It was Socrates who said, “Man know thyself for an unexamined life is not worth living”. This expression shows that there is more to life than man can know, and so man need to be fully aware of himself, what he intends doing, why he wants to do that thing and the possible result that follows such intended action. The controversy that surrounds the immortality of the soul is such that may never cease until man ceases to exist on planet earth. The reason is because there are so many events and happenings which man cannot explain or ever predict regardless of how knowledgeable man may be or how rational man may claim to be which makes him see himself to be a higher animal. The Irony of this issue is that man recognizes himself to be an “animal”, whether he means a higher animal, a political animal, a rational animal or a social animal, he is also an animal. Little wonder why George Orwell in his book ‘animal farm’ said, “all animals are equal but some are more equal than the others.”
Whether man be an animal or not, man is both spiritual and transcendental and the expressions of S.Radhakrishnan are true. These words are, “true humanism teaches us that there is something more in man than what appears to his ordinary consciousness, something that generates ideas and thoughts, a more subtle spiritual presence that makes him unsatisfied with his purely worldly conquests”. This shows that there is in a man something higher than the intelligence man himself can express or feel, a substance which dwells in man that cannot change when all other things change. Instead of that substance changing, it in some way makes other objects or things around it change towards its own bearing just like trees or green grasses grow towards sunlight (photosynthesis). Aristotle in his metaphysical work discovered that every change is an attempt to achieve another state or form.
The immortality of the soul cannot be apprehended if the key words of this concept are not elucidated in details.
SOUL:
The first time I really thought about the word “soul” was after a Sunday school class about 12yrs ago in the Anglican Communion. My mum always told my siblings and I about the soul but I assumed she just wanted us to be good children and that day, the Sunday school teacher taught us the importance of living good lives and how we need to respect man and fear God who has the ability to destroy our flesh and soul and also keep us in eternal peace and not damnation. I went home that day thinking of what the soul really is and also wondered if my own soul was aware that I was thinking of what it is. I summarized the soul to be that spirit that will always want me to do the right things and make others happy and also be a friend of God though I wondered if the children that lied and stole did not have souls or were their own souls bad souls and I left that faint conclusion to God until I got into a philosophy class.
Plato defines soul as the principle of life, because for him, man is essentially soul, spiritual and incorruptible soul, and is certainly immortal. The dialogue that took place in ‘Plato’s Republic’ shows that Plato believes the soul is a prisoner to the body.
Battista Mondin in his philosophical anthropology expresses the view of Aristotle as follows, “for Aristotle, man as well as other beings of this world is essentially composed of the soul and body. In man, the soul carries out the role of form and precisely for this reason, in spite of its evident superiority with respect to the body, it does not seem able to escape from the corruption of the body, and therefore from death.”
C. Jung, one of the founders of psychoanalysis admits that the soul contains no fewer enigmas than the universe has with all its galaxies, enigmas with such a sublime aspect that only a spirit lacking fantasy cannot recognize its own insufficiency.
Furthermore, different scholars have given different accounts on the origin of the soul, some of these accounts are seen in Battista Mondin’s philosophical anthropology and they include:
Translationism: this account states that children derive souls from the parents and this theory was patronized by Tertullian and Augustine. But the question is where do the parents derive their own souls from, because own drawing a chain on the derivation of souls one will get to a point infinity where there should exist a first set of parents from which the first set of children derive souls, from where then did the first parents derive their own souls? Again, does this soul cease at the death of the parents or are the parents eternal?
Emanation: this account explains that souls emanate from the Supreme Being; from the logos for the stoics, the One for the Neoplatonics, the substance for Spinoza, the absolute spirit for the Idealists. This account still gives room for a question. Does it then mean that the soul comes from a necessary being, whom different philosophers describe in different ways due to their subjective views and the problem in language? Why is this soul that comes from a Supreme Being stuck in the body of corruptible, mortal man and possible being?
