SOUL

The soul has been thought of since time immemorial as an animating, self-bestirring principle, as the vital core of what constitutes a human being. But much as it is still talked about in the modern age, there is no picture with a clear understanding, suggesting that it might in the overuse have become wearily outdated. It is now often substituted by the concept of the self, attributed to the capability of self-esteem and rational thinking, of having plans for the future, communicating with others, and so on. The self is a concept that rounds up description of the modern human being. Yet for some reason we are unwilling to do without the term ‘soul’. Why is this? While, for example, the concept of the soul together with what we usually associate with it has long ceased to exist in science, largely considered as a relic of a past time in which faith, not science, dominated the worldview, the concept has not departed from everyday life. In science instead, there is talk of the psyche – which sounds more modern, but is simply the Greek word for ‘soul’ – of ego identity and above all of the self. If science has moved away from use of the term, does this mean that the soul is really dispensable for us as human beings?

Where the soul is still used in intellectual circles, it is often