Immortality of the soul: ideas, teachings, sayings of famous people

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

Every person, without any doubt, at least once in his life, certainly wondered what awaits him after death. Numerous teachings and religions are trying to explain this, containing a description of the other worlds.

The immortality of the soul is a wonderful dream of all people. To date, however, no thinker has proved for certain that this is possible. Nevertheless, there are various teachings about the immortality of the human soul. According to their beliefs, each "I" is able to live forever and consciously. But at the same time, do not forget that each teaching is only a vision of the problem, but not the truth at all.

Teachings of Socrates

The works of this ancient Greek thinker marked a real revolution in philosophy, turning from consideration of the world and nature to the study of man. Socrates was the first among the Greeks to talk about the fact that people consist not only of the body, but also of the soul. She is the divine beginning of a person and controls his actions.

Socrates had his own evidence of the immortality of the soul. After all, without it, in the presence of only one body, a person, according toaccording to the ancient thinker, and would be completely devoid of reason. Thanks to the soul, people are able to join the divine knowledge.

Reason allows a person to know the world around him, to have articulate speech, to do good and evil deeds. That is, the soul controls the human body. However, she herself is mind-controlled.

Socratic belief in the immortality of the soul is confirmed by his last conversations with friends. Such conversations were closely connected with the idea of the existence of a single divine Mind. He created the world on the basis of order and harmony. This Mind, according to Socrates, is eternal from its beginning. He acted as the force that endowed man with a thinking soul, speech and immortality. That is why knowledge is extremely important for us not only about the world and nature, but also about our own soul. Having comprehended the mind of his own immortality, a person is able to begin to live in observance of righteous laws and never experience the fear of death. In addition, he will gain confidence in his future, which is an afterlife.

In the teachings of Socrates, there is one phrase that is known to many of us and expresses the main idea of the works on the immortality of the soul of the ancient thinker. It sounds like this: “Man, know thyself!”.

Plato's Teachings

This ancient Greek thinker was a follower of Plato. In doing so, he became the first philosopher whose writings have been preserved in their entirety, rather than in the brief passages cited in the works of other scholars.

In Plato's philosophy, one of the main places is occupied by the idea of the immortality of the soul.substance, according to the ancient thinker, rules everything that is on the sea and on land, with the help of its movements, which are care, discretion and desires. Plato argued that the Earth, the Sun and everything else are only forms of the soul. It itself is primary when material bodies are derivatives. The thinker regards them as secondary objects.

Plato is trying to solve the problem of the correlation between the material and the spiritual. At the same time, he concludes that there is a divine in the souls, which is hidden behind the objects of the surrounding world.

Plato believed in the immortality of the human soul and that it has always existed. He expressed a similar idea in his dialogues, some of which are parables. An important place in these works is given to questions of the afterlife. Plato raised the question of the immortality of the soul in his excellent dialogue Phaedo.

Nature of the argument

The theme of the immortality of the soul is a smooth continuation of all the philosophical ideas of Plato. Moreover, the arguments in its favor are very diverse.

According to Plato, the life of a real philosopher is a renunciation of everything sensual and a convinced preaching of the spiritual world as the most beautiful, true and best. That is why the thinker could not imagine that the life of the soul was interrupted at the moment of death of the body. Plato preached renunciation of the flesh, or dying for the sake of obtaining a supersensible good. He considered death to be the final deliverance from all evils and the beginning of that new life that leads to an ideal world. Moreover, Plato believed in him more than in earthly reality.

The immortality of the soul for the ancient Greek thinker was a moral requirement. At the same time, to metaphysical evidence, he added faith in the afterlife retribution and in the triumph of truth. You can see this in such of his works as "The State", "Gorgia" and "Phaedo". In them, the thinker gives a description of the afterlife judgment on the soul. He does this using poetic images.

Plato's arguments about the immortality of the soul consisted in his recognition of its pre-existence. The thinker proved this fact based on consideration of the nature of the knowledge that a person possesses. According to the teachings of Plato, any knowledge is only a reminder. Otherwise, it is simply unthinkable. Knowledge, however, is universal. Such general concepts as similarity and dissimilarity, differences and identity, magnitudes, multitudes, etc., are not at all given to a person by his experience. They are provided by his soul. With their use, it becomes possible to gain new knowledge.

Plato's body and soul have a clear separation from each other. In this case, the soul dominates the body. Plato draws arguments in favor of her immortality from Orphic-cult and Pythagorean sources. Among them:

• the soul is a homogeneous substance, which can be equated to the eternal existence of ideas;
• presence of self-movement of the soul;
• cognition of like with like, that is, the soul that accepts pure being has the same source.

