    The soul lives on after death

    Aquinas combines Aristotle with Christian teaching. The soul is the form of the body, so a human being is one creature, not a soul trapped inside. Yet because the soul can think, which no bodily organ does by itself, he argues it survives death.

    Go to the rung: Aquinas: God and Creation

  6. 1641

    René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, with the Objections and Replies

    The soul lives on after death

    Descartes argues that the mind is a thinking thing quite distinct from the body, which is extended in space. He hoped this would support belief in the soul's immortality. How two such different things work together became one of philosophy's hardest puzzles.

    Go to the rung: Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy

  7. 1890

    William James, The Principles of Psychology

    William James writes as a scientist. He says psychology can study thoughts and feelings and their ties to the brain without needing the idea of a soul to explain them. He adds that this leaves the question of a soul open for philosophy and religion.

    Go to the rung: William James: The Principles of Psychology

For young readers

Many people believe each person has a soul: the deepest part of you that thinks, loves and chooses. Some believe the soul lives on after the body dies. Others believe differently.

The great thinkers argued about the soul for thousands of years. Plato said it lives forever. Aristotle said it is what makes a body alive, like the seeing in an eye. Your family can share what you believe.

Talk about it

  • What do you think makes you you?
  • Aristotle said the soul of an eye would be seeing. What would the soul of a hand be?
  • Why do you think Socrates was calm on his last day?
  • Do animals and plants have souls, as Aristotle thought? What would that mean?

Where else on the site

Every rung tagged with this idea:

These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.

@teddyrookbook GitHub Sources and credits