Soul

Soul translates the Greek psychē and the Latin anima, the principle of life. For Plato, the soul is immortal and akin to the eternal Forms; it is imprisoned in the body and can be purified by philosophy, which he calls a practice of dying. Aristotle defined the soul as the form of a living body, inseparable from it in most of its activities. Plotinus taught that the soul is never wholly descended: something of it remains always in the intelligible world.

Christian thought joined these inheritances to the biblical idea of a creature made in the image of God. For Augustine, the soul finds God by turning inward and then upward: God is more inward to it than its own inmost self. Medieval mystics described the soul’s depths with images: a spark, a ground, an interior castle with many dwelling places. The soul is created, and its union with God, however intimate, is not the disappearance of the creature.

Comparative study often sets the soul beside the Indian ātman and the Buddhist teaching of non-self. The comparisons are illuminating but uneven: the Christian soul is individual and created, the Advaita self is one and uncreated, and Buddhism denies a permanent self altogether.