The reasoned proof of the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo is represented by a dialectic althe conclusion that this substance, the sign of which is life, can in no way be involved in its obvious opposite - death. Plato sums up his thought with the following sentence:

"…divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indecomposable… our soul is supremely similar."

Socrates' dying conversation

The opinion about the immortality of the soul is not a postulate for Plato. He tries to prove his point by offering several pieces of evidence in its favor. You can get acquainted with them in the dialogue "Phaedo". Here it is said how the friends of Socrates, who came to him in prison on the eve of the execution, are having a last conversation with him. They ask the prisoner why he is too calm before death. Socrates at the same time explains that the philosopher, whose whole life is the desire for dying, should not give it up. The true is the knowledge of the immutable and eternal. Such is the understanding of ideal essences, as well as those ideas to which the soul is related by nature. At the same time, Socrates says that death is nothing more than the separation of the soul from the body, which, because of its sensory organs, prevents a person from knowing the truth. It is death that will make it possible.

The students were not happy with these words. They expressed their doubts about the immortality of the soul. Socrates offered them four proofs in favor of his innocence.

The emergence of the dead from the living

How did Plato prove the immortality of the soul? Arguments in favor of this idea can be found in Socrates' first explanation. He toldto his students that everything in this world arises from the opposite. Namely, white - from black, bitter - from sweet, movement - from rest, and vice versa. That is, everything is subject to change, turning into its opposite. A person, knowing that death will come to him after life, can draw the opposite conclusion on the basis of the foregoing. After all, if the dead arises from the living, then it can be vice versa. According to Socrates, there are no significant changes in this world. Before they are born, all souls are in Hades.

Evidence from anamnesis

In Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the soul, it is said that knowledge is remembrance. There are universal concepts in the human mind, which is a confirmation that absolute entities are eternal. And if the soul is already familiar with them, then it was before it ended up in the body. After all, before his birth, a person could not otherwise have received knowledge about the eternal and immortal. This also proves the existence of the soul after death. This can be seen in the following words of Socrates:

“Once our soul existed before, then, entering into life and being born, it arises inevitably and only from death, from a dead state. But in this case, she must certainly exist after death, because she will have to be born again.”

Simplicity of Soul

In order to further convince his students, Socrates tried to present them with yet another proof of his innocence. He pointed out that there are various things in this world, both simple and complex. However, subject to changefar from all of them. This process can only touch complex things. Only they can disintegrate and be divided into some components, decreasing or multiplying at the same time. Simple things always remain in the same state.

At the same time, Socrates argued that everything material is complex. Simple can be considered everything that a person cannot see. The soul refers to the formless entities. And they are not able to decay and be destroyed, which confirms their eternal existence.

The soul is its idea

What other arguments did Socrates give in favor of his being right? One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul in his conversation with his students was the discussion about the essence of this substance, because the soul personifies life. Where there is one concept, there is bound to be another. No wonder the words "animate" and "living" are synonymous.

However, the soul is formless and immaterial. That is, in its essence, it is also an idea. Can something that is inextricably linked with life personify death? And if we affirm that everything in this world proceeds from its opposite, then this does not apply to ideas at all. Thus, the soul, which is the idea of life and soul, will certainly be eternal.

Why is this bound to happen? Yes, because the soul has such an attitude to life as fire to heat. It is simply impossible to imagine a cold flame. So is the soul. It is also impossible to imagine her without life. Moreover, any thing excludes from itself everything that is opposite to it. This is indeedcan be said about the soul. She will definitely exclude death from herself.

Confirming the idea in other dialogs

Belief in the immortality of the soul was expressed by Plato in other works. They were the dialogues "Gorgias" and "The State".

In the first of them, the thinker argues his evidence using the concept of motion. After all, some other object forces any thing to leave the state of rest. However, there is something that moves due to itself. And if this happens, then such a process is endless. What in a person can be considered the source of movement? Body or soul? The answer to this question is clear. The soul sets the body in motion, being the same source for itself. That is why it is eternal.

In his dialogue “The State”, the thinker says that only those things that perish from certain evils can be considered mortal. This may be division or reduction, fire or any other external influence. The thing can then disappear forever. As for the soul, no change or evil can affect it. The soul will not deteriorate and will not disappear. It will not change, according to Plato, and its essence. And this is another proof that the soul is immortal.

Works of Aristotle

In what teachings is the immortality of the soul substantiated? Engaged in solving this issue and a follower of Plato - Aristotle. In his writings, he made additions to the idealistic view of his teacher about the soul. In his interpretation, it was represented by the form of a living organicbody.

Aristotle argued that the soul goes through the path of its development at various stages. That is why there are several types of it. Soul included:

• vegetable;
• animal;
• reasonable, that is mind.

But at any stage, the reason for the movement of the soul lies in itself. And this is, for example, the difference between a stone, which is not able to move by itself, from an animal and a plant.

