Online research in philosophy

Naturalization of the Soul charts the development of the concept of soul in western thought, from Plato to the present. The authors place particular emphasis on the eighteenth century which witnessed an enormous intellectual transformation in the way theorists perceived self and personal identity and paved the way for contemporary philosophical and psychological debates.

The soul has played many different roles in philosophy and religion. Two of the primary functions of the soul are the bearer of personal identity and the foundation of immortality. In this paper I shall consider different interpretations of what the soul has been taken to be and argue that however we interpret the soul we cannot consistently maintain the soul is both what we are and what continues after our bodily death.

Has not such a promiscuous, ill-defined concept come to obscure and confuse rather than clarify a genuine understanding of our experience?Harvie Ferguson ...

Is there a ghost in the machine? Are we born trailing clouds of glory? Is there a part of us that will survive death? Is the soul reborn in different bodily forms? These and similar questions have occupied humankind since the dawn of consciousness. Rosalie Osmond's book explores the way the soul has been represented in different cultures and at different times, from ancient Egypt and Greece, through medieval Europe and into the 21st century. Basing her approach on historical sources, she reveals the many different ways in which the soul has been imagined and the range of human needs and aspirations these imaginings have addressed.

The soul of Achilles -- Aristotle -- The doubleness of soul -- Out of itself for the sake of itself -- Nutritive soul -- Sensing soul: vision -- Thinking soul. Sensation and imagination ; Passive and active mind ; Imagination and thought -- The soul as self and self-aware -- "The father of the Logos" -- "For the friend is another self" -- Herodotus: the rest and motion of soul -- Rest in motion: Herodotus's Egypt -- Motion at rest: Herodotus's Scythians -- Euripides: soul as same and other -- The fake that launched a thousand ships: the duplicity of identity in the Helen -- Euripides among the Athenians: the double vision of soul in Iphigeneia among the Taurians -- Plato -- The soul of the law: Gyges in Herodotus and in Plato -- The subject of justice: on Plato's Cleitophon -- The object of tyranny: Plato's Hipparchus -- Plato's Phaedrus: Er's and the structure of soul -- The grammar of soul: the middle voice in Plato's Euthyphro -- The soul of Socrates.

This study of the interaction of the Aristotelian and Augustinian views of the soul traces the disarray of Latin concepts by 1240, the solutions of Bonaventure ...

The soul in Greek thought -- The soul in medieval Christian thought -- The soul in continental thought -- Locke, Butler, reid, and Hume -- Soul-body causal interaction -- The soul and contemporary science -- Contemporary challenges to the soul -- Thoughts on the future of the soul.

Finally, he looks at,the various kinds of unity of the body, both in itself and in its union with the soul.Spirits and Clocks continues Des Chene's highly ...