The term soul (from the Latin anima, “breath,” “life-principle,” related to the Greek psychḗ) designates the inner principle that animates living beings and grounds their unity. According to various philosophical and religious traditions, the soul may be understood as the principle of life, sensation, consciousness, intelligence, or personal identity. In its most general sense, it signifies that by which a living being is alive.

More specifically

The notion of the soul occupies a central place in the history of philosophy. For Plato, the soul is a spiritual reality distinct from the body. Existing prior to its incarnation, it belongs to the intelligible world and retains the memory of eternal truths. Philosophical life thus appears as a purification through which the soul turns away from the sensible realm in order to recover its true homeland.

For Aristotle, the soul is defined as the “form” of the living body. It is not a separate substance but the principle that actualizes and organizes living matter. Aristotle distinguishes the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul, and the rational or intellective soul, corresponding to the different levels of life.

Christian tradition adopted and transformed these inheritances by affirming that the human soul is spiritual, immortal, and directly created by God. It constitutes the principle of unity of the human person without implying that man is merely a soul imprisoned within a body. The human being is a substantial unity of soul and body.

In the thought of Saint Augustine, the soul is the privileged place of encounter with God. The path toward truth passes through interiority: it is in the depths of the soul that the presence of the Creator is discovered. Saint Thomas Aquinas developed this perspective by showing that the human soul is capable of knowing truth and loving the good because it participates in the spiritual order.

The religious and philosophical traditions of the world have elaborated diverse conceptions of the soul. Some emphasize its individual immortality, others its relation to a universal principle, while certain Buddhist doctrines question precisely the existence of a permanent soul. These differences testify to the fundamental importance of the questions of identity and consciousness.

From a metaphysical perspective, the soul often designates the intermediary principle between the material world and the spiritual order. It makes possible knowledge, freedom, love, and openness to transcendence. It manifests the fact that a living being cannot be reduced to a mere aggregate of physical or biological processes.

In the Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Christian traditions, the soul is also regarded as an image of God or a reflection of the divine principle. Its ultimate vocation consists in returning to its origin through knowledge, virtue, and union with truth.

The soul thus appears as one of the most fundamental concepts of philosophical anthropology and metaphysics. It expresses the living interiority of the human being and the possibility of an openness toward that which transcends the sensible world.

Further reading

  • Plato, Phaedo;
  • Plato, Phaedrus;
  • Aristotle, On the Soul (De Anima);
  • Plotinus, Enneads;
  • Saint Augustine, Confessions;
  • Saint Augustine, De Trinitate;
  • Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, qq. 75–89;
  • Edith Stein, The Structure of the Human Person;
  • Jean Borella, The Sense of the Supernatural (Le sens du surnaturel);
  • Jean Borella, The Crisis of Religious Symbolism (La crise du symbolisme religieux);
  • Bruno Bérard, The Spiritual Life;
  • Bruno Bérard, Jean Borella: The Metaphysical Revolution (Jean Borella, la Révolution métaphysique);
  • Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2021 (It. trans. Sui sentieri della metafisica; Sp. trans. ¿Qué es la metafísica?; Ger. trans. Was ist Metaphysik? Zwischen Ambition und Wirklichkeit).

Note: The notion of the soul should not be reduced to psychological consciousness or to the sum of mental states. In its traditional philosophical and metaphysical sense, it designates the living principle that grounds the unity of a being, its capacity to know and to love, and its openness to a reality that transcends it.