Simultaneous creation: this thesis as defended by Filone of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine states that there was a simultaneous creation of all the souls at the moment of the world’s origin itself. Do these philosophers mean that even the souls of generations to come have been made from time immemorial? From where was the soul created? Who created the soul?
Individual and isolated creation: this view is basically diffused among Christian thinkers and modern philosophers like Descartes, Vico, Campanella, Leibniz, and Kant. They are of the view that there is an individual and isolated creation of every individual soul on the part of God at the moment of the body’s formation.
Evolution from matter: this thesis is patronized by all modern currents of thought of a materialistic theory. And if soul evolves from matter that means the soul is destroyed alongside with matter and the soul cannot be intelligible.
IMMORTALITY:
The world immortality is derived from the word immortal. Immortal however according to wikitionary is the ability to live forever, eternal life, undeadliness. St. Thomas Aquinas defines the immortality as that which signifies a certain power to always live and not to die.
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
Immortality in ancient Greek religion originally always included an eternal union of body and soul as can be seen in Homer, Hesoid and different ancient texts. Different scholars hold different views of the immortality of the soul.
This work however holds a subjective view of the immortality of the soul.
EMANATION THEORY:
Firstly, following the emanation account of the origin of the soul, if the soul really emanates from a Being that is indestructible, then, the immortality of the soul cannot be disputed for if a tree cannot die when its roots and stem are functioning properly then, the soul cannot die for its source is considered to be a necessary being, that is indestructible, immortal, invincible and supreme. The controversy here maybe on why the soul then dwells in a material being. A certain explanation may not be given to that for the quest to know ends when all is known, and man being limited by physical may not be able to perceive all that happens in the higher realm or why they happen until man gets to the level of immutability and perfection.
THE THEORY OF CHANGE:
The Ionian scholars pondered on the Ur-Stuff of reality from which all things were made, this led to the issue of change and permanence. In Egbeka Aja’s ‘metaphysics, an introduction’ Aristotle expressed that the ultimate goal of every object is to achieve a state of immutability and immobility, a state of complete rest. That is to say that that movement and change are attempts to reach a different state of complete rest in which no further alteration of any kind can be achieved. So, all beings are in the processes of constant change until they get to the level where they cannot gain form and so have achieved immutability and perfection.
This means that while man through the soul and St. Augustine’s doctrine of divine illumination gets to know things which are transcendental, and also receive form, there will come a time when man will no longer be limited by the physical bodies and will not get to know things by divine illumination because man will totally be dominated by his transcendental, immutable and spiritual intelligent self.
Death
Death brings fear to the heart of many and joy to heart of few. Socrates expressed that a philosopher should not fear death when he was being executed by the Athenian law, for he believed he was going on to another phase to see what he can know and exploit what his mortal body has restricted him from knowing. Death is generally seen as the end of the activities of living beings or organisms. A few study has shown that death is the separation of the soul from the mortal body, and Aristotle said the soul escapes the body through death.
Irrespective of the environment man has been nurtured in, the experiences man has had, man still has in him an innate intellective ability to say that a thing is good, beautiful, ugly, and other abstract concept that man knows exists but cannot really explain this concepts.
Furthermore, man always seek comfort and peace and the fact that man struggles to live in comfort and peace here in the world shows that a world as this is not where the soul of man belongs. Besides we often here doctors or people say “he gave up the ghost” when someone dies.
A hymn usually sang by the Anglican communion which is a denomination in the Christian religion explains that man’s death is a pathway to eternity, that is to say that if the soul of man which is the essence of man must reach ultimate perfection, then the soul of man must be separated from the mortal body of man which is the act of death. Now, the inevitability of the death of man and the inability of the mortal body to exist and function without the soul, and to last long in the world is an evidence that the soul is immortal and so belongs to a higher realm of indestructible beings.
Finally, if the body gratifies pleasure and is sustained for a while through such pleasure in the world, the soul gratifies happiness and seeks peace in things that do not appeal to the world and will be eternally sustained when the soul through death losses its connection with the body.
BY JOMBO ODILICHUKWU FRANCES.
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