Talking about the soul, Aristotle emphasizes its rational appearance. He argues that this form of it is not at all the entelechy of the body. The intelligent soul is not even connected with it. Its existence is separated from the body in the same way that the eternal is incompatible with the happening. At the same time, the soul controls the body. You can compare this with the movement of the hand that controls the tool.

Aristotle recognizes the soul as a certain essence, which is the form of the body endowed with life. She is his true essence. So, if the eye were considered as a living being, then sight could be considered its soul.

According to Aristotle, animal and plant souls are mortal. They disintegrate along with the body in which they are located. But the rational soul is divine. That is why it is eternal.

Thus, in his work On the Soul, this student of Plato claims that

"nothing prevents some parts of the soul from being separated from the body."

That is, this higher substance can exist outside of a person.

Regarding about the soul and the objects in which it is located, Aristotlewrites that the creative mind is not only independent and free from real objects, but also primary in relation to them. This will allow him to create objects by thinking them.

Kant's opinion

In what teachings is the immortality of the soul substantiated? This problem was also raised in the works of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, which were created on the verge of two eras of human development - the Enlightenment and Romanticism.

This scientist did not see the cognitive value in the concepts of “simple” and “complex” used before him. Speaking about the immortality of the soul, Kant could not agree with the fact that only on the basis of abstract concepts alone, previous authors made a conclusion about being, which could be erroneous. For the German philosopher, anything can become real only after something visible has stood behind it. That is why, according to Kant, it is impossible to theoretically prove the immortality of the soul. However, he still acknowledges the existence of it. In his Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1788, he speaks of the immortality of the soul as a conceptual postulate, without which the very desire of the human soul for the highest good loses its meaning. He says that this process is directed to infinity.

Quant at the same time talks about the danger of rejecting immortality. Without this, he argues, the foundation of the ethic of prudence is liable to collapse. In the same way, he justifies the existence of God, as well as free will. Although, according to the philosopher, a person is truly unable to know either one or the other.

TeachingBolzano

The theme of the immortality of the soul continued to be considered in the 19th century. During this period, it was illuminated by the Czech mathematician and philosopher Bernard Bolzano. This heretic and priest, creator of set theory, expressed his beliefs about Plato's divisibility argument. His writings say:

"if we clearly see that our soul is a simple substance, then we should have no doubt that it will exist forever."

At the same time, Bolzano pointed out that simple structures never cease to exist. They can only be completely destroyed. But everything that a person perceives as disappearance is only a change in the system of connections that take place within the boundaries of one substantial set, which remains unchanged.

In other words, according to Bolzano, the statement about the immortality of the soul can be justified based on the coordinates of the mind. It is simply impossible to prove this empirically.

Ancient Indian religion

The immortality of the soul and God are two inextricably linked concepts. This can be traced in the ancient Indian faith, which testified to the presence of an indestructible spiritual substance that passes through all forms of existence. The basis of the teachings of this religious direction is the idea that God is omnipotent and one.

The holy book of the Brahmins, the Upanishads, tells of various higher powers. However, in their hierarchy, these deities are below the Atman, which is the personality itself, and alsoBrahman, that is, the universal soul. When a person passes through true knowledge, both of these substances merge, forming a single whole. This allows the “original self” to emerge. A similar process is described in the Upanishads as follows:

A living soul does not die. This subtlest substance permeates the Universe. This is Truth, this is me, this is you.”

Schopenhauer's Teachings

This philosopher, a student of Kant, highly appreciated the ideas of ancient Indian religion. Arthur Schopenhauer attributed the world of phenomena, perceived by the senses, to such a concept as "representation". Kant's abstract "thing-in-itself", inaccessible to representation, he outlined as an unreasonable striving for existence.

Schopenhauer claims that

"animals are basically the same creatures as we are",

and what

"the difference lies only in the uniqueness of the intellect, and not in the substance, which is the will."

Christianity

The distinction between body and soul can also be seen in the Old Testament. Moreover, this idea was taken by Christianity under the influence of the teachings of Plato in the 3rd century. BC

From the text of Holy Scripture, it can be concluded that the souls of people are eternal. And this applies to both the righteous and sinners. Man, according to Christian teaching, consists of a body and a soul. Moreover, each of these elements cannot be the whole person. The soul leaves the body after death. Further, she is in anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ. She will return after him.into the body. This will give a person the opportunity either to live immortally in Christ, or to gain eternity, which is devoid of the communion of the enlightening energy of God.

Such views are in clear opposition to those put forward by philosophers. After all, according to Orthodox scripture, the soul is not at all newly created and born. However, it never existed in the form of the idea of an unchanging world. The soul, according to the Christian religion, is immortal because it is its natural property, and also because God himself wishes it.