Defined by the Merriam-Webster English Dictionary, a soul is the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life. It is also described as the spiritual principle embodied in beings and an active or essential part to every being in the universe. For the purpose of this philosophical view on the soul, we will not only focus on this commonly accepted definition, but we will also focus on the definition that philosophers have clung to over the years. A philosopher states that the soul is “the vitalizing principle by which a thing is able to perform activities which we associate with being alive.” Philosophers further narrow their definition down to describing the functions of vital activity to the “minimum powers of nutrition, growth, and reproduction.” Although it is not always easy to draw a line between something living and non-living, such as the example of a virus, it is easy to determine through rationalization that plants, animals, and men do indeed have souls. Because it is easier to observe humans because we understand them so well, it is also easier to fo

Aside from all the philosophical beliefs proving the existence of the soul, is the human intuition we experience so often throughout life. Whenever we hear ghost stories, aren’t we assuming that the ghost we are so afraid of are actually souls? If the human body has died, then the ghost is what is left behind; the physicality of a human may be gone, but its spirituality remains in tact as a spooky ghost. Whenever we experience feelings such as love, friendship, guilt, loneliness, or joy, aren’t we experiencing things that are not tangible? If we are experiencing things that are not tangible, they must be originating from something we cannot grasp within our hands. These feelings come from within our souls.

We have discussed very thoroughly the existence of a human soul, but we still need to remember that plants and animals have souls as well. Even though it isn’t as easy to understand the soul of an animal or a plant, we still believe that it exists. Remember, the philosophical views of a soul reduce it to the vitalizing principle by which a thing is able to perform activities which we associate with being alive. A soul is minimum powers of nutrition, growth, and reproduction. It is logical to say that a plant is alive, and an animal is surely alive. Both plants and animals reproduce, grow, and require nutrition. Therefore, even though we cannot experience or study the souls of plants or animals directly, we know they do indeed exist.

When a soul is “born,” when does it die? There are two basic ways that something can be destroyed. There is no believed principle of death in the soul; it cannot be destroyed. The only manner in which it may be annihilated is if its creator would commit an act of destruction. Philosophy has no good reason to believe that God would destroy any soul.

One famous philosopher, Descartes, made soul and body so distinct from each other that he and his followers had trouble uniting them; this gap between soul and body is referred to as the “mind-body-problem.” Descartes, referred to as the Father of Modern Philosophy, compared man to a machine and its driver, the body being the machine and the soul being the driver. A machine

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