90. Do We Need the Word "Soul"?

We're losing the word "soul." That is, we can no longer use it in a straightforward way before certain audiences. With the meaning "the disembodied spirit of a human being" the word is lost before an audience of scientists because they don't believe in supernatural things. With the meaning "the immaterial essence of an individual" the word is lost before an audience of existentialists because they depreciate essences. "Existence," they say, "precedes — both goes before and takes precedence over — essence." And no doubt the word is in the process of being lost before other modern audiences.

I may eventually be forced to join one of these audiences but I must say that if I lose "soul" I'm certainly going to be left with a lot of blanks in the pre-modern authors I read. What do I fill in for John Donne when he feels defiled? What is it that's defiled? What is it that De Quincey has abused? that suffers in Shelley? that Herbert must repair? And, the big challenge, what is it that Socrates wanted his students to take care of?

I see an answer, of sorts, to that last question in my preceding post (#89): Socrates wanted his students to take care of what those parents wanted their son away at college to take care of. What is that? To the son it was an ideal, held by his mother and just being established, shakily, in him. It appeared when she said things like, "That's not the Bobby I know." It was obviously an ideal, something to be lived up to.

Is there a word, acceptable in today's vocabulary, that will do for people what "soul" did for Bobby? As soon as he heard it from his preacher he knew he had a core, something around which all his virtues — and vices too, if he weren't careful — clustered. It could be damaged, and look ugly. He was responsible for its condition but, oddly, it made him responsible. It, the whole of him, not a part, is what took the blame, and made him blush.

Might "better self" be called in to do what "soul" did? Maybe, but we won't win back the existentialists or any of the many postmodernists influenced by them. The concept of a "unitary Self" is as vulnerable to deconstruction as any other essentialist concept.

Can philosophers working in this area give me another word? Kant, I find, is sympathetic, but he can't offer anything better than "soul," which he uses reluctantly. "You don't know that it exists but you've got to postulate it as a necessary foundation for morals." Then William James says, "No, no, it's not necessary. Morals and a sense of personal identity don't depend on it at all. 'Soul' (besides referring to an unverifiable entity) is a superfluous word." Many modern philosophers agree with James. I'm still at a loss.

All right, salvage what we can. Let's call this thing a "nexus of values." That word "nexus" makes you think of a place where nerves, or stock holdings, or telephone lines come together, right? Well, I'm glad to have you think that, because that's what I think values do, in a place some call "character." So we've got that much. What we've left out is the big thing with Bobby. His values didn't just sit there, nexus-like. They came out and scolded him. "Hey, you're not living up to us. Get out there and start showing the world we're yours." If we don't have a word that takes that in, one that identifies the Bobby his mother knows and he (though he gained the whole world) could lose, we're still short of "